I could hardly believe it. Was it a dream? Was it some convoluted prank that will drop me in some horrid place filled with muck?

  I remembered my short and tensed stay in the room called a dormitory and i'm certain there wasn't a second exit. Not counting the apparente futility on needing a worming corridor when the entire complex seemed working through teleporting points encased in the wall. Honestly whoever made or owned this place could have simply connected every room to ona another instead of forcing his guest... and likely himself to walk around for hundreds in not even thousands of meters just to access a certain room. Yet the theme seemed to point the other direction for reason I seriously could not fathom. Not seen the spartan way of the place. the corridor was just stone and the blue line. No decorations, no frescoes or painting.

  Not even a goddamn window, the entire complex gave a sense of bare, spartan and practical way of living. The only luxury, admitting there weren't more richer rooms me and the others didn't have access to, was the teleporting system.

  Yet, it showed and improper utilization. Or at least to me it felt as such.

  “In?” I asked after touching it and a moment later I was in what looked an avant-garde bathroom almost as big as the precedent room with a large metallic sink with a big mirror over it and two stands for soaps and who know what on it, a shower in the opposite corner that was large enough for three men to wash on near the other comfortably. I’m not suggesting anything...

  And even a bathtub as large as the bed with three high hangers occupied by three towels as large as bed-sheets only fluffier, just one of them was big enough to cover myself completely and still have more of it to not know what to do and there was two more normal sink towel sized folded on another cabinet.

  “Wow… this is… so much better I ever had been! Not even the best hotel my parents ever brought me as a child had such an incredible bathroom. It seem as if it came out of some Years 3000 movie. What the… how in all” I said but finding myself unable to describe how absurdly gorgeous the place looked.

  Then I noticed, on the opposites side of the wall, there was another door. I run to it, a hint of an idea of what awaited on the other side.

  “...it can’t be… In.” I said touching the next blue crystal.

  But it was.

  I appeared in a toilet. One more spacious then the only other I saw that horrible first moment… or at least I thought it was. You know, didn’t got much of a mind to notice details at the moment.

  What I had here was a toilet annexed to a bathroom annexed to my room that I shared with none and I didn’t need to walk around searching for or asking directions to find!

  All… while those three shared just one room that thanks of all the extra beds and wardrobes wasn’t really packed but wasn’t as free and comfortable as what I got.

  They had to get out and then search for a toilet and then if they wanted to wash themselves they had to get out again and then go searching for a bathroom. Just the thought of the annoying problems that awaited them every time they wanted to take a dump!

  ‘All the distance and time lost to do the dead, walk to the bathroom, washing hands and then back to the dormitory…’

  It wasn’t hard to imagine the pain of it all.

  “Not that they seemed the kind that washed their hands after having taken a dump.”

  Which reminded me of my own latest oversight… but I pushed it aside to continue to gloat by myself.

  “And I have everything here a few steps distances…. Is this how one feel when he is blessed in life?” I rhetorically asked myself sitting on the toilet and admiring the walls that here were of a soft pink instead of the dark red.

  ‘A bit feminin

  e of a color but… you know, its good! I like it.’

  Agreeing with myself I was ready to leave that little corner of peace to finally do what was needed.

  “Need to find the bin so I can throw away these old scraps.” I muttered to myself touching the lone crystal on the wall “Out.”

  Surprised, I found myself back in the bedroom.

  “Well damn! You seriously are on point! So efficient...”

  Once there I started undressing after having found the “bin” as the skeleton called it.

  The bin in question was… for no better way to put it, a black cylinder with no holes whatsoever and a metallic sheen to it that left me confused on how or of what it was made…

  It looked just a like cylindrical tube high 30 cm from the floor and with a diameter of twenty put near the desk, by the wall in between the desk and one of the bookshelves.

  “…. how am I supposed to use this?” I asked not understanding how I was supposed to open it as there wasn’t handles or pedals to press so it would open.

  Unsure that was even it but not seeing anything else that wasn’t easily recognizable as another furniture I tried searching around, hoping to find some buttons like the ones in the sci-fi toilet…. But there was nothing of such.

  “…. maybe I have to open it manually?…” I whispered to myself trying to touch it.

  When my fingertips where at less than 15 cm from the black cylinder the blu line started… going crazy!

  It became completely white emitting a lot of light, then it became black a second later and the room became so dark to the point I could not even see in front of my face. After that it returned blue illuminating again normally then white again, then black, blue, white, black, blue, white…..

