Welcome To The Fucking Monkey House

[MurderWeasel]

((Phillip Olivares continued from "Shitshow" sounds so crass. I prefer "fecal fiesta."))

Phillip had been walking a long-ass time, and his feet were starting to hurt.

Like, he wasn't a goddamn Mountie or a boyscout or anything like that. He'd gotten tired of running, had some water, dug out his map, and tried to figure out where he was and where he was going. He'd assumed he'd awoken in "The Woodlands" given the presence of all the trees everywhere, and had figured the best place to find some vague semblance of comfort would be "The Village," because everything else sounded absolutely whack. That meant heading roughly due south.

But, see, Phillip had never actually used a compass, except maybe once in elementary school? He thought it was pretty easy in theory, after spending a little while looking at it and turning it over in his hands and such; you hold it straight and whichever direction the needle points is north, so then you move accordingly—in his case, in exactly the opposite direction. Pretty hard to totally fuck that up, no?

Except, he'd gotten a little turned around somewhere in there, likely because half the damn island was woods and there was that whole big chunk in the middle that didn't seem to bear any official designation, meaning it was probably just more woods or otherwise unworthy of a specific name. Whatever the case, Phillip had made his way between endless trees and then along this slope for a while, a big old rise off to his right that he couldn't see the top of, and soon buildings had appeared before him, so he'd headed there, even though he thought he heard some weird popping sounds that were probably gunshots. Like, they could've been from his destination, or further, or from off to the side, twisted by weird voodoo physics shit like echoes. And they'd stopped at least twenty minutes ago anyways, probably, if he had any sense of time, which was up for debate. Whatever. He was tired of walking and wanted to sit down.

Then he made it to the structures and figured out that he'd overshot or somehow just missed the village completely, and now he was sitting around outside the monkey house. Kurt Vonnegut inexplicably had a book about this, or at least that was what Phillip assumed it was about; he'd read a bit of Vonnegut but never that one, but Vonnegut was into weird shit about humans being in aliens zoos and so forth.

Perhaps more pertinently, ICP also had a song directly applicable to this situation. It was called "Fuck the World" and it featured the word "fuck" over a hundred times in under four minutes, ninety-three occurrences of which were uttered by Violent J. It was actually a really smart and self-aware piece of parody of a lot of mindless rap tropes and feuds and shock tactics, and Phillip had a whole mental essay ready to drop on anyone about its genius, but right now that was pretty secondary.

No, as he looked up at the cage and noted the hole in the net, frayed and ragged ends gently twisting in the air currents, monkeys presumably having long escaped to the freedom Phillip would never know again, he could sum everything up in one simple utterance, worthy of eternal repetition:

Fuck.

[Namira]

"Um... hello? Hi there!"

Shauna had been startled awake by gunshots what felt like hours ago. She wasn't sure exactly how long, on account she was developing a killer headache and some major dizziness. She could vaguely remember being completely terrified and in a detached, not-all-there kind of way she was still pretty scared, but her head really, really hurt.

It was probably something to do with the way that she'd woken up completely upside down, her lower legs entangled in a cluster of netting and plantlife that managed to keep her suspended what was what, 25, 30 feet up?

Weirdly, gauging exact distances was difficult from this angle. Who would have thought? Her hair was kind of falling into her face too, and two straps worth of bag hanging down from her shoulders weren't exactly the greatest feeling in the world, though she thought they were maybe a bit wrapped up too. Like a perfect gift bow of uh, murdertools.

She hadn't called out earlier, on account that the type of people shooting at each other were also the kind of people probably who would see someone dangling around halfway up a wall and think target practice.

Shauna had moved a bit before, but the first time she tried it the whole thing lurched down with an alarming snap and she'd dropped about three feet closer to the ground and honestly she definitely didn't want to land directly on her head from up here.

She couldn't tell who it was down on the ground looking up at the building, but he didn't seem to have a gun; that made him shaped much more like a friend than those other guys. She tried to wave and wound up punching a chunk of plant stem. Ow!

"Help, or something?"

She was... getting really light headed.

[MurderWeasel]

Oh shit, someone was calling out. More than that, the voice was coming from way up above. Phillip looked up more closely now, squinting against the sun and trying to make out where the words were originating from. He could see a bunch of netting and vines and that sort of thing, but not any platforms. There was a clump of something embedded in there, maybe a rock or some old—

Wait. No way.

