Noah noticed an iron baseball bat at Isaac’s feet, likely the source of the metallic noise. It slowly rolled towards him; he picked it up when it reached him. He kept a relaxed pose, wanting to make sure to not agitate Isaac by appearing as a threat - the fellow had never been the most temperate individual, but one had to wonder what his mental state would be after being exposed to the madness in this dungeon.

“Who are you talking to, Isaac?” he asked, though he knew the answer already.

“Some fucking guy that calls himself the Jester, he-“

“Yes!” Jacob exclaimed in recognition. “The Jester! That’s him, that’s the one that did this to me!” he continued, showing his stump to Isaac.

“What the fuck?! I’ll fucking kill this asshole!”

Noah remained perfectly stoic, almost jaded. He took a look at the bat, then laid his eyes on Isaac again.

“What is going on?” he asked. “What did you mean when you said you wouldn’t play his games?”

“That clown is a damn psychopath, is what he is. He wanted me to kill Jake.”

Jacob breathed in, surprised and fearful. Noah turned in his direction and took a step forward, leaning in slightly in an inquisitive stance.

“Again, I wonder: why you? He obviously has something against you. What do you know? Why are we in here?”

Jake attempted to formulate an answer but was at a loss for words. Seeing him panic, however, Isaac decided to interject himself in the interrogation.

“Wait! He didn’t want me to kill Jake specifically. He said, ‘the next person that enters the room’. But obviously, I’m not gonna do that. We’re better than this. The three of us, we can get out of this crazy place without doing the things he wants us to do.”

“Or can you?” asked the high-pitched, mocking voice that they now knew to belong to their captor. “How can you escape when there are no doors?” he asked.

Puzzled, the trio looked around. The wall behind them, where there was once a way they came in from, was now a solid tapestry of gray bricks. The doors had simply vanished into thin air and they hadn’t even noticed it - in fact, there was no trace of any door having ever existed in the first place. They were effectively trapped, at the mercy of this cruel and seemingly all-powerful entity.

“How?” Isaac raged.

“Now, listen carefully," the Jester continued, his voice echoing from the ceiling. “I am a… very generous person," he continued while audibly holding back a burst of laughter. “I will also extend the offer to you, Noah, my dear friend. Kill Jake, and you two shall be free.”

“Why do you want him dead so much?” Noah questioned.

“Hmm… you’re right. It wouldn’t be fair for poor Jake here to not have a shot at making it out in one… or should I say, two pieces. Not that his hand is ever getting out, no no no, I’m keeping it as a souvenir.” He let out a slow and malevolent chuckle, evidently finding his own twisted sense of humor funny.

“Very well. I am willing to compromise. If you want him to stay alive so much, I will agree to let all of you leave, on one condition. I have obtained a single hand from Jacky-boy, but it would be better if I had a pair. I’ll take either Isaac’s or Noah’s. But here’s the twist! Poor Jacob will have to do it. The deed must be done… by his own hand. Do you think he has it in him to inflict such harm in order to survive? And do either of you have the capacity for self-sacrifice?”

“And what if we refuse?” Isaac asked.

“Well. Nobody gets out, simple as that. How long will you last in a room with no doors, no windows and no escape, I wonder?”

There was a moment of silence as dread started to set in.

“Why do you do this?” Noah asked. “Jacob wouldn’t hurt a fly, do you really think he’ll be able to dismember us?”

“Oh well. His loss… of life.” The Jester chuckled again until it faded into nothingness, leaving the three young men to do what they had to.

They sat down, some distance apart from each other. It was a room completely void of any feature, save for some green moss, a few showerheads, a large, square iron drain, and a single light bulb that barely shone any light on their new jail. A near-perfect blank canvas for a bloody carnage.

A ghastly silence fell in the room. As time passed, the air became heavier, warmer. The young men were sweating due to the anxiety, the heat and the lack of oxygen as it was constantly recycled among them, the room being sealed shut. Isaac was the first to stand up, moving nervously in circles. He felt the pressure of the encased room. He started screaming and swearing.

“We should try to reach for the light bulb," he said after calming down.

“It’s too high,” Jacob answered.

“We can lift you on our shoulders. Maybe you can reach it.”

“And then what?” Noah asked.

“I don’t – I don’t know. Maybe we can find a way out, something! Ugh!”

