The Drowned Man Games : The Green Room.

We all stand frozen in horror. As if any sudden motion might trigger our own collars.

The mystery has been solved. The terror confirmed. The collars are real, and they will activate, if the rules demand they do so.

And the cost of confirming this truth…

...The cost, was Yellow’s life.

Her corpse lies still between the desks.

I hear a lot of voices all erupt at once. To me, it sounds as if they come from underwater.

“What does this mean?” someone shouts. A man. Red, I guess. “WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? Have we lost? F*ck! Is there no hope for us, now? How do we escape without her key?”

“Can we take it now that she’s dead?” someone else asks in a shrill voice.

“I don’t know!” comes a response. “F*ck, I don’t know!”

Violet staggers backwards and clutches her stomach. She dry heaves.

Green has paled significantly, and the paint across his face stands stark and bright against his skin. He swallows, and crouches down to Yellow’s neck to examine her collar.

Blue does likewise. I am surprised to see a couple of quiet tears leaking down her face. Orange hyperventilates in the corner. She shouts something at Red.

Indigo stares down at the body.

And myself… I just push through them like clouds. I settle down at the 'white/grey designated' desk, and I write up the events of the previous room.

…

…I become aware at various intervals of someone shouting at me. “WAKE UP FOR F*CK’S SAKE! A GIRL HAS DIED! LEAVE THE WRITING FOR NOW!”

But I don’t. I have a duty, I’ve decided. As the chronicler. I ignore the hand shaking my shoulder.

*

It feels like I finish a lot faster this time, but a glance to the timer reveals that it took about as long as it always does. There are eight minutes left until the green door opens up for us.

The others have pulled the chairs away from their desks, and have huddled in the corner of the room opposite to Yellow, still processing.

…Yellow tried to tell me something. She tried to share some information with me before she died. Why me…? And what was she trying to say…?

Blue is the only one not sitting with the others. Aside from myself, of course. She’s still beside Yellow, trying to open and fiddle with the collar, her hands trembling and covered in blood.

“Hey”, I say to her, and she looks up. “You okay?”

She laughs, and changes the subject. “I can’t get this damn thing off. It’s still locked tight around her neck… ugh..” she flicks her fingers and the blood goes flying.

“I’m sorry Yellow…” she murmurs. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get that final card for you. I tried, I really did”.

“So they’re real then. The collars”.

“So it would seem”, she says. “The mechanisms are simple enough. Water-resistant. I just don’t know how they were activated. Sensor-based, perhaps? But they could just as easily have been activated remotely”.

“If they were activated remotely, then, that would mean someone has to be watching us, right? The ‘Asura’?”

She nods. “Or at least monitoring our location. Tracking us”.

“-No, no we can’t risk it!” comes Orange’s voice in response to somebody else, loud and clear. “The rule is CLEAR. DON’T try to take a key from another player’s neck, or your own collar will activate!” She glances down to the evidence of this, and wipes a sheen of sweat from her forehead.

“Then what the hell are we supposed to do?” Violet asks. “The rules also say that we NEED SEVEN keys for the final door”.

“Maybe that’s the purpose of Grey?” Indigo suggests. “Could we use his key as the seventh?”

“No”, Red grunts. “The rule said the colours of the rainbow. ‘All seven colours of the rainbow will be required to open the door’…” he sighs. It is a deep, sad sound.

“Why the obsession with rainbows…? What’s the significance here?”

"To be fair..." Blue says, rubbing her chin. "Thinking about it, I don't think the exact number was actually specified. The Asura simply said we need 'keys'. Not seven keys, just 'keys'".

"Didn't you hear me?" Red grunts. "All seven colours of the rainbow. Rainbow door. Yellow is a colour. Grey is not".

"White, however, is the combination of all natural coloured light". Blue looks at me. They all look at me. "Perhaps Grey's key will be necessary after all".

We all try to process this.

Some of my teammates start looking at me a little differently, I feel... Though that could just be my imagination.

"...We don't know for sure that 'white' is meant to be his colour. He could still be grey", Red mutters. "And besides, I don't think we should risk it. 'All seven colours of the rainbow'.

Red, orange, WHITE, green, blue, indigo, violet... No, no that's not right. Technicalities aside. We need yellow. It's just common sense".

