[Auto Exam] House of Horrors (Dekana Solo)

[SkieBorne]

Dekana had made it, finally! With that last class, he'd finally earned enough credits to pass through the Year 1 Exam and properly begin his career as a student of Amityville! The invitation arrived soon enough after his last qualifying class, and as with everything Amityville, it was both vague and mildly disturbing.

When he approached the indicated area, the building – he'd seen it multiple times before but it had never been for him – was open before him. The note tacked to the wall beside the door was as mysterious as ever... and seemed to indicate he need only pass through the house to progress. Not too hard, one might think, except that this was a haunted house... a sentient, malignant force among those of Halloween purpose.

Entering the house, Dekana was greeted by silence and emptiness – nobody else was in the house and nothing else would be allowed in or out. This was his test and his test alone.

Thus, it was with excitement, that he began the journey through the house.

It started swimmingly – being quiet and careful and got him into the kitchen and even a few steps across before he knocked over a pail of bones and the tiny fragments scattered across the floor, raising such a racket, he was certain someone or something would surely come looking!  

[SkieBorne]

When nothing happened, Dekana slowly unhid and moved on, swiftly crossing more distance until he, again, knocked over a bucket of bones and sent that one scattering across the floor as well. Whomever had set this up was a troll, he was certain! He'd hit every possible bucket so far!

Again he dove for cover and waited to see if anyone would come calling his name.  

[SkieBorne]

Nothing came, much to his relief, and Dekana decided to move on with speed. All would have gone well had he not found the last trap laid in his path with such certainty that it almost seemed as though he'd deliberately dove into the vat of melted chocolate. The cry of surprise, however, and the splash of chocolate that began to solidify on the floor, implied he did not in fact love chocolate enough to go swimming in it.

Dragging himself up and out of the mess, Dekana wiped his face off and continued on his way, wondering why on earth anybody would place a chocolate vat immediately before a major doorway. It was bizarre.  

[SkieBorne]

As he stumbled, covered in chocolate and in a sour mood, into the next room he found himself in a library. He'd seen these kind of puzzles before – you had to find the fake book and toggle it, trigger the secret door to win fantastic prizes. It couldn't be that hard to figure it out!

Glad for a simple task, Dekana moved to one book and slid it out, surprised at the weight as it gave and nearly fell to the floor. Hefting it, Dekana leafed through the pages with interest for a moment before he realized the wood carving prints were not ornate letter but more of the writhing body kind of prints. Blushing, the shadow panther shoved it back on the shelf before someone could claim he'd been looking at naughty books.  

[SkieBorne]

No naughty books would be the keys, Dekana figured, and moved on to tug and pull and rearranged various other books on the shelves. Nothing gave any hint of being connected to a fancy locking system, sadly, and he was forced to continue on, section by section. Did the answer change with each attempt perhaps? If that was the case, he could be here for a very, very long time... there were so very many books!  

[SkieBorne]

A while did indeed pass as Dekana methodically looked through each and every section in each wall of books. He found a variety of titles that intrigued him but he could not afford to simply be distracted by their contents while he worked on his exam. Eventually, he found the required books, side by side, on a shelf in the far corner... it wasn't the last place he could have checked but it was certainly close! The door swung open when he pulled them both but the ticking sound told Dekana it wouldn't stay open forever and he really didn't want to go back and do this all again.  

[SkieBorne]

Slipping through the door with grace, even if he left chocolate smears on everything, Dekana made it to the third and final room. A bedroom done up in a classical gothic theme all full of taxidermy animals and velvet cushions trimmed in black lace. The bed looked like it might've been sentient, with the way the covers pulled back along the edge, and the way the metal somethings gleamed like teeth between the top and bottom mattresses... so he had to get out without being eaten, it seemed.

He crossed the door out but it was lock, unsurprisingly, and a set of lockpicking tools lay on the ground the door. Pick the lock without making noise? He could that!

His first attempt, however, failed miserably as he toggled the tools back and forth, trying to learn how the lock worked.  

[SkieBorne]

Dekana kept working with the lock, almost getting it on his second try but an unfortunate sneeze caused his tools to slip and the attempt to fail once more.  

[SkieBorne]

Determined to pass, Dekana kept working and his third attempt was even worse than the first - he bent one of the tool with a horrendous twisted metal sound that he was certain made the bed wriggle as if its sleep had been disturbed.  

[SkieBorne]

With a sigh, he tried once more and, as he shifted his weight to try to find that perfect spot within the lock, one of his other tools actually snapped off and he had to fish the broken end out of the lock before making any further attempts.  

[SkieBorne]

Would this be where it ended for him? Eaten alive by a sentient gothic bed, forced to idle away at picking an impossible lock for the rest of his existence? Dekana was beginning to think so - he'd lost count of long he'd been at this last door to freedom.  

[SkieBorne]

It's funny, Dekana decided, that nobody had told him that his enthusiasm could so quickly turn to dread and boredom.... he just wanted out now, to be back in the fresh air once more and not stuck with this sentient bed. He was pretty sure he could feel some sort of breath on him... never mind that it smelled like exceptionally heavy potpurri.  

[SkieBorne]

Dekana was pretty sure he had an intimate knowledge of this lock now, they'd spent so much together. He'd learned the best way to start, the perfect fiddly moves to get in position, and it was just this finishing tweak that he kept screwing up.... but this time, this time he felt something was different as the lock didn't slip and his tool didn't break.

The sound of click as the lock gave way was, perhaps, the absolute most satisfying sound Dekana had heard in his time at Amityville. It was the sound of freedom... the sound of victory.

He barely registered the scroll of exam completion when he spilled out in the sunlight a moment later, blinking rapidly as his eyes adjusted to the brightness. Out of the gloom and into the promise of Year 2, Dekana had succeeded his exam!