E.LO.E

We find a young woman awakening in a bed. Even in the gloom of the darkened room, and the glaze of recent wakefulness, she is possessed of the sensation that she is in an unfamiliar place. She sits up abruptly, in a sudden panic, the room is... small, she thinks, as far as she can tell, it's too dark to tell specifically. There are shapes in the darkness, furniture probably; to her left, what she presumes to be a side-table, it's bare. There's a faint glint of light on part of the wall, very faint, she almost didn't notice it. Across from from her there is a light switch, she can tell because it's illuminated by a small light just above the switch.
She is very concerned with her present situation. "Where am I" She thinks. She curls up into a ball, as she comes the concerning theory that she may have been kidnapped. But why? She's no-one important. No-one special. She isn't even terribly pretty, she thinks. It is absolutely beyond the realm of her own comprehension why she is here.

After a period of calming, The girl decides to take some initiative, and gets out of the bed. She cautiously steps across the carpeted floor, slowly creeping along as it is still rather dark and she's not certain if there's anything on the floor she should. She then yelps in surprise and pain as she stubs her toe and something that was evidently just laying in the middle of the room. It's a fairly small thing that she can't really discern in the darkness, so she opts to sidestep around it rather than Inquire towards it further. After a few more slow, trepidous steps, she eventually reaches the light-switch, flicking it on with a disproportionate sense of urgency.
As the light comes on she feels, she feels a brief sense of relief before the nature of her situation returns to her. She re-examines the room. It's a spartan room, not much in terms of furniture. The walls are a light blue-gray, and the floor is a dark gray carpet. It's very clean, concerningly clean, she thinks, before rebuffing herself for paranoia. Theres a bed, more of a cot really, like a hospital bed. In fact this whole room feels a lot like a hospital room... albeit from the most dull hospital ever, and that's really saying something. She glances towards the endtable next to the bed, there's nothing on it, but it has a single drawer. She looks to her right, and sees what looks like an opening into some sort of bathroom, or at least a closet with a shower. Going along the wall there's a full-body mirror, a very simple full-body mirror with a dark blue frame, what looks like a wardrobe, very simple light blue... plastic, who makes a wardrobe out of plastic? Next to it is a small table, maybe a desk, but there isn't a chair, It looks like a cheap ikea desk.
Eventually her eyes wander to the... thing, on the floor. She's not entirely certain what that thing is. It's, round, and has some sort of assemblage on the top, including some sort of glass panel... maybe it's a screen of some sort. The Thing is bolted to the floor. She feels a profound sense of... concern, about the thing. Everything else in this room seems fairly normal, if not very extravagant. But then there's just a weird sort of... THING, in the middle of the room.

>KICK IT TO SHOW DOMINANCE

>Just mess with it. Kick it, tap on it, push buttons if it has any. Whatever this thing is, you will know EVERYTHING about it.

or

>Remember the scientific method. Produce a theory before you experiment. Approach with caution.

The girl ponders the mysterious device in the room. It entices her with its mystery, its suspicion, it's esoteric nature its.... mystery. She jaunts over to it, crouching down so she can take a closer look a the thing, It seems to be a single piece of metal, shaped into a sort of cap, about a foot and a half around, and raised two inches off the ground. There's an extension out the base from which it's bolted to the floor, seven bolts in total, all around. The assemblage on top of the thing continues to vex and concern her. It's some sort of trapezoid, with a bunch of nubs along the side, pressing on them provides a small clicking noise. The top of the thing, where the glass panel is, is mostly plain, with what appears to be a single push pin just under the panel.

She presses down on the pin, which emits a loud ping after it passes some sort of latch. She worriedly looks about,, it was quite loud, and she is concerned that someone might have heard that... she's not entirely certain who would've, as she doesn't even know if there's anyone to hear, but then she's not really certain of a lot of things in this situation. She's drawn back to the panel when she notices it producing a soft blue glow. She boggles vacantly at screen, which is displaying a symbol she doesn't recognize, in white, against a blue background. She clicks some of the side switches, and as far as she can tell this does nothing except change the image to other symbols she doesn't particularly recognize.