  I moved away from the black cylinder, whatever was happening, it started when I got near it so I hoped moving away would end it…. And the line returned back to it’s normal blue color.

  “… so…. Touching the black cylinder is Bad?” I asked the blue line.

  It flashed red.

  “...Yes it’s bad…. Is that the bin?…” I asked again.

  It flashed red. It was the bin alright.

  “if I touched it…” I said while my neuron worked full steam to come up with something.

  The an idea formed in my mind. One coming from some scifi horror\splatter movies I watched in the past… and shivered

  “If I touch it will I be sucked in?”

  The line flashed red again before flashing black and then returning blue.

  ‘FUCK!’

  “Okay… I’ll throw the dirty dress without touching it.” I said while thinking ‘so black must mean danger.’

  Blue: is all good.

  Red: is this way and yes.

  White: is no.

  Black: is danger.

  “I’ve got it, thank you. Again.” I said feeling my knees starting to tremble.

  I thrown my old and dirty work clothing against the black cylinder only see them being sucked inside like they were some crumbs against some super vacuum… I actually did not even had the time to look them disappear. A moment they where flying against it and the next they disappeared.

  “Fucking black hole!” I whispered while cold sweat poured on my back “if the blue line didn’t stop me I would be reduced to molecule by now.”

  “A black hole….” I muttered to myself. “Here they use fucking black holes as trash bins...”

  After that I went in the “shower”, only to notice the absence of the shower head, or whatever other parts I was familiar with aside from the panels closing it… which were rounded too!

  “Talk about paranoia. For being a necromancer dude really hate giving impurity a place to hide.”

  There were only four buttons and a knob resembling the one to regulate temperature of the water with a caricature over it of a little arrow on two color sticker, green and purple.

  The buttons instead were like the ones in the toilet, all black, no other color and no sticker showing what they did.

  “...Alien sci-fi things…” I whispered, then “when in doubt, go for the middle one and the first from left to right I guess.”

  So I turned the knob with the arrow exactly in between green and purple and then I pressed the first button.

  Drops of waters appeared all around me from the panels of the shower before floating around me with intention and starting to move against my body from the neck down.

  ‘It doesn’t really hurt… it’s just… strange… ah fuck! Too hot.’

  I noticed too late that it was somehow too hot, not at the point of it really hurting but it was starting to get unpleasant.

  ‘Purple or green? Or one of the buttons? Let’s try purple’

  I turned slightly on purple and the water became immediately hotter.

  “Ffffffuck!!!”

  Then I turned on green hoping to cool it down… but I must have gone a little too much in green, because it became freezing cold.

  “FUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCKKKKKKK!!!!!” I squealed jumping out of it.

  In the end I found the right temperature only after considerable testing, and found out what the other buttons did.

  The second buttons made water fall from overhead like the normal shower I used, only with the difference of not been possible avoid to make the water fall on your head, because it would fall from all the higher parts of the shower and not only a little area of it in the center… stranger thing, when I moved on the said or away from the center of the shower to take less water then ALL the water droplets would change their course to fall on you head no matter where you moved for as long as I was inside it.

  “… fucking magic shower..” I said but not with a negative feeling. It was just fucking strange.

  But the worst came when I tried the third and fourth buttons.

  With the third a very creepy blue slime like thing started forming at the base of the shower and then crawled up my body…. Literally scaring the shit out of me when I looked down and saw it.

  In a moment of panic I tried to open the shower doors but they were serrated… and I ended screaming like a girl in front of an insect… if I had been happy to have the entire place for myself early, now I was soo much more happy no one had heard me in that moment of my life.

  In the end I somehow calmed myself enough to press again the third button to give it another try because hell why not?

  And through experiment I found out that like with the button of the water of the shower that stopped when pressed a second time, by pressing it the second time the one for the slime, which I hypothesized it was a different way of cleaning oneself, it stopped and started receding and then disappeared in the floor like the water of the shower even thought there were no holes.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  But I ended getting curious about the slime, especially because it didn’t eat me alive or melted like the ones in the movies... and noticed that after it the parts of my body where it crawled on smelled curiously like a beach during summer afterwards.

  So I tried again, this time trying to stay calm.

  The slime crawled up, covering until half my chest, then tried to expand and grab my arms… I freaked out… but not enough to press the button and stop it.

  When I calmed, I realized that aside from the feeling of being like inside warm water up to my neck it didn’t bind me in any way, it was warm and kinda comfortable… then continued to crawl upward trying to cover my face…

  When it touched my lips, I seriously freaked out, screamed anew and tried to press the button only to miss it and press the fourth…

  …. the slime… started to vibrate….

