Trap Nest (Nightmare World)
She lands on a slightly squishy carpet of mottled... hair? String? Hissing at the bruises, she stands, taking stock of the room.
Size of a small stage. Red, soft, smooth walls stretch up, curving in above to make a dome. A blob dangles from the very top, jiggling wetly, a slit like diseased lips down the middle. Ropes of the pale carpet-hair reach from the floor to the ceiling- anchored by strange tumors- then into the slit.
With a popping, squelching noise, the ropes tighten, the blob drawing them up. Heaps she'd though were just lumps in the floor draw up, pulled by the ropes.
Human-shaped, but grey and faceless and horrible. Dangling puppets.
She doesn't know what to do.
They move- no, the ropes move them, feet dragging uselessly behind them as they drift randomly in the room. And then one gets close to her, and the arms raise up and grab before she can shoot.
Cold, soft, slippery; everything she has never wanted to touch ever. The rising bile slams against her scream and she's flailing, fighting. The knife is in her hand somehow but the thing holding her isn't even hurting or bleeding.
Her feet aren't touching anything.
The ropes are pulling them up, up, toward the disgusting blob.
The slit opens.
Shiny bug legs emerge. Something horrible attached to them- meat and skin and teeth.
Amber screams, abandons the knife.
Gunfire. Muzzle flash. Liquid spurts. A scraping squeal of pain.
The thing disappears back into the blob. The ropes drop. She tumbles, scrambling back up.
The ropes tense. The things come up.
"Oh fuck no. I am not doing this."
She shoots upward. The blob looks soft, but apparently it's hard enough that the bullets do nothing.
"SHIT. This motherfucking..."
She hops aside as a body flails toward her, its arms outstretched.
The walls won't give way. The floor is spongy but solid. There's only one way out.
Two ways. Only one way that she's going to accept, though. Suicide is giving in.
She steps in front of a thing, gun ready. Her teeth clench painfully at the feel of the cold, heavy arms. But, like before, they pull her up, and the monster pops out.
Another fall. Another clammy, sickening embrace. Another pull against gravity.
BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG
The screech is louder, longer. The thing flails, bleeding, then drops from its shell.
The bodies fall, too, and Amber with them.
The world goes white to the roar of the siren.