STOP EATING MY CHAPTERS! THEY ARE PRIVATE PROPERTY! IF YOU DON'T STOP EATING MY CHAPTERS THEN I'LL STOP POSTING CHAPTERS AND YOU'LL NEVER KNOW HOW IT ENDS AND YOU WILL ALL DIE SAD AND MISERABLE WITH NO IDEA OF HOW THE STORY ENDS AND WHAT THE SEQUALS WERE GONNA BE ABOUT!!! *takes breath*, oh boy, long sentence. Anyway, before i faint, chapter... something!
Chapter 36
Splat
The first sign that I was approaching the bunks was an increase in the number of bloodstains. And the smell. I’m yet to visit a factory, lab or mine where the mudokons quarters didn’t stink like a dead glukkon. This place was no exception and a few minutes later I was walking past a large board labelled: “Mudokon Bunks ahead, no unortherised entry.”
I muttered something less-than-polite under my breath and kept walking. A few minutes later I came across a story stone and stuffed my hand into it:
Due to highly paranoid security precautions, up ahead you will find 5 doors. One of these doors will lead you to the Mudokon Bunks; the other 4 will result in various forms of painful death. If you have authorisation but do not know the door, please ask the head of security for advice. If your name is Abe, please pick the wrong door. Thank you for your time.
Weird.
Another 10 metres along the corridor twisted sharply to the right, opening into a chamber with 5 doors leading from it; on each door was a picture. They were a hammer, a star, a scrab, a cog and a black oval. I stared at the 5 pictures on the 5 doors and one thought crossed my mind: can I ask the audience?
Stay calm Splat; just think about it! I thought, 5 doors, Mudokon Bunks. Well mudokons are slaves and slaves have… hammers? No, too obvious, not even sligs are that stupid.
Scrab then? Scrab means death, you want to avoid death so you wouldn’t bother to pick a scrab, right? Unless they’re using reverse-psychology; I’d come back to that one.
A star then? But why a star… you’re more likely to find that on a glukkons office but if the door lead to a painful death… Odd, I hate reverse-psychology!
A cog… nothing springs to mind there. I’ll come back to that one too.
And the black oval. Sorta looks like a hole I guess. That does almost look like a trapdoor beneath it. Ok, cancel hole.
Scrab, star or cog. I’m pretty sure the scrab is just reverse psychology. You think a scrab is to forced to be a bad thing so you pick it but that’s just what the glukkons want you to think so… ok, I’m just confusing myself now, star or cog?
Nothing about those two have any message of painful death. No clue comes from what I’m seeing here. What are the odds of getting it write through complete guess? 50%. Fine then, I’ll toss a coin for it.
I pulled a 1-moolah coin from my backpack and flipped it into the air. “Wings is cog,” I muttered as it flipped in mid air; I caught it in my left hand and pressed it onto the back of my right hand. Taking a deep breath, I parted my fingers a looked down at the face-up symbol on the coin.
It had come up mandibles, which meant I was going to try the star door. “Oh odd, please let this be the right one,” I muttered quietly. I stepped forward and reached out for the metal door handle…
METAL DOOR HANDLE!!! I shot a look around the room at all the other doors. They each had a wooden handle except this one. My hand hovered about a centimetre above the metal. Why should this one be metal when all the rest were wooden? An image of 50,000 volts of electricity (the official execution level) passing through my body entered my head; I bent down and peered at the handle.
Yes, there was a spot on the very bottom of it that looked as if someone had welded a wire onto the handle. I shuddered when I thought of how close to a painful death I had come and stepped back. Which door was it then? Suddenly I found myself not trusting the cog painted onto the door. Well hurry up and choose Splat, the readers are getting bored! I thought. It was then that I remembered the words said to me by a dying mudokon only 25 minutes ago: “Mudokons are the cogs that make this place work… it’s on the door…” How could I be so stupid? I walked up to the door and reached out for the handle.
Just before I touched it I felt a sting of static electricity; my arm drew back instinctively. I paused for a second. Warning of death or paranoid security system? Glukkons wouldn’t accept a trap that let people know when they were gonna die. I took a deep breath and reached out for the handle. My hand closed over the wooden handle… and I let out the breath. Nothing had happened.
I twisted the handle and as I did, I felt the floor below me lurch. I quickly released the handle and stepped back, looking at the tile I was standing on. It was sliding up to become level with the rest of the floor; I reached over it and turned the handle: it lurched down but then returned to its place. “Man, these guys are paranoid,” I muttered. I stepped onto the tile again and shoved the door open, instantly there was a loud screech from the other side like a scrab’s. I ignored it and shoved the door open the rest of the way; it opened out into a narrow, empty corridor. There was a deathly silence. A stench of blood and sweat and chemicals washed over my body like water. This was definitely the bunks. I took a deep breath of the fresh air from behind me and turned to the corridor.
Drawing near the end of the story, pretty soon I'll be writing the sequal! I'll finish Splat before i stop for the summer anyway. (oh, and cool banner T)
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