Waking up did not come easy. It wasn’t that Lucas particularly had to battle with his heavy eyelids, or that he didn’t want to particularly be awake right now, no, nothing like that. It wasn’t like he was back in his early college days and just not wanting to go to one of those generic science courses that the University required he took, no, it was just that something felt wrong, and some primal part of him thought that if he fell back asleep that whatever was wrong would just go away. He knew that was wishful thinking, though.

You know what else was wishful thinking? That this hangover would just go away. Oh, jeez, he hadn’t been hungover since, what, undergrad? Yeah, there was that party he had with his friend who graduated, and he just could not stop the drinks from coming his way. The pain from the hangover after that party still haunted him to this day, and the only thing he had to be grateful about here was that this hangover did not feel nearly as bad. His muscles were sore and his head hurt something awful, but at least he wasn’t sleeping in a pile of his own puke. No one ever deserved that shame, and he was grateful he didn’t have to go through it a second time.

Not wanting to wake up and crappy hangovers aside, what really ruined his morning was the fact that he was not actually sleeping on his own bed, in his nice little apartment. No, he was currently lying down on some wooden floorboards, in the middle of some creepy ritual circle that looked eerily familiar to some macabre runes and rites he’d seen in all those crappy horror films he’d been forced to watch with his friends from undergrad. The creepy wax candles, the insidious red ink that looked like it could have been blood, and the strange runes that looked both fake and real at the same time, yup, this would like right in place in a schlocky horror flick.

As he pushed himself up into sitting in the floor, he tried looking for a hidden camera. Surely, the fact that all this reminded him of his undergrad years meant one of his old pals were pulling a terrible, fast prank on him. Was it Ted? Mark? Both of them? Was the camera on top of that simply terrible looking dresser over there, hidden in the dark? Why weren’t there any lights here-- oh, right, prank. He did have to applaud it, though, whoever stuck him in here must have put a lot of effort into finding this place. It came as a surprise that a place this unwelcoming and eerie could even exist in modern day America. Seriously.

The room was dark and only lit by the few candles placed around the room, which was odd, because he didn’t think candles would be able to give off enough light for him to see the room, but what did he know. He’d never even seen a candle in his life up until now, and it wasn’t like he was a physicist or anything like that – no, a simple manager of a crappy local restaurant like him didn’t exactly get to experience candles. And were the candles the source of that awful smell? He thought they were supposed to smell good, not like a half-dead cat. His nausea was bad enough without the assault on his nose, thank.

“Alright,” Lucas called out. “This was fun and all, but I feel like crap and I want to go home. Time to pop out and surprise me and end this prank! Mark? Ted?” He hadn’t been drinking with them last night, but he didn’t know anyone else who would pull something like this. The only guy he remembered sharing drinks with last night was that that guy dressed up in that suit. What was his name again? Ah, he probably didn’t ask for a name, since he was just a drinking buddy for the night. Oh well. That guy must’ve been a friend of Mark’s or Ted’s though, considering the current situation. He must’ve called them over when Lucas was black-out drunk.

Despite calling out to them, neither Mark nor Ted answered him. In fact, no one answered him, and the floor was icy cold, so it didn’t take a stroke of genius to realize that he should stand up. Despite the nausea, Lucas pushed himself up off the floor and stood in the middle of the stupid fake circle. Standing really did not give him a better perspective of the room at all – it was still dark, smelly, and cramped. Who even furnishes a room with a dresser, and nothing else? Oh, right. Stupid horror prank, he wasn’t supposed to actually think about the purpose of this décor, he was just supposed to be scared. Really, the dirt walls were a nice touch, and the wooden supports in the corners just nailed the look together – if he didn’t know better, he would say he was definitely in some creepy witch’s basement, and that she planned on sacrificing him to some demon or other.

A brief panic overcame him when he didn’t see a door in front of him or to the side of him, but when he turned around he found it. Of course there would be a door, how else would he get in here? It looked old and heavy, and the panic set in again when he thought it would be locked, but thankfully it opened when he gave it a push. At least Mark and / or Ted weren’t terrible enough to lock him inside while they snickered at him from wherever they were.

Opening the door revealed that there was an old, and probably creaky, wooden staircase. Those jerks really did put him in a dank basement. He tried grabbing his phone out of his pocket, but it wasn’t there. Actually, his clothes had been changed, too. Last night he’d been wearing the stupid restaurant’s uniform – a stupid green dress-shirt with a tacky orange tie and some black suit pants – but now, what was wearing could only be described as sweat pants, but coarse and rough. His shirt wasn’t much better, it felt stiff and uncomfortable. If they took his shirt, and they took his pants, and apparently they took his shoes, too, since he was barefoot now. Oh. Oh no. He pursed his lips, took a heavy breath, opened his pants, and looked down.

