1/14/22 Find Your Card (Part 1)

Find Your Card (Part 1)

A small crowd of people wake up in an unfamiliar room amongst strangers. There are no objects in the room that can be moved, no one has any personal belongings with them, it is just the people in the room and the clothes on their backs.

“How did I get here?” a man in an orange Hawaiian shirt asks nervously.

“Probably the same way as the rest of us,” a taller man with gray hair answers.

“And how did we get here?” a red haired woman questions the gray haired man.

The man walks to the red haired woman and sternly gazes down at her, “I have no idea lady,” he says with an intimidating tone. The room is filled with silence. Everyone stays silent, seeing who in the room is going to make the next move.

Seeing the scared reaction on the red haired woman's face, the man is filled with sympathy, “I’m sorry ma’am, I think we are all a little scared and not quite thinking straight.”

The woman accepts his attempt at apologizing, “I agree,” is all she says.

Another void of silence fills the room. With that interaction ended no one knows what to do next, if they should talk or remain silent. Everyone just stands and looks at each other.

“Alright we are not going to figure anything out by just standing here and doing nothing,” a woman says, emerging from the crowd into the center of the room. 

“Well what should we be doing?” the man in the Hawaiian shirt asks.

“Let's start by getting some basic facts and then we can try to figure out a plan.” All eyes are now on the bold woman in the center, filled with anticipation of what she will say next. “Alright I want everyone to make a nice line around the room, let's figure out how many people we have in here.” 

The people begin lining up on the walls as the room is not big enough for one straight line. The woman stays in the center and once all the people are nicely arranged she begins to count. “Ok, including myself, I count 52 people in here, but just to make sure I didn’t miscount, does someone want to volunteer to do a recount?”

A man in a brown sweater jacket steps forward raising his hand saying a quiet, “I will.” The woman nods at him as the two trade places. The man, nervous by all the attention, meticulously counts every person. “I count 52 as well.”

“Thank you,” the woman says as she takes back her spot in the middle. “Ok, since you are all scattered around the walls, I want everyone to look for a door of some sort, or a break in the wall, something that might suggest an opening.”

As everyone turns to follow the woman's instructions a young man, no older than 25 speaks up, “Why are we listening to this lady? What if she is the one who brought us here and this is some sick game she is playing with us?”

“Look I woke up here just as confused as the rest of you, but we needed to do something and since no one else seemed willing to step up as some sort of leader, I decided to do it,” the woman boldly proclaims, “But if you have a problem with me being up here, you are welcome to come take my place,” she says, practically challenging the young man.

The man begins to panic, not expecting the response. He turns back to the wall and everyone continues looking for a crack, or something. People search the walls and the floor and some even work together to check the ceiling, but all to no avail, the room seems to have no exit. As the teamwork comes to a halt, everyone begins to think, trying to process their situation and find a solution.

“Ok, so there is no exit or any sign of an exit that we can find, I saw a few of you trying to break the walls down but that didn’t work. So we are stuck in here, with no clues of how we got here or what to do,” the woman says, slightly defeated.

“Is there something special about the number 52?” the red haired woman from before asks, looking to the people around the room.

“Well there's 52 weeks in a year, or 52 cards in a deck, not including the jokers. I don’t think that tells us anything though,” a middle aged blonde haired man says. That seemed to be the thing to say however, from beneath the floor images of playing cards light up. On the ceiling shine the words, “Find Your Card”

Everyone turns to the middle aged man, “I guess it told us something,” he says with a relieved chuckle.

To Be Continued

1/14/22