Looked like someone was having an even worse day than Phillip was. He couldn't tell at all who, just that she was a girl, and honestly that was only because of her voice. She was way, way up there.

There was a whole thing in the circus about aerial. The flying trapeze was the classic, but nowadays there was all this stuff with hoops and silks too. Phillip heard a lot about it, but he had never looked into it much himself. It was the sort of thing that required bravery, which he was mildly deficient in, and upper body strength, which he felt himself somewhat more notably lacking. No, he would stay on the ground with his clowning. Maybe he could carry around a tiny trampoline like he was going to catch someone when they took a spill from a perilous height, but even that would be stretching his limits somewhat.

But now, this girl was asking him for help. Well, help "or something." Phillip wondered just what "something" entailed, and how pissed she'd be if he chose that option.

"Oh," he called, "oh shit, hang on. Lemme see what I can do."

Because, okay, he could take one look at that and go nope, nah, no way, absolutely not. And that was fair. That was rational and normal and if anyone gave him shit for it they could bite his ass. But there was a person up there, a real person, who was stuck and in trouble, and whatever one could say about Phillip, he wasn't the particular stripe of asshole who would look at that kind of predicament and walk off without at least trying to do something to help.

"I have a," Phillip started, and then wondered how to explain just what he had. He'd looked through his bag again, so he knew it had a name. Problem was, that name was "macuahuitl," which was a mouthful and a half and would bear absolutely no meaning to someone who wasn't a total geek for whatever the fuck sort of ancient weapon and/or ceremonial stick puppet this was.

"A paddle with sharp bits on the side," he settled on. "I could, I don't know, throw it to you so you can saw yourself free? Or you could drop a rope and reel it up?"

Was that a polite enough insinuation that Phillip trying to make like an ape was not Plan A? He sure hoped so.

[Namira]

He heard her and didn't ignore her. Hurrah! Shauna was getting somewhere that hopefully wasn't a direct sharp drop! Assuming that this wasn't another gunboy, but uh, that thing he was carting around wasn't a gun! Unless he'd killed someone using a gun and that thing was something he'd picked up and she was going to stop thinking now before she started screaming again.

Shauna wasn't certain what the thing actually was, though. It looked like a 2X4 with metal sticking out the sides, which felt unimaginative as far as weapons went but who was she to judge? They obviously didn't care enough about her opinions to put her on the ground like a normal person. She really felt like there should be more intense emotions than mild disgruntlement running through her system right now; maybe it was the dizziness. For real, though, someone had to have decided 'yes, yes this girl we will go out of our way to get tangled up in wall vines'. How'd they done it? Lowered her down from above? Pulley system? Gone full climbing wall and scaled it with unconscious her slung over their backs?

Truly a mystery.

Oh, he was talking. She shouldn't ignore potential rescuer. Her eyes blurred a little as she tried to refocus on him.

"I don't think I can catch it," more accurately, she doubted he could throw something that looked so heavy so high in the air. Still, he was offering assistance so like... she cast about for something that looked like a rope, cautiously reached out for another nearby vine, and gave it a tug. It came straight off in her hand, and then there was an alarming creaking noise and her stomach lurched as she dropped.

Shauna had just long enough to squeal in alarm before the drop was arrested again.

"Haha," she said, after a second. "God, jesus. God."

[MurderWeasel]

Okay, throwing was out. That was fine. There was still Plan B. They had this. She'd just wrench loose a vine and then discover it was an important part of the structural support keeping her aloft, leaving her to suddenly plummet towards the ground, all set to land with a sickening splat sound like in a cartoon except that her chest would burst like the time Phillip was ten and didn't want to eat the orange his mom had packed in his lunchbox so thought he was being so clever by hiding it in his closet, and then two months later he was looking for a deck of cards he'd stuck somewhere in there way at the back and he felt this weird squishy thing and grabbed it and pulled it out and there was that orange he'd forgotten about, just like that except instead of pulp and this weird powdery blue mold it'd be blood and organs spewing everywhere, and that was a sick premise for a rap song but Phillip could go his whole life not actually experiencing it.

