One day, Alex, Austin, Aiden, Hugo, and Russell were talking on the phone. They were having a friendly conversation about what they should do together. They eventually decided to go to an escape room. This is how they came to that decision:
Flashback
Alex called his friends. “Hey,” they said. Alex started talking. “We should do something together as we did during the sleepover a couple of months ago!” he said. “It would be so fun. Remember what we did last time?” Hugo thought of that. “Yea, I remember that sleepover! That was so fun!” he told them.
“What should we do now?” Russell asked. He was thinking about it, but he couldn’t come up with anything that would be fun, Austin already had an answer to that question. “Let’s do an escape room!” he answered Russell while he was talking to the other.
Everyone else loved that idea. They thought that escape rooms were entertaining and they were exciting. They loved shows, video games, or anything else that had to do with escaping.
They agreed on that, but before one of them could hang up, Alex said, “Wait!” Everyone stopped trying to hang up and listened to what Alex had to say. “What?” Austin asked.
“We need a date for when we are going to do this. What date should we do it?” Alex said.
“How about tomorrow at 2:00 pm?” Russell asked. They agreed on that.
End of flashback
Now, they were on their way to the escape room place. The name of site was called Open The Escape Door. When everyone got there, it was 1:50 pm. So, when they saw each other and went inside together, they decided to talk. “Hey, guys! Look, there is a riddle on the screen,” Austin said. They all looked at it. The riddle was, “What has many keys but can’t open doors?” They thought about it for a while. Russell said, “Either a keyboard or a piano.” Alex went to give their answer to the person behind the desk. “Keyboard” was correct. After waiting another five minutes, a staff member said, “Group of 5 people!” The five of them got up and walked over to the member.
“Hello,” Austin said. “We are the group you are looking for, right?” According to the nametag on the staff member’s shirt, her name was Ava. At that moment, she was looking at a list with all the boys’ names. Ava said, “Are you guys Austin, Alex, Aiden, Hugo, and Russell?” Austin said, “yes, we are those people.”
“Ok, come with me then; your escape room is this way!” Ava cheered. The boys followed her and she took them through a hallway with doors - other escape rooms. They had people’s names, most likely meaning that they were reserved for other people. I guess that ours will have Alex’s name on it. He’s the one who came up with this idea Austin thought. He was right; when they got to their room, it said Alex Anderson on it. “Anderson” was Alex’s last name.
They went inside. There were two doors. One said “enter here” and the other said “exit here.” Ava said, “Well, these signs are self-explanatory, so I don’t need to explain that part. I’ll explain the rest of it though. You have 1 hour to try to escape the room. It’s prison-themed. You must try to escape the prison and get to the secret base, which you could pretend is here. I’ll open the door, let you in, close it, and start the time.” She did that and then said, “Good luck boys.”
“Ok, so this looks like the cell,” Hugo said. “Look at the size of this!” Alex said, “Yea, it's huge! This is supposed to resemble a real prison cell!”
“What if this was a real cell?” Austin joked, laughing to himself. Russell giggled a bit. Aiden smiled and continued the joke, “Yea, that's true. It could have been.” In the cell room, there were fake punching bags, a jukebox, fake weights, a fake toilet, and a sleeping bag on the floor. On the wall, there was a screen. Austin saw it and pointed at it, “Look at that!”
“Probably part of the escape room. Come on boys, let's go check it out,” Alex said, and the boys walked up to it.
There was a riddle on it. “What is one thing that makes American Football easy for offensive players but confusing for defensive players? (take the camera and point it at the item)” Russell said, “I know all about Football! The answer to this question is ‘Juke,’ as in Jukebox.” He took the camera and pointed it at the jukebox. The camera scanned it. Once that was done, Alex, Austin, Aiden, and Hugo saw the checkmark that appeared on the screen, and they, as well as Russell, heard the door (which was painted to look like a prison cell door) unlock. Hugo opened the door.
After the boys exited the cell, they walked through a building, through the prison yard, and ended up in a sewer. “Do real sewers look this clean?” Austin asked.
“No, they don’t,” Alex said. They continued through the sewer until they got to the first door. A sign said, “If you want to get through, you will have to find the key somewhere.” They had 50 minutes remaining to try to escape. They had to find the key quickly so that they could get out.
They talked about it for a few minutes. Hugo said, “Ok, there aren’t many places to hide a key here. How is there even a key here?” Austin replied. “Well, do you think there is a secret door here?” Alex said, “A secret door? In a sewer?” Aiden agreed with Alex,” I don’t think sewers are built that way.” Russell said, “Then the only thing that could be possible is that the key is underwater. It is possible, right?”
“He’s not wrong,” Hugo said. “Who wants to go look?” No one said anything. Knowing that no one was willing to do it, Hugo said, “Ok, I’ll do it.” He walked into the water. Wait a second, this isn’t water! It’s just green jello! He thought, but he didn’t say it aloud because then the other boys would get distracted by it and waste a ton of time. So he continued to look for the key. After 48 seconds of searching, he found the key and excitedly showed it to his friends. “I’ve got it!” he said.
