“No.”

He steps back, giving me more space, “suit yourself, bit rude.” He takes off his backpack and gives me a marble. “Swallow.”

The marble feels unnecessarily heavy for its size, its tinged blue with a yellow swirl within it, “what is it?”

“it'll heal your ankle and shit, got it from floor 262.” He stands a bit towards me, “that's why you didn't want to fuck, right? You were hurt?” Once he places a hand on my shoulder I step back.

After a few paces I feel confident enough to speak, hoping to bargain some deal and buy time, “maybe, but first give me information, what is this place?”

“Youve never been in a trap floor? Are you new?”

“No, I'm not new, I just stay on higher floors, 297.”

“Why not 288? Traveling with someone?”

No clue how those two relate.

“I am.”

“I get that, pretty lucky guy or girl, to be traveling with you... too bad we are both dead, hope you said your goodbyes.” He sits down, leaving the bag beside him, he whistles painfully.

“Yeah...” this guy seems like a dickhead, but he also seems experienced, “you ever... seen the waving man?”

“Hm? Yeah? What do you want to know?”

“How, how do I get rid of it.”

“You have it? Oh, then you’re fucked, have you died yet?”

“No.”

“Well, if you weren't trapped here, you would go down to the floor you saw it and kill it, do you remember the room codes near your home? For the coordinates?”

“Coordinates?”

“You ARE new, aren't you?” His whole demeanour changes, like he feels a lot more powerful than me, knowing I'm not a veteran here.

“I'm not new, been here 20 years, I just like to stay put on higher floors...”

“Yeah?” He doesn't believe me and steps forward.

“Just tell me about the coordinates, please.”

“Hm... I could, I very much could. I'm not evil, and I know it's not ‘culturally appropriate’ to say this, but you don't have the capacity to understand the coordinate system.”

Fuck this guy.

He steps closer, I take a sidestep, trying to slowly reach his backpack, I think he notices but doesn't try to stop me. “What's your plan here? Kill me and then die? This room will squish us soon.” He pushes himself onto the wall, this hallway does seem a lot narrower, “you’re so dumb, its cute.”

I take another step to the side, he steps towards the bag, “okay, then let's fight, you get a knife I get my hands.” He reaches into the bag and for a knife that seems more like a small machete. He is treating this whole thing like a game, guess that's what happens after you die enough, nothing feels serious.

He holds it out, “okay let's start on the opposite sides of the wall,” I take it from his loosening hands, “alright, thre-” I slice at his skull.

Stolen novel; please report.

“FUCK YOU.” I pull my arms back and slam the sharp end into him, straddling his body that fell to the floor, his arms go up, shaking a bit, “FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU.” I speak as a mantra as I repeatedly hit him, his arms drop and rest by his sides, turns out I had a lot of anger boiling.

He should've realised I'm new enough to not treat everything like a game yet, what a dumbass.

My breathing gets unsteady again, “JUST SHUT UP.” I start slamming the knife machete against his chest, the spray getting in my eyes and mouth, he doesn't even move anymore, clearly a dead body, probably was dead by the second time I hit him. I lay down on top of him, a soft small whimper or laugh bubbles to the surface, god damn it.

I grab his arms and squeeze them like stress balls, this doesn't even feel good, I just feel pissed, like after you throw a phone at the wall in anger then get angrier at it breaking. Just to be clear, I am not a psycho, I'm not crazy, I'm normal, any normal person would do this. I know I kind of cheated, and he probably expected me to at least play along a little bit, but no.

I get off him and look in his bag, I truly do wonder if this marble heals me, or if it was like a paralysing drug, ill test it once I'm out, if I get out. The walls are about the width of one dead English human body lying down, when they used to be two dead English human bodies lying down, cool.

The bag has some very interesting items, floor 260 he said, the items seem a lot more practical, there's a glowing glowstick that glows far too much, perfect for this situation in the dark so I flop it over onto his dead body, giving him a green hue that he should get used to, since he's a corpse and all.

There are some good bandages, real ones, what looks to be a sling shot, another machete, a few more marbles in a bag, one green and one yellow, ‘happy pills,’ which ill have fun with later and a ton of snacks.

Nothing to stop the wall from crushing me, so that's fun.

I hear the slam of a door, like someone had just walked in through a staircase, “ZEE?” My voice comes out slightly manic.

“Alice!” He screams, running over, like an idiot.

“NO, NO GO BACK, GO BACK TO THE STAIRCASE, KEEP IT THERE.”

I see him turn the corner around the hallway and run towards me, all in the green lit darkness, he hugs me like I'm a teddybear, “alice!” He squeezes harder, seeing the dead man behind me while peaking beyond my waist.

I am beyond annoyed right now, I know he doesn't know English too well, but it seems like he just actively ignored me.

“let's go, come on.” I push him towards where he came from, hoping the staircase is still there, knowing it won't be. Knowing this world just hates the easy way out, we make the turn and to his surprise and to my fake surprise, it's not there, the walls small enough that it's bending the dead bodies legs upwards.

“Okay.” I walk back and put the bag around my shoulder, “Zee.” I hold a finger gun at the wall, “bang?”

His mouth opens then closes, seemingly unamused by the idea, he holds his arm out and speaks a small ‘bang’ into existence, all it does is push air around, none of the wall was destroyed.

“Why didn't that work? Zee, destroy the wall, now.” I grab his shoulder and point at the wall, “now.”

“I am... uh... uh...” he doesn't know the words, of course he doesn't, it would be convenient if we could communicate like human beings. I grip my machete and slice it into the wall, the paint ripping off easily.

He just stares at my violent attack towards the wall, I barely get anywhere with the hard wood on the other side, “ZEE, BANG!” I yell at his face.

He tries to find ways to convey his words yet again, failing. Fantastic. The wall is basically the width of me arms if I hold them out

“DESTROY THE WALL ZEE.” I scream again, pulling his arm to face the wall.

“Bang.” A gust of air shoots out, but nothing happens again, I grab a little tighter before letting go, okay, think, think, my plan right now is to get to that squishy void, Hoping it'll somehow send us somewhere else if we get crushed into it, just like that fork how it got sucked into it.

Does Zee need an actual target? All the times before he has had a definitive object to destroy, a monster, a tv, an egg sack and face spiders, all disconnected. I begin to scrape the paint off in a door shape, showing of the hard wood behind it, please work. The walls can barely allow any arm movement for Zee anymore, I hear a sick crunching sound from the corpse beside us.

I get the door fully scraped away, “Zee... Door, bang.”

He holds his hand and touches the wood, “door.” and the wood disappears like it was cut out of reality, leaving a black squishy void, I was not expecting that. I place both our bodies in between it, a rock and a soft place, I wonder what's beyond this, I hope it's not something stupid.

My bag pushes roughly into my back, it feels like my face is being smothered by a pillow making it hard to breathe, I swear if I die from smothering, I would have officially died in the two most painful ways, actually burning is pretty bad I'm fairly sure.

I stop being able to breathe in, Zee is probably feeling the exact same, it hurts, it really does hurt, my nose feels like it's about to break, everything feels like it's about to break, is everything breaking?

And then something pulls me in, like a vacuum.