His boxers were gone and replaced with what could only be described as ancient briefs. At least the string tying it together looked solid enough.

“Really guys? You had to take my boxers?” He complained. He tried looking for the hidden camera again, but again he couldn’t find it. Those things could get so small, and be hidden so well, or so he’d heard. The cameras his restaurant used were large and very obvious, so he was almost a little jealous of whatever cameras this place was using. Not that the jealousy lasted very long at all, considering he was a victim of this stupid prank that had gone on way too long now. Whoever spent money constructing this place could go sit on a landmine for all he cared.

Hopefully, going upstairs would solve all this mess. Surely, they would just be waiting up there, ready to scream and jump out from behind various furniture with crappy masks on, and then they’d all laugh, and then he could go home and rest off this hangover. Thankfully it was Tuesday, and no one could call him in to work. Everyone he hired knew better than to call him on a Tuesday, after all.

As he suspected, the stairs were creaky, and oh so scary, yadda yadda yadda etc etc etc. As he walked, a hidden speaker also played some howling wind noises for him.

“Very dramatic, Mark,” he called out. The wind wailing was top notch, really. If this were a video game, he could appreciate how ghoulish it sounded, but right now it just annoyed him. Actually, it did more than annoy him. It pissed him off. Who the hell would go so far just for a prank like this? He knew he hadn’t seen Mark or Ted for a while, but damn, their personalities really sank to rock bottom if this whole setup was anything to judge them by.

As he reached the top of the stairs, the howling wind only got louder. He found himself in a single room, bonafide log cabin. It was smaller than his bedroom and it smelled like piss, but at least the piss smell was vague. Like a really crappy perfume a woman might wear on a blind date.

The room itself was not much better furnished than the basement. Once again, candles seemed to be the main source of light here, as there were a few of them adorning the walls, held in place by some iron candle… holders? Whatever they were called, he did not care, candles were outdated, why couldn’t there be actual lights here? This was so overkill. They had already gone way over the line as far as pranks were concerned, so why couldn’t they just… augh. Breathe, Lucas, breathe. In, and out. In, and out. There. Everything is fine.

Continuing on. There was no bed, but there was some straw lain in the corner of the cabin in an oval that was presumably meant to replace an actual bed. Next to it was a desk and a chair, which both looked like they had been made by the world’s worst carpenter. The desk’s edges were uneven, and the legs were all differently sized, and the faces of the desk looked to have chips broken off of it. On top of the desk were a pile of books that were likely older than he was, or at least, designed to look that way. They weren’t leather bound, but they had that old-timey binding that always showed up whenever a cartoon or a video game or a movie wanted to show that a book was old and important.

The chair wasn’t any better than the desk, and in fact it looked a little monstrous. It looked uncomfortable since it didn’t have a cushion, and the seat itself looked uneven.

On the opposite wall was a fireplace, uncleaned and full of ash. The firewood placed next to it looked just as hideous as the furniture did, but at least firewood wasn’t meant to last. It was meant to be burned. There was an odd lack of any fire-starting tools here, though, which was completely strange considering the… “realness”… that the rest of this cabin had going for it.

Not that he even knew why he bothered looking at all this garbage. There was a door in front of him, similar to the door from the basement, that presumably lead him outside. Or maybe this cabin wasn’t a single room, and the door would lead him to another room. But he really felt like this was it, there was nothing more, there couldn’t be anything more. This was already too much.

“Okay, guys. I’m going to open this door, and I’m going to be done with this prank. I’m going to go home,” Lucas said as reasonably as he could. It took a lot from him, mentally. All he wanted to do was explode and scream at whoever was behind the hidden cameras, asking them how they felt knowing that they were making money off of his misery. Cry to them about how they took all his clothes and made him wear this filth. Moan about how they didn’t even put him in the straw bed over there, but instead left him in the creepy basement. But no, he was done with this place. Once he opened that door and got surprised by Mark and Ted, he would scold them like a proper adult, get his clothes and his phone from them, and leave. He would go home, sit down, and watch a let’s player or something on the computer. Or maybe play a video game. One or the other.

A heavy sigh escaped him as he opened the door and saw what was outside.

A blizzard was currently rampaging out there, of the likes he had never seen before. He could barely see through all the snow that was currently flying through the air, but what he could see didn't seem familiar to him at all. His car was nowhere to be found, in fact, there were no cars parked anywhere in sight. If there had been any cars out there, he'd imagined at least one of them would have been tipped over. Instead, the only objects he could barely see out there were trees, swaying in the storm and trying their best not to get blown over.

He slammed the door closed. A part of him wanted to open it again, see if what he actually saw was real, but he wasn’t that stupid. He trusted his senses. The snow’s icy bite left his arms cold, and his eyes hurt from the bright white storm that was apparently raging outside.

Okay. Maybe this wasn’t a prank.