  Craziest shit of my life!!!….

  The slime continued to crawl up covering my mouth and nose while vibrating like a motor hoe or a massage chair… and in a fit I pressed all four buttons together stopping the vibration of the slime and making it recede until it disappeared…. All while I was shot with water from every direction and with enough volume to drawn me I waited too long…

  I could infer that depending on the strength used and the time the buttons remained pressed the more water and the more “hitting force” the shower gave.

  When I came out from the shower I was clean, sweet scented and… mentally damaged.

  “….Shower…. Never…. Again….!!!!” promising myself that and with some material for my nightmares I exited the torture chamber disguised as a shower.

  Then I dried myself with one of the big towels and then slumped on the bed still covered in it. To tired and mentally wounded to care for decorum or the possibility someone was watching.

  The lights in the room slowly faded as if to help me fall into the unconsciousness of sleep, but it could have been just my imagination while knocking out but images of slimy blue hands continued to dance in my mind making me reopen my eyes every time less than a minute after I closed them.

  “… I… can’t… sleep… that shower… broke me…” I nearly cried after having revived again the same scene only few minutes after having barely escaped from the real thing.

  The light returned, and I left the bed and started to walk around instead.

  What else could I do?

  “I’ve been awake for what... 32 hours by now?… More or less… it should be…?” I looked around searching for my phone… but not seeing it it came back...

  “Goddamnit!… I left it on the truck… no, I put my backpack in a corner out of sight and out of the sunlight so my water would have stayed colder for longer… so now it should be still there…”

  “……….”

  “If… the test take no more than a couple hours… for good or bad... I should be back by midnight… by that time Daniele’s truck will be already be towed or simply stolen… the chances of some thief finding my backpack are… not really high, but I cannot rule it out.”

  “So, no phone, no keys, nor the little money I had in my wallet… I must go back soon… but, do I?...”

  ‘… do I even have a reason to go back?….’

  ‘Oh right, if I fail I would be set free and if I pass I would get a prize… but if I can choose a prize… why not asking to be able to live here? This place is full of magic and interesting things, the blue lines have been kinder with me than most everyone aside my parents… well, more or less. And the undead… is scary… and kinda creepy… but not as much as the slime in the shower… if I stayed I could… clean? Help out? Didn’t mages need magical plants to make spells sometimes? I could learn how to grow magic plants and herbs. I’m a gardener after all…” I babbled, not really sure if my brain was even working right after being awake for all this time and all I went through or if it was just purging out absurdity after absurdity in an attempt to release tension.

  “I don’t know how things will be going, it would be nice to stay here, but if I cannot… then I cannot, I don’t want to force my presence… if I have to go back I would.” I whispered deciding to stop marching around like a crazed person.

  ‘What else can I be doing aside from sleep? I could go eat but…?’

  “Well, I was thinking to go and eat, but seen how those three still have their phone they would know when it’s time to have lunch… if my calculation is right, it should be midday, if I go there now I would probably find them… unless there is more than one place to eat at…” thinking that… I went near the blue line and touched it.

  “Hey, ehm, sorry if I disturb you… I think… ehm…” I tried asking but I had to make it a yes\no question, after all the blue line answered with color, not with phrases.

  “… there is only one refectory?”

  It flashed red.

  “Darn, then eating for now it’s out of question… what else did the skeleton said there was? The dormitory, the refectory, various bathrooms and toilets, the test room… oh!”

  “Blue Line, can you guide me to the test room the skeleton talked about?”

  It flashed white.

  “No good then?… I understand… what else there was… the portal room? No, is off-limits… what else, it’s not like it gave us a lot of place to go to… oh the library!” I then remembered, “he said we could go to the library to research. Test have yet to start but who knows. Maybe its already open.”

  The more I thought at it the better the idea sounded.

  “Knowing them, the changes I will find then there is minimal, they are muscle brained that think books are boring and a waste of both time and paper…. And to be the most intelligent around just because have some practical knowledge... surely they will not go in a boring library, do they?”

  “Blue line, sorry to disturb you so much, but, can you guide me to the library?

  It flashed red then the red line formed.

  “But this sure is strange… are you doing the red lime only with me or with the others too?… oh sorry, if you are doing it only for me then flash red, if you are doing it with others too flash white please?”

