Welcome To The Fucking Monkey House

[Melusine]

"Aaaaah, sorry! Sorry!"

What was he supposed to say? Oh yeah Shauna, you must really be enjoying yourself up there, haha! Hey, now that you are stuck can I take your stuff? No? Okay, sure. Let's do that!

No, he couldn't. At least, Danny wasn't alone in this situation. Both Nikki and Phillip were there, but they probably felt the same feeling of helpness pulling on their sanity. Shauna was probably too busy hanging out upside down. Yeah, she probably had something more important to think about than her inevitable death of her classmates.

"Uhhh," Danny blabbered, "I guess I'll do that."

Danny both shrugged and shooked his hands as he responded to Phillip. Danny turned around, wiping the sweat off his brows. Suddenly, a crack noise came. For a second, he thought it was either Shauna or Phillip opening like Humpty Dumpty. It was just a pair of glasses. It was Shauna's.

"Hey, Shauna, I got your classes they are kinda cracked though!" They weren't just kinda cracked. They were fucking wasted. Jeez that was a murder scene and he didn't want to think about how this fall would affect Shauna's body. He turned toward Phillip.

"Dude, I can climb this." He yelled, "I used to do this all the time as a kid." That was a bold-faced lie, but Danny trusted himself over Phillip. He didn't want to see anyone cracking open for an omelette today.

[D/N]

Nikki pawed through her TerrorBag (TM) and at first thought the rope was missing, like maybe she'd dreamed it and had actually been given a sock or extra protein bar or something as a weapon, but no. That was just a bit of panic thought. The rope was right there, neatly coiled like all they'd done was taken the price tag off wherever they'd gotten it from. Where did these people get their supplies anyway, did they go down to Ace Hardware and just pick up random tools and ropes and guns and stuff?

Phillip had called over to toss the rope. Yep, made sense. He'd get the rope and then... he presumably had a plan to use it to get her down. Rope had to help.

"Hey Phillip! I got it!"

Now she just needed to keep breathing and give it to him. Nikki left her bags and quick-walked past the Asian kid who she'd remember more of once this was done. Shauna's glasses had fallen off while she was grabbing the rope, and Nikki winced. Boy, that'd kinda suck for her, but that was as an astute an observation Nikki could make right now. Besides that, the Asian guy was saying he could climb the net as well, but Nikki wasn't sure, wouldn't more people on there mean there was more chance of the whole thing coming down and making this place a horrible tribute to Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark and completely destroying all her resolves?

"Uh, I dunno, Phillip's already kinda up there but maybe if he needs help? What do you think? And uh... here!"

Phillip wasn't that high up. Even Nikki was sure she could reach him with a toss of the rope. She'd unknotted the end of it so it'd be easier for him to unravel it once he caught it, and after stopping for a silly beat to try and decide how she was gonna throw it, Nikki pitched it up to him and hoped.

[MurderWeasel]

Phillip caught the rope. That was the important part.

He didn't catch it cleanly. He was only, like, ten feet up or something, but he was also hanging onto the net with both hands and Nikki had sort of segued into the throwing mid-thought so it took Phillip's mind a split second longer than it otherwise might have to click that it was time to catch something, and then the rope coil was a weird, rapidly-unwinding loop, and Phillip was holding tight as possible to the net with his left hand while he leaned and flailed with his right.

Thing was, Phillip wasn't good at a lot of stuff but he was pretty alright at catching things. He could do a hundred cycles more or less every time with his juggling balls now. He could get close to that with random shit from the cafeteria. He'd juggled milk cartons before, forks, oranges. All sorts of weird stuff. So when the rope hit his hand at an odd angle and sort of bounced off, he was able to toss it up a bit and grab the end. Granted, that let the rest of it uncoil all the way back down to the ground, but fuck it, he had one end of the rope and that was progress, and he hadn't fallen to his death or shaken the structure so much that it all came to pieces or anything like that.

Now, as he started winding the loose end back up, around his shoulder and torso, he had a moment to address the other salient points of conversation.

"Hey, dude, Danny, thanks, but I got this I think. Already halfway there and honestly at this point it'll be safer to get up and then come down with some backup."

Did that make sense? It sort of did to Phillip. Granted really climbing a net wasn't actually that hard, like it wasn't like climbing a rope or a pole or even a tree or anything. It was like climbing a wiggly but wider than average ladder, with loads of places to hook his hands and feet to hold him tight.

"Plus, gotta keep someone there to patch me up if I fall," he said, "and I don't know shit about first aid. Also thanks for the rope, this'll make it way way better."