“So what do we do, then?” Violet repeats, exasperated. “Do we have to drag her corpse with us through all the remaining rooms?”

It is a sarcastic question. Red snorts with black, bitter amusement.

…

No-one responds.

The suggestion hangs in the air.

Green glances at me. At Violet.

…At Yellow.

“…We could take her with us”, he says quietly.

“…You’re not serious?” Orange replies, stammering, “this poor girl-”

“We could. We need her key”, Red says, staring at the floor, then over to Yellow.

“Oh, God. We need her key. Violet’s right. I think… f*ck. We’re going to have to carry her with us”.

“She’s DEAD!” Orange shouts. “She deserves some respect, we can’t just haul her bloodied corpse from room to room like she’s a sack of potatoes!”

“Well then what do YOU suggest?” Red retorts angrily. “What do we DO? The way I see it, we don’t have a choice!”

“So who’s going to carry her, then?” Orange asks, folding her arms, voice wavering. “You?”

Red hesitates. He glances to the body.

…To Yellow.

“…I’ll do it”, Green volunteers, and we turn to him.

There’s a pause. He carefully removes his glasses, cleaning the lenses on his shirt.

“I’ve done it before. It’s not a pleasant experience, I wouldn’t want someone else to have to go through it”.

“…You’ve done it before?” Blue asks from beside me.

He nods at her. “I found a close friend of mine, in… in a not so dissimilar state back at university”.

He sighs, and we consider this.

“…Suic*de”, he finishes, with a sad shrug and in a detached, faraway voice.

“Sh*t…” Violet mutters, looking between them. “This is all kinds of messed up”.

The timer ticks down, and it reaches zero.

The computer room's sole door, this one with green paint splashed across it, whirrs and grinds, and it steadily clunks open.

I watch with clenched jaw as Green crouches down and hooks his arms under Yellow’s shoulders. Her head lolls to the side as he hoists her up, blood streaking across the ground as he drags her into the soft, green gloom of the next room.

Her eyes have been closed, which I am thankful for.

Goddamnit… she’s so small. So young. I never got a chance to ask her her age. I was unable to confirm my ‘no kids’ theory. I glance at Orange. She doesn’t look well. She doesn’t look well at all.

…Maybe not knowing is for the best.

A series of noises quickly surround us as we enter the green room. Frothing, gurgling water.. and a steady mechanised chuntering. We are presented with another fork in the corridor, similar to the one in the orange room.

There are arrows and colours painted on the walls.

To the left, is marked:

Blue. Indigo. Violet. Grey/White.

To the right:

Red. Orange. Yellow. Green.

“You’re a person down”, Violet murmurs. Her voice is cold, but we make eye contact, and her eyes are very wet. She blinks and looks away.

“I guess we just have to do our best”, says Green, grunting as he hoists Yellow a little higher up in his grip. His chest is already splattered with blood. “Come on. Let’s just get this over with”.

We’re all still in varying states of shock, I think. But we do as the colours command, with some parting murmurs.

“Good luck”, says Orange, looking between us.

“Yeah”, I murmur. “You too”.

And they disappear around the corner.

Blue takes a second to collect herself. Running her hands up and over her face, and then together, we set off. Around the corridor, and towards the source of the noise.

…Here is what I see as we round the last corner.

The floor beneath us suddenly ends. Directly ahead is a wide, steadily rotating circular floor. This is the source of the mechanical chuntering noise. Between us, and acting as a makeshift ‘moat’ of sorts around this circular floor, is frothing, churning dark water. It laps hungrily and mercilessly at the edges of the platform. Water drips from the shadowed ceiling.

I can see the other team from here. Seems like we won’t be entirely apart in here, like we were in the table-game room.

Red, Orange, Green… and Yellow.

We are separated from them by a thick plexiglass wall, suspended a few inches above the rotating platform, such that the wet metal is able to rotate freely below it. The wall goes directly across the middle, and ‘splits’ the circular platform in half. We are on one side. They, on the other,

Red turns to Green and says something, but I cannot make out the words from here. The plexiglass and the surrounding, frothing water muffle the sounds. Green hoists Yellow up a little higher.