She quickly gets fed up with this seemingly futile series of events and stands up in a huff. She circles angrily around the device a few times before reeling her foot back as far as she can manage. She gives the thing a swift kick to the side, hearing a soft crack as her toes connect to the device. She's befuddled for a moment, and then starts shouting expletives and clutching her foot. The pain is extraordinary and she forgets herself for a moment, falling to her ground and rolling about, her only clear thoughts being concerns about the permanence of this damage. She's drawn out of this delirium when she thinks she hears something. From outside the room. She suddenly remembers the situation she's in and clamps her hands around her mouth. Her foot still really hurts.

>A whirlwind of emotions surges in your head. Fear over your situation and anger over your situation as well. You can't hold it back. In a whirlwind of simultaneously terrified and enraged destruction, you disassemble the entire room. Stopping just short of tearing up the floorboards.

The girl begins to freak out a little bit. The weight of the circumstances begin to get to her, she's angry, scared, confused, and her foot still hurts. She feels the strong urge to punch something, anything, possibly everything, that mirror, for example, that would shatter amazingly, she thinks, the glittering pieces of glass and silver, it would be beautiful, she thinks. But, in a tremendous display of willpower and through prodigious hyperventilating, she manages to calm herself sufficiently to resist her spontaneous urge to destroy everything in the room, she feels a little dizzy after all that.

Good thing, as well, as no sooner had she relaxed herself to her unnerved base, that she heard something again. Footsteps. Heavy Footsteps. Coming from... the right of the door, in the room beyond. She quickly sits up. Did she sit up too quickly, did it hear her. She begins to panic again, she scrabbles to the back wall, Her hands firmly clasped over her mouth in case she makes any noise. There's a pause in the footsteps. It heard her didn't it, whatever it was, it heard her, she's certain of it. The footsteps begin again. She begins glancing about the room, she could hide under the bed... no that would stupid wouldn't it? Or maybe it's so stupid that nothing would even think that someone would under there. Or maybe the wardrobe, it's big enough for her, it'd be perfect... Maybe too perfect... it's the first place *she* would look if she was looking for someone.

Then there's the... bathroom, for lack of a better term, from what she can tell looking at it from this room, she wouldn't think there's anywhere to really hide in there, but... maybe? The footsteps keep getting closer... They're very determined. Her foot throbs, this whole scenario's making her mind a bit swimmy, with stress presumably.

>What are you waiting for? To the bathroom with haste! It might as well be a fortress as far as you're concerned. Four walls, a door you can barricade, and too small for anything to jump you. Also, if the evil footsteps have any manners, they'll knock before entering.

>Stand in the middle of the room, arms folded behond you calmly. Keep your back straight and your stance wide, feet apart by one foot. Stare. Stare and do not say a word. Do not blink, do not break eye contact, stare.

>Go for the bed, girl!

>Check for exits.

The girl takes a brief moment to frantically check herself for any sort of self-defense tools. This causes her to become incredibly cognizant of the fact that she is terribly under dressed. She usually slept in her underwear and it appears whoever or... whatever... kidnapped her didn't care to dress her. Oh god someone saw her when she was practically naked, she thinks, nearly panicking as her mind sifts through the innumerable and increasingly unsavory implications of this fact.

She's snapped back from this moment of panic by another heavy footstep. Oh yeah, she thinks in passing, there's... that. She glances between the bed and the bathroom, debating to herself which way to go. The footsteps are getting closer, and she begins to hear heavy breathing. Very laboroious heavy breathing, it doesn't sound particularly healthy, or especially friendly. The thing stops right at the door and she finally makes a decision, darting underneath the bed. She lies on her chest beneath the bed, hands over her mouth and trying to stay as still as she possibly can. Silence descends for what seems like an eternity, before the door is suddenly, and roughly, swung open.

From her position underneath the bed all she can really see are it's legs; Monstrous legs that look like some parody of human legs, disgusting and diseased looking, covered in scabs and dried blood, gnarled grasping toes, with what appear to be pointed claws instead of nails. It stomps about the room, it's heavy breathing almost masking it's heavy footfalls. It appears to regard the wardrobe, and then, in a swift action, rips off one of the doors, discarding it such that leans askew against the bedside, letting out a guttural cry, seemingly of discontent. It laboriously stomps it's way to the bathroom. It only enters partway, twisting to regard something to it's right.

