You're an idiot, Drake,
I told myself as I pulled at the collar of my light jacket and knew too late that I should have worn something warmer. Walking the streets of the city at night in early January was just plain stupid, especially with the winter as cold as it had been. I guess I'd been so excited about my birthday tomorrow that I'd rushed out without thinking, and now I was standing in a sketchy alley between some huge skyscrapers as the wind howled through the space separating the buildings. Dirty, slushy snow soaked through my shoes and socks and the icy breeze tunneled its way past my jacket and through the thin shirt beneath. I was freezing. The only thing keeping me here were the words of a stranger I'd met through an online message board.
You're totally an idiot,
I said again. What was I, anyway? A soon-to-be 26-year-old with mounds of college loan debt and a degree in accounting.
You're here as a joke some stranger is playing for their sick amusement. When you freeze to death —
"Hello! You must be Drake."
I spun.
A door was creaking open in the wall a dozen feet down and a tall, bearded figure was standing in the yellow rectangle of light. "Come in! You must be freezing, poor lad."
I shivered through the slush and into the doorway, finding myself in a small, square office with a large welcome desk and several corridors leading deeper into the building behind it. The tall man who had let me in strode back across the room and sat down behind the desk. When he turned to face me, I saw that his beard was long and white, his nose was long and crooked and his head was bald as a hardboiled egg. He also had beady eyes and a wicked smile that, along with the rest of him, made the man look like a shifty Merlin or lecherous Dumbledore.
"So, Drake..." he mused. "You responded to our posted message in an online forum for individuals with certain... sexual proclivities... expressing interest in coming to a business arrangement."
I tried and failed not to turn red with embarrassment.
He thinks I'm some sort of sexual deviant.
"No no no, lad," he said, obviously noticing my coloring and waving his hand, letting his mouth turn into a much more grandfatherly smile. "Many of our clients frequent such corners of the Internet."
I wasn't sure whether to be soothed or discomfited even more.
"Some men like their women tied up and gagged, bound or chained or strapped down," the man continued, waving his hand more as he went down the list. "Others..." He shot me a significant look. "Want nothing more than docile playthings — submissive and obedient and always ready to please."
I clenched my fists and tried to ignore the fact that even just his description sent a bucket of blood rushing below my belt.
"I assume you came with the down payment?" he asked, as I wondered whether I should even be here.
I took a deep breath.
This is real. This is crazy, but real.
I reached into my pocket for my wallet. "Your message said a thousand dollars?"
"Nope. Four thousand." The man's face fell back into the blank expression of a professional hustler.
"Four thousand?" I gaped.
That's 80 percent of my bank account!
The old man winked at me and spat into a tall silver cup that sat on his desk. "You know what you're buying," he cackled. "$1,000 each, that's the new price. Take it or leave it."
Fifteen minutes earlier, I wouldn't have thought twice. I would have flipped the man the bird and walked out. But for some reason I hesitated.
Dirty Gandalf sighed. "Rest assured, my boy, that this is your only opportunity." He shook his head sadly. "Many men have walked out that door and regretted it when we didn't give them a second chance."
I swallowed, hard. "This better be for real," I said. Fishing in my wallet, I pulled out my credit card. I tossed it down on the table.
Quick as a wink, Crazy Merlin swiped it up and was entering the details into the desk's ancient-looking computer. Several minutes of
tap-tap-tapping
on the keyboard later, he slid my card back across the desk. "You just received an address and a gate code in your email inbox," he said, looking up at me through bushy eyebrows. "Show up tomorrow to the address with the four young ladies. There will be a man there who will walk you through the rest."
I nodded, coughed uncomfortably, then turned and started to leave.
"Oh, and Drake?" The man had paused at the entrance to one of the tunnels and I paused in the doorway.
The wind was hitting my back and sending shivers down my spine. "What?" I asked.
The Dumbledore doppelgänger grinned. "Happy Birthday."
We pulled up to the crumbling facade of an old warehouse down by the financial district at around 11 o'clock. We came in two cars, Sammy and Eliza with me in my beat-up red truck, Marcella and Hannah in Hannah's new Mercedes. The security code I'd been given opened up a heavy black gate that looked new and out of place in the rundown surroundings.
"There's an escape room in there?" Sammy asked, stretching as she got out of my car and almost popping the buttons on her blouse as her sizable breasts threatened to escape.
