I am trapped in an old hotel — the House — with six other people. There are also seven vampires making the hotel their ir. The vampires have thus far been too caught up in their own interpersonal dramas to do much to us, but they have made it clear that we are not allowed to leave and that they will get around to feeding on us eventually. Most of the vampires have chosen a specific mortal to focus their attentions on.

  Each of the vampires carries a rge antique silver key. We believe these keys to be our ticket to escape. With some limited communication and assistance from some people on the outside we hatch a pn to get one of the keys and quietly slip out while the vampires are distracted.

  While the pn is being carried out I return to my crumbling, mildew-infested hotel room to act as if there is nothing out of the ordinary. I take a moment to consider which of my things to take with me when we make our escape. To take my full suitcase and backpack with ptop would unfortunately be far too conspicuous. The loss of data on the ptop will be felt keenly, but better than dying trapped here.

  One of the vampires appears in my bathroom while I am changing clothes and tries to seduce me, but I thwart him with the power of asexuality. Confused and frustrated, he leaves me alone to finish getting dressed and make my way down to the lobby as casually as I can pretend.

  At the st minute, in a fit of spiteful self-destruction, one of the other captives uses his own ptop to write out a post on the monitored internet connection expining our situation and gravely insulting the vampires. Not only the vampires but the House itself is angered by this. The entire building begins shaking and only one of us manages to make it out the front door before a chunk of the ceiling colpses, cutting off our escape.

  Once the rumbling of the House finally stops, the oldest of the vampires, who has up until now remained aloof and unconcerned with everything and everyone, appears before us and expins that we never had a chance of escape to begin with. The keys are a false hope and the vampires are just as much prisoners to the House as we are, if not more so. In truth the House is a seemingly sentient extra-dimensional space of which this hotel is but one yer or level. The House likes its tests and games, and we will py them whether we want to or not. Our joint cooperation in hatching and executing an escape attempt was merely us passing the first test before being “allowed” to go “higher” to the so-called upper levels. On very rare occasions like this one the House will be merciful and let the initial escape attempt succeed for a single member of a cohort (and yes, even now other groups of seven are making their way through those upper levels), but there will be no other chances for escape until the very end. The elder vampire projects visions of the increasingly surreal horrors and death traps that await us into our minds and we see those who came before us struggling and dying bloody and terrified deaths.

  At the end will be a simple, empty chamber. Should any of us make it that far, we will be able to progress no further until only one of us is left alive.