  The line…. Didn’t react…

  “Okay, there is no real reason to answer that, I was just worried that if you are doing it only for me and someone else found out they could become jealous or say that I’m favored or something.”

  Few moment’s later the red line dissipated to return a line of red dots.

  I didn’t comment on it, I did loose nothing from the change and instead, in this way, I would evade a lot of complaints from people whose entire life was about complaining for the sake of it.

  So I dressed in the strange garbs the best I could and once out of the room the line guided me on the right, opposing from where I came from.

  “Eck.. I think I must have tied up something somewhere wrong. I feel like my knees are binded or something like a mummy. And the vest continue to flap around…. I’m quite certain of not having seen such floppy dresses in any web comics… whatever.”

  With a numbers of blasphemies and curses I arrived at a door\crystal that was… like every other ones.

  “Can I come in?” I asked touching the central gem.

  A moment later I was in the biggest library I’ve ever seen in my life.

  “I had read of libraries that became dungeons and labyrinths such was their scale… but this is…” I said looking at the ceiling some fifty or more meters above my head where rows of books continue to go higher.

  “Totally insane!… how can a place like this even sustain itself?… oh right… magic…. Let’s go searching for something to read… which, I think will not be so hard… these bookcases go on until the ceiling… and they are all filled with books… how can the bookshelves in the room I’m staying even compare?… just by taking only the books of a single line I would fill that room to the brim… totally fucked up insane magic….”

  So I started looking around, but while the numbers of books where such to need ages to be counted, there was actually no one to read them, the entire place was deserted.

  The library was ginormous to say the least, the rows of shelves went on and on with no apparent end to it, even when I reached what looked like its center and from there I looked around, which was luckily and strangely where the door was, I couldn’t see where the ceiling changed into the walls… nor I was able to actually see the walls themselves. Only corridors define by bookcases made of the same stone of the walls, like any other furnishing of every other room, and columns of books with no end.

  “… and that bunch of bones think any of us could complete a test that would require all this knowledge?” I said with my mouth hanging open.

  One person would actually need almost a century only to read the book of a single ceiling high shelf and pointing out, a century to only read them, to study all of them and remembering everything, five lives could not be enough, unless a good number of them treated the same arguments and concepts with minimal differences between them only by being written by different authors.

  That would be more feasible than memorizing tens of thousands of books with different contents.

  “I suppose I will not find a librarian with an index of all the possible contents of the test… if the emptiness of the rest of this place give any clue… I would not be surprised if the skeleton is the only inhabitant…. While I cannot rule out the possibility of this place reason of existence being only to do the Magyster Test to different individuals kidnapped every now and then, the monstrous numbers of rooms and space… gives the feeling of being some kind of sealed and ancient temple that open only once every thousand years…” blabbering more nonsense I started in a corridor at random hoping to finding something that caught my interest.

  But after having walked around the place for a good while and taking a look to every book who caught my eyes for a reason or another I got the feeling that everything…

  “… Is more fucked up than I thought…” I said after putting yet another unintelligible book back in the place I’ve taken it from.

  “Every one of the books I reached for are in some alien languages I cannot understand…. Unless the ones in the language I speak are… no no no… what I’m thinking about, in my world there doesn’t seem to be magician and the kind, unless they are some super secret circle like the Illuminati, the Templar and the kind…”

  “But even if there are some who can wield magic there are non chances they would have enough knowledge and power to space or dimension travel, if it was a thing it would have leaked and become known… so it’s highly unlikely.” I said realizing the absurdity of it.

  “If I take that as a hint, there will not be any book about magic in one of the languages of my world… at best… there could be something left by ancient population like the Egyptian and Maya… with it being mostly impossible… remain the problem of different languages… so I still cannot understand it even if there is one.” I admitted dejectedly.

  My dream to learn magic by studying on my own in few just hours was now smashed by the hard hammer of reality.

  “If only there was an “all images magic manual” for children, I could at least learn something… but seeing how this is a serious place and not one for children, such a book certainly is not here.”

  I set off toward the door, I’ve been here for quite some time, by now my stomach had started to grumble for the hunger and I had some hope I wouldn’t met the others at the refectory now. After all they were the kind who at noon, max half past twelve, want to be seated at the table and eat. I was quite sure that time had passed already.

  Because of the of the way the library was structured it wasn’t really all that hard finding the way back to the door, all the shelves started from the center of the room and were positioned all in the same direction creating a number always increasing of corridors that would take whoever decided to set off for the wall a straight road to it and back, it was enough to follow the way in one of two directions and you would reach either the door or the wall.