Conventional wisdom held that, in moments of extreme stress and peril, the adrenaline kicked in and everything slowed down. That was the whole life-flashing-before-your-eyes effect, and Phillip thought that was happening here for just a moment, but no. No, the girl had fallen only a short distance before something aborted her plunge, and now she was hanging there, slightly more precariously than before, doing that panicked laugh and muttering that came with having slipped the noose of the inevitable horrible consequences for your actions through sheer dumb luck and not being quite ready to get your hopes up in case karma realized it wasn't a clean hit and circled around for another go.

"Fuck," Phillip said. "Gosh, fuck, I mean, uh...

"Maybe don't do that again?"

That was all well and good, but the only progress they'd made towards getting whoever it was (he still couldn't quite tell, or maybe he didn't even know her to begin with) down was the part where she'd almost swan-dived straight into the dirt. A little voice was whispering that, hey, now that she was a little bit lower maybe she could just drop the rest of the way and it might be merely crippling instead of fatal. Phillip told that part of himself to hush. For now at least. If the alternative was him climbing, maybe it'd be time for a second consultation.

"So," he said, "uh, what's Plan C?"

[Namira]

"I don't know, dude! I'm upside-freaking-down! I can't feel my toes!"

[MurderWeasel]

Right, okay, fuck. Right. Fuck. Okay. Phillip had this. He had this. He just had to be clever and figure out how to effect a rescue. Piece of cake. It was like when your cat climbed up a tree and was too dumb to get back down, except in this case maybe the cat was dragged up there by a big angry owl that inexplicably didn't eat it, just told it to eat other ca—never mind, anyways, your cat was up a tree so you called the fire department and, oh hey, there it was, Phillip's madcap mental spitballing had dropped a possible solution right there in front of him. Bingo, piece of cake.

"Okay," he called, "okay. Just hang tight."

This was way too much excitement for one lifetime. This sucked. It was a cosmic injustice that he was still going to get shot or bludgeoned or exploded or whatever after having to deal with this shit, like more of a cosmic injustice than it already was.

"I can, uh," he started, "maybe I can go find someone who can climb up and get you down?"

[Namira]

Shauna knew one thing, and it was that there was no way in hell she was a lucky enough person to get away with the entanglement giving way a third time. From what she could tell, what was wrapping up her legs and lower body consisted of more net than it did plant, and the stop to her fall had more been about the limited slack snapping taut than it was anything catching her. The vines were supporting some weight, but it was mostly the netting that she'd been wrapped into in the first place. Fact was, if she kept trying to wriggle around, she'd come unwrapped like tugging the bow on a present, only instead of delicious gifts inside it would be uh.

Organs. And things.

Her head hurt and she wanted to cry and she thought the guy beneath her might have just made a pun.

Shauna grabbed two fistfuls of net either side of her head and clung to them. She wasn't sure grabbing on would make much of any difference, but if it suddenly gave way then maybe it would be something. Maybe.

"Can you not... find a soft thing?" wait that was dumb. "I just--I don't think it's going to hold forever."

How long had it already been? They'd done a great job of the tying-up part but sooner or later it was going to give or her head was going to pop.

[MurderWeasel]

A soft thing? Phillip wasn't even quite sure how actual firefighters did that (though hey, they were on the same page, that was something at least). He thought maybe they got a whole big circle of people and held a blanket taught so that the force of the impact could be distributed among the entire assembly, or at least that was what his somewhat limited knowledge of physics combined with his hazy memory of Saturday morning cartoons suggested. Phillip was real, real bad at math, though, like he could do his multiplication tables and shit but probability? Algebra? It was a struggle to make that stuff stick in his head for the forty-five minutes it took to get through the quiz. He had no idea how many people he'd need or what sort of padding it would take to keep the girl from splattering all over.

He did remember just enough to have this thought that if he tried to catch her probably the result would just be both of them ending up with assorted broken bones and crushed organs. His body would absorb the momentum or force or whatever and suffer accordingly. And she'd get it back from him, or something, or else his shattered ribs would impale her and perforate her spleen.

There really wasn't anything around here that looked particularly soft, as an aside. Maybe some plants, but that would take ages to get gathered and probably wouldn't do shit anyways.

"Okay," he said, once again. "Okay, let me think."

