Part 36: Crayon Drawings

In the Candy Room, Cherry suddenly saw the cabinet doors open to her left. Hiding behind the second doors while covering her mouth to keep any sounds of breathing from becoming noticeable, two shadowy hands suddenly grabbed her feet. Screaming in terror, Cherry tried to kick out of its grasp as it mercilessly pulled through the dark door. The moment this happened, she felt herself spinning around rapidly in some sort of sticky ball-shaped cage that slid down and knocked her around while crowds of evil laughter could be heard. She started to faint during the ride.

By the time Cherry woke up, she found herself dazed and frightened. Observing her surroundings, she found out that she was inside of a giant gumball machine that was half full of toy capsules with other people inside of them begging for help.

She stopped for a while to read the white print written on one of them from a side viewpoint next to the glass window of the machine.

“Funhouse Industries?”

Turning her attention to the outside, she saw more gumball machines stretched out inside of a huge gingerbread house. Below was an indoor candy-themed amusement park filled with what she made out to be crayon-drawn cryptids walking around.

“Of course. It’s those drawings from the library shelves... What are they doing?” she asked herself while eyeing them down to try and get a closer look.

Upon further inspection, it became clear what was going on. There was this deep pit in the center (known as The Funhouse Pit) which had what looked to be at least thousands of people laying atop of this pink frosting calling out for help as hands of the previous victims which were covered in the weird pink goo grabbed ahold of the newcomers and sucked them into it.

Cherry did not want to end up like that. Whatever the reason they were stuck in there, it looked horrendous. Escape seemed impossible though from the way this place was designed. She glanced at the top of the gumball machine’s interior to see many dark holes dropping more and more of these toy capsules inside at random. Looking back outside, she noticed a date on a pole which indicated when the gumball machine would release them into the pit.

October 13th.

That was one day away for them.

“I have to find a way out. There is too much time now not to make the best of it. These capsules are sticky inside but the only way I can possibly get out is by taking off anything that might stop me from getting out.”

Looking at her green jacket, she started to see that it wasn’t really zipped up. This meant she could use her hands to grab the sides of her sleeves and get out of her own jacket. She had to lean towards the side where gravity was pointing down based on her position. Making an effort to turn her torso to the right, she was able to loosen the jacket and tug away on the insides of the sleeves to get herself out of it.

With enough effort, she could now use her hands to sit upright. It was a relief to be able to do this but her legs were still stuck. She was wearing stretchable jeans. In order to even remotely be free, it would mean slipping off her shoes and sliding backwards out of her jeans and crouching on top of her jacket. Fortunately she had black tights on underneath them so she wouldn’t be worried about being naked as soon as she took them off.

After making that adjustment, she was a lot happier that she had outsmarted her captors on this level. Now all she needed to do was bust out of the capsule.

However, that was going to be the trickiest part of all.