  I was getting back to the door and was on sight of the “square” in the center of the room where the tables and chairs for reading where located, but the sound of voices from a near aisle made me freeze in place.

  “What the… what place is this, how can there be so much paper all in a single place?”

  “Look at all that burning material consumed to make all these useless books! What did they thought when they did this? Couldn’t they simply make internet and put everything on it after simplifying it?”

  “What’s even the use of all this crap? Surely most of these books are filled with uselessly big words and long explanations good only to confuse the reader…”

  “What a big loss of time, we could be around doing real work instead of being here in this shitty place.”

  “Yeah, with those horrible bathroom and those toilets filled with strange buttons that do nothing aside from wetting you all over.”

  ““Yeah””

  Apparently I was wrong. Not entirely, counting the insults and obscenities thrown around and yet I was wrong enough to not consider it possible for those three to come here.

  “And these dresses? They are awful! We had to cut them to pieces so we could somehow put them on!”

  “I’m sure that here come only (insulting words for homosexual people), only those “transvestited” perverts could put on such craps.”

  “Fucking right!”

  ‘Wow, they really love to complain...’

  “So true, and the food? Did you see the food? What the fuck was that? A fucking fruit that was all rotten inside! What they took us for? Even in jail they eat better!”

  “Yeah! And you saw who was that served it? Some floating stone that seemed made by some retarded child!”

  “Yeah, surely those demented little shits where the ones who cocked those rotten shit-fruits.. aha I left it all there splatted on the plate, if they make such shitty food, awful hygienic service and poor rooms it’s obvious no one would come and take this test of “whateveritis”.”

  “And then they kidnap people to make them come in this kind of amusement park of theirs. Not only is totally shit but its even illegal! You see if once out of here I will not run straight to the nearer police station and report the entire thing! I’ll send them all to jail and fuck them penniless!”

  “You are right! I’ll do the same. I’ll sue them so hard they will not even have eyes to cry… just like that fucking prop of theirs.”

  “Right? In the first moment I see someone other of that creep dressed as a skeleton I would lament!”

  “Only lament? Let’s file a legal charge for kidnapping, inhuman treatment and tried poisoning!”

  “And for having given us some kind of drugs, what did they thought? Drugging us so we could think to being controlled by a dude with a mask and scare the shit out of us? What did were these fuckers thinking while putting us at health risks with drugs!

  “Yeah!” “Right! We will make them see!”

  “While at it, why not break some things here and start to give them a lesson?”

  “Yeah!”

  “Good idea! Lets rip this useless paper to bits!”

  The voices then passed over, getting further and further away.

  “Oh Shits! Those three are crazy, did they convince themselves of being jokingly kidnapped and taken into an amusement park with a evil fantasy theme? Did they not realize the difficulty of making a place like this with modern technology would require an absurd amount of money and working force just to create the rooms and the corridor? How can something like this be made by some run-of the mill agency? And how do they explain the door that teleport you in and out?….”

  The situation was turning out of hand.

  “They are out of good sense and reasoning ability, even if a place with magic seem absurd, there is only so much you can forcefully explain with improbable theories.”

  I ran out of the aisle I was hiding in trying to not make too many noises while running, luckily helped by the particular kind of shoes found in the wardrobe. They were in full style of a Chinese theatrical representation with thin soles and soft fabrics, when a moment later I slipped in the lane where the door was with a breath of relief.

  I didn’t really wanted to test how pissed off they were by showing myself. In the past they already targeted me for the smallest thing and with an out of proportion anger that could only get even worse with what they apparently went through.

  Thankfully, a moment later I was out of the library.

  “Blue line, the three people who came with me are plotting to do damage, I need to advise someone before they destroy the books in the library or break anything else, can you guide me to someone who can stop them?”

  White flash.

  “No?… you cannot guide me there?”

  Red flash.

  “Yes… so I cannot go because I do not have permission to get there?”

  Red flash.

  “Then how I can do it?…. If I can not the…. can you stop them.. no, at least ca you advise someone who can stop them?”

  Red flash.

  “I understand, this is a relief, even if I cannot understand what is written in those book it would be a tragedy if they set the library on fire because they are such retarded…”

  “Then I suppose I can let you advise the person whose role is to protect this place to resolve the problem… then, can you guide me to the refectory? Those three talked about some alleged rotten fruit but seen how things here are magical and alien, I would not be surprised if the food is only strange-looking but perfectly edible.”