We are carrying Yellow’s corpse. This has become our reality. She died very recently. And we are carrying her pale, bloodied corpse. She died*. We can all die down here. Death is a real possibility. A likelihood, even.*

…I look away.

There are circular holes in the plexiglass, each about the size of a football. And finally, there are coloured pipes attached into the walls. Not the plexiglass wall, but the black walls at the rooms’ edge. Far smaller than the pipes in the previous room, they have the same diameter as the holes in the plexiglass.

There are eight colours.

The seven colours of the rainbow, and mine. White-grey.

On our side are four, colour-corresponding pipes. Blue, indigo, violet, white-grey.

And on their side and directly opposite are four more. Red, orange, yellow, green.

Rotating platform. Plexiglass wall. Coloured pipes. And an angry, surrounding moat.

…I also don’t fail to notice, on our side of the room, another of those vents near the ceiling. Barred off, and impassable.

There’s something we’re missing. Something obvious.

Violet makes the sudden decision to jump from beside us, across the churning moat and onto the rotating platform, with a gentle wobble.

“Wait!” Blue calls, but she’s too late.

Violet finds her balance, and starts walking across the great circular platform as it carries her round. She strides across our half of the circle, and then, when she reaches the opposite side, she jumps across the moat again, onto the next section of static platform. She walks down it and rounds a corner, disappearing out of sight. Presumably, that’s where we’ll find the blue door.

Blue sighs.

“…Yellow knew her, Blue”, I say to her.

She meets my gaze, with no surprise at all on her face.

I sigh. “…You already knew that, didn’t you?” I ask, and she nods.

“Yeah. She told me in the last room”.

I grimace. “We’re connected. All of us. I’m sure of it. I just don’t know exactly how”.

Blue’s eyes shine bright in the green darkness.

…What else do you know, Blue? Are you hiding something from us as well?

Movement through the plexiglass catches my attention.

Red has jumped across the water and onto the platform, with a stumble.

Blue looks at me, and then decides to do likewise. Across she goes.

I glance down to the water below us.

…Who knows what foul machinery lurks just beneath the surface.

Hell, maybe there isn’t any. Maybe it’s just an endless, abyssal drop. Currents that’ll suck you down to oblivion, never to be seen again.

What would I prefer? I wonder. The abyss… Or the collar.

…Unable to come to a conclusion, I push the morbid thought aside, and I jump across to the platform with a quick burst of fear as I leap the gap.

Indigo, completely silent now, follows. A dull metal thunk sounds out as he lands just beside me.

Due to the nature of the platform, we have to keep steadily walking just to stay in place, otherwise it will carry us around and bump us into the plexiglass wall.

I look through this glass.

Orange and Green have both made it to the platform. I watch as Green carries Yellow over to the far side, and, with Red’s help, they toss her unceremoniously across the moat to the next stage of stable flooring. I cannot help but wince as she smacks to the ground with a wet thud.

I get the logic, of course. No use carrying her body around on the platform as it spins. Can’t set her down on it, either, as she’ll just be knocked against the wall and into the water… But still it’s brutal, and honestly kind of heart-breaking to watch.

Who was she? Who was she, really? …Surely she didn’t deserve all this. To die down here, afraid and unknown.

Violet returns.

“The door’s through there”, she says. “The next door. There’s nothing else”.

She jumps back down onto the platform, and as she does so, a klaxon sounds from somewhere unseen, sending the hairs on the back of my neck rising up in anxiety.

We wait for a second, full of dreadful anticipation… Until a shimmering glass ball drops suddenly from the ceiling. Appearing from the shadows of the pipework overhead.

It falls silently, directly down between Indigo and I, and shatters loudly against the metal floor.

“F*ck!” I shout out in alarm. Indigo makes a noise of surprise. We watch as the glassy ruins of the ball are carried around in an arc by the gentle rotation of the platform… and then, when it hits the plexiglass, many of the shards are knocked and brushed off into the water.

Some of them get stuck and the smaller pieces carry through to the other side.

Red has stepped up to the wall and he puts his face against one of the holes. “The hell was that?” he asks us.

I look again.

The shards of glass, I realise, have a very faint, yellowish hue. Difficult to see in this light, but it’s there.