It steps in, and not even a moment later it emits a cry, and what appears to be some sort of plastic sails past the limited view of the bathroom she has. It examines the discard hamper, and she gets a look at the thing's back, though it's obscured by the poor lighting. It's disgusting, infected looking, covered in sores, and generally looking torn apart, like flaking paint. it's proportions are strange, it's shoulders bugle and it's arms generally look too long and muscular.

She nearly yelps when it suddenly spins around and stomps it's way towards the be. She backs away, hoping vainly that crawling as far as she can into the corner with protect her. It bends down, grasping at the foot of the bed, gnarled, long, clawed fingers curling around the metal frame. It let's out a small grunt as it lifts the bed an inch on the ground. She is very certain she is about to die, how did it come to this, she thinks. Why is she here, in a place that something so monstrous dwells. The bed lifts another inch and a half off the ground and she closes her eyes. Suddenly then, a sound breaks out like... firecrackers. No, not quite it's something else... gunshots she thinks. The creature twitches at the sound, regarding it for a few moments, before dropping the bed with a loud clang. It then stomps out of the room.

The girl remains quiet for a quite a while after that. For a while she can hear it making it's way down the same way it came. The gunshots continue intermittently as it's footfalls get quieter and quieter and quieter, until they can no longer be heard. But she doesn't get out immediately, she's actually not sure if she even wants to get out.

>Stay silent.

>It's actually pretty cozy under the bed. Why not stay for a while longer?

The girl elects to remain under the bed for a time. It's cramped confines providing strange comfort in these even stranger locals, she decides laying on her stomach is uncomfortable, and rolls over. Laying on her back and looking up and the metal bed-frame, it's slightly askew from when the thing dropped on top of her, she's actually kinda surprised it didn't drop it on her. That would have been rather terrible. It's surprisingly comfortable under here, she thinks, the carpet is fairly nice compared to some carpets she's laying down on, she could probably...

She suddenly wakes up... she fell asleep, under the bed, how weird, she thinks. After a few more moments of this, she decides that she probably can't just stay under the bed forever, as much as she'd like to, and gets out from under the bed, sitting up just in front of the weird device that she kicked earlier, oh her foot doesn't hurt anymore, she realizes. She re-examines the room; It's in a bit of disarray, the door is hanging lazily on it's hinges, light spilling into a plain gray hallway.

She glances at the wardrobe door, it's laying on the ground after being knocked down when the bed dropped. The wardrobe itself is mostly fine, except for the fact that it's missing one of it's doors, she can see some clothes in there, and is suddenly reminded of her near-nakedness, she frowns, and shifts a little in discomfort. Much of the room remains undamaged, the end-table next to the bed has shifted slightly, the mirror is slightly askew, but otherwise... She sits on the floor, arms draped defensively around her knees and considers, that maybe she should... perhaps leave the room, or at least do something.

Thank god we didn't stand and stare at the thing oml

>Look at the mirror, it will be the first thing that will tell you if you're in another dimension.

>You should definitely leave the room, but first: head into the bathroom and grab a towel to use as a modesty shield and a security blanket. And that's just two uses out of many.

The girl gets up and meanders over to the mirror, to give herself a look-about. She doesn't see anything particularly out of the ordinary, she sees her shoulder length black hair, it's slightly ragged, unkempt, she was awful at taking care of it, she just didn't really know what to do with it. She wipes away her bangs, she hadn't really noticed they were there before. Her bangs passively drift back over to her face as she examines the rest of herself. She increasingly frowns as she looks over her body. She feels that she's altogether too pale, maybe she should get out more, she thinks.

She's also a little flabby, kinda pudgy, she's fat. She begins absently prodding at her slightly above weight stomach, and her frown progresses even more. She glances back up to her face. She had never thought of herself as especially pretty, but without any make-up, she just looked horrible, she thought. Her Blue eyes darted about as she examined her frowning face, she frowned yet more when she reflected on the fact that she hardly ever smiled. She turns away from the mirror before she has to think about herself for much longer, she'll hardly get anything done if she doesn't, she thinks. At the very least she confirms she's not in any weird dimensions, at least not any that make her any prettier.