The net was coming apart all over the place, but the more he looked at it, the more he realized that it wasn't just magically hanging there on its own. There were beams giving structure to the enclosures, beams that had supported the netting for however long this place had been in operation, and had presumably been tough enough to withstand the fury of a bunch of bored, pissed-off orangutans or whatever. Okay, the holes in the net suggested that the construction was actually pretty shitty and not monkey-proof at all, but it was what they had. Phillip was starting to get an idea, albeit rather unwillingly.

A length of vine had fallen in that last ass-clenching drop, maybe fifteen feet or so of thick ropy jungle shit. Would it hold a person's weight? Who could say? But it would hold up better than the alternative, which was hoping Jesus did them a solid and snatched her out of the air. So the plan was, Phillip would secure the vine to the pole at a level about even with her, throw her the vine, and then she could tie it to herself or hold on or whatever and it'd moor her like a rock-climbing thing so she could only fall a little ways, and then she could try to wriggle out and get her hands free and get turned around and climb down the netting under her own power.

Only problem was, getting the vine even with her meant going like twenty feet up the goddamn monkey netting. Fuck. Phillip looked around, just to make sure no big, tall, beefy gymnasts were around to swoop in and save the day. Come on, someone had to be as bad at reading maps as he was. But they seemed to be more or less alone.

With a very disconsolate sigh, Phillip dropped his packs to the ground, collected the loose vine, shoved his inhaler in his pocket just in case because wouldn't that just be a hoot, if he had an attack while he was way up in the air and fell to his death and then the girl would be stuck upside down watching him bleed in the dirt and no closer to safe for it, and then he went to the net.

It shouldn't be that hard to climb, actually, really. It was a net, so he could use his feet too. This place was designed for climbing, because monkeys got bored if they couldn't climb and when they got bored they literally hurled shit at people. If this was good enough to entertain monkeys, then Phillip could shimmy right on up even though he was a weedy wimp. This would be way easier than doing a pull-up, which was good because he couldn't really do those. Anyways. No sweat.

Still no gymnasts here to steal his thunder.

"Okay," Phillip said, "I'll, uh, I'll try to come up a little and throw you a vine, just so we don't have to worry about the net giving out, okay? So just keep cool. Be up there in no time at all."

He grabbed the net and stuck his left foot into the first loop, and the ropes wiggled unsteadily. No time at all. Yeah.

Come to think of it, they were all gonna die anyways, right? Wouldn't that be a good excuse to just give up and do it now instead and not have to do this?

Phillip had made it three feet off the ground, but already he felt like King Kong embarking on his final ascent.

[Namira]

He asked for some thinking time. Shauna decided not to say anything to the effect of 'I'll just hang around' but she totally thought it which was pretty much just as bad. Whoever stuck her up here had probably spent like an hour making puns to that effect and it personally offended her that she could share so much as an inkling of humour with a person that had gone that extra special extra mile to ruin her day. Like, damn, as if it wasn't already bad enough with the let's-all-kill-each-other, you know? Something like this didn't just happen; it was an inconvenience that someone had gone seriously out of their way to set up. Because screw her in particular, apparently.

Her head was pounding, her temples pulsing. It felt like a snake made out of pain and pressure had encircled her brain and started squeezing. Shauna would have rubbed her head, except that steadying grip on the adjacent netting was about as much of a reassurance as a massage could be comfort. She thought? Honestly now that she was gripping the net she was really reluctant to let go. It'd be her luck that the second she let go was when the entire thing decided to give way.

Her would-be rescuer finally came to a decision and approached the side of the building. Whoo! You go, upsidedown boy she'd probably recognise way better the right way up! Probably shouldn't yell that out at him, would be a bit embarrassing for both of them, and if ever there was something Shauna was expert at it was secondhand anxiety. Still, he was making a go of it and not immediately falling off so really, that meant this would be a piece of cake and she wasn't going to be stuck up here until she peeled off or got some kind of permanent damage from being the wrong way up all this time.

"Being cool, being cool." that didn't feel like enough, she had to keep talking, let him know she wasn't passing out or something. Wait, that was like, wounds, not hanging, wait she was already speaking. "I'll just hang around."

Goddammit!

[Melusine]

The best thing about running for your life was the feeling that you were about to vomit your lungs. Wait, that's a terrible thing.