“Wait”, says Violet, “listen-” she cocks her head and directs an ear up to the ceiling. I don’t hear anything myself, but she seems to. She jumps back a step, looking up, and a second glass ball drops from above. This one, Violet catches, with a grunt.

It has a very faint, green hue.

“Okay, I think I get it”, I say out loud, eyeing the green pipe on the opposite side of the glass. “Violet, pass the ball through the-”

“Yeah”, she interrupts. “I got it, Thanks”. And she walks to the barrier, passing it carefully through to Red.

“Hey, says Green, stepping up beside him. “Shouldn’t I take that?”

“I don’t suppose it matters”, Red replies, making his way back across the platform. Green says something else to him, but his voice is lost to the surrounding sounds. We watch as Red reaches up and pushes the green glass ball into the green pipe, where it quickly rolls away and out of sight.

We watch as, just below this pipe, a card is dispensed from a hidden groove. A quick glance around reveals that all the pipes have this groove.

Red grabs it up and slots it into his collar immediately.

Green steps up to him, says something, angrily. I can’t make out the words.

Red replies with a dismissive wave of his hand, and a shrug. Green shakes his head and a vein bulges at the side of his neck.

Red shoots him a look and mutters something else.

A timer appears above us. I presume there must be one on the other team’s side as well.

60:00, it reads, and as before… as always…

…It starts ticking down.

That weary, frustrated, enduring sense of dread returns like an unwelcome friend. It’s as if I can actively feel the energy being sapped from my body. The adrenaline spikes are just not quite cutting it any more. My heart pounds though, all the same.

And so, we play the game.

“It’s like Kancha”, Blue says in passing thought as the glass, marble-like balls begin to drop, slow and steady from the ceiling.

“Yeah”, I reply, considering the shape of the floor and the appearance of the glass balls.

It’s a game, Kancha. Like marbles. “I guess it is, a little”.

There is no pattern to the drops, but we quickly learn where they are able to fall from. There appear to be five locations on each side.

The next few balls are all missed. No-one catches them.

One on our side, then two on their side.

One of the balls was ever so slightly blueish in hue, the other two were green.

…A lot of them are green, as it happens. We start to catch them as we get a little more practice in.

The balls we catch on our side are never for our own coloured pipes. We always have to pass them through the wall, and vice-versa.

Many of the balls we catch are green, and we pass them through the wall to let the other team push it down into the pipe… but nothing further happens. We get no more cards. Nothing happens if we push the ball down the wrong coloured pipe, either.

I catch a flicker of soft, glassy red. I look quickly around as Indigo reaches for it. The ball is dropped with a stream of water, and he fumbles. With a small splash it slips right out of his hands, and shatters against the metal.

“F*ck!” comes the distorted, muffled voice of Red from the other side.

Indigo continues to stumble, stepping shambolically backwards. I jump forwards and grab the front of his shirt, preventing him from toppling right over backwards and into the dangerous surrounding waters.

“Sorry”, Indigo murmurs. “Uh, thanks”.

“Yeah, it’s alright”, I tell him. An honest mistake, could have happened to anyone.

…But Indigo is, as it happens, terrible with hand-eye co-ordination. As I watch ball after ball slip through his fingers, I begin to wonder if it was his fault that his team was so close to the wire in the orange room.

…The game goes on.

Glass balls, when caught, are carefully passed through the holes in the wall to the opposite team, to be deposited in the corresponding pipes. Watching as they roll away into the shadows, and the cards are dispersed.

As I said before, most of the balls are green, and as such, useless. We have to match the right colour to the right pipe.

As the time goes on, we successfully capture and utilise a blue, an orange, and an violet.

They are taken and carefully rolled down their matching pipes, and then, the cards are taken by the corresponding players.

Blue. Orange. Violet.

Four down, four to go.

The platform is littered with broken glass, now. It crunches beneath out feet as we step from place to place, periodically kicking the excess into the water.

We don’t do much speaking, in this room. We all just play in quiet contemplation, all lost in our own thoughts, occasionally interspersed with a localised outburst from Red.

It’s because of this that Blue’s sudden words take me by surprise.

From right beside me, she says: “I wish I’d reached out to her”.

