Hendrick
Hendrick’s mind kept spinning like the ceiling-fan above his head. He had 5 more minutes to sort his thoughts, strategies and ideas, then it was time to roll. His plan rested folded inside of his pocket, waiting to be turned into reality. The clock appeared to be sprinting. Time was mocking him.
Nervous taps got placed on the desk in front of him, as his fingertips created a steady pattern. Even though he knew what was coming, he was still nervous.
I think I finally got what I have been missing, he told himself. I just need one good run, and then all of this is going to be over and I can finally rest.
3 minutes remaining. The old teacher started to slowly finish her talk, yet she didn’t slow down at all. It was a wonder itself that she still had a working voice after all the talking she had done in the last two hours. Most of the children had already started packing their stuff, were now scrambling and sorting their pencils and rulers off their desks and into their backpacks.
“…and remember to read the pages 32 – 34 inside of your text book during next time, since the next lesson is going to be essential for understanding all the following ones, and you can bet that all of this stuff will be part of the final exam, because…” The words poured out of her parched mouth like a waterfall: relentless and never-ending.
And then time ran out.
The clock started ringing, both clock hands pointing at twelve as reality started glitching. A mechanical screeching was audible as the teacher’s face distorted momentarily before being replaced by something entirely different. Time was frozen, and the ‘teacher’ was the only creature besides Hendrick left moving.
The old, wrinkly face of the teacher had been replaced by a roundish, white mask carrying an inhumanly wide smile which almost reached from one side of the mask to the other. Lifeless teeth stared at Hendrick in a pitying manner. He felt a familiar feeling build up inside of him as he stared back, deep down into the white pit of emotionless void.
A mechanical voice seeming to originate from the face echoed inside of Hendrick’s head: “‘Sinner’s Game’ will now begin. Clear all stages to win. Good luck.”
Hendrick had prepared himself as much as possible. His plan had to work. The mechanical screeching inside of his eardrums didn’t bother him at all. He was focused and ready. Whatever horrors laid ahead of him, whatever obstacles would be placed inside of his way, there was no way he could be stopped. Hendrick realized he had started scratching the nail of his thumb against his middle finger.
The classroom started glitching more heavily around Hendrick, changing its shape and appearance before enveloping him in a storm of blue particles. He then found himself flying through a current of blue matter, getting launched through reality towards his destiny.
He closed his eyes.
Everything turned black.
---
Jim
As Jim’s consciousness returned, he heard muffled voices nearby. It felt like he had cotton inside of his ears and his head hurt like hell. He had a hard time pointing out what the voices said, but he soon realized that they sounded familiar. As sounds got clearer and his head stopped spinning, he opened his eyes.
His field of vision was greeted by his friends accompanied by a lot of bright colours. He sat up, noticed that the ground beneath him consisted of plastic squares which felt smooth and hard at the same time. The floor was plastered with them, each of them around one square-meter in size.
“Oh, so you’re finally awake?” Jack asked with a wide grin on his face.
Jim scanned to the left, then the right.
There were high walls not too far away. So high, in fact, that they reached upwards to what seemed to be infinity. They consisted of children’s toys, only in gigantic scale. Wooden blocks, Pencils, balls, teddy-bears, these weird creepy wind up boxes no one likes, and so on. All of them somehow fit inside of a roughly vertical complex of walls, which created a labyrinth of giant proportion.
It almost seemed like someone had shrunken them down. The toys covered the landscape as well, spread across the area as if a giant infant had played with, then forgotten about them. The floor was flat, no hills or even slopes anywhere as far as the eye could see. Hell, the place even smelled like old comics and plush.
“Where the fuck are we?”
“Well,” Hendrick said, “It looks like we finally get our chance of living through a real-life adventure together.”
Jim blinked twice, then his eyes widened. “No fucking way.”
Hendrick stepped forward, offered Jim a hand up. He took the offer.
“We need to get moving now,” Hendrick said. “We have around one hour until the red phase starts. Until then, we need to find a hiding spot.”
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The sky – or at least the part of it which was not blocked by walls restricting his view – was plain white. Even though there was no sun up there, the entire area was very bright.
Jim blinked a few times in a row, pinched himself just to be sure. His gaze focused on his friends, which were by far the least bright shapes in this place. Hendrick scrambled around inside of his pocket, pulled out a piece of paper and unfolded it. He held it up, looked at it. Jim could now see what was on the back of the paper: English grammar questions.
“Hiding spot? Hiding from what?” Jim asked.
“The Doll-Maker.”
“The... what?” Jim didn’t quite get what Hendrick was talking about, but Jack and Anna seemed to agree with him, so he played along with it.