He sat back down. Immediately, the Jester’s voice manifested itself. “Tick-tock, tick-tock! Time is running out!” And a laugh. Isaac cursed at him, then turned towards Noah, who was staring down at the floor.

“What should we do?” he asked.

Noah chuckled sarcastically. “How should I know?”

“Maybe we should do it,” he said. He hesitantly turned towards Jacob. “I don’t think we have a choice. We don’t have anything sharp enough to cut off a limb…”

Jacob’s eyes went wide. Of course, he was terrified: he had feared his captor, he had feared the torture, he had feared the murderous intents of the psychopath, only a few minutes prior. But Noah knew this was entirely different. His gaze held a sense of hopelessness at the situation, of a friend with his back against the wall, the despair, the instincts of cornered prey. Above all else, though, Noah knew he felt betrayed. Jacob would never have harmed anybody, much less a friend he had known for years, no matter how dire the circumstances. He never expected anybody to be as non-violent as he was, but how Isaac was almost casual about it surely shocked him.

Noah interfered, hoping to defuse the tense situation, or at the very least take it in a less grim direction.

“What happened to your morals?” he asked Isaac with a tone of disapproval.

“What else can we do?” Isaac grunted back.

“Would you really be able to live with yourself if you killed an innocent? Look - honestly, I think you were on the right track. This… Jester person is clearly a psycho. He enjoys seeing us suffer. If we do nothing, maybe we can bore him into letting us out.”

Isaac sat down. The three of them waited in silence for what felt like hours.

Noah’s bid eventually paid off. Their enemy let out an exaggerated sigh.

“Very well," the Jester said. “If you will not indulge me, this means I was wrong and you are hopeless. In this case, I have no further use for you. I will allow the three of you to die, now.”

The three young men stood up, all senses on high alert. From the shower drain, on the floor right in front of them, some manner of slimy substance oozed from the iron grid, a mix of colors ranging from pink to red. It made some nauseating sounds, creating a harmony of cracking bones, boiling flesh, and organs rubbing against each other. It slowly spread, initially stretching itself over the floor, but soon climbing the walls and clinging to the ceiling as well.

“What… the… fuck," commented Isaac.

The three of them backed against the wall furthest from this monstrosity of gore. Pustules formed on its surface with yellow pus oozing and leaking out, before being wiped back into itself by long and thin tongue-like appendages.

Pods shaped like funnels appeared as the wall of flesh spread throughout the room. They opened and closed in a pulsating, throbbing rhythm, revealing in each of them asymmetrical sets of gargantuan molars, ready to awkwardly crush whoever they could grab before assimilating any organic matter into itself.

One of the pods developed towards the center of the room. After a few seconds, one of those tongues came out of it, whipping the air in the room in search of the taste of fear and panic from potential prey. Evidently, it had found them, the funnel pods getting excited and trembling with anticipation as Jacob cried and screamed in horror.

It only served to aggravate the cancerous mass. As the trio recoiled away from it in terror, away from its protuding mouths, some of the organs and excess flesh collected itself into a bigger pile, reforming itself in a disturbingly human-looking arm, although about eight times the normal size. It stretched at the base further and further, increasingly giving it more reach to attack its new victims.

Noah was frozen and Jacob had his eyes closed, begging for mercy. He had wet his pants. Only Isaac seemed to offer a modicum of resistance by pointlessly slamming against the wall they had backed up against.

Or perhaps not so pointlessly.

A feeble punch somehow sent a shockwave through the stone wall, shaking the whole room. His eyes wide open, he didn’t think about the how or the why and kept going. Two more hits and the wall tore itself open. It didn’t crumble as if it had been impacted by a tremendous force; rather, where there was but a moment ago only solid matter, a cylinder-shaped tunnel made of polished rock had appeared, with its floor flat and wide. It was large enough for all of them to fit in and escape.

Noah noticed it as well, though the arm lunged towards him to crush him against the wall behind and snuff out his life. He had never been the agile type, but his survival instincts kicked in, ducking just in time in the direction of the newly-formed corridor. After Isaac helped him up, they dodged another attack, grabbed Jacob and rushed to the exit.

Coming from the room behind them, they heard the Jester utter two words: “I see.”

They ran as quickly as they could, always moving forward in the darkness, chased by the nightmarish abomination. Then, in the distance, a flickering light. Was it yet another trap, another danger? Or was there even a small chance that it could be the way to their freedom?