“Oh, what?”

“To Yellow”, she murmurs. “In the last room. Right before we left, I passed her by, and I put out my hand… I was going to squeeze her shoulder, or just… I don’t know. But I was going to do something. And then I changed my mind. Why? Why did I do that?”

“…I don’t know, Blue”, I tell her. “I don’t suppose it matters”.

She sighs. “Of course it matters”.

Something tugs at my heart. I try not to look through the glass. At Yellow’s crumpled corpse on the next platform.

“I feel so terrible, Grey. I could have done more. I was looking out for myself; maybe... maybe I should have been looking out for her, too. She was so… vulnerable”.

“No, you weren’t just looking out for yourself. I can tell. You were thinking about everyone. But it’s rough down here. Self-preservation. I get it”.

Blue shoots me a look that I find difficult to decipher.

Violet is nearby. She darts forwards to catch a glass ball, but it’s green. She sighs and drops it into the water with a splash. She looks at us, her face full of scorn.

“Yellow wasn’t ‘vulnerable’. She was weak. Weak and pathetic. She wasn’t strong enough to do what needed to be done to keep her alive and she paid the price”.

“The hell is wrong with you?” I ask her. “Don’t you have a heart?”

“Why”, she shrugs. “What’s the point”.

Her dispassion triggers something in me, and I find myself getting angry.

“What the f*ck is your problem, Violet? You got some kind of chip on your shoulder?”

She stares daggers at me. “F*ck off”, she says, simply.

“I’m serious”, I reply. “How could you be so callous? You got angry at Orange for forgetting who you were, but you’re a hypocrite. You know that Yellow knew who YOU were too, right?”

Indigo looks between us. Blue chews her tongue.

“…What?” Violet asks.

“Yeah”, I say. “She was in your school, apparently. Looked up to you, for whatever reason. And you didn’t even recognise her”.

Violet considers this. She looks away, thinking.

“…Yeah”, she says after a moment. “Yeah, I think I did know her, actually. I don’t know her name, but… F*ck… She was a couple of Standards lower”.

She scoffs. “N*sty piece of work, from what I heard. Accused some kid of stealing. Escalated it. Got her kicked out of school. Privileged b*tch”.

I shake my head in disbelief.

“She was copying YOU. YOU, Violet. You’re unbelievable. You’re a hypocrite, and you’re worse than Red. At least he has some concept of- of team, of working through this game together-”

“Let me stop you RIGHT there!” Violet suddenly screams, loud enough for the others on the opposite side of the glass to hear. Orange and Red approach, putting their heads to the holes to hear better. She strides towards me as a green glass ball plummets down far behind, shattering on the metal and spilling into the water.

“First- I am not responsible for somebody’s else’s actions. I’m not to blame for whatever dumb, heartless sh*t Yellow might have got up to. SECOND, I am not a hypocrite. Yellow was nothing to me. Some dumb girl from a different part of the school. Orange was DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE for my childhood. My upbringing was shaped by the standards of her orphanage, and they were sh*t. They’re not the same. False equivalence”.

She spits.

“And third, don’t compare me to that misogynistic prick, Red. In FACT-” She turns to him, points a finger at him. He fumes on the opposite side of the glass.

“You’re all still talking about the ‘game’… the game, the game, the game. You were so opposed to playing along at the beginning, Red. What happened to you? This is F*CKED”.

She throws out her arms. “I mean what are we DOING here? Catching big f*cking marbles and playing pass-the-parcel. Putting the right colour into the right slot like we’re little babies. F*ck this. I’m not playing”.

It's Indigo, who speaks next. “You already have your card, Violet. Your collar has been deactivated. How convenient”.

“Shut the hell up, creep”, Violet mutters, turning away. “Of course I would prioritise myself. Why wouldn’t I…?” She reaches the far end of the circular platform and jumps up onto the next section of flooring, across the churning water. Without looking back she strolls down the corridor and round the corner, vanishing into the dim green shadows.

Blue rubs a hand across her face “Great. Two down”.

Red knocks his knuckles against the glass. “Three folks left to collect for. Green, Indigo, Grey. Let’s get back to it”.

