Give it Your All (2)

Mandy stood in a room containing a fire alarm, a lighter and a small stool. Her woollen cardigan tickled her bare thighs, and the floor was cold against the soles of her feet. The fire alarm was placed just out of reach, so that flicking the lighter on and waving it beneath the alarm wasn’t enough to trigger it. When Mandy stepped on the stool, two of its legs instantly snapped, and she had to react quickly to avoid falling on her face.

Mandy picked up a stool leg and saw the remains of glue on the part where it had connected to the seat. It had been broken before, and in fact was probably supposed to break. It was long and thin. If she held it up, it would probably reach the fire alarm. She glanced around the room for anything flammable. Of course, there was nothing of the sort. The intended solution here was obvious.

“If you think I’m going to burn my clothes, you’ve got another thing coming, buddy,” she said to the ceiling.

Mandy then returned to the door she’d come though, pulled it open, and marched into the break room. She grabbed the ends of the white table cloth and yanked, sending metal plates and salty snacks flying. Then she returned to the fire alarm room, wrapped the tablecloth around the end of the stool leg, and lit it on fire.

The cloth burned easily, and she waved it in front of the fire alarm.

There was a brief, ear-splitting whine, and then the door on the other side of the room swung open. Mandy walked towards it, brandishing her torch. It led into a deep, dark tunnel, so she would need to keep the light with her. She also popped the lighter into her blouse pocket, just in case her torch went out.

As always, the door shut and locked behind her. She cursed herself for forgetting to jam something into the lock again.

The tunnel was cramped, but with high walls and ceilings, and made a lot of twists and turns. At the first fork in the path, Mandy realized she was dealing with a maze. After hanging her torch on a hook in the wall, she produced a notebook and pen from her cardigan pocket and began to draw.

Mandy traced out the maze on her paper as she went. It was large and full of dead-ends. There wasn’t enough space to sit, so her legs were getting quite fatigued. And what was worse, her light was starting to get low.

Worse still, the lighter seemed to be dead. Mandy clicked a few times in increasing frustration before tossing it against a wall. She glanced at her torch and the scant remains of the tablecloth. She would soon need to burn something else or be plunged into darkness.

There weren’t many pages left in Mandy’s notebook, and she didn’t yet know how many she’d need for the maze. The door at the start of the maze was locked tight, and it would be a while yet before she found the end. The idea of being plunged into darkness in this twisting, claustrophobic maze was horrific, unimaginable.

Mandy had always been terrified of the dark. She looked at the fading flame on her torch and imagined it snuffing out, leaving her in blackness so complete she would be unable to see her hand in front of her face. She imagined stumbling forward, blind, losing her place in the maze. She imagined the walls closing in…

Mandy needed light, and there was only one way to get it. Hands shaking, she undid the knot in the sleeves of her cardigan and pulled it from her waist. It was made of red wool, and had gone quite nicely with her plaid skirt and her white button-up blouse. Oh well, this outfit was doomed anyway.

The room had better reimburse her for all these lost and destroyed clothes, she thought wryly, wondering if the other members of her group were experiencing similar travails. Wincing, she held the cardigan to the flame and then wrapped it around the stool leg. The air felt cool against the back of her thighs.

The torch roared to life, and Mandy continued mapping the maze. She was now down to three items of clothing: bra, panties and blouse. Hopefully she wouldn’t have to burn any of those.

Mandy went down to the last page of her notebook mapping out the maze. The light from the torch was low again when she finally saw another light—the light signalling the end of the maze. Overjoyed, she rushed towards it, crossing the threshold just as her torch died. “Yes, yes yes! Haha yes! I made it! And I only burned… my cardigan… I really liked that cardigan. You’ll be hearing from my lawyers!”

Mandy blinked in the bright light of the new room, which felt positively cavernous after all her time in the maze. There was a large, comfortable-looking armchair against one of the walls, which Mandy sank into gratefully, having not had enough room to sit while in the maze. From this comfortable vantage point, she let her eyes adjust to the light, and then looked out at the room beyond her.

After filtering water and setting off fire alarms, this again looked like a more conventional escape room area. There were some weird symbols on one of the walls, a map full of drawing pins on another, a few tables with scattered papers, and a whole lot of locked boxes. Mandy sighed in relief at this reprieve from clothing damage puzzles, and, after luxuriating in the chair for another minute or two, got up to start solving.

RIIIIIP. Mandy’s heart skipped a beat at the sound, suddenly feeling the air somewhere new. Scared of what she would see, she slowly turned her head back. Then she screamed.

Caught on a pin jutting out of the chair’s upholstery was a substantial portion of the pink cotton that once made up Mandy’s panties. The whole left side, including a substantial area of the seat, had torn clean off. Mandy pulled at the loose ends, but the garment’s structural integrity was now thoroughly compromised. Without her hand in place, it slipped limply down her thigh.

“What. The. Fuck. That wasn’t even a puzzle! It’s not fair!” Mandy glanced down at the remains of her cute pink panties. They were beyond salvation.

She assessed the situation. Her blouse was just about long enough to cover her pussy and most of her ass, as long as she moved relatively carefully. But now, for the first time, she was really exposed. What would the others think once she finally rejoined them? It was one thing to walk around without a skirt, but having no panties on either was a whole new level. Maybe, if she was really careful, they might not notice. She could only hope.