He was moving again, now, ascending hand over hand, foot over foot. His pace was measured, but with a bit of urgency to it; Shauna was probably more than ready to get free. Phillip could see her slightly better, now, as he drew more level with her. Her face looked purple like a tomato, not a standard tomato but one of those fancy-ass heirloom sorts Whole Foods sold for like four dollars a pound.

Phillip took the rope, wrapped it a couple times around the support pole he'd been climbing next to, and then tied the best triple knot he could with his arms hooked through the loops of net. He tugged once, twice. It seemed pretty firm. Then, with another glance to the side and to the ground (whoops, that was a fucking mistake), he started to edge away from the beam, towards Shauna.

"Just a sec, just a sec, I got this."

[Namira]

Now she really couldn't see. On top of not hearing and hanging and everything else, everything had turned into one huge blur of absolutely nothing and actually it was making the vertigo even—

Her stomach lurched. Her eyes widened. Shauna clenched her jaw as hard as she could, pasted her tongue to the roof of her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut. No, god please no puking, not now, not strung up and inverted and with her hair directly in the firing line. After everything else—and maybe, probably this sounded really dumb what with was going on—after everything else, she really didn't think she could handle throwing up into her hair.

Shauna clung onto her lifelines with everything that she had and willed the nausea to subside. It did not. Someone said something further off, her glasses? Someone else, then Phillip? Was Phillip nearly here? She couldn't open her eyes again, if she opened them again she'd see again and then she really really would puke.

"HelphelphelpgetmedowngetmedownGETMEDOWN!"

[Melusine]

Danny was left on the ground while Phillip was climbing around to save Shauna. Perhaps, this was the best decision because Daniel wouldn't put himself in danger, but it felt like he was watching tragedy in the making. Shauna started to flail around like someone who spent too much time upside down.

Then, the screaming started. It sounded like she was begging for her life, but nobody was there to confirm her safety. It was something along a horror movie, a silent killer was about to kill without any mercy and he only watched as she was struggling to free herself out of the trap he set up. Danny tried to stay calm, hoping it would help Shauna.

"Shauna, Shauna!" He yelled, "Phillip is coming, okay!"

He looked around him. Gosh, he just wanted to climb on the net and free Shauna from this trouble she got herself into. She had a tendency to do that, set herself up for failure then squeal and shriek until it was over. However, in this situation, she couldn't quite cry her way out of it, and freaking out was only going to make it worse.

"Just hang on," he looked at Nikki, nodding toward Shauna with inquisitive eyes, "we're here, and we're not going anywhere until you're safe."

[D/N]

Ooooooooo.

Shauna was still wriggling around up there. Aaaand. Now she was starting to freak out. Well, she'd probably been freaking out for a while, but this was the big major escalation of that.

So Nikki shuffled her feet.

Well, wasn't more she could do, was there? Send good vibes?

"You got this, Phillip! You got this, Shauna!"

Bring on the distractions?

It's time to try, defying gravity.... I think I'll try, defying gravity....

No those were bad distractions!

No no no, OK she had to admit it was a bit funny to pop in her mind but that was not the distraction of the moment. It was the +ve, that was it. That was the focus for now. Nikki had etched that in paint cause there was no stone around and it would take too long anyway, and it was the half-word of the hour because she'd been too lazy to scratch the whole thing.

It was the +ve, that Shauna would be totally fine and Phillip would get her down, and her and Danny were down here too. And that all of them were great, and this was a scary spot but they were all totally doing their best and who else could say that? OK, probably others on the island too but that was all part of the good, uh, part. Great peeps, great things coming, and sure Nikki wasn't doing anything now. She kinda couldn't do anything more than friendly encouragement but whatever. Hey, she'd already brought the rope and that would give her a whole ton of future good will stored up like a squirrel rations nuts over winter.

And did Nikki have other stuff to add in the future to make sure this all turned out for the best?

She thought she did.

She caught herself almost grinning, then looked over to Danny and nodded.

"Yeah, we're here!"

[MurderWeasel]

Alright, Phillip had this. He had this. The people down below, Nikki and Danny, they believed in him. They believed in him a shitload more than he believed in him, even, but they had a better perspective on the whole situation, so he'd take their word on it. They had his back, metaphorically.

They were certainly more inspiring than Shauna, who was flipping the fuck out. Couldn't blame her, but still.

Closer and closer, Phillip edged along the net, rope spooling out behind him. Finally, he reached the girl. The weave sagged dangerously under the combined weight of the pair, but its monkey-withstanding magic held true and they didn't plunge to their deaths just yet.

"Okay," Phillip said, "okay. Stay cool, we got this, just gonna wrap the rope a few times so we're all cool if things get fucky."