I did an amazing job of not staring directly at her tits as I answered her question. Instead, I was captured by her bewitching blue gaze. "This is the address the booking agent gave me."
And according to old Merlin's advertisement, the room is equipped with the technology to turn any four women I bring into my personal harem of brainwashed bimbos.
Eliza came around the truck, sleek as usual in black jeans and a dark leather jacket that somehow accented her milk chocolate complexion. I'm not so good with style, but whatever she did was definitely working. "This is the place, huh?" she asked, pursing her full lips. "It doesn't look like much."
Definitely doesn't look like $4,000,
I thought glumly, but tried to look upbeat and excited. "Yeah!" I said, turning and smiling as Hannah and Marcella walked up to join us. "I've never done an escape room before and I wanted to take my four best friends with me on my birthday. Apparently this is one of the most difficult and complex ones in the city."
"Well, Drake," Marcella said, and I felt a tingle of warmth in the pit of my stomach as her delicious Spanish accent sounded out my name. "We're all here and ready for a good time."
Hannah smiled brightly at me. It was a brilliant, million-watt smile — no wonder she was pulling in the big bucks as the personal assistant to one of the biggest software magnates in the city. "The inside can only look better than the outside!" she told me, punching me playfully in the shoulder. Hannah was usually the chipper one of the group. "So let's check it out."
I led the way towards the big blue door of the big blockish building, my four hot-as-hell friends trailing behind. I still couldn't believe these girls hung out with me. Sure, I had been completely emasculated and dumped in the friend zone by all of them. But nonetheless, an average-looking guy like me took the opportunity to spend time with gorgeous women where he could.
I hit the door several times with my fist, eliciting a hollow-sounding
bong
each time. "Anybody home?" I called.
The door opened suddenly and a suspiciously-familiar tall man in glasses and a long white lab coat stood before us.
Dumbledore!
I thought incredulously.
There is no fucking way.
"Erm, hello," I said as he looked down his nose at me. He had a clipboard in his hand and a pencil.
"Hello, stranger," he said, and I could have sworn I saw him wink beneath one bushy white eyebrow. "Are you and your beautiful companions ready to embark on the adventure of a lifetime?" He flashed a joking grin at the girls and they tittered behind me.
I nodded, slowly. "We are, sir," I said, feeling slightly foolish.
My old acquaintance slumped suddenly, dropping his pretentious act. He laughed, a deep Santa Clause sound. "Then get on in here, young 'uns," he said. He backed out of the doorway and I stepped inside. "The adventure awaits!"
We trooped inside and looked around. The room was small, with blank concrete walls, obviously taking up only a tiny corner of the vast warehouse. It made me wonder how big the escape room actually was, or whether our room was just one of many. My bearded friend showed us to a table where several pages of forms were laid out in four neat stacks. Beside each stack was a pen. "Get to signing, girls," Merlin chuckled.
Sammy raised her hand, her sparkly pink fingernails flashing in the light. "There are five of us, not four," she commented.
"Our young birthday boy will have a different set of papers to sign," our host explained, snaking an arm around my shoulders and gesturing vaguely with his clipboard. "Since he's the one who booked your whole adventure he has a bit more liability."
Hannah rolled her eyes. "I swear," she laughed. "Not even my office has this much paperwork." She bent over the table and I tried not to stare at her ass in those tight jeans as she focused on the work.
I shook my head and turned to examine the pages the escape room operator scooted in front of me. I skimmed down the page. It started off like the usual stuff.
Do you forswear the right to take legal action against the Escape Room Corp. for any injuries sustained from actions taken of your own free will?
Then it moved on to some stranger ones.
Do you acknowledge that any decisions you make or actions you take during and/or after the escape room are yours and that the Escape Room Corp. has no liability?
Finally, I froze. I reread the line.
Do you, Drake Sutton, consent to have your four fellow escapees hypnotically transformed into willing, obedient bimbos, sexually submissive and servile to you, and you alone?
My hand seemed unable to move the pen across the line that said, "Sign here."
God,
I thought.
You're so stupid. And gullible. You've been reading too many stories on the internet. This is all a scam anyway. It doesn't matter if you sign.
I scribbled my signature and took a deep breath.
This is stupid. You wasted your money coming here.
A wrinkled set of fingers reached out and grasped the paper. I looked up and saw it was in the hands of my old friend the escape room curator.
