Escape Room: Airplane Mode

Chapter 3 : Porcelain Sacrifice

Phoenix's touch is as hard as porcelain skin. But Ben's touch is as soft as porcelain skin. That's what I told myself, as the word porcelain engraved my mind. Did I really want to stay with Phoenix? Ben's the one who got me out of the water. He's the one who performed the first half of CPR on me. What if... Phoenix is just possessive?

"We have to look for more clues," I said.
"Kelsey, you're allowed to mourn," Zoey said, "She was your best friend."
"There's no time to mourn, Zoey! Okay?! If we mourn, more people will die! And then we'll have to mourn more! What if Ben dies next just because I mourned! How would you feel?!"

I calmed myself down.

"We're looking for clues, not for another excuse to die," I said.

I took a step forward, beginning my search, and suddenly the floor creaked. I tested the floor again.

"What are you doing?" Phoenix asked.

I shushed them, and I suddenly jumped on the floorboards, breaking them. They scratched a deep wound in my leg, and I hissed in pain, before Phoenix came by my side.

"You okay, Princess?" they asked me.
"Yeah, I'm good," I said then turned to Zoey, "Hey!"
"Yeah?" she asked.
"Is that sweater still available?"
"Sure, but we'll need to dry it first."

So Dasher set it by the human-sized pizza oven fire.

I then took my leg out of the hole, and took out a big dollhouse from underneath the floorboards. I tried opening the doors, but of course, they were locked, and we needed a key.

"How many keys will we need?" Phoenix asked, discouraged.

I thought for a moment.

"Search for anything about a dollhouse, or a doll. Or maybe even a key— Anything."
"I think I saw something earlier," Ben said.

He looked around, before pointing to a scroll on top of the oven.

"Here! If I can just reach it..." he said, straining to stand up on his tippy toes, trying not to fall in.
"Move. I'll do it," Dasher said, and got the scroll with ease.

The scroll was burnt, so Dasher being the guy he is, cussed.

"Ah, shit!" he hissed.

When it cooled down, he opened the scroll gently, and visible confusion spread across his face.

"There are so many spelling errors," he said.

We all gathered around the scroll.

"A— A little space please!" Dasher stammered in an annoyed tone.

The scroll read: 'I'm sometimes a girl
I'm sometimes a boy
You can lay with me
As I am a toy.
Sometimes I speak
And others I dn't
Sometimes I come with accessories
Sometimes i's a phone.'

"Ooh, kinky," Phoenix said.
"Shut up, Phoenix," Ben snapped.
"Yeah, shut up, Phoenix," Dasher replied.

I inspected it, and told my team it was probably some type of code.

"It's speaking about a doll, obviously," I said, "But the grammar mistakes... it's missing some letters!"

I started naming all of them.

P in play... O in don't... T in it's.

"Pot," Ben understood.

We looked around us, and saw that there was at least a good dozen pots, and Phoenix was gone.