The two only had a moment to reunite before the corridor around them began to flex and distort, knocking them off balance. The ticking sound emanating from the walls grew larger and more violent, and soon, it was joined by a new sound, like someone clicking their tongue in disappointment. Alice looked around in alarm before noticing Jake writhing around in pain, a blood-soaked scream escaping him. A small sensation reached the base of her skull, pinpricks of feeling as the voice tried to grab hold of her, yet otherwise, she remained fine.

“How very disappointing…” The voice returned, thundering down upon the pair. The sheer volume of its presence forced them down toward the ground, crumpling under its furious might.

“How very disappointing, all that work for this? I expected better of you, Jake! All that work for such a disappointing outcome, I’m truly heartbroken. I see I’ll have to spend more time working with you, teaching you how to be a proper doll…” Jake gave no response, still thrashing around across the ground as pain wracked his body, threatening to tear him apart and leave him begging for death.

“And you…” Alice suddenly found herself thrown backward away from the thrashing Jake, her body crashing into the wall with a horrific crunching noise. “There’s just no helping you, dear guest…” The contempt held in the words of the voice cut like a knife through her skin, she worried the voice might kill her simply with the hate it felt for her.

“I’ve tolerated your actions so far because I thought you might prove useful, but I see now that was naïve of me. Dear guest, dear Alice, I’m sorry to say there’s no place for you here anymore. I hoped not to get involved; I so hate hurting my guests…” The voice's tone began to shift as hatred and malice began to be hidden by barely contained joy and excitement, “But you’ve forced my hand, dear guest, I so hope you can forgive your ever-remorseful host!”

The voice finished speaking, sounding more excited than ever, and Alice could feel the sensations in the back of her skull multiply in intensity, magnifying without end as the voice unleashed its furious rage on Alice. Yet she remained unaffected with but a slight headache forming throughout her head as consequence from all the sensation the voice forced inside it.

“WHAT?!” The voice spoke, sounding truly surprised for the first time as it reacted without hidden agenda or mocking sarcasm, “I hadn’t realized it was this bad?!” It was speaking to itself now in a frantic, almost panicked tone.

Alice took note of the voice’s words but struggled to process their meaning. The sudden crash into the wall had worsened her already deteriorated state; she found it hard to focus on anything now outside of just staying conscious. Pain radiated through her as she crawled forward, a stabbing pain erupting in her chest with every move she made. Her ribs were certainly cracked, probably broken, and threatening to puncture her heart.

She didn’t know what she could do, somewhere in the back of her head, she processed the voice's panic and worry and connected it loosely with herself, but that was all she felt capable of doing anymore. She couldn’t walk, she could barely crawl, and from the sensations stabbing through her body, she would die any second, even without the voice’s help. The voice also seemed to take note of this, the panicked hurry leaving its tone as it took note of her desperate crawl and began to let out cruel cackles once more.

“Looks like I began to worry over nothing, perhaps I played with you a little too hard earlier? I didn’t mean to break you so easily; I wanted it to hurt. Oh well, I suppose this will do…”

The voice's asinine comments died in Alice’s ears as it began to let out more horrid cackles. She simply ignored it, tuned it out like background noise, and focused all her effort on crawling forward across the stone. Every movement hurt, and a trail of blood followed her as she cut through the filth of the corridor. Gritting her teeth through the pain, she finally managed to reach her goal as she pulled up beside the thrashing Jake.

She would die soon; she accepted this now as simply a fact of life that couldn’t be changed. Her consciousness was fading already, perhaps most of it already had faded away, lost to blood loss and pain. Yet instinctively, some part of her clung to the desire not to be separated again, not to let the voice win. She reached forward toward Jake, bones broken and blood pooling beneath her, and grasped hold of the strings.

She felt delirious now; the strings felt real, tangible, not just something internalized. But the longer she gripped them, the more certain she felt in her mind they existed, real and here in the now. They pulsed and resonated with something deep within her as if responding to an unknown call sent by her soul. Suddenly, she felt a powerful light begin to explode beneath her clutched fist, leaking out through the gaps of her hand.

The voice had stopped laughing now, furious screams of pain and desperate calls of action echoed around the chamber, reverberating back toward Alice and Jake as the ticking grew ever louder. They could practically feel the rage of the voice press down upon them, feel its unseen breath on their necks as the corridor shifted and twisted. Yet Alice found she could no longer pay the voice any mind, lost in a trance to the light escaping the string. It grew and grew before, at last, her hand couldn’t contain it any longer, and it exploded forth.

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A blinding light overtook both Alice and Jake’s vision, and suddenly, Jake felt the pain ripping through his body subside and disappear. All around, he could hear wails of pain and anguish as the voice screamed in agony. The sounds of the voice’s misery slowly began to dissipate, undercut by the sharp sounds of static. The ticking emanating from the corridor’s walls grew weaker and weaker, fading into the background, and suddenly, there was silence. Pure and true silence for the first time in ages. Unsure what to do, Jake lay still enveloped in the light, waiting for his sight to return to him.

