Built Different

Oddly enough, it wasn't the first time Crush had fallen through a trap door. After being kicked from the orphanage, he and Sprite went on various expeditions exploring the city. One of their favorite discoveries was escape rooms. Usually, the ones higher in difficulty because the puzzles kept their mind sharp. However, that's not where he fell through the floor.

It happened at an old preserved bunker tour at the city's edge. It was represented as historical and informative; however, Crush broke from the tour guide to search for undiscovered antiques to vend. He sensed that mastery of escape rooms would somehow translate to looting old structures as if there'd be a throne room in the basement filled with the riches of a past king.

In his quest, he tore a panel off a wall that activated an old pressure plate that dropped him into a basement. There were no artifacts as he'd hoped. But the dusty human remains were creepy enough that he could claim trauma and get paid not to report the proprietors for putting a minor in danger.

Unlike the bunker, however, the threat he was facing then was real. While falling through the portal, he could not breathe, think, or comprehend his existence. He seemingly ceased, then was reprinted in another scene.

Crush plunged out of the magic door feet first, then the rest of his body. There was the phantom feeling of a floor beneath his feet because he expected one to catch him, but a gust of air slammed into him instead.

A warm, damp atmosphere met Crush in the air as he free-fell over an expansive, seemingly bottomless canyon. The new setting was just as green and unlit; there was no ground, just hundreds of thin rocky trails connected from one side of the canyon to the other like spider webs.

Both walls were rocky and irregular, but the left was mossy and had colorful fungus growing. At the same time, the right was onyx black with menacing red cracks that looked like the base of an active volcano.

Those slivers of skinny footpaths were the only thing stopping him from falling into infinity. (("Stick and roll,")) he thought, taking fleeting inhales as thick air fought his desperate breaths.

Crush narrowed in on the slim strip of earth, then braced. It was roughly 15 feet down, a distance that perished quickly when pulled down by gravity.

As intended, Crush fell toward the ground, touched down, then barrel-rolled forward onto his back before springing to his feet. The landing seemed OK, yet, an egg-cracking crunch sounded from where he docked, and parts of the platform wavered and gave out.

"Fuck, fuck," Crush muttered, outstretching his legs to distribute his weight. His heart was already drumming inside his chest, so he didn't dare address the screaming of other humans above him as they dropped. More fools who couldn't hold their tongue when instructed.

One problem at a time. Crush couldn't swivel his head to satisfy his concern; he merely held it perfectly unmoving...

Several seconds of life-depending stillness had stopped the rest of the narrow stone-like terrain from collapsing, but there was no relief. Not when surrounded by persistent, echoing cries.

Time after time, a flurry of wind and screams passed his little safe zone. Bodies blasted by only feet away, so close he could reach out and grab them. Though he wouldn't dare, not when his own support was so feeble.

Crush wasn't very empathetic, yet as living beings showered down to their demise in that dark, humid hellhole, he wished-

(("Land. Please, someone else, land on the footing."))

"((It's not hard, just-"))

Men and women of various ages, they all begged for their life the same. Crush wanted to palm his ears to block out the sounds, but he feared the moment he did, the approaching clanking of metal scrapping against the stone flooring behind him would arrive at his neck.

One problem at a time.

A severe pang had made itself known on his upper back. He'd never been stabbed in a fight, but the excruciating pain he felt then seemed comparable. Crush gradually pivoted his hand above his waist, then inched it higher before he emitted a startling RAHH.

He whipped his hand from his rear to his face and noticed the crimson delight of his own blood. It doused his fingers and had already formed a puddle on the ragged ground where he'd landed.

"Bleeding, I'm fucking bleeding," he seethed, tightening his eyebrows inward. "FUCK this dark ass cave, FUCK that stupid door, FUCK these tight ass pants! FUCK!"

Amid his uproar, he neglected the eerie sounds he'd discerned moments ago. His initial apprehension was justified because the same metal scrap was indeed traveling to his nape.

Stinging, like nails to a chalkboard, roughly a car's distance away, it became too close to ignore.

Crush found that this awful sound only furthered his madness. "Fuck you!" He yelled, whirling around 180 degrees to address the new source of fever. To his wonder, his absolute marvel, he saw something unreal.

