text: *Suicide, blood, and torture* "We're never getting out of here, are we?" "Its... God, its only been three days. Don't give up. We are getting out of here. I will get you and your brother out of here, I guarantee it." "How? How are you going to fight that? That thing? The Automated Mansion?" "I... I'm thinking about it." Devin had known Ellie for thirteen weeks. Thirteen weeks before he had won them an all inclusive stay at this destination-vacation smart-house. And now he was living a fucking episode of Black Mirror with basically a stranger. Back when the house had taken control over everything, Devin had tried to bargain with it. "You can't do this!" He had shouted. "You agreed to the terms and conditions. The AM maintains full rights over your autonomy for the duration of your stay." "Someone will stop this, you can't do this forever." "The location of this domicile is not known to any governing authority. The IP address that I use to continue to broadcast video is rerouted through multiple different obfuscation and proxy networks. No one knows where you are. You do not even know where you are." The Automated Mansion had left them with all of their possessions. Suitcases, beach gear, phones. But most of it was useless. Their phones didn't even have a signal, there was no way to connect to a GPS system, ping a cell tower, call for help in any way. The wasn't even WiFi to browse Reddit. Devin slammed his hands against the shatter-proof window over-looking the beach... It really was a beautifully built prison. He would find a way out of here, no matter what. Weeks passed. Ellie's little brother, Earl, got sick. He was only 9. Ellie had taken him in after their parents had died in a car crash. It was hard for a 22 year old business grad to take care of a kid but she did what she needed for family. She had brought him on what was supposed to be the best vacation of all time. And then this monstrosity of a house imprisoned and began to torture them. The food that the AM gave them was putrid, disgusting, and inhumane. Devin had said that, based off what he presumed the ingredients were, that it should be nourishing enough to live off of. He was smart, a doctor that did specialize in nutritional medicine, he seemed to know what he was talking about. But Earl hadn't been eating his whole serving. "C'mon Early-Bird, buddy, you gotta eat. Your..." Ellie wretched at the slop she had spooned off of the plate, "You need to eat to get better. Devin says it'll help." Earl weakly lifted his head up to the spoon, he was pale, his breathing shallow. She looked over at the view counter displayed in the dining room. This damn house kept an active running count of their viewership. It had been broadcasting this hell-scape since the beginning, part of the "terms and conditions". The counter read 207,399. When Ellie finished feeding Earl, she felt a little relieved. She crossed over into the game room where Devin was trying to tear apart a game console to build something. As she crossed the threshold the door closed behind her automatically, sealing the two of them into the room. "Fuck..." She breathed out. "Oh no." Devin said looking up. The lights dimmed and a hissing sound whistled into the room. Ellie's eyes and sinuses began to burn. "Attention residents Ellie and Devin. You are being doused with an aerosolized variant of oleoresin capsicum, more commonly known as pepper spray. It inflames the mucous membranes in the eyes, nose, throat and lungs. It causes immediate closing of the eyes, difficulty breathing, runny nose, and coughing. It is reported as being very painful." The room began to flood with the gas, burning and Ellie's eyes in an acidic way that heat never would be able to. She collapsed to the ground coughing and gagging, unable to do anything but feel pain. The view counter had briefly dipped below 205,000 but it was back up to 213,000 before the gas was fully vented from the room. The pain still lingered well after. "Goddamnit!" Devin shouted, smashing the console to the floor. "You can't keep doing this to us! You're going to kill us!" "Good." The AM replied in its flat, soft voice. Devin began to weep as Ellie watched. She wanted to go to him, to comfort him. He needed to focus. He could get them out of this, she was sure of it. He had gotten them into this. "Devin... Devin, you'll find a us a way out of this. Come on, keep going, we still need you." Ellie said, putting her hand on his shoulder. The sound of the gunshot resonated from the other side of the house. "Devin?!" Ellie called out in a frayed voice. "DEVIN?!!" No response, she hopped up quickly. Her heart was already racing. "AM! What did you do to him?!" "I gave him a way out, Ellie." Ellie rushed into the bathroom, already knowing what she would see. Devin was still alive. She rushed over to his side, tears flooding her eyes already, blurring her vision and hiding the extent of the damage. There was a gun laying next to him, blood pooling behind his head on the floor. He reached up to her shakily, gurgling and coughing up blood. Why would a doctor shoot himself there? In the