The theme song started. This time it was a delightful swing tune straight from the ‘30s.

Nate wandered into view. He was holding a bird on his arm, gently speaking to it.

“Polly want a cracker?” Nate pulled a cracker from his shirt pocket and held it up in front of the bird.

“Cracker, cracker,” The bird squawked. “I’m talking to a…” Nate snapped his fingers around the bird’s beak before it could finish.

“Where did you learn such horrible language?” Nate gently eased up on the beak, then snatched his hand away so he wouldn’t get bit.

“Your momma,” The bird looked straight up and squawked.

“That’s it, I’ve had enough of you. You can go home now.” Nate prodded at the bird with a finger.

The bird took off, it circled the room a few times, then landed on Nate’s head.

Nate tried to swat it off, but the bird nimbly dodged each attempt.

He finally gave up with a loud Harumph and crossed his arms.

The bird settled down in Nate’s hair and then started squawking away with the lyrics to the theme song. Nate shook his head and walked out of view. The squawking of the bird faded gradually.

A book fell from the sky again. It opened to a new page, and a quill wrote.

Rule 10 - Talking during a competition is prohibited.

The bird picked up the book and flew off.

The scene went black

Nate was sitting in the dark. Even the timer had gone out. He took a deep breath, then another.

“I’m out,” A voice called out in the dark, and the scrape of a chair being pushed back. Several others joined in.

“This is fucking terrifying,” one of them called out.

The sound of a lot of footsteps, and then quiet again. Nobody dared break the silence by typing. It was like a hypnotic trance.

Nate reached out and felt the bumps on the table. He moved his hands forward until they got to the keyboard, and started typing. He didn’t have much of a story yet, so he started off by describing the victim.

Once Nate started typing it broke the trance, and several other people started as well. The only noise was the tapping of keyboard keys.

The BookcamTM floated out of the room through the walls, it flew through one room after another until it ended up in the cat cafe.

“I hope Nate’s doing alright,” Stacy was sitting at a table with the rest of the Silver Platypus room. Nancy was there as well.

“I’m sure he is,” Alvin said. He pointed to the tarot cards in front of him. “The cards say there’s something special about him.”

“Not just that,” Luke said, taking a sip from an espresso cup. In his massive hands, it looked like a thimble. “He was perfect in training earlier today.”

The table murmured their agreement.

“Anyway,” Matt took a sip of his own drink. “I’m thinking of asking Madame Midnight to video chat with me.”

“No!” Luke dropped his empty cup. It fell to the table and rolled around before stopping in front of Matt. Luke was watching the cup, and when he finally looked up he realized everyone else was looking at him.

“I mean you haven’t even got a picture from her, right? Don’t you think that’s moving too fast?” Sweat started to drip from Luke’s face.

“I think I have the answer to that.” Matt laced his fingers together and cracked his knuckles.

“She probably hasn’t sent a picture because she’s nervous about her body. A video chat is more informal than that. I think it’ll work.”

“She can even start with the video turned off until she gets comfortable.” Nancy clapped her hands. “I think that’s a wonderful idea.”

“Well, I still think it’s moving too fast,” Luke crossed his arms.

“Come on, it’s romantic,” Jaz had a distant look in her eyes. “You’re a romance writer, you’re supposed to understand women.”

Stan held up a sign that said

Just Do It with Nike’s logo. At the bottom of the sign was printed Almost Sponsered by Nike

“That’s it. I’m going to ask her tonight!”

Everyone except Luke clapped.

“And what about you, Alice?” Luke desperately tried to change the subject. “Rumour has it that you were making out with somebody by the pool last night.”

“You know me, I don’t kiss and tell.” Alice tilted her head slightly and winked.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

“Ah, to be young and in love,” Nancy closed her eyes and sighed.

“Don’t give me that,” Jaz threw a crumpled napkin at Nancy and hit her square in the forehead. Nancy’s eyes popped open. “What about Albert?”

“Yes, Albert,” Stacy put her hands together and spoke in a sing-song voice.

Nancy blushed

“You got me. I actually heard that he’s taking dancing lessons.”

“Oh, that’s perfect,” Luke said. “You can offer to practice with him.

“Yes!” Stacy squealed with excitement, her voice was high-pitched.

Stan held up a sign that read

Your ad here with a 1-800 number.

Nobody said a word, but they were all glaring at Stan. He looked at the sign, then hurriedly pulled out another one that read Oops, sorry.

“I could never ask Albert something like that.” Nancy protested.

“You can with our help,” Stacy stood up. “Come on, let's go find him right now.”

The rest of the table got up, cheering Nancy on. She reluctantly agreed.

“He should be getting out of History class soon,” Nancy admitted.

“Ooh, look who has his schedule memorized,” Alice looked at Nancy and stuck out her tongue.

Nancy’s face turned a deeper shade of red.

They left the cafe, followed by the BookcamTM.

The classroom wasn’t far away, and they got there with five minutes to spare.

“So, what are you going to say to him?” Luke fluttered his eyes.