((Danny continues from Why not me?))

Danny was running in a straight line toward the closest building that wasn't the temple. There was no way he would turn around and go through the girl with a knife and the blind boy just to hide inside a temple they can freely walk inside. So, he ran down the hill. He reached some type of buildings. He picked the biggest one.

The menagerie looked fine, but it had seen better days. Daniel's hand was on his knees as he wiped his nose with his hand. As the nausea exited his body, he started to settle in his new environment. Daniel quickly realized he wasn't alone, and he sighed. Walking toward the source of the noise, he realized this place used to house animals. So there's a temple and a zoo on an island? That sure is questionable, but sure, Daniel decided to grind his teeth and continue walking through the alley.

Reaching the central part of the menagerie, and that's where he first noticed Oliver. No, Phillip. Phillip-Oliver? Whatever, and he was climbing on the net. Daniel traced his path with his eyes, and noticed the lady hanging upside down from the ceiling. Wait, it was a basketball girl, and he knew her. That sure was a pleasant surprise, or at least, not as bad as waking up with a knife inside of you.

"Shauna? What the fuck are you doing? Do you need help-" he looked as the boy, "do you want me to help you?"

[D/N]

Oh no! she thought.

"Oh no!" she said.

Oh no!

A girl was hanging upside down! Nikki wasn't afraid of heights, but she'd be scared of that.

(Nikki Nelson-Kelly continued from You Gotta Learn to Dance Before You Learn to Crawl)

And it was actually not that bad of a stroll down here. Hot enough that she'd had to strip off her jacket; that thing was lightweight but still denim. She had two light blouses and a spare shirt in her bag, plus a pair of socks and underwear and that was it for clothes. And she was already conscious about sweating through the white t-shirt she had on, how it'd be clinging to her and ugh, so she'd thrown on her sleeveless yellow Roxy shirt so at least she wouldn't look terrible. The black silk scarf that had been wadded in the bottom of her stuff didn't exactly match the ensemble, but it had a wholly different purpose. She'd wrapped it around the collar on her neck.

The house she'd woken up was near a path that Nikki was pretty sure led south, and checking her map at this new area, yep, she was right. Good on her! Not that Nikki had much experience with maps, but they seemed pretty simple to work out. She guessed the visual aspect of them melded well with how her brain worked. So this place was... the Menagerie. Sounded cheesy as all hell. She liked it.

She approached the biggest of the buildings. Then stopped and headed back to the treeline.

Oh man. She couldn't do this. Maybe just turn around and that's when she saw a kid in a black windbreaker go running in there.

It was the first human contact she'd seen yet, and she only nearly thought about puking before she followed, trying to be quick and quiet all at once and not much successful at either.

"Oh no!"

Which is how she ended up seeing a girl hanging upside down!

The girl was Shauna; Nikki kinda knew her from classes but not much more. Had she... had someone dragged her up there? Was she trying to climb up for some reason and got stuck? Was that Clown Philip climbing up? Well, that one she could answer. Nikki liked Philip, it was pretty awesome for a guy to have such a neat hobby and actually be looking to turn it into a career. Made her a bit jealous but she wasn't gonna try facing her own pettiness right now, thank you very much. An Asian kid she vaguely recognized calling up, he was the one who'd sprinted in like a bat out of hell. Or a bat back into the menagerie. Hehehe.

Focus.

On what, Nikki didn't know. She was neither ready nor willing nor able to go clambering up that net. That would be the grossest violation of her first rule ever, and wasn't gonna break it just an hour or so after she'd come up with it. The Asian kid was asking if he could help, and that was it. Help. That abided by all her rules as long as it wasn't bad help.

"Oh no, hey! I uh..."

She dropped her bags and stood dumb for a second before realizing how, uh, dumb that was.

"I can help! I've got rope!"

Nikki scrambled to open her terrorist bag.

[Namira]

"What am I doing--oh just I dunno, I thought it would be fun! I thought this would be really freaking fun! Look at all the fun I'm having!"

