conundrum
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Callie could feel her eye twitch. The rest of her so-called friends were wandering out the room, looking at the various items there. All while she did all the actual work. This involved pouring over the carefully carved words in the stone walls.
“You know, this would be a lot easier and faster if you guys actually helped.” She said.
The others did not even look up. “Yeah, but you’re so much better at riddles than we are.” Chuck said.
Adam nodded his agreement. “You don’t want my help, trust me, Cal. I’m likely to get the wrong answer anyway.”
Shirley picked up a random object. “I’m helping.” She said. “I’m gathering clues from the various objects around the room. Scouting them out, taking inventory. That sort of thing.”
Callie did not believe Shirley for a moment. But at least the shorter girl was pretending to do something productive. The guys may as well not even have been there. She stuffed the urge to hit them deep down and went back to the riddle. Some nonsense about colors, letters, and numbers. She had thought it was obvious, but her initial ideas had all lead to dead ends. Now she was forced to pour over each word with a fine toothed comb, trying to parse out even the slightest bit of meaning.
“Well, if you’re not going to help me find an answer to this, you could at least get to work on some of the other puzzles.” She said, only avoiding speaking through clenched teeth with an effort of will she was not aware she possessed.
“Uh, like what?” Chuck asked.
“I don’t know, look for a key or something. Or a combination lock. Something to start actually being productive with.”
“Oh, right. Yeah, I can do that.” The big man said. He did not make any move to actually start an earnest search.
“And you.” Callie said, pointing at Adam. “Look for anything with a keyhole in it. That way if someone finds a key, we have some ideas on where to use it.”
“Uh, right. Sure. I think I can handle that.”
To his credit, Adam actually did start looking. That was more than she had hoped. She turned next to Shirley, who gave what was probably meant to be a helpful smile.
“Just…just keep looking for anything helpful.” Callie said with a sigh.
“Okay!”
With her friends, or at least most of her friends, occupied, she went back to the riddle. No matter how she spun it, it was meaningless. She occasionally asked one of the others if a number meant something, or about a color in a significant place. But none of them yielded any results. She let out a growl and ground the knuckles of one hand into the palm of another.
Chuck came over and placed a hand on her shoulder, trying to comfort her. “Hey, come on, it’s not that bad. Take a break and look at something else. Maybe I should take a look at it?”
She turned sharply to him. He just looked at her and grinned. She sighed.
“Fine, fine. I’ll go look at one of the other puzzles. But don’t bust your brain about it. This is a hard one.”
Chuck spend a few minutes looking at it, then pulled out his phone. He looked at the stone words and typed a few things out. Callie, meanwhile, went to work on a small puzzle cube. That was more up her ally, and she went to work solving it.
“Red herring.” Chuck said eventually.
“What?” Callie asked.
“That’s what it is, red herring. See? All the letters are part of those words, and all the numbers turn into other letters, and the colors all start with one of the letters. It spells red herring.”
He showed her his phone screen. He was right. She hated to admit it, but he was right. Her eye twitch came back. She had spent almost fifteen minutes trying to piece together a clue meant to waste time. A low rumble formed in her throat, before erupting as a scream of frustration and anger. She even threw the cube at a nearby wall. Then she plopped down in the middle of the room and crossed her arms.
“Uh, Callie, you okay?” Adam asked.
She glared at him, refusing to elaborate. He seemed to accept that as an answer and went back to the puzzle hunt.
Shirley sat next to her. “Hey, don’t worry about it. We all get distracted sometimes, you know? And it’s not something super important either. It’s just a game, right? So cheer up and help us look for stuff. We’ll get out of here, go get some ice cream and laugh about it.”
Callie had to admit that did sound good. Especially the ice cream part. She sighed and stood up. “Fine, fine. Let’s get back to it. Hopefully the next thing isn’t put there just to mess with us.”
And with that, she resumed the search, pointedly ignoring the words written solely to taunt her.
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I once did an escape the room thing. I wasn't super helpful, I'm afraid. My group did get out before time was up, so that's good. Not something I'll probably do again though.
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