Marcus Morris woke up from his sleep slowly. As his brain brought itself up to speed, he noticed that his bed felt different. It was softer than he liked. Eyes snapping open, he saw that he was not in his own bed at all. A desert dawn-light sneaked through the cracks in the blinds, illuminating a foreign bedroom.
Only dressed in his boxers, he looked into the walk-in closet. All his clothes were there, which, rather than being comforting, just heightened the feeling of weirdness. Where the heck was he? Was this some kind of inebriated hook-up gone wrong?
Now he opened the blinds and looked outside. In the early-morning light, he could see to the mountains. The house he resided in appeared to be located in an under-construction housing development, as there were a few half-finished houses dotting the street.
Putting on a set of clothes, he walked down the stairs, wondering where the unfortunate girl was that he had just bedded. He wanted to tell her the whole “moving-in” thing was off, that it was just a mistake, but the whole house was quiet and empty.
So when a cheery male voice said, “Good morning, Marcus” from behind him, he almost had a heart attack. Spinning around, he found a man dressed in a suit sitting at the breakfast bar.
“Dude, do you gotta sneak up on me like that?”
The man just smiled, not giving a response. This angered Marcus. “You’re in on it, aren’t you? You know why I woke up this morning in a different house, and you’re going to tell me the reason.”
Faced with the tall, angry basketball player, the man still kept smiling. “As an official representative of Fulton Homes, I would like to welcome you to your new Fulton Homes home. Fulton Homes is proud to own the three-point zone and donates one hundred dollars to local charities. You will love it here…forever.”
With this unsatisfactory answer, the man got up and turned the corner into the kitchen proper. Marcus walked after him, but when he looked into the kitchen, there was nobody there. “Hey, where’d you go, man?” he yelled. There was no sound of retreating footsteps and no response. Marcus sighed in frustration. He might as well see if he could catch a bus back to his old place, then call up the Suns and figure out what they were thinking, making him move in the middle of the night while he slept.
After a bit of confusion trying to find the front door, Marcus located it, and reached out for the knob.
Locked.
Locked? It should have only locked from the inside. However, examining the mechanism, there was no deadbolt or anything of the sort accessible from this side. Unease growing, he tried the back door next, but ran into the same problem. Seeing a nearby window that looked like it would swing out, he fumbled with the latch, but it was stuck. Even exerting all his force on it would not budge it a millimeter.
“Screw this,” he grumbled, looking around for something heavy to break the glass. Finding a decorative bookend, he stood a safe distance away and baseball-pitched it as hard as he could. However, it just bounced off, not even denting the glass.
Marcus began to panic. How was he supposed to get out of here? He tried more windows with heavier objects, but they were all composed of the same super-strong glass. He tried kicking out the door, but only managed to hurt his foot. Taking out his phone to call for help, he saw that he had no signal inside the house.
Slumping with his back against the inexplicably-barred door, he sobbed as the man’s words replayed in his head: “You will love it here…forever.”
Forever.