Round robin story #1 - Story only

[Momoko]

(Posty posty! Time to give it a shot. Steph is next. ^^ ... Re-edited post from earlier. Made a little mistake in overlooking a flaw with regards to the mirror. Apologies.)

Alex was becoming ever more frustrated. The face in the mirror was that of himself again, except for the fact he's actually smiling. He still moved in the same manner as Alex did, much like any reflection would do. Only he was still smiling. A rather eerie expression.

Alex wasn't sure how to confront this reflection. Yelling at it would just be silly. Would the man just mimic his yelling anyway? He pondered throwing the keys at the mirror. Seven years of bad luck or no, he wasn't going to let this reflection bug him further.

And so, with a winded pitch, he threw his keys over at the mirror as hard as he can. The man made a similar pitch, but Alex couldn't see what he threw at the mirror on his end.

The keys bounced off the window, right between the man's eyes on the reflection, but it bounced off. The keys landed a few feet away from the mirror and near Alex's feet. There was not a dent, nor scratch on the mirror. Either his throw wasn't strong enough, or this was a very strong mirror.

He bent his knees down to pick up his keys, the reflection doing a similar motion, though Alex still could not make out what he picked up. Frustrated, Alex stood up, and turned his attention to the paintbrush and paint.

A strange idea struck his mind, and he wondered to himself. If he could use this brush, perhaps he can paint over the now sealed 'door' to make an actual door. Or maybe use it to paint a way out. It wouldn't make a lot of sense, but then again, it seems he might have to suspend belief in order to get away from this room.

[Sophia Anieri]

The paintbrush contacted the door with an audible "slap!" The brown paint stuck to the brown wood fairly well, smoothing the color and giving a finished appearance.

Alex wondered briefly what was possessing him to do such a whimsical thing as painting over this door to find a way out. Then a memory niggled at him. He remembered that each of the nine doors leading off of the hallway had been painted. The tenth had not -- it was pure wood. And the unpainted door had led him to his keys. Maybe painting it would lead him to an exit.

He slapped on another coat of paint, then looked at the result. A door covered with light brown paint. He would have to wait for the paint to dry before opening it again. And so he turned around, cursing his stupidity...

--and blinked, as the mirror came within his sight. In the mirror was clearly reflected an open door, with the hallway leading away...

[FreeFall]

Alex vaguely remembered stories where the magic only worked if the hero wasn't looking. Shrugging - things were already firmly in the ridiculous category - he backed up, using his reflection in the mirror for guidance. His searching hand reached out for the mirror's open doorway...

and hit wet paint.

Cursing, Alex pulled his hand back, examining the oily paint covering it. Stepping forward, ready to at least cover the mirror with paint if he couldn't break it, he pushed his right palm against the cool surface. For a second, it held, before parting like water, absorbing his hand and wrist smoothly.

Alex stared at his reflection, both sets of astonished eyes watching the other.

There was a creaking behind him. Twisting around, he watched the painted door open into darkness beyond. Seeing his opportunity, he wrenched his hand from the mirror (an entirely unnecessary show of force. The mirror released his hand as easily as it had taken it), and he grabbed his keys, ready to bolt.

Then a steady, musical tingling caught his attention. Raising his right arm, from which the sound seemed to eminate, he beheld a pale, thin wrist, leading to long, slender fingers, covered in silvery, thin bracelets. Each bracelet had a small, gaily coloured bow and a bell tinkling softly with every movement.

Alex turned to the mirror for a moment, examining the soft hand so incongruous with the rest of him, then sprinted for the door and the unknown beyond.

[Princess Jaimie]

Alex ducked through the open door at full speed and found himself back in the hallway. There were two problems, however. First, he was charging straight for the door opposite where he had come from, and second, that door was hanging wide open, almost as if it were waiting for him.

Even slamming on the brakes couldn't stop him in time, and with a muffled curse, he stumbled into the room, and finally caught himself on the bed, the bracelets on his changed hand jingling together as he stopped. He turned back around just in time to see the door click shut behind him. Muttering under his breath, he walked back to the door and tried to open it; the doorknob rattled, but the door didn't budge. It seemed, yet again, that he was stuck in here. Great, what do I do now?

[FreeFall]

Alex growled. How long was this house going to keep toying with him? Angrily, he kicked the offending door, before turning to survey his newest prison. A plush four-post bed dominated the room, covered in heaps of furs and comforters. A small coffee table had a TV and a PS2, both unconnected, on it, and two dressers flanked the walls.

Walking to the dressers, Alex pulled one drawer open...to be greeted by a profusion of panties. Apparently, whoever ran this place loved variety. There was everything from lingerie to a couple pairs of boxers (still cut for women, though). With a snort and a muttered curse, Alex let the dressers be.