As he spoke, that was more or less what he did, looping the rope around Shauna's middle, wrapping one, two, three circuits before starting to cinch it. It was sort of awkward being this close to a girl, but actually kind of less so than when that other girl had gotten all up in his space at prom, like there he didn't know what she was doing but here this was pretty clearly a platonic thing, like if this was Star Wars he was Luke Skywalker and Shauna was Princess Leia, siblings and all that, and they were about to swing across the chasm on his trusty belt rope. That kind of thing, more or less.

He fiddled with the rope, tugging it taught. It took a while because he was hanging on the net by his elbows while he worked. This felt a lot less scary than it had at the start, which was probably actually a bad thing. Meant more room to do something stupid, mess up and send them both plummeting to their demises.

Still, if his estimates were right (okay, a decently-large if, that), then Shauna was now secured to the rope as a backup and there was enough slack that if she fell she wouldn't hit the ground and die. She might, come to think of it, instead swing in an arc and smash straight into the pole he'd used as the rope's anchor. That sounded like the sort of bullshit physics and math would pull, like really was it Phillip's fault trig was the most boring-ass subject known to man? Maybe if they used stuff more like this, he would've paid more attention. Forget measuring lakes by the shadows of birch trees or whatever, give him the real life applications. "You're on a net in an old ape enclosure, trying to get a girl safely secured. At what points do you need to anchor the rope, and to what length, to prevent her brains from getting turned into mashed potatoes if everything turns fucked and the structure collapses?"

Phillip looked again. Good enough, probably. He'd done what he could and Shauna wasn't super patient and like that really was an alarming color she was turning. This would have to be enough.

He scuttled a few feet away, just so that if everything went to shit he'd hopefully not be dragged down with it. What? He'd done his level best. There was helping people and then there was letting the drowning guy drag you down too just so he'd feel better about it.

"Try to grab the net and turn yourself around?" he called. "I think you should be more secure now."

[Namira]

Shauna's panicked babbling gave way to panicked hyperventilating. The pounding of her temples had become a squeezing vice crushing down on her skull until it felt ready to explode. Everything was so dizzyingly heavy, spoons of pain levering behind her eyeballs, just waiting to pop them out.

More yelling, reassurances and then something like encouragement. Her name a couple of times. Did she know those voices? For a second she very nearly tricked herself into opening her eyes again before realising and squeezing them shut as hard as she could. No no, no opening up, not now. She didn't want to throw up. She didn't want them to launch out of her skull like a gaudy halloween slasher. If she kept them closed she could block out just a little of the roaring agony that churned around her head, the pins and needles rampaging up and down her arms, her inability to move her feet and toes even if she tried. But people were here, people were here to help. There was Phillip, and there was the boy and the girl calling out to her and she had to know them because otherwise how would they know her name? She just had to keep calm and trust that they'd extricate herself from this predicament, relying on others as always.

Phillip's voice was much, much closer now, and Shauna's breathing subsided to soft panting. Not calm, but calmer. He'd actually climbed all the way up here to help her out and damn if that wasn't something to be grateful as hell for. He didn't need to do that, he'd chosen to.

"Okayokayokay."

She managed not to yelp when the rope touched her but she did jolt, and for a second she thought it was a signal that everything was about to collapse and she was finally going to fall from this spot and plummet to the ground. She gripped with her hands so hard that it hurt and the moment of panic passed. The netting hadn't even moved. She was okay, this was fine.

Phillip called out what to do next.

Never mind, this was not fine nor was she okay.

Turn⁠—turn herself!? How was she supposed to do that!? Hadn't he seen what had happened last time she'd moved around? She'd then moved much more! Directly downwards!

All right, all right, breathe a second. If she didn't move what was going to happen? She couldn't just stay here indefinitely and sooner or later either something would give way and she'd splat herself on the ground, or something in her would give way and she'd black out⁠—like Shauna honestly didn't know what happened if you hung somebody upside down for hours but she had a hunch that it probably didn't turn out well.

Slowly, painstakingly, Shauna let go of a handhold, one finger at a time. Then, trying not to tremble, she transferred the grip to the rope that was now tied around her midsection. It seemed secure, and the most tentative of tugs seemed to confirm that. A shaky exhalation and then she extended her arm back out into more of a diagonal position 'above' her head. She hesitated.

"D-don't... don't let me fall."

She pulled, putting some rotational force into it, shifting her body. One leg came around a little, then the other, and then a very loud creaking echoed through the air.

