Escapism Part 1

Read time: 3 mins.

This is a throwback to my first attempt at running a serialized fiction blog in 2018. Much of what I wrote during that period I’ve now synthesized into a draft of a novel. This story, while one of my favorites, really had no place in the new narrative. However, that doesn’t stop it living on as what I originally created it for in the first place: a blog story.

For once, Isabelle and Jason had a weekend when they’d submitted all their immediate assignments for grad school and didn’t feel the need to spend every minute working. This scenario had downsides. First, they’d gotten so used to living in survival mode that they couldn’t relax and do nothing; second, they couldn’t think of anything they actually wanted to do. Thankfully, sitting at the kitchen counter looking on their phones for something to do counted as something to do for a couple of hours.

Nasrin walked past them to the refrigerator. She ignored them as long as she could before saying, “You do realize I can take us anywhere in the world, right? We could reach Monte Carlo before you could breathe.”

“We know,” Isabelle said. “We’re trying to wait till summer so we can stay longer wherever we go.”

Nasrin held up a hand to show she was letting it go. “Okay, then how ‘bout you come see my show tonight? It’s at a casino, that’s like being in Monte Carlo, and you wouldn’t have to buy tickets.”

Isabelle put her phone down. “We could have fun with that. What time does it start?”

“8:30. A typical show runs about two hours including the intermission. The grand finale is an escape act where I…”

“Hey!” Jason said. “Escape rooms! We can do one of those before we leave to see the show. There’s one right up the road in Mobile.” He started pulling up the website, so he didn’t see Nasrin’s scowl.

She crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. “Escape room? What’s that?”

Isabelle leaned forward, trying to somehow get between them. “It’s where you get locked in a room and have to solve puzzles to get out. Most of them are story-driven, so you get to pretend you’re somebody else along with it.”

Nasrin shrugged. “To me it sounds a little dull, but I guess continually performing an escape act sort of subtracts from the novelty.”

Jason snorted. “You could barely escape a glass bottle without help from a sea lady. You’d probably take longer to get out than any of us.”

Isabelle scooted her chair away from Jason’s.

Nasrin leaned on the counter. “Okay, let’s go do your silly escape room and see who can and can’t make it out.” In the second it took him to respond she had gotten the address off his phone, grabbed his and Isabelle’s arms, and carried them to the place. She let them readjust while she got the tickets.

Isabelle held her head. “We have got to stop making her do that. What were you thinking?”

“I get carried away, alright?”

Continued in my next post.