Sighing, he sat on the bed, his bulky weight sinking into comforters. Staring at the cold, hard wooden floor, he felt his anger rising anew, coloring everything a hazy crimson. He snapped to his feet, cursing vehemently. Completely losing it, he roared through the room, putting his foot through the TV, throwing drawers into walls, and tearing sheets from the bed.

"All I wanted was my keys!" he hissed between curses.

Finally, exhausted, he slumped over on the bed again to survey the chaos he had made. The room was in complete disarray. Grinning triumphantly at his handiwork and rather tired, he lay back on the bed to rest his eyes for a second.

He was asleep in less than a minute.

[Coruscate]

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

Toc.

Time flew by on silvery wings.

Visions of clocks and distant rings.

Melting. Melting. Time and space were candle wax, sliding about under the flame of an unseen light.

His body did not breath, oxygen was useless here.

He felt no heat or cold, those feelings were meaningless.

His skin was but a shell that he expected to be there, fuzzy, out of shape because he only knew so much of himself. Such was the image of a man who paid so little attention to himself.

Darkness wrapped him like a womb of all creation.

Presenting nothing, blank, dark, deep. Giving him nothing but forcing him to look inwards, which was giving him all.

Thoughts rushed past him. His life. His birth. His childhood. The loves he had and the loves he lost. Towering above all was the fatal question.

"Who am I?"

"I am Alex."

"Who is Alex?"

"I am Alex."

"Who are you, Alex?"

"I am I."

"Are you?"

"I am."

"Why?"

"Because I am."

"You are not you by your own choice?"

"I have no choice but to be me!"

"Are you certain?"

"Yes!"

"Let me show you something."

The voice disappeared.

Silence fell once again on the stillness of the void.

A light appeared in the distance.

A light called the future.

Two hands outstretched to reach it.

One hand was elegant, female, covered with silvery bracelets with bows and bells.

The other hand was strong, masculine, covered with hair and a watch that told time.

The purpose of one arm was to attract attention, to dazzle, to entrap.

The purpose of the arm was to pay attention, to focus, to grasp.

"Who are you, Alex?"

[Princess Jaimie]

Alex suddenly sat up, breathing heavily, from the extremely unusual dream. "Is this whole house cursed or something?" Of course, there was no answer forthcoming, and he turned his attention to his oddly changed hand. As he'd already surmised, and as had been indicated in the dream, it was a woman's hand, with long, slender fingers tipped with oval nails, and at the wrist, a series of intricate bracelets that each had a ribbon and bell tied to them.

Looking at the bracelets closely for the first time, he realized that they were actually connected together, and although they weren't uncomfortable to wear, they were too close around his wrist to slip off, and he couldn't even figure out where the clasp was to take them off the normal way. And the constant soft ringing was very distracting; it sounded nice in its own way, but it made it a bit difficult to concentrate.

Then, he frowned. The ringing seemed awfully loud for coming from the bracelets on his wrist. Tilting his head slightly, perplexed, he felt a weight at his earlobes. That caused him to sit up and take notice, so to speak. With a trembling hand, he reached up and felt at his ear with his unchanged hand, and felt a series of tiny rings at his earlobe. Feeling around a bit more, he realized that the rings themselves weren't attached to his ear, but they were attached to a tiny hoop that was nearly flush with his lobe.

He gave an experimental tug, and winced from the pressure; it was obvious that he wasn't going to be able to get the earrings off without help, help that was evidently nowhere to be found. He felt like throwing another temper tantrum, but it wouldn't have done any good. Then, glancing around at the room, he noticed that it was neat and orderly again; the damage he had caused seemed to be completely gone.

[FreeFall]

He was out the door (which opened without a sound) and down the hallway in moments, his Wallstreet form marching past other silent doorways, all looming open into shadow like jaws waiting for a victim. With every forceful impact of his Armani shoes upon the wooden floor, the ringing around his ears would renew, and the shifting silver of his slender wrist would remind him of the curse this house had already placed upon him.

A strange voice rang in his head, a voice sensuously deep, reverbrating until it was more vibration than speech. What was this place doing to him?

Down the stairs, past the beautiful, vivid jungle splattered on the wall, so detailed it seemed to beckon to him, Alex strode. In the front lobby, past the table with its damned cards (the only thing in the house to remain constant, Alex noted grimly), he tried the door, jerking on the handle until his arm hurt, but it refused to give so easily as its companions in the bedrooms.

Finally, agitated and nervous he picked a dark, mahogany side hallway at random and jogged down it. Every time he had stayed in one place for too long, something had gone wrong, and Alex did not intend to make himself an easy target. Storage closets did not much appeal to him, and Alex finally found himself in front of two massive sepia doors. With no little trepidation, but also the realization that his only choice now was to outlast this place, he grasped a handle, turned it, and stepped inside.