The others smiled at him as he came over the unlock the door. It opened easily! They all went through and walked a few yards to the next door. When they got there, they saw that there was a door that didn’t need a key or a code. They could just go right through! But when they tried, the door was too heavy to open.
“Uuuuuuuugh! What are we going to do about this? It's not going to open!” Russell said in an angry tone of voice. Everyone else knew how he was feeling. How are we going to make it through this door if it is unlocked but won’t open? Everyone thought.
“I have an idea!” Hugo exclaimed. “What if we swam under the wall? That may sound dumb, but if we looked under that water, then maybe we might be able to get under the wall and to the other side!”
As Hugo expected, most people thought this was dumb, but Russell said, “I’ll look.” Hugo smiled and thought Maybe I was wrong; maybe someone did think this was a good idea. So Russell carefully went under the water and looked. He saw a space under the wall that was big enough to fit three of the boys at once. Russell came back above the water and said, “Hey guys! I found a hole big enough for us to go through it! Let's go. We have 42 minutes remaining.” So they all went through the hole Russell saw and climbed back onto the sidewalk.
Aiden sighed in relief and said, “Good thing we made it under there.” Everyone else agreed. Russell said, “Let's continue to the next part. We do have 39 minutes left.” They continued to the next door. There was a screen there, like the one that was there in the first room. There was a riddle on it. Austin read it, “The more of this there is, the less you see.”
They were thinking about this one. It was tricky. Russell was thinking of San Francisco. It was completely unseen because of fog. He realized just then that he had his answer: Fog! He told his friends how he came up with it. “Genius,” said Austin. He went to type that into the computer. The door unlocked and the boys went in. In front of them was the end of the sewer. There was a ladder and a wall that stopped anything from going through it. “I guess we climb the ladder,” they all said at once. That’s what they did (climb the ladder).
They saw that there were outside a DMV. It seemed that they were supposed to go inside it, but they talked about it first. “What should we do?” Aiden asked. Hugo said, “Go in, I guess?” So that's what they did. They saw a car there. The door was open. Alex went to it saying, “Maybe this car is for us.” So he got into the car and sat down (This car wasn’t a real car that needed a driver's license. It was a fake car that looked real.). The others got into the car after Alex.
They took it out of the DMV through the window that was open (this one was big enough to let a car in and out). Alex saw that GPS was taking them to a base. Is this where we’re supposed to go? He thought.
“Ok, are y’all ready?” He asked. The others said they were ready and he drove accordingly to the GPS. There were so many cars, turns, and signals that it took a while to arrive at the destination. There was a lot of traffic on the road. Alex managed to get through it. There were so many streets that led to the base; that Alex thought that the car might run out of gas on the way.
Finally, they made it to the base, where they were supposed to be. “Ok, let's go see what we have to do,” Alex said. The boys got out of the car. One minute later, Russell said, “What are we waiting for? We have 27 minutes left to finish this! Let's go!” He walked towards the base and the others followed him.
“We need to find a door,” Austin said as they walked to the building. “Maybe there will be a puzzle, maybe more than that.” They walked around the building, finding a door as Austin said, and there were puzzles that they needed to solve, but there wasn’t just one like Austin thought, but there were three of them! The first one said, “There were three houses. The red one was to the left and the blue one was to the right. Where is the White House?”
“This one is easy,” Austin said. They all the correct answer at once, “The White House is in Washington DC.” They all laughed. There were three red lights on the door. The one on the top turned green, and another puzzle appeared on the screen. Hugo read it, “Someone was pushing their car, which was out of gas, to the hotel. He arrived and said he was bankrupt. How was that possible?”
This one was a little more tricky than the last one for the boys. How did that ever happen in real life? Russell, like the other boys, was wondering this. He was asking himself how it could happen in real life, not in board games and tv. He thought of games that involved hotels, cars, and money. Life? No, where was the hotel? Monopoly? Oh my god! This person was playing Monopoly! He said that out loud. The others approved. Aiden went to type in the answer. Another light turned from red to green.
“You did it, Russell! Good job!” everyone was saying. The third puzzle came onto the screen. Russell read it, “A man was looking at a photo of a kid. Someone asked him who the kid in the picture was. The man said, ‘the kid’s dad is my dad’s son’ Who is he?” Russell didn’t have to think about this at all; he typed, “his son” into the computer, and the last light changed to green. The door opened.
The boys went into the base. It was a well-lit room with a door on the other side. In the middle, there were couches and a table in the middle. On the table, there was a key that matched the lock on the door. The boys, feeling tired from the other rooms and having 22 minutes remaining to escape, sat down. “Alex, how many more rooms are there?” Aiden asked.
“This is the last one I think,” Alex said. He read the description before paying for the escape room. He knew all there was to it, except how what the puzzles would be and how to escape.
When they were done resting, they had 15 minutes left to escape. Alex picked up the key and unlocked the door. It was the room where Ava had let them enter and started the time. She was there, waiting for them to come out. “So, you guys finished before you ran out of time. Clearly, you did a good job,” she said. Alex said, “Yea, we did.”
“Well, since you guys are done, thanks for coming here and doing an escape room with us!” Ava said. “I hope we see you again in the future!” The boys agreed and left, satisfied that they completed an escape room in 45 minutes.