As the two lay still in the light, slowly, its pure white splendor began to die down, revealing their surroundings. They no longer lay in the cold stone corridor. Up above, the symmetrical sky had returned. Sitting up slowly, Jake looked around to find he was back lying by the fire pit. The perfectly symmetrical Forrest had returned, and with each move, he felt his weight begin to sink into the spongey earth below.

Looking up at the sky once more, eyes squinted as he struggled to adjust to the sudden power of the sun, he saw the perfectly circular sun begin to move with a heavy, groaning sound. It was moving with rapid speed, tracing its way through the sky in a hurried effort to return to its original position after being forced to stay in place.

So many feelings began to rush through Jake’s battered frame he struggled to properly process them all. Turning a bit, choked with emotion, he suddenly felt every thought drop from his head as he caught sight of Alice. She lay unmoving on the floor, curled into a ball. He couldn’t tell if she was breathing. Rushing next to her, Jake forced her body to uncurl itself as he reached to check her pulse, yet stopped as his sudden actions earned a groan from her collapsed form.

Alice slowly opened her eyes to find Jake peering down at her, worry clear on her face. Unsure what was going on, she squirmed uncomfortably at the sudden sight. Yet, as she looked around, delight quickly filled her as she realized they’d escaped. They stood back atop the surface, and what’s more, the sun moved freely through the sky. In just a few short hours, they’d leave this nightmare behind permanently.

“Are you… ok?” Jake asked nervously as Alice sat up and looked around. She seemed to show no sign of injury or pain, in fact, all he could see on her face was pure joy and excitement.

“Course I’m ok, why wouldn’t I be! Where free… FREE!”

“But, well, I mean… It was hard to tell, but you looked pretty hurt before. Are you sure your…”

“I feel fine,” Alice said, cutting Jake off. She didn’t want to talk about it anymore; she didn’t want to think about the voice or the corridor ever again. Still, she couldn’t help herself as she curiously pocked her sternum. No pain erupted through her, and though her memories felt hazy, she was fairly certain her ribs had been broken. Yet no matter how hard she tried to remember anything, all she could recall was the light overwhelming her in blissful warmth.

“Well… that’s good at least…” Jake said, not sure he understood what she could possibly mean. His body still ached, every movement a struggle, yet thankfully, by now, he was no longer profusely bleeding. Whether this was due to the passage of time or an effect of the blinding light, he couldn’t say, but he was grateful to no longer be losing mass amounts of blood.

Fatigue suddenly gripped hold harder than ever, and Jake decided to stop fighting it, falling backward upon the spongey dirt below. Looking at the sky above, the sun tracing through the sky at a rapid pace, he found he couldn’t hold it in anymore. It started as laughter, overwhelming joy at his survival, before devolving into wails of grief and screams of pain. He tried to stop himself, but everything seemed to escape all at once, the agony of the corridor filling his body.

Alice watched him in silence at first before, with a choking noise, she curled her knees to her chest and felt tears begin to escape her eyes as well. Try as she might to stop the memories, the emotions, they burst through her, destroying everything in their path. The two sat together in the glow of the setting sun, weeping and screaming as their combined pain filled the air. Time had lost all meaning to the two now, how long they sat and wept was anyone's guess. They only stopped when the sun had set, when they both felt their tears run dry and their throats grow too sore to carry their anguished screams anymore. Yet still, both agreed it was not near enough time to vent their agony.

“What… What was that…” Alice asked, voice quiet as she sat still, curled in the dark.

“Hell…” Jake finally said, unsure of what else to describe it as. By now, the chill of the night brought forth biting winds that stung the pair, yet neither was willing to move and search for some sort of cover or even their original belongings.

“It was Hell. Torture for the fun of it, and whatever that thing was, whatever held us there… we were just its little playthings, its little dolls…” Jake said, voice breaking a bit as he spoke.

“What do we do now?” Alice asked, looking up toward the sky above.

“Run, run from here and hope wherever we land next is less cruel…” It seemed a desperate hope to Jake, yet it was all he had anymore. “Run and move on, bury this place behind us, and remember that…” Jake froze, unable to continue his speech, as suddenly the chilling winds were undercut by a loud ticking sound that rose from the earth to surround the pair.

Neither could even begin to express their panic with words as they stared hopelessly at the sky above, watching the onset of the purple horizon that marked the coming sunrise… before suddenly everything froze with a horrid sound of scrapping metal.

“Oh dear guests, dear dolls…” The voice rose up, distorted and faded, but still all around them.

Before either could react, the ground gave way beneath their feet, and they fell, landing upon the stone floor of the corridor. Horror reached a fever pitch within the duo as they watched the ceiling of the corridor fill itself in above their heads, slowly and methodically, till the last sign of the sky above was gone.

“How hopelessly naïve, dear dolls…” The voice spoke, malicious rage burning in his tone as the ticking sound rose up to surround the duo.