“I haven’t the slightest idea.” Nancy punched Luke in the arm. “And stop that.”

The door opened and students fled the room as though they had escaped death.

It wasn’t hard to pick out Albert. He was the only person over twenty-five in the whole group.

He saw Nancy and the gang and headed over.

“Hi, Albert! Look, we’re the Silver Platypus room.” Nate ran over and thrust out his hand to show off the ring.

“Hi, Nancy, Hi gang.” Albert waved, then turned to look at Luke’s ring. “I love it. I got the Golden Guinea Pigs.” He held up his hand and the group gathered around to look. The ring was a gold band. At the top was a detailed carving of a guinea pig head, with black gemstones for eyes.

“Ooh, I love the ring,” Stacy couldn’t take her eyes off of it.

“What are you all doing here?” Albert took a granola bar from his pocket and started eating it. “Do you mind if we hit the food court? I’m starving.”

“Of course. I think we all could use a bite to eat.” Nancy led the group in the direction of the cafeteria.

“We’re here because we heard you were taking dance lessons,” Alice was spinning in circles as she walked.”

“And Nancy here wanted to offer her services,” Stacy looked at Albert and winked.

“Partner. I mean dance. My services as a dance partner.” Nancy stammered. Then she gathered her courage. “Well, I mean…” She trailed off and bit her bottom lip.

“I’d like that,” Albert offered his elbow and Nancy slid her arm through.

“Umm. I just remembered that we should be waiting for Nate.” Luke turned to the rest of the group. “Bye.”

“Have fun you two,” Stacy had caught on, and was blocking Stan and Jaz from walking on.

“What do you mean? Nate can find us. I’m hungry.” Matt was completely oblivious. Luke grabbed him by the back of the shirt and lifted him off the ground. Matt’s legs kept walking. Luke pointed him in the opposite direction and put him back on the ground.

“There’s food in our room.”

“Righto,” Matt said, without missing a step.

The rest of the group called out their goodbyes and left the couple to have some alone time.

“So what are we going to do now?” Dave scratched at his arm.

“You heard him, we’re going back to our room to eat,” Matt called out from down the hall. “Now hurry up, I’m not going to wait for you.”

The group hurried after Matt, and quickly faded from view down the long hallway. The BookcamTM went back through walls and rooms, speeding back to Nate

It finally made it back, and the room was still completely dark.

Nate had grown comfortable with the dark. It was actually kind of peaceful.

Tuna pudding!! Nate shouted in his mind. He had misspelt a word. He used the ctrl+shift+left arrow to highlight the word and retyped it.

I can’t let myself get too comfortable. It’s a good thing I caught that one.

Nate’s story was shaping up.

The killer had been walking around with a dog, asking people if they had lost it. He used that to lure a young woman to his van and kidnap her. The dog was his friend, and this wasn’t the first time he had used this ruse to trick people.

Once he had his victim, he released them in an empty warehouse that he had spent years modifying into a house of torture. He would hunt them down and kill them.

In Nate’s story, the victim managed to kill the attacker and escape. The story ended with the building burning down, and nobody would believe her story. So she told them she got the dog at a pound.

Nate had stopped typing so he could work out the exact wording for the next part. He wouldn’t be able to edit it after typing it out so it had to be perfect.

“Aarggh!! I lost my curser.” A voice cut into the dark. “I thought I was hitting nine on the number pad, but it was page up.”

“Hit ctrl+end,” Nate responded without thinking. “That brings you to the very bottom.”

“Thanks, mate.”

“I can’t take it anymore,” another voice cried out. Nate heard sniffling.

“Wait. Don’t leave,” again Nate spoke up without a second thought. “You can do this. Sing quietly to yourself, or hum under your breath. Type to a beat. Anything to take your mind off it.”

“I… I’ll try. The voice was shaky. A few seconds later Nate heard quiet singing. A few other people joined in. The voices were all too soft to hear the words, but Nate smiled.

He gently tapped the keys to the Adams Family theme song, quietly snapping his fingers in the right places.

He finished up his story and breathed a sigh of relief.

Now it was just Nate and the dark. He closed his eyes and drowned out the soft voices. After what felt like an hour, a buzzer went off to signify that it was over. Extremely dim lights came on and gradually got brighter.

“Results will be posted in one week. Good luck reaching 500 views before then.” The voice from the speakers called out. “You are now free to leave, except Nate.”

Nate gulped.

Everyone filed out of the room in silence. A few of them glanced at Nate in sympathy. One elderly gentleman with a full head of shocking grey hair gave Nate a weak smile and held his thumbs up.

Once the room had emptied out, a portion of the wall slid open. Kent stepped out of a small room into the one where Nate was waiting.

Kent was wearing a hooded purple robe, accented in black. It had what looked like runes embroidered in gold all over it. Nate wondered if he was cosplaying a wizard for a D&D game, then shook his head.

Kent marched straight up to Nate.

“Are you aware that talking during a contest is prohibited?” Kent gave Nate a hard unblinking stare.