A surprisingly cool response. Maybe he’s just given up on Violet. Maybe Yellow’s death has forced him to reassess his priorities, a little.

But we play on.

The timer ticks.

…Twenty minutes to go.

*

Violet’s words have resonated with me. I’d become so swept up in this… this game… What the f*ck are we even doing here? I lunge forwards and catch one of the glass balls.

This one has a faint reddish hue, and is the only the third of this particular colour to drop so far. I tread my way through the smashed up glass and pass it carefully through the hole. Green takes it from me, his hands still stained red with Yellow’s blood.

“Cheers” he mutters, with a weak smile as it slips into his hands. He carries it across the rotating floor and lifts it up, depositing it into the red pipe. It rolls quickly away and out of sight, and a card appears beneath.

Green sighs, relief visible across his face. He brings the card up to his collar and slots it in. I catch the edge of the beep and the chime.

We’re being toyed with. Who would put us through something like this? What do all these games have in COMMON..? What’s the theme? What’s the POINT in this madness? I’m convinced that our escape, our salvation, lies in the answers to these questions. Some sort of teamwork bullsh*t?

Is that it? It seems too simple, too juvenile. It’s maddening. I will power through the next block of writing, I decide, as quickly as possible, and we will use the remaining time to discuss properly. Once and for all. We’ll work out how we’re all connected, and we’ll figure out the missing piece to the puzzle.

The game goes on.

The timer ticks down.

We successfully retrieve Indigo’s card, just leaving myself.

Classic.

I note that we fail to see even a single white or grey coloured glass ball. There just don’t appear to be any.

…But that doesn’t matter.

There are enough yellow ones. Eventually we catch one, and we pass it through the wall to the other team. Yellow’s card is dispensed, and it is passed back through to me, and this, I use. Sliding it into my collar, which beeps, and chimes.

“Right. That’s everyone”, says Blue, with a sigh of relief. And there’s still seven minutes left to go. She heads to the centre of the platform, to the plexiglass wall, and she calls through. “We’re good, then”, she says. “We’ll see you guys at the door”.

The others nod to her. Orange says something to Blue. I don’t hear what she says, but she gestures to Yellow’s body as she does so. Blue simply shrugs, and returns to Indigo and I. “Alright, let’s get out of here”.

“What did Orange want?” I ask.

“Well… she brought up an interesting point. We haven’t deactivated Yellow’s collar. Technically, if she goes through the next door without doing so, she’ll be… well… ‘breaking the rules’, so to speak”.

I cannot help a snort of laughter. “So what? What’s gonna happen? Would the collar go off again? Double drowning?”

Blue puts out her hands. “I don’t know, Grey. Come on, are you ready?”

“Yeah”, I reply. “Yeah, let’s go”. So we begin to make our way towards the exit. Indigo makes the jump first, and then Blue. I am the last, and just as I am about to follow on behind, the timer reaches ‘five minutes to go’, and a curious thing happens.

Slowly, at first, but then in much more rapid succession, glass balls begin to fall from the darkness of the ceiling. In a regular rhythm, this time, not random. They fall and shatter like heavy glass raindrops, and all of them, every single one… is white.

Or grey, I guess. Depends on your perspective.

I make a decision, in that moment. Something compels me to act. Irrationally, perhaps, but it’s a necessity all the same. I jump over the churning moat, back onto the platform, and I reach out my hands to catch one of the falling white glass orbs.

I do so with a grunt, and carry it around the edge of the rotating floor to the accompanying plastic pipe. I lift it up and drop it down inside, and it rolls away out of sight. A second later, the final card is dispensed below, and I reach out to collect it.

I will deactivate Yellow’s collar. Even if it has no practical purpose. I just feel like it’s the right thing to do.

I lift my gaze for a final look at the vent. That narrow gap in the wall. Up high near the ceiling, barred off and inaccessible.

…And from the shadows, behind the bars…

…A pair of bright, wide eyes stare back.

My blood freezes in my veins.

The sound of the rushing water and the rain of shattering glass is dulled to a backing murmur.

Behind the bars, all crouched up, is a little girl.

…In the shadows, she looks kind of like Orange.

She stares at me, fear plain across her face. She raises a finger to her lips, and she scuttles away out of sight; off, and into the darkness.

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