“We need to move in…” Hendrick looked down at the paper, then back up and pointed between two of the massive walls not too far away from them, “...this direction.”
Jim’s head almost felt like spinning again. This place was the definition of sensory overload. What his friends said made no sense at all, and it appeared that the sky had been deleted, which caused him minor distress. But it also seemed like his lifelong dream was turning to a reality.
“Does that mean?” he asked.
“Yea.” Hendrick folded his school exam and put it back into his pocket, then started walking. “It’s what you are thinking. Like I already said, it’s our chance to live through a real adventure together.”
“Okay guys, this will be like… a real-life video-game of some sort,” Jack said as he followed Hendrick. “Let’s show whoever we need to face who’s boss around here.”
Anna – who looked lightly distressed – followed Hendrick as well, said, “Alright, but please let’s hurry a bit... This place is starting to hurt my eyes.”
Jim’s eyes lit up.
He couldn’t help it but smile.
And he followed his friends.
---
A few hours later
Anna
Anna’s eyes dashed from item to item, trying to choose a good hiding spot. The out of tune notes creeping up her neck grew in volume as she knew her time was running out.
Then, she spotted something to her left around 10 meters away: a ball-pit embedded inside of the floor close to one of the endless towering walls of playthings. Hundreds, if not thousands of plastic balls created an ocean of colours. Anna manifested her remaining energy, dragged herself to the pit and stumbled into the save heaven of cheerfully colourful spheres.
The mechanical clawing inched closer. Anna dug herself deeper and deeper, used her hands as shovels as she was soon fully covered. It went dark around her.
Finally, some pleasing darkness for her eyes. The cheerful colours showered in red light had started to freak her out.
She stopped moving and held her breath as the music increased in volume once again. Eyes closed, she hoped for the creature to just pass by, to leave her alone. If she wouldn’t be able to find her way back home, she was going to stay inside of this pit forever. Safe from all the dangers of the colourful outside world above, silently waiting until the hands of faith put her to rest.
Luckily, Anna didn’t have to give up right now. After a few minutes the sounds had vanished, and it was now completely silent. She pondered: If it is really gone, I need to take the opportunity and move. If I’m lucky, I can follow the path of destruction back to where we originally hid. Maybe I will be able to find the others from there.
After a few minutes of hesitation, Anna emerged from the pit. She felt like she had just been reborn, a butterfly breaking out of its cocoon. She felt the plastic floor beneath her feet, no longer suspended in the semi-solid ocean of plastic balls. She looked to the front and the back of the corridor, didn’t spot anything Doll-Maker-like. She stretched out her arms towards the heavens, opened her palms in relief.
Sadly, she had forgotten to gaze towards the heavens.
A stinging pain shot through her hands as she felt two needles pierce through her palms and impaling them. They hit the ground close to Anna, the reflection of the thin strings attached to them now painted in crimson. Then, the needles got pulled back upwards. Barbs, which were attached to them, hooked themselves inside of the back of Anna’s hands, pulled her upwards suspending her a couple of meters above the ground.
Tears of pain had formed in Anna’s eyes, made it harder for her to see what was unfolding in front of her. She heard the noise of a quiet melody close by, slowed down and now more clear. It wasn’t out of tune anymore, seemed more calm as something cold wiped the tears out of her eyes.
And then, the Doll-Maker revealed itself.
A white, round mask hovered close to her face, its only feature being a lifeless, wide grin. Pale, symmetrical teeth greeted her with an unmoving smile. The source of music was still behind her, so Anna assumed this was where the main part of the creature’s body was. Her back was pressed against something sticky and tenacious, limiting even more of her movement.
From the dark mass of black goo – which was the only thing visible behind the mask that could be interpreted as a head – a long, gory red neck expanded sideways, so long its origin was hidden out of Anna’s sight. The neck resembled something close to an accordion’s middle piece. It was made out of reddened skin, almost as if all the parts inside of it had been stretched and twisted far too many times.
Before Anna could let out a scream, she was silenced by a cold, gooey hand which had most likely been what had wiped away her tears earlier – tears of which there were now a lot more of. She squirmed and struggled to break free, but her attempts of movement were met by her hands being pulled on by the strings attached to the needles impaling her flesh.
Hellish pain led to muffled, silenced screams. Salty tears dropped onto the plastic flooring below. In the distance, a happy, smiling teddy-bear sat silently leaned against a blue toy car.
Anna spotted multiple rows of hands moving into her field of vision from behind her, each of them holding a needle attached to a string. Their grips were tight, holding the needles with brute force. All of them jerked in place for a moment, as if they hesitated.
After a moment of silence, the hands tightened their muscles.
The music stopped playing.
The Doll-Maker started preparing his next gift.
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Prologue End
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