Just an Ape-tizer
As a lizard, most of the dishes at the banquet are larger than you. You decide to go with something smaller.
A few minutes later, you find that it's impossible to peel a banana with a lizard's claws and teeth. You give up and eat it with the peel on. It's easier when the changes start and your teeth get bigger.
It's immediately obvious that you're becoming a mammal again. Your tail and scales shrink as you grow big and hairy - bigger and hairier, in fact, than you ever were as a human. Your leathery arms and torso bulge with muscles. So does your forehead. Your claws shrink, your reptilian toes thicken, and you've got fingers again - clumsy, sausagelike ones, but fingers all the same. You've even got thumbs on your feet. When the changes finish, you're standing again, even if most of your weight is held up by your massive arms and knuckles. You've become a gorilla. Not human, but close enough.
Now that you're a primate again, you find you can think more clearly. Stumbling around at random probably isn't the best way to get out of this mansion. You need a strategy. It's difficult to know which way to go. The only entrance you know of is locked now, and you don't know the layout of the rest of the mansion - or even if the layout stays the same. The rooms change you; you might as well assume they can change themselves as well. Even the old labyrinth strategy, turning right at every corner, might not work in this place.
If only you had a ball of string.
All right, so there's not much you can do to find your way out - except just keep moving. The next thing is to make sure you can do that. You'll need to stay focused to get out of here. The longer you stay in one shape, the more of your mind you lose. Therefore, what you want to do is change as often as possible, into as many different shapes as possible, until you find a way out of this crazy place. You don't know how often the mansion itself is going to change you - or if you might get stuck somewhere and be unable to change. Therefore, what you need is a large supply of transformation triggers...
...Like the ones right in front of you.
When you look at it that way, it's obvious. With your newfound fingers, you grab the corners of the banquet blanket and pull the whole thing into one big bundle. You can hear things squashing and shattering inside, but you don't really care if the food gets mixed up. All it has to do is keep you transforming. It doesn't have to taste good.
With a grunt, you swing the bundle over one massive shoulder and knuckle your way onward. You don't know where you're going, but at least you won't go hungry.
At the back of the banquet room are doors in various sizes; the smallest is barely an inch high, while the largest looks like it could fit an elephant. There's also something like a fireman's pole in front of them. Made of smooth metal, it extends into wide openings in the floor and ceiling. It would be easy to slide down the pole, but as a gorilla, you could probably climb up as well. The hole above you is dark; looking down, you can see a dim red light.
What's it going to be - up, down, or forwards?
Written by Chrysalis on 15 May 2010
The end (for now)