[Melusine]

"If you fall, I'll- uh," a loud cracking noise resonated in the room. Great, this whole thing was coming apart, and Shauna was stuck in a death trap. Technically, everyone in the room was stuck in this death machine, but Shauna was the center piece. Danny looked at Nikki then Phillip. They really had to hurry up.

"I'll catch you!" He screamed while cupping his hands around his mouth. "But, do your best not to fall, okay?"

The structure continued to crack like a rusty dinosaur waking up from a nap that lasted billion of years. The room was becoming alive, and the four student scrawling around, trying to save each other, were going to die here if they didn't hurry up. Yet, Danny said nothing. He feared if he opened his mouth, he would jinx it.

Maybe if he didn't talk about it, if he ignored the signs, if he looked away from the now-revealed fragile structure, the creature wasn't going to shallow up the four students in the room. "Don't give up!"

[D/N]

Oh that didn't sound good.

Nikki poked her eyeballs up a bit. Not literally. She didn't... hey where exactly was sound that coming from? Nowhere she could see. It seemed to poke out of the walls and sky and ground like needles of noise, then retreat back in.

Geez Phillip, hurry up. Or actually geez Shauna, Phillip had gotten the rope on and everything. Or actually maybe Shauna was moving too fast.

Either way someone had to do something cause it was making the fact that Nikki was gonna just smartly stand around all the more obviously. Because c'mon. Nikki wasn't climbing. Nikki wasn't-- well hey it was Danny who said he'd catch Shauna. But good positivity. Right now everyone was so freaked that no one was saying hey Shauna just fall on Nikki and you'll bounce off laughtrack cliched drum thing dumb meme.

But OK, Nikki could... something smart. Something safe enough, something to help.

She glanced around the netting and saw various poles supporting it and her brain lit up. Those must be the part of the noisemaking!

Nikki hustled her way over to one with her patented NNK QuickShuffleRun-Walk (TM). Were they still creaking? She couldn't quite tell but she grabbed on to it as well as she could with her small hands and called up.

"I can try to hold them in place!"

It was the useless gesture to end all useless gestures.

That was OK!

[MurderWeasel]

Oh shit. That was not a good sound.

Shauna was telling them not to let her fall, and like, that was cool, that was the plan, but counterpoint: what exactly was Phillip supposed to do now, precisely, to prevent Shauna from falling more than he already had? He'd given it the old college try, and now his options were limited to either attempting to coach her through this from a distance—a distance it wouldn't hurt to increase, you know, just a bit, just to keep as little weight on that part of the net as possible—or climbing right back on over to hang right next to her and fall with her for moral support.

Like, come the fuck on. He'd climbed up here, hadn't he? He'd tied the rope around her. He'd tried to talk her through it all. He could've turned around and walked away right at the start, and you know what? That was the smarter choice in basically every sense of the word. Nobody would've blamed him that much, not compared to everyone who was gonna start eating eyeballs of whatever. And okay, maybe saying he could do that was looking at things in the more hypothetical realm, because he, that is to say Phillip as a person, couldn't just leave someone tied up hanging upside down waiting to die, but someone, some theoretical asshole out there, certainly could and that would be a more intelligent decision all things considered.

He'd scooted a few feet further from Shauna. Danny was shouting that he'd catch her if she fell. Nikki was shouting that she was holding something in place. They were down there, way removed from it all, nothing they could actually truly do to help whatsoever, but they were both doing their best, and here Phillip was trying to talk himself into wimping out.

Goddammit.

"Okay," he said, starting to inch back towards Shauna again, in effect just neutralizing any change in position he'd made in the last five seconds, "okay, just stay calm, I'll be right there."

[Namira]

This was fine, really, this was totally fine. Shauna was basically almost the right way up, or halfway. The noise from the nets was just noise, she'd heard that before and it hadn't been that bad apart from when it had, but this would be fine. Some of the heaviness almost seemed to slide out of her and stars sparkled in her eyes. She tried to open them, saw nothing more than a dizzying blur, and her vision spiralled away from her.

The mother of all head rushes slammed into her brainbox at a thousand miles per hour and she retched, a thin stream of bile spluttering out of the corner of her mouth. Shauna slammed the eye shutters down again and squeezed tightly. "M'okayI'mokayI'mokay," she mumbled through pressed together lips.

Apparently hearing this and retaliating with a sound 'fuck you', the cosmos picked that moment to have the net finally give out.

Shauna shrieked as the whole section tore away and she plunged. The ground raced up to meet her as the drop stole the air from her lungs, and then the rope went taut.

The cords wrapped around her constricted and her scream was cut off as the rope snapped tight. Her body all but folded in half at the stomach, doubling her over in midair.

"Ghk!"

