The food is good; the mood, not so much

Jen followed Anne to the point store, helping her decide what to buy for lunch. She tried to convince Anne to buy a whole kitchen set so she could show off her cooking skills, but the others agreed that there wasn’t enough space for that. Instead they settled on buying a long table with eight chairs, along with a variety of lunch platters.

Frank finished checking out the plumbing with no luck. The water flow seemed to shut off whenever the toilet was removed from the wall, and there weren’t actually any openings for the water to pour out of. Apparently it was just as Anne had guessed, and the water was slipping through the walls like the rest of the items that came from the store.

“The air in here is probably doing the same thing,” Anne explained, adding the observation to her notebook, “Otherwise I think we would’ve run out of oxygen a while ago.”

“It would be fascinating,” Ed said, “If we weren’t trapped here.”

The others nodded their agreement, and lunch was finally ready to be served, but there was still one problem to solve before they could eat. Leticia walked over to the corner where Greco lay, still angrily grunting and growling every once in a while. “What do we do with him?”

“Maybe he’ll behave if we just untie him?” Ed asked, hopefully.

“No, we can’t risk it,” Frank answered. “We can’t trust him not to attack Anne again, but we’ll all go crazy in this tiny room if we have to always be watching his every move.” Frank moved to the wall once more, scrolling through items in the point store. “I know it’s not great, but I think this is the best option.”

Anne came up beside him and nodded. Frank was pointing at a metal cage, big enough to fit a person. “I don’t want to hear him shouting all the time, either. We can try untying him and throwing him in there, but if he doesn’t shut up, I’d say we should just keep him bound most of the time, and only untie him to let him eat, or use the restroom.”

“I agree,” Frank said, turning to the rest of the group. “Any objections?”

“Isn’t that too inhumane?” Jen asked, not entirely onboard with putting a grown man in a cage, like some kind of wild animal.

“Maybe,” Frank said, “But I still can’t think of anything better to do.”

Jen nodded reluctantly, and Anne purchased the cage. Greco was moved inside, his bindings loosened a bit, and then the door was locked. Frank slipped the key into his pocket.

“Let’s eat,” he said, ignoring the angry bald man in the cage behind him.

Over lunch, Ed made a proposal. “Are we agreed to forget about the whole points thing for as long as we aren’t in any immediate danger? Anne and Jack can make any necessary purchases for us, and if we still haven’t found a way to escape or been rescued in say, a week or so, we can reconvene and discuss what to do, at that time?”

“Yes, please,” Jen said, very eager to stop talking about anything related to the room’s strange and awful rules. Everyone else also agreed, and the rest of the meal passed without any further discussion of the point system.