This whole room - in fact, probably the whole wing - was a sprawling library. Row after row of bookshelves spread beyond Alex's vision in the light of scattered bulbs swinging from the darkened ceiling. Directly across from the doorway in which he stood, business suit blending with the walls, an empty librarian's desk stood, and in front of that three long, rectangular tables, each with six well-padded chairs, stood empty.

"May I help you?" asked a delicate voice, the same tenor as the one haunting the back of Alex's head. Whipping around, he saw a slight woman, so pale that her skin seemed to shine in the gloom of the library. Her wide, sapphire eyes were cool and calculating, though not intimidatingly so, and her smile was the easiness of someone used to dealing with troublesome customers. "We have a wide selection..."

[Eri Anikemi]

Ok, fine. I'll give it a go. I keep finding things to play with on here.

Alex looked around the library in shock. He didn't really know why he was suprised, the house already had more than enough going on to make any rational person lose thier mind. But he was suprised, he had to admit it.

"Uhm." Yes. I'd like to find out how to leave." Perhaps there was a chance, even if only a small one.

"Leave? We have many books on exits. Ways of exiting, methods of exiting, famous exits of the past, present and future." The librarian smiled in a perfectly neutral way that was utterly chilling.
"But you meant to ask about leaving the house completely. I'm truely sorry, but without the permission of the mistress of the house, you may not leave."

"What?! This is outragous!" Alexander spluttered in his best wallstreet voice. He was quite proud of that voice, it had gotten him a great many deals and past a great many inconviences like this... librarian.

The librarian nodded and bowed her wizened head meekly, but spoke with no change in her iron hard disinterested voice. "That may be. But you cannot leave without the permission of the mistress of the house."

Alexander strode forward, reaching to take the librarian by the upper arm. "Now see here, do you know who... I... am?" his hand vanished through the librarian's form as though she was a ghost. She smiled politely in that chilling fashion, and responded. "No. Do you?" And then she was gone.

[Princess Jaimie]

Well, that went well. Alex growled once more, then stopped berating himself and focused on his ultimate objective, to get out of this house/mansion. "I should have asked where the mistress of the house was." He turned to leave, then paused as he glimpsed something out of the corner of his eye...

[Coruscate]

The gold leafing of a book glimmered in the shower of light cast by a stained glass window behind a tree. His feminine hand clamored nervously over the book and he brought it up close to his face.

Alice In Wonderland.

Alex threw the book into a bookshelf so hard that the spine broke and pages spilled out, covering the floor in a blanket of literature.

"Someone has a sick sense of humor," he thought. He paced about for a moment and glanced out the window by pure chance. The scenery outside looked nothing like the area he had driven to. Where he should have seen overgrown weeds and willows casting a deep, lonely shadow on the earth, brightly colored flower patches and lushious green mountains greeted his eyes. The surreality of his situation creeped over his mind and body, making him fidget and itch in anxiety.

Beneath the window lay a small table, not much bigger than a night stand with a small chair perfectly suited for a lightweight woman but comically small for a full grown man. His elbows brought the weight of the world and his head down hard onto the table, it squeeked as he ran his hands through his hear in frustration. "Why me," he shrieked.

[Sophia Anieri]

Alex had no idea how long he sat there. His mind seemed to have completely turned off. Things were happening that were simply unexplainable, and his logical mind reeled from the contradictions between his previously ironclad beliefs about the way the world worked, and reality.

As much as he would love to convince himself that it was a dream, he knew better. Somewhere deep down, he knew this was real. Strange, impossible, and real. So somehow, he would have to deal with the world as it presented itself.

A mirror, I need a mirror. Somehow he knew what he would see, and as much as it frightened and repulsed him he felt an overpowering need to know that overshadowed the dread. No, it was born from the dread -- the fear and attraction were one emotion. He buried his head in his hands, and winced at the unfamiliar feeling of his right hand on his face.

He reached for his right ear, feeling its contours. It doesn't feel the same, but nothing feels the same with this hand anymore. I need to see what's happening to me. But how could he submit to that longing and dread?

[scarplo]

Ultimately, the question won out over the answer, and Alex looked at the window.

Stained glass isn't the best reflector. The colors mute the shadows, making any discernable form little better than an outline. So, when Alex saw himself, a concerned, tired look on his reflection, he went with the most reasonable response.

And when his reflection started talking, it only convinced him further that he was going insane.

"It's about time you got here. I was begining to think you weren't going to look."

"This has got to be some kind of messed up dream... some--"

"DON'T LOOK AWAY!"