She shuffles off into the bathroom, which now that she's in it, she can clearly see a toilet, in a little dark alcove that was out of sight of the doorway. In the same alcove as the toilet there's a hole, about a two feet across, surrounded by a ring of dislodged screws and bolts, she glances over to the hamper, and realizes that it was in fact just a hamper shaped tube, covering this... hole. She crouches down, She thinks she might be able to fit, possibly, but it's so dark down there. She has no Idea where it could go. She gets up and turns to the left of where she couldn't see, catching a glimpse of her pale, unattractive self for a few moments, before turning her gaze turns to a countertop with a single metal sink built into it. It's very unembellished, she can see the bottom of the basin and the piping.

She glances further left, and sees a pair of towels, one dark gray, and other light blue. She arbitrarily picks the light blue one to wrap herself in, it makes her slightly more modest, except not really. She decides to be a little creative, and wraps the light blue towel around her waist, like a skirt, and wears the dark gray towel draped around her shoulders, like a shawl, or... yes, like a cape. She is reminded of when she was a kid and perks up ever so slightly. She considers looking in the mirror, but thinks better of it. She's already aware that this looks really silly.

She goes to the open doorway of her room. She suddenly remembers that thing that walked in here, she had been trying to forget, and with the self-loathing and messing with towels had nearly succeeded. She reflexively whimpers, and peaks around the corner to the right, the hall goes down a ways, every few feet marked by another door, until it gets too dark to see. She hadn't noticed until now, but the gunshots had stopped, she certainly hopes that's a good thing.

Peaking left she sees the hallway branch out into a larger room, there seems to be a window on one side, the side that she's on. It looks like some sort of waiting area... maybe she is in a hospital. There are benches in the center, and on the right wall relative to where she's looking. There are two doors, including one that looks like and elevator. On the far side of the room it looks like it goes on into another hall. She steps out into the hall, looking concernedly to the right, suddenly, there's another sound of distant gunshots.She steps into the waiting room looking area, and in here, notes how sparse it is, for a waiting room. There are very few decorations of any sort, and there aren't any plants. This is strange hospital, if it truly is one. She then spots out of the corner of her eye... something... red, and she tenses up.

>Yell at it!

>Yell at it!

Seconding

>Fight or flight mode! Fists up!

The girl spins around, letting out a yell, not at all directed at the red thing, that was mostly a coincidence really, she screams for a solid minute before remembering her situation, and silently takes up a defensive stance... a move that proves largely pointless as she actually looks at the red thing... It's... a person. Or at least, it was. Right now it's looking more like a mangled pile of meat, it calls to mind pictures she's seen of slaughterhouse detritus, but those were animals.. and this was a person. There are some recognizable aspects, mostly the legs, and some of the, uh, the bones, she vaguely remembers what human bones look like, but seeing them just... sticking out a person is entirely different, it's actually a bit surreal.

She feels a churning feeling in her gut, and just then, the smell, that awful rotting smell. She feels like she's about to throw up, but manages to keep herself together. She finds herself morbidly drawn to the sight, she just can't get herself to look away. Is this even real? She thinks, how can any of this be real. She wakes up in a strange hospital, she's hunted by some sort of terrible monster. She feels herself getting rather light-headed. How long has she been hyperventilating, she thinks.

She collapses on the ground, and pulls the towel around herself tight, she faces away from the... person. She tries to focus on what's outside the window. It's dark, it must be night, wherever she is. She can see a forest, reaching towards the black horizon. She reflexively whimpers as she thinks about the implications - that she's in the middle of nowhere in a strange hospital with monsters and... and. She notices a black shape further down on the horizon, there are faint lights, it must be another building. Is it part of this hospital? She moves closer to the window to try and get a better look, yelping when she suddenly sees her reflection. She's slightly more unattractive than usual, she had evidently been crying. She clutches at the towel, deeply inhaling, and exhaling... She notices that the other towel had fallen from her at some point, and frowns slightly.

>Hunt around for jewelry to make yourself pretty.

>The macabre sight is so grotesque that whatever food you had in your stomach is now on the floor. No, it did not taste better going back up.

>Hunt around for jewelry to make yourself pretty.

Les' find us some glam glam, secondinginging