Crush's eyes were filled with pure mania, his fist was clenched, and his breathing hastened even more, glad an outlet for his anger had appeared.

He was already convinced the door had taken him to a genuine dungeon, but the chipped, black-bone, sluggish skeleton sold the concept. The rusty sword it dragged on the earth concealed the creaking of its dry limbs as it swayed without vigor from the black and red wall.

The monster's hollowed-out eye sockets latched onto Crush, who, in his anger, glared back. Back on Earth, he'd never read comics or manga too intently, only glanced at the pages as Sprite printed counterfeit works.

Each book had something in common: skeletons. They were always low-level, introductory monsters to the story.

Not that it mattered; the hot oil in his veins was burning hot enough that he'd square up against a dragon if one presented itself.

"My entire life has been shit; there no way, no FUKCING way I die without making up for tainted time!"

Crush unhooked the chain around his neck and wrapped it around his knuckles. Before the creature could lift its weapon, he launched his arm back and smashed the empty skull. The head fractured like a glass vase, separating from the spine, and tumbled off the ledge.

The skeleton's body collapsed, with it, the already frail footpath. It began from the west side of the earth, where the fungus wall was, and extended beneath him.

He'd moved too much and plunged down, this time expected. Crush pillaged the sword from the skeleton on the fall and found time to spit on its corpse before they diverged. He used the blade to anchor onto another rocky trail below the last and pulled himself up.

It was like a scene from a movie; it was just lousy that Sprite wasn't there to see it.

Again, the ground threatened to crumble, so he held even at the center. He only made slight rotations to glance around the landscape for an exit. For a while, all he made out were moving corpses, strolling toward what few people had managed to survive the fall.

He was glad that others had landed safely. Yet, he found it strange how many strings of land there were compared to the humans dropped. It was absurdly dark beyond a certain distance, but it appeared to him that no more than one person had landed on a single bridge.

"Coincidence?" He questioned. The discomfort from his wound hindered his processing ability, so he didn't realize it sooner, but there was a pattern. A specific arrangement of the structures.

Between the escape rooms and all the advertising media he'd ingested, he learned about the "human touch." Marketers use reds to draw the audience's attention, and puzzles have corresponding numbers or systems. They are designed to be solved. Now nature, nature is truly outside the matrix. No two rocks are identical, nor are any trees the same distance apart; if they were, that would be pure coincidence.

Crush began tapping the frangible sword against his head while scanning the area and mumbling. "Based on where the doors dropped us off, if people just took a calm approach, they should have been able to land safely."

The entire structure seemed far too... Intentional. Crush also felt the talking door was sincere in its request, so he didn't see the logic in killing off those it summoned to help.

"It wasn't a death sentence," he whispered. "Sure, we are being punished for interrupting, but I think this is also a test."

More observations revealed that only one skeleton was located on each strip of land. Far too fortunate to be unintentional. In fact, Crush would have bet his left testicle that the talking door was spying on them, analyzing human capability.

Crush took a final glimpse around, up, then down. He winced in ache every few seconds but kept up the observations before breaking concentration.

"There's no way..." He said with lethargy. He glimpsed down at the ground and squinted at the cracks made when he landed. Each vein branched toward the right where the black and red wall was. "Before, the ground crumbled from the left, where the plant wall is. Now it's the opposite."

"I landed at the center both times, yet the consequences varied. The only difference is-"

Crush peeked toward the left side of the trail, where another skeleton was emerging. This one was similar to the last, except its bones were ash grey instead of black. It also had multicolored fungus growing on its body.

Crush diverted away from the left, then eyed the black and red wall on the right. He blinked, took the sword in his hand, and tossed it at the trail's edge. When he did, that side of the platform instantly crumbled and collapsed.

"heh," he sounded. That little hiccup became a secluded dry chuckle, and before he knew it, he was laughing. He'd forgotten blood on his hand and accidentally spread it when he covered his mouth to muffle his amusement.

His laughter persisted for half a minute before it devolved into a simple smirk. Then, Crush devilishly announced, "I understand."

.

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[The Creator is Now Spectating ]