Alex's eyes stopped their descent to his rising hands. He could still see his reflection's chest. It rose and fell with his, showing those same hints of man-boobs that he struggled with the YMCA to remove.

"Listen. This place isn't just a physical location. It's a choice. And if you don't make it, it will make you."

His reflection had an adam's apple, and a five-o-clock shadow about his neck. How long have I been here?

"Every reflection you see, every image you come across, is something trying to become real. They're potentials, Alex. Ideas."

That strong nose that got him into so many fights back at Lincoln. That same mane of hair and dark eyes that brought so many women so close...

"What are you?"

His reflection smiled, a tired, weary smile. "I'm the you that escapes. I can tell you how, but you need to listen carefully and do exactly as I--"

Alex's fists squeezed shut. "No."

The reflection glared at him. "We've got no TIME for this, damnit-"

"I'm not going to listen to some voice in my head. Not now, not ever." Alex pointed a finger at the window for a second, and started turning.

"You're not your mother!"

He had a book from a shelf before he knew it, and had thrown it at the glass before he heard himself. "SHUT UP!"

The glass obligingly shattered, revealing the wonderland he'd seen beyond.

[scarplo]

Alex didn't walk through the looking glass. He didn't run back through the house, struggling for another way out. The subject of our attention simply stood there in the library, for a moment, letting his mind run itself ragged.

Absentmindedly, he checked the time on his cellphone. It was early, a day later than he thought it should be. Excecutives would be wondering where he was, his date would have passed from utterly furious to mild concern--his dog was probably getting hungry.

Alex's laugh was quiet.

He walked about the library a bit, looking up at the various books, wondering what other bizzare traps this place would throw at him. A book on Egytpology. Would that make him a slave? Queen Nephertete? Isis? A small science fiction piece; Red Sun. Would that drop him on a martian landscape?

Slowly, dispair cracked under accomplishment. College graduation. Top of his class. A leader of men. Producing an income that some small countries dream of. Accomplishment raised his sight from the pit beneath to the bridge to cross. There was a pattern here. A consistant internal logic to the madness. Something to exploit and employ! It was just a matter of figuring it out.

He checked his pockets a second time, and found a small pen bearing Careerbuilder's logo. He smiled a bit and stood a little straighter. "Every bleeding second."

Then he took a book from a shelf and started writing over the story.

Pre-occupation with puzzles; bad puns, threats...
Assertions that T&A beats sticks n' balls...
Paint...
Cat...
Reflections...

He frowned at the paper and thought.

'A choice--make it or it makes you'

[Arkain]

Irritated, Alex snapped his pen, hitting it several times against the edge of the table to break the plastic through.
For the past few hours, he's sat at this table and scribbled over this book (the Arthurian Cycle,) putting down all the thoughts that came to his head and then some. Alas, it was to no avail, for not one solution would come to mind.

All he knew was that the place was screwing his head over royally. All he had to do was glance over to the hand he had been writing with, his favored hand, the one that clinked and jingled with jewelry, or to look at the paper and the neat, flowing characters so alien to his own yet brought about by the ingrained motion of the muscles in his right hand and wrist.

"Sir."
He jumped at the faintly insistant voice, one that carried a hint of having repeated itself for a while now, knocking the chair unto the ground. He spent an embarressed moment propping it up, then looked angrily up at the librarian who had been trying to get his attention. "What do you want?" he asked rudely. Normally, Alexander is an enormously polite man, knowing that a happy person is one who is more likely to help him in such things as business; at the moment, he didn't care in the slightest.

"You've ruined that book, sir," she answered calmly, crossing her arms, "You're going to need to replace it."

"Why bother?" he responded with a bitter question, "Should make a dent on what this house owes me." He started to cross his arms, but stopped when his good left hand felt the cool metal on his right's wrist. The woman said nothing in return, looking at him as if he were acting like a spoiled child. In the end, Alex was the one to look away, and reached for his checkbook with a mutter and snatched his broken pen off the ground. He wrote out an entry, using his left hand despite the awkwardness, poised the tip over the amount and said, "Fine fine...how much?"

The librarian slid the book off the table, evidentally not entirely immaterial, and began to flip through the pages. Growing impatient, Alex started to noise up when she lifted a finger imperiously, silencing him, and lowered it down to an illustration he couldn't quite see. With a deft motion, she picked at an infinitisimal flap and peeled it off and handed it to him.

Somewhat bemused, he reached for and took the paper, but before he could turn it over to have a look at what it was, it disassociated with itself and became colorless white dust that sank into his right hand, tingled, and then went still. Startled, Alex looked up, but found the librarian missing, a fresh new Arthurian Cycle in the bookshelf. Not a sound could be heard throughout the library, none save his own breathing.[/i]