The Only Game In Town [Adventure]

Lillian was in a blank white room. Everything about the room screamed boredom to Lillian.

Lillian looked down at her feet and noticed she was standing on a bright red chair. And now that her attention was brought to it, she saw six more chairs stationed at various points throughout the room.

They were all varying colors – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.

Somewhere in Lillian's soul, she knew that something dreadful would happen to her if she touched the bland white shades in the room. She knew that she would become boring.

That could not be allowed to happen. So, she jumped from her red chair and deftly landed on the orange chair.

A giggle escaped her lips after she landed her precarious jump. None of the chairs seemed to have even legs, and so after she had jumped, she had nearly tipped over the edge of the orange chair.

Lillian looked back at the previous chair she had touched and saw that the bland white color was creeping up the legs of the chair like a mold. It grew and festered, popping little zits of boring whiteness that spewed chunks of milk colored goop. Lillian shivered as she saw the red chair get devoured by the blankness.

Well, now was as good a time as any to jump to the next chair. Lillian's feet touched yellow, and she easily kept from tipping over on her second try.

Again, Lillian saw the degradation of the orange chair happening, and she decided to look beneath her own yellow chair, to gauge the speed of the growth.

She leaned over the edge of the chair, careful to keep her weight well distributed. Lillian saw a hand of blank whiteness reach up towards her from the floor, it grabbed at her raven-colored hair and Lillian jerked back in a motion that caused the chair to start tipping over.

In a bid of desperation, Lillian leapt from the falling chair and barely caught herself on the seat of the green chair. From the ground, the blankness was no longer taking the form of pus and mold, it now reached out invitingly. Arms grasped at the feet of the chair she was one, eating away at their integrity. Fingers beckoned for her to join them in the endless nothingness.

With no other path for herself, Lillian kept leaping from chairs to escape the crowd of arms. They followed her across the room as she jumped from green, to blue, to indigo, to violet.

Lillian stood on the final chair, surveying her kingdom. It used to have a few chairs in it, but now the blankness had almost consumed the entire room. Lillian stood on violet and took a deep breath. She accepted that her fate had come, that she would become boring and her life as a fun youthful person would be over.

The room shook. The blankness recoiled from and tried to hide beneath the indigo chair Lillian now resided upon.

A single giant finger crushed through the white ceiling of the room. The finger was black and goopy. It seemed to be made of oil and puss congealed into the facsimile of a human finger.

Lillian stared at the finger in awe. It had saved her, yet she felt insignificant in its presence. Her existence was beneath that of the single finger.

With a casual flick the finger removed the white roof of the room Lillian had been trapped in moments before. Lillian gaped at the world outside of this room. It was filled with the same black puss as the finger, and there were monsters in it.

A terrible shriek came from above the finger, and Lillian saw a face of anguish screaming down at her from far above. The monster's eyes were stars and their teeth were planets.

The finger inexplicably scooped the whiteness from beath the indigo chair and lifted the white glob into its gaping maw. A scream emanated from inside the creature's neck but was muffled by blackness.

Lillian didn't move. She was trapped by fear, and she hoped that by not moving, she may be able to avoid the creature's notice.

She was not so lucky.

The massive bright eyes fixed on her diminutive form and Lillian yelled and she started scrambling away. She couldn't run anywhere; the room was just four walls trapping her in. So, she ran into a corner of the room and cowered, waiting for the inevitable.

A massive black finger scooped her up and she was lifted so high into the air. Through her panic, Lillian looked down at the world below.

There were so many rooms just like her blank one. Hundreds upon thousands of rooms lay in an ineffable grid. The rooms contained seven little chairs and some white goop, and most of them had already had the roof ripped off by this massive monster.

Lillian knew that she was dreaming. But she could not allow this monster to come into the real world. So, Lillian prepared herself to die in this dream.

She couldn't remember the last time she died in a dream. She would always wake up as soon as the danger presented itself. And furthermore, once Susan, the dream demon, had been able to physically attack her through the dream world she had taken absolutely no chances in her dreams. She was terrified that this death would be permanent, not just in the land of Dream but in reality.

But there was no choice. Lillian was dropped into the gaping maw of the monster.

___

There are layers to dreaming. When one sleeps, they find themselves in a land of terror or horror, but there is no truth to it. What is terrifying in the confines of dreams may be banal in reality.

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Lillian felt like she should remember something. It itched in the back of her mind; it clawed back there. But she couldn't find the right angle to scratch it.

She was walking through a stream that barely went up to her ankles. The water was cold and fresh, but Lillian didn't shiver from it. Instead, she felt rejuvenated as she walked.

The water seemed to be coming from far, far away and kept going towards the horizon forever. The world around her was filled with large stone buildings. They rose high into the air and blocked the direct sunlight from touching Lillian's skin.

Lillian wasn't sure why she had to keep following the stream, but she was convinced that something horrible would happen if she stopped following the endless path. So, she kept walking between these massive buildings.

But her walking didn't stop her from looking.

Inside the buildings, Lillian glimpsed figures moving this way and that. Each building seemed to only house one person and that person seemed to be stuck within the building. From Lillian's observations there were no entrances or exits from these stone monstrosities, rather they were massive stone coffins, keeping something inside.

"Hey, psst!" Someone from the left side of the stream stage-whispered at Lillian. "You don't want to follow that water. Bad mojo down there, come up here with me."

