Ooops

The sound of the car traveling down the gravel road seemed to drown out the nightlife. Theo sighed, half asleep at the wheel. She was going home from a nature trip into the forest for ideas. Her car's headlights were broken again and she couldn't afford to fix them at the moment so she was navigating the road by the feel of the gravel under the tires. For a split second she closed her eyes and then in the next as she felt the car slam into something and then run over what she hit, she screamed and hit the breaks. She paused for a moment before getting out of the car, grabbing her flashlight as well. She looked around and under the car paling at the blood before looking back the way her car had come. As the flashlight's beam panned over the man she dropped it, eeping in dismay. She went over to him, poking his still body with a foot before cringing and dragging him into her car.

When she got him home, she cleaned him up, stripped him down and set him in bed in one of her live rooms, the one with a living mural of a picturesque cliff overlooking an ocean.

Michael sat up slowly, clutching his head. Realising the tattered remains of his clothes were missing, Michael draped himself in the bedsheet and crawled out of bed, looking around. It looked for all the world like he was standing on a cliff at the edge of a forest, looking down into the churning waters of the seashore. As he crept forward to get a better look, Michael's head thumped loudly against... something. He put out a hand, feeling the space in front of him. There was a wall in front of him, as far as he could tell; he just couldn't see it. He followed the invisible barrier around, finding that the wall didn't just stop him tumbling off the cliff, but also surrounded the bed in a roughly 5 radius in each direction.

"Where the hell am I...?" he murmured aloud, looking around for an exit, his panic starting to set in, albeit slowly. The idyllic scenery did seem calming...

Suddenly a door opened up in the forest side of the room. Theo blinked, holding a tray with a pitcher of water and a glass. "Oh you're awake!" She smiled and headed for the bed, leaving the door open. The doorway opened up onto a dark wood paneled hallway with various pictures hanging along it. If you watched them long enough too, someone would notice them moving. "How are you feeling? Okay I hope. I really didn't mean to run over you." She blushed as she set the tray down on the bedside table.

Michael instinctively cringed away from the door, his fists clenching visibly.

"Who are you, where am I, and why am I here?" he demanded to know, staring intently at her. "Are you from the lab? I'm not going back there... I'll... I'll... I'll kill you, if I have to." He stated suddenly, hoping it to be suitably dramatic enough to startle her into co-operation. This 'coersion' thing was new to him, after all.

She paused, blinking in confusion. "Lab, what lab? As for your first questions though. I'm Theo, you are in my house and I brought you here after I hit you with my car. Sorry again about that by the way." She smiled slightly. "You really aren't in much of a condition to be killing anyone though. You still look awful."

Michael looked down at himself. He did still have one or two bruises, and his skin was awfully pale still. The scars along his arms and chest were clearly visible, outlining the extent of the work 'The Lab' did on Michael, for whatever purpose they were trying to serve.

She shrugged and headed for the door. "Anyways since you are up now I'll get you something to eat. Be back in a moment..." As she left though, she forgot to close the door, giving him access to the rest of the house.

after she left, Michael crept to the door, cinching the bedsheet around his body in a sort of makeshift toga. With his hands free, he silently crept out into the hall, looking around as he did. He jumped, startled quite badly when he discovered the paintings hanging on the walls were moving; even moreso when he wasn't paying direct attention to them. Following the sound of her footsteps, Michael followed Theo through the house.

After about ten mintutes though, the doorway to the room she had put him in came up again. What had been happening was the house itself had been taking him in a circle, blocking him from any stairs or doorways.

Michael paused for a moment, cottoning on to the house's slight sentience.

"Right... if you don't stop screwing around with me right this minute, I'm gonna start going through the walls; violently." He said, cracking his fingers and neck dramatically to emphasize his point. He normally wasn't in the habit of knocking down strange walls, especially if they belonged to someone else. But then again, he wasn't used to an entire house trying to mess with him.

The only response was a subaudible chuckle that resonated from the house itself.

Michael scowled visibly at the reaction, balling up a fist. "Oh, smartass huh? Think I haven't got the heuvos?" He turned and slammed his fist into the wall nearest him, waiting for the satisfying feel of fist hitting drywall.

Instead the wall just seemed to abosrb his punch, sinking his hand and arm in what felt like pile of wet plastice wrap. The house chuckled more. It wasn't holding him capive in the wall. His hand would pull out freely.

Michael pulled his arm free, flexing his fingers slightly as he did. "Oh... so that's how its gonna be, is it?" he demanded, staring at the wall. "How's about I dig in and start tearing pieces out?" He demanded, scowling slightly.

The house flexed a bit, shrinking the width of the hallway three inches.

Michael smirked, noting he'd hit a nerve... or whatever a house had, in place of nerves.

"You don't scare me. I've seen and experienced worse things than you. In the grand scheme of things, you're nothing but a pile of splintered matchsticks on the scale of scary shit..."

suddenly the house seemed the snap back to normal.

"Who are you talking to?" Theo asked, saiding right behind him.

Michael froze, and then turned on his heel, staring face-to-face with Theo. He blushed ever so slightly, and then straightened up, looking around.

"Your house... I think it's trying to screw with me." He said, looking around. "Seems to like you well enough though..."

"How would my house screw with you?" She laughed slightly. "I think you must be seeing things. Let me take you back to your room and you can rest some more." She took his arm lightly, to guide him back.

Michael scowled slightly, knowing the house was laughing at him, even if it wasn't doing so right now. "Great, now I'm crazy on top of everything else..." he muttered irritably.

"You aren't crazy. Anybody would see things in houses like these. Plus you were hit by a car and whatever else you have gone through to get those scars. " she smiled at him, leading him back to his room. She had set up a table with some soup and toast. "Why don you sit down, have something to eat and get some rest. I'm sure you will feel better after that."

Michael grumbled slightly, but did as he was told, sitting down and eating, albeit begrudgingly. "That's the damnedest thing about it all though... I don't know what they did to me..." he said, examining the scars in his forearms. "They cut me open... a lot. That's about all I can tell you. I don't remember anything before the operation, whatever it was..."

She sat on the bed, looking him over. "I can't really tell either...though I could draw up like an xray or cat scan machine or something to try and help find out."

Michael murmured thoughtfully before pausing, fixing her with a curious stare.

"'Draw Up'? That's a... curious turn of phrase. What do you mean by that?" he asked, eating the soup she'd provided for him. It wasn't half-bad, as far as Michael could tell. But then, he couldn't remember anything besides the slop the Lab fed him after the operation so really, anything was delicious by that standard...

"Things I draw become real. So I could draw a xray machine and a real one would appear." She shrugged. "I mean that's how I made this house."