Something splattered out of her mouth. She tasted something that might have been blood. Before she had an opportunity to think it over, the beam the rope was knotted around snapped off. Shauna fell the rest of the way.

[Melusine]

Daniel did catch Shauna. First, her vomit. Well, blood vomit. His first thought when the liquid splashed him was how Shauna was fucked. Nobody vomited blood under normal reasons, and she was in the most abnormal one.

Then, he caught her body. It came down suddenly. The impact knocked the air out of his body. Their two body became one, and their wounds proved it. Bruised and battered, they both crashed to the ground. Perhaps it was for the best, maybe Danny’s body managed to make Shauna’s fall nonlethal.

“Urgrrgh.”

It’s not something he would know just yet, however. His consciousness was more. Probably due to the fact his head was the first thing Shauna’s body slammed into. He might still be alive for now, but there wasn’t much to see other than two teenagers on the edge of consciousness in the floor.

[D/N]

Aaaaaaaaand it was all gonna be good--

No it wasn't.

"Nononononono!"

That was pretty much all Nikki had time to get out before Shauna crashed down on Danny. She fell, the rope seemed like it would be a good idea, and then the whole net started giving way and Nikki saw the strands popping one by one out of the pole she was uselessly holding on to. Sounded like bubble wrap, she thought, and then it was starting to flutter down and was about time for her to let go and see Shauna smack into Danny's head as they both gracelessly flopped to the floor.

Oh no. Oh no again.

First realization.

Um, oh man. Nikki was really glad that wasn't her in Danny's spot!

Second realization.

They were dead.

They were dead just like that they'd both died in front of her and she let out an ugly wheezy exhale that was about to turn into even uglier tears so she was going to grab her bag and nope right on out of there before anyone saw them. She was going to take off right now and find other people and she had to had to had to forget this happened in fact she was already forgetting. Now.

She took two stuttering steps towards her bag and wait they weren't dead after all.

Shauna was curled up on the floor next to Danny; Danny was uggghing or something.

"Guys! You!"

Nikki twirled and took five quicksteps towards them.

"Oh my God, uh, uh..."

She stopped on a dime and flittered back to her bag. Zipped it open. Useless stuff, useless water, wait water might be good? Never mind that. Nikki pawed through it all and found the first aid kit at the bottom, grabbed it and huffed on back towards the two of them on the ground.

The she stared a second and called out to nobody in particular.

"I don't know first aid! I, uh..."

Nikki dropped to he knees and started untying the rope around Shauna's belly. Oh man that must have hurt. And the rope was hers. But more importantly, it was something to do and maybe Phillip had a better idea assuming he was OK?

"Are you guys-- what's bad?!"

[MurderWeasel]

Everything went absolutely to shit. This was true even past the rather shitty expectations Phillip had held to begin with.

Shauna plummeted, taking a good chunk of the netting with her, and while that did not entirely drop Phillip to his demise, it did knock out a part of the support for the section of net he was clinging to. His stomach lurched as entered freefall for a fraction of a second, but his desperate grip on the net held true and he was merely jolted and spun about ten feet below where he'd been.

He didn't scream or shout, but mostly because his heart was beating way too quickly for that, and his breathing was speeding up, and he thought his throat was getting tighter but couldn't be sure and he really, really needed this to not be happening right now. He hung there for a moment as everything below unfolded, trying to will himself to calm, and then, slowly and carefully, he climbed back down. At least it wasn't as far as before.

The last five feet, he dropped, stumbling only a little. He scooped up his pack, digging around in it for a water bottle even as he looked over his shoulder at the others. Nikki was hunched over them. She didn't know what was going on. She didn't know what to do, and Phillip didn't either, and all his forced bravery and bravado was wilting now under the force of the adrenaline running through his system and the tightening of his chest and the way it could've so easily ended in death and the fact that, hey, death was an actual probable intended outcome of this exercise.

He should've gone over to help, or he should've sat down and calmed down, but what was running through his mind just now was an even greater, heavier need to go, to get away and collect himself and then figure things out and come back when he was stable, probably, when he could process things and think and...

He was already nearing the edge of the building, walking further and further from where he should be going and what he should be doing, leaving this in Nikki's hands. She could take care of it, right? She had it under control. She was good, they'd all be fine, Phillip just had to take a few and ignore the way his steps were speeding up and how his hand was clawing at his pocket for his inhaler.

"I'll be, I'm okay, I'm, my... asthma? Be right back," he called over his shoulder at her, at them.

Then he was darting into the woods. Just for a moment. Just until he pulled himself together.

((Phillip Olivares continued in Just keep breathin' and breathin' and breathin'))