[MurderWeasel]

Oh, okay, right. Now here came everyone, once Phillip was like eight feet off the ground. Couldn't they have, like, piled in just two minutes ago? Back when he was pining for someone to save him from doing this? He was almost halfway up now, fingers hooked into the rough rope, gentle breeze ruffling his hair and shirt in a way that would've been refreshing in basically any other situation. Going back down was only a little less effort than going the rest of the way up. Well, that wasn't actually fucking true at all because he'd have to go all the way back down anyways after reaching the top, unless he fell off and splattered himself, which just might be the merciful option at this point.

Be cool. Be fair. They were being nice and helpful. The first to arrive was Danny... something, Phillip always wanted to call him either "Danny Chumbawamba" or "Danny Banana," but like they weren't close enough for him to actually do it and fortunately nobody used last names in normal social interactions. Could Danny help? Well, maybe he could shimmy up instead but that felt like kind of a big ask for a guy who just rolled up, like maybe he was just being polite and shit. That's more or less what Phillip had been doing, and look where it got him. But Danny did do one big favor and that was letting Phillip know just who he was rescuing: Shauna. Shauna was cool, into comics and shit, had come by the book club a time or two. It was nice to know he was putting his ass on the line for someone he at least vaguely liked, made the personal stakes in this endeavor slightly more apparent and added some urgency to his ascent.

Then there was Nikki, who was pretty cool, into good books and shit, and better yet she actually could help because she apparently had real rope, the prospect of which made the chunk of vine draped over Phillip's shoulder look like the wimpy little scraps of jungle weed it actually was. So okay, yeah, he took back anything mean he'd thought in even hasty passing about Nikki, she'd arrived at just exactly the right time and was more or less the second coming of Christ right now.

Shauna had no time for anyone's shit, and while Phillip empathized he also was all about this being a team effort.

"Hey, hey," he called over his shoulder. Looking down had been okay but when he turned back around and looked up at Shauna he had this moment of real heavy vertigo. That wasn't good. "Hey, Danny, Nikki, good to see you, yeah, I'm just, uh, just gonna lend Shauna a hand here."

He wanted to add some witty quip about how like a huge spider had wrapped her up. Like in Lord of the Rings, Shelob. Phillip had actually read Lord of the Rings before seeing the movies, somehow, and it had really caught him off guard how that whole bit got shoved way into the third movie, like he'd spent the whole Two Towers waiting for a big-ass spider to turn up and it never happened and the movie just kept going and going because they'd gotten the special enhanced too-big-for-one-dvd edition from Goodwill. Anyways, there were worse people to be than Sam. And yet, the humorous repartee that was his default mode felt further out of reach than the stranded girl.

"If you have rope, yeah, if I could borrow that for a lick here, that'd be real good," he said. "And Danny, if you could, like, be ready in case we have to drop you Shauna's stuff, maybe? Or like if I fall and die, then someone else can learn from my mistakes before they try."

See? That came out way less light-hearted than he'd intended.

[Namira]

Semi-cogent yelling aside, the person she'd first called out to was making kind of decent progress up the side of the building. The netting had to extend a ways down then, because he hadn't whipped any climbing equipment out to start making the ascent.

The angle made it that half the time all she could see was a face glancing up, sometimes at her, sometimes much closer to hand for the next rung on the climb. After a few minutes of staring and sufficient opportunities for unblurred vision to sync up with those windows of up-looking, it finally clicked who it was coming to help. Phillip! Phillip was a guy she knew decently well. He was into that music subculture thing of his that she didn't really get but mostly figured that if he liked it and it helped him fit in with others then who was she to judge? She'd voted for him for book club mostly cause he was the person who'd stuck in her head and she felt as if even if she only attended semi-regularly that a person who'd tried to make her feel pretty welcome was probably a pretty good choice?

That's how seeing him slowly but surely approaching felt too, actually. There were definitely way worse people to watch getting closer bit by bit. Did the other two people who had shown up since Phillip started climbing count in that? Shauna wasn't sure. The first one had called out to her by name before she shouted back down at him but being honest she wasn't 100% on who it was? Identifying voices was a little difficult with all this roaring in her ears and she actually also wasn't 100% on whether she'd yelled precisely in response. It'd felt loud more than sounded. The girl Shauna couldn't really recognise either. Actually, she couldn't properly see her, the angle was strange and her neck was getting legitimately sore from trying to crane it backwards and up, maybe if she twisted--

There was a sliding sensation above her ears. For a second Shauna wasn't sure what it was. Then her glasses fell off.