Lillian saw what could only be described as a mix between an ape and a tarantula. It had eight long hairy legs ending with eight distinct toes. Its body kept to the natural shape of an ape, but it had eight eyes placed all over its noggin. Two large arms were cupped around its grotesque spider-like mouth to keep its voice down as it whispered at Lillian.

"You're going to the land of the lost dreamers that way. Don't go! Step up on the shore with me, you'll be safe here." The spider monster kept talking to Lillian as she kept up her stalwart march down the river.

Who was this monster to tell her to do just what her instincts told her not to? That sounded confusing. But she knew deep down in her bones that it was right for her to follow this path, despite the warnings.

"I can show you how to wake up." That caught Lillian's attention. Now that her mind had adjusted from her dream-like task she realized that she was dreaming. She didn't know how she had forgotten, but this was clearly some sort of dream.

It was time to wake up though.

Lillian reached down into the part of her soul that allowed her to travel between the land of the waking and dreaming with ease and felt nothing.

Terror touched Lillian.

She shuddered and fell in the endless stream. It wasn't deep, but Lillian suddenly felt like she was drowning. The water felt cloying in her face and feverish chills wracked her body.

Why couldn't she leave?

The monster was still waiting by the edge of the water; it was wringing its hands together in a nervous fashion as it watched Lillian in her anguish.

In all her fear, Lillian reached for the first helping hand to present itself to her. No matter how eight-legged and vile looking.

"You said you could tell me how to wake up…" Lillian started standing up in the stream, turning around to face the monster. She felt the water hit her feet and feebly try to drag her further down the stream. But she was far too determined to let a little water stop her.

"Yes, you must leave the water first though. There's only so much I can do before you leave the water." The ape-like face was contorted in a creepy way. But Lillian was trying to keep from judging monsters by their appearances.

One step. Two steps. With every footfall, the water pushed harder and harder against Lillian. What had started as a feeble touch was now a whirlpool of water pulling her feet away from the edges of the bank and towards the endless horizon.

With the power of Lillian's indomitable will, she pulled herself away from the grasping water. Laying on the bank of the river Lillian gasped heavily, taking a deep lungful of air.

Lillian took note of her body, she realized she didn't need to have taken the deep breath, nor did she need to rest her body. Her body felt perfectly fine, and she wasn't even out of breath. It was her mind telling her that such a powerful exertion should have made her tired, but that didn't mean that she was actually exhausted.

The ape creature shuffled over to Lillian and helped her get to her feet. Its long arms were soft and fluffy to the touch, which gave Lillian a weird dissonance between the hulking creature and the fluffy feeling she felt.

The creature turned away from her. Lillian noticed that its shoulders were shaking, and it was looking off into the distance.

Why was it scared?

"I got her out of the water! Can you help me now?" Lillian suddenly felt a chill go down her spine as she saw a creature made of darkness explode out of the shadows of one of the massive stone structures.

The creature was too fast for Lillian to react to, but she saw a single talon leap explode out of the darkness and cut off the ape's head. A fountain of blood exploded over Lillian as a new monster sidled up to her.

"Well, well, well, it's nice to see you here Lillian." A familiar voice came out of this new creature. The monster looked different – it was an amorphous blob of shadows that occasionally had clawed fingers grasping from it – but Lillian knew deep down in her soul that it was Susan speaking to her.

Lillian thought she had conquered her fears of Susan back on the Frozen Continent. Lillian's gift allowed her to bring something out of her dreams when she woke up, but somehow this demon of the dreaming realm had hijacked her gift and used it to take things from Lillian in the real world. It had been limited to mere hair that time, but who was to say that Susan wasn't able to take her heart out of her body?

But Lillian had conquered Susan. She had ingeniously figured out that she could just have a powerful healer watch her as she slept and then undo any damage caused by the demon.

The demon looked down on Lillian. There was no face to read emotions off, but Lillian could feel the hunger coming off Susan in waves.

"You cannot hurt me, and you know it." Lillian decided that bravado was the way to go in this situation. Something was obviously wrong, but she hoped she could bluff her way out of it.

"Oh, little birdy. Don't you remember? You aren't safely asleep in some medical practitioner's office. You were nearly killed. So, you are not safe from me."

A single claw materialized in front of Susan, and she brought the sharp edge down through Lillian's face gently, opening a single bleeding line.

Lillian recoiled from the claw. Fear wormed its way through her guts and Lillian knew one truth without a doubt. No matter the speed she had seen Susan possess earlier, she knew what she had to do.

She had to run.

Lillian began to run away from Susan as fast as she could. Out of the corner of her eye, Lillian saw Susan was unmoving. The monster watched as Lillian tried to run to the river from earlier. She had to leave of her own volition last time, so maybe the river would save her from Susan.

The river pushed Lillian away. A magical force pushed Lillian hard. She flew backwards past Susan as the monster watched with bemusement at the whole debacle.

Lillian's back slammed into one of the massive stone structures. The stone cracked and she felt an impossibly strong force start to pull her into the building. Her body spaghettified as she was pulled through the miniscule cracks in the structure.

Lillian's final view before being pulled in was Susan forming a face in the shadows of their new body and a look of surprise as Lillian was dragged away from them.

Lillian hoped that wherever she went it would be safe. But she knew better than to hope when dreams were involved.