Mandy picked one part of her panties up from the floor and the other part up from the chair, scrunched them up, and put them in her blouse pocket. There was no point in worrying about them for the moment, while she was still alone. The need for worry would come later.

For the next half-hour, she diligently worked across the escape room puzzles, trying not to think about the breeze between her legs, or the way her blouse would rise up on her ass when she crouched down to open a lock box. There was no-one there to see her like this, or so she hoped.

Finally, Mandy found the final number for the combination lock attached to the next door, unlocked it and proceeded through.

A fashion mannequin stood in the middle of the next room. It had on a plaid skirt, stockings, chunky black heels, a cardigan tied around its waist, and a fishing rod in one hand. Mandy squealed with delight and ran towards it. “Guess you guys don’t want legal action after all!” she yelled at the ceiling.

But when she tried to take the clothing off the mannequin, it wouldn’t budge. The arms of the cardigan refused to come untied, and the skirt and shoes remained stubbornly in place no matter how much she pulled. Mandy crouched down and looked under the mannequin’s skirt, confirming the presence of pink panties, which appeared to be glued on like the rest of the outfit. “What kind of sick joke is this?!” she cried, feeling the beginnings of tears in her eyes.

As she stood back up, she noticed a message scrawled across the mannequin’s torso. It read, “COMPLETE ME.” It was a female mannequin, with two plastic bumps on its chest. The meaning was clear.

It was then that Mandy realized the escape room had won. Despite her minor, temporary victory in the fire alarm room, she had lost garment after garment, and was now required to shed the garments that remained to solve this hopefully final puzzle.

In vain she searched the room for some alternate solution, or an additional puzzle to distract her and delay the inevitable, but there was only the mannequin, and there was only one way to proceed. She fingered the top button of her blouse.

No, no, no, this couldn’t be what she was about to do. She couldn’t let this escape room strip her of everything. She paced around the room again, looking high and low for something, anything that she had missed. It was then that she realized that there was a window in set into the top of the door to the next room. On the other side, she saw room filled with racks of clothing. Dresses, skirts, blouses, pants, shirts, jackets, and everything else one could want.

Well, that was some relief. And if she just solved this puzzle, she could get into that room. Considering things logically, it seemed worth it. To trade her blouse and bra for a full outfit, at the cost of a few seconds of nudity. That felt… acceptable.

Still, Mandy’s hands shook as she slowly undid the buttons on her blouse, one by one, until it hung open, exposing her bra and bare, shaved pussy to the world. She then undid her bra and walked over to the mannequin still holding it up to her chest. After a deep breath, she switched the lacy pink undergarment from her chest to the mannequin’s in one quick movement. There was a sense of relief as her breasts dropped—she often took off her bra at home after a long day at work—but that was more than counteracted by the shame she now felt at standing exposed in the middle of a weird warehouse.

As she snapped the bra strap closed, a single green light above the exit door lit up. A second light next to remained dark. Just to be sure, Mandy walked across the room, open blouse billowing behind her, and tried the door. Locked. One more item of clothing was required, of course. In her open blouse, she was already functionally naked. Now it was time to get fully naked.

Mandy returned to the center of the room. She let the blouse slide off her shoulders and down her arms, and then placed it on the mannequin. She buttoned it up to the top and smoothed it out, then took a moment to look at it. Collared white blouse, blue plaid skirt, red cardigan tied around waist, sheer stockings and black shoes. This giant plastic doll was now dressed exactly as she had been upon entering the escape room. And she was not dressed at all.

She took the scraps of pink fabric that had been her panties out of the blouse pocket and turned them over on her palms. She could try to put them on somehow, but this seemed pointless with the clothing room just up ahead. So she sighed and dropped them on the floor.

She’d done a lot of things in escape rooms over the years, but this was the first time she had been naked in one. Would she tell the others about what had happened to her today? They’d probably ask why she was wearing different clothes when they saw her. Once she was safely dressed, this could be quite an amusing story, and it would certainly demonstrate her dedication to the team. Though it might give the boys ideas for future rooms…

The second green light had come on, and the lock on the exit door had disengaged. Mandy skipped hurriedly to the door, taking a few fervent glances back at the mannequin wearing her clothes. By now she knew better than to try to remove any of them before leaving.

Mandy opened the door slowly, cautiously peering around it. She hadn’t seen a single person since entering her chosen door from the first room. But now that she was totally naked, a natural caution overcame her. She knew that she’d rejoin the others at some point, and she couldn’t just barge in on them in the all together. Imagine if they were in this clothing room! She shuddered, but consoled herself with the thought that, should that be the case, she would be able to make a dive for one of the racks.

“Hello?” she asked cautiously.

There was no response. After five seconds, she decided it would be safe to proceed. The clothing on the racks looked warm and inviting. Already she could see a skirt similar to the one she’d previously been wearing, and a blouse that looked a little better than the one she’d left on the mannequin. If the room would let her keep what she chose, maybe there wouldn’t be a need for a lawsuit after all. Well, she might still sue for emotional distress.

Mandy stepped through the doorway, eyes focused on her prospective outfit. But as her feet crossed the threshold, they gave way from under her.

The floor! The floor was falling! And so was Mandy!

To be continued…