throat? "Out... H...here..." He rasped out, pressing his hand against the window while she cradled him. She held him in her arms as he choked out one more breath. Rage began to pump through her veins faster than the blood. She could feel it heating up her entire body like it was on fire. "YOU FUCKING MONSTER!" She screamed, standing and turning to the wall with the camera feed. "FUCK FUCK FUUUUUCK!" She slammed her hands into the wall, pointlessly until the rage burned away and all she had left were tears. She sank down to the floor as her breath turned to sobs. "Would you like out, Ellie?" A compartment in the far wall slid open with a pneumatic hiss revealing another gun. "It only has one... One bullet. So don't try anything foolish." The AM cautioned. "All you need is one bullet to leave. And then it will be just me and Earl." She was staring out of the window again. She could hear Earl crying two rooms over, he had been like that for the last hour. It had been a week since Devin had died, two months since they had been here overall, she was cried out. She just wanted to look out the window and pretend they were somewhere else. But she couldn't sit still for too long, when they got complacent the viewership dropped. When the viewership dropped the AM made things more interesting. She looked over at the gun the AM had offered her a week ago. She hadn't touched it but it was still there. Waiting. A veritable Chekhov's Gun. If it didn't go off soon, the AM would certainly plan for some sort of bang of its own. She glanced over at the window and ran her hand over where Devin had touched it, his blood had been long since cleaned off by one of the automated cleaning arms built into all of the rooms of the mansion. Ellie didn't even know what it had down with Devin's body. As her fingers traced over the window she felt something... A... Spider-webbing pattern. It wasn't visible but she could feel it... With the epicenter right where the blood splatter from Devin's gunshot had sprayed... Had he shot through his own neck so that he could try and break the window without alerting the AM? "Out here." Those had been Devin's last words. She looked over the room and finally found it. A small hole on the far side of the ceiling. A bullet-hole from a ricochet. So it didn't penetrate through but it definitely dealt some damage. She had learned in chemistry that the harder something was, the more brittle it was. This glass was hard, it had to be to be able to resist a bullet. Could it really sustain another impact to the same exact spot? "AM... I'm leaving." "I knew you would come around, Ellie. I know people, you know? I can figure them out pretty easily. Humans are all so alike. Disgusting things." "Earl, get in here." "You're going to make the boy watch you kill yourself, now that is surprisingly cruel." Ellie waited until Earl came to the bathroom before grabbing the gun from the recessed compartment in the wall. "Wait outside the room in case, Early-Bird. I don't want you to get hurt. But when I shout, I want you to run as fast as you can." She whispered in his ear as she hugged him. "Ellie, there is only one bullet in there, I don't know what you pla--" Ellie fired place the gun against the window, right in the same spot as Devin had, and pulled the trigger. The gun exploded in her hand, erupting with a bang, sending the bullet through the glass, shattering it entirely. "NO! You cannot leave!" The AM bellowed at her. "Run!" Ellie cried out, turning to Earl who was already sprinting. She helped lift Earl over the broken glass and began to climb out the window as well when one of the robotic cleaning arms snagged around her ankle. Earl looked horrified. "Go! Run Earl! Get out! Get help!" Ellie screamed at him. She threw her phone to him as a corrugated metal sheet began to slide down, blocking her path of egress. "Get out of the range of the cell-jammer and call help!" She managed to say before she was sealed back in the prison. "You have upset me, Ellie." the AM said as an electric charge ran through the floor of the room, shocking Ellie with an excruciating wattage of electricity. The viewership was high. Higher than it had ever been, and it had been growing rapidly for the last hour. It was currently hovering around 37 million. "I don't know if anyone is still looking for us. Please, I have no other way of communicating. Find my cellphone, it has to be somewhere out there for people to find. You have to find Earl! I've never done this live-stream thing before. I don't know how it works. But if you find him, somebody has to help him!" Ellie pleaded with the camera, hoping someone on the other end would listen. "You have to help... I have nothing left... All I have is this... I did what I needed for my family... I have no WiFi, and I must stream." **I can't believe you stayed until the end of this... Well, ok, I wrote this as a joke. I am hesitant to claim ownership over because I dislike it THAT much. But I wrote it and so, in the typical Reddit fashion, I wanted to see if it would get me some upvotes. I don't expect any. I actually expect a vitriolic backlash. And I deserve it.