Give it Your All

Mandy had always been terrified of the dark. She looked at the fading flame on her torch and imagined it snuffing out, leaving her in blackness so complete she would be unable to see her hand in front of her face. She imagined stumbling forward, blind, losing her place in the maze. She imagined the walls closing in...

Mandy needed light, and there was only one way to get it. Hands shaking, she undid the knot in the sleeves of her cardigan and pulled it from her waist. It was made of red wool, and had gone quite nicely with her plaid skirt and her white button-up blouse. Oh well, this outfit was doomed anyway.

The room had better reimburse her for all these lost and destroyed clothes, she thought wryly, wondering if the other members of her group were experiencing similar travails. Wincing, she held the cardigan to the flame and then wrapped it around the stool leg. The air felt cool against the back of her thighs.

The torch roared to life, and Mandy continued mapping the maze. She was now down to three items of clothing: bra, panties and blouse. Hopefully she wouldn't have to burn any of those.

Mandy went down to the last page of her notebook mapping out the maze. The light from the torch was low again when she finally saw another light—the light signalling the end of the maze. Overjoyed, she rushed towards it, crossing the threshold just as her torch died. "Yes, yes yes! Haha yes! I made it! And I only burned... my cardigan... I really liked that cardigan. You'll be hearing from my lawyers!"

Mandy blinked in the bright light of the new room, which felt positively cavernous after all her time in the maze. There was a large, comfortable-looking armchair against one of the walls, which Mandy sank into gratefully, having not had enough room to sit while in the maze. From this comfortable vantage point, she let her eyes adjust to the light, and then looked out at the room beyond her.

After filtering water and setting off fire alarms, this again looked like a more conventional escape room area. There were some weird symbols on one of the walls, a map full of drawing pins on another, a few tables with scattered papers, and a whole lot of locked boxes. Mandy sighed in relief at this reprieve from clothing damage puzzles, and, after luxuriating in the chair for another minute or two, got up to start solving.

RIIIIIP. Mandy's heart skipped a beat at the sound, suddenly feeling the air somewhere new. Scared of what she would see, she slowly turned her head back. Then she screamed.

Caught on a pin jutting out of the chair's upholstery was a substantial portion of the pink cotton that once made up Mandy's panties. The whole left side, including a substantial area of the seat, had torn clean off. Mandy pulled at the loose ends, but the garment's structural integrity was now thoroughly compromised. Without her hand in place, it slipped limply down her thigh.

"What. The. Fuck. That wasn't even a puzzle! It's not fair!" Mandy glanced down at the remains of her cute pink panties. They were beyond salvation.

She assessed the situation. Her blouse was just about long enough to cover her pussy and most of her ass, as long as she moved relatively carefully. But now, for the first time, she was really exposed. What would the others think once she finally rejoined them? It was one thing to walk around without a skirt, but having no panties on either was a whole new level. Maybe, if she was really careful, they might not notice. She could only hope.

Mandy picked one part of her panties up from the floor and the other part up from the chair, scrunched them up, and put them in her blouse pocket. There was no point in worrying about them for the moment, while she was still alone. The need for worry would come later.

For the next half-hour, she diligently worked across the escape room puzzles, trying not to think about the breeze between her legs, or the way her blouse would rise up on her ass when she crouched down to open a lock box. There was no-one there to see her like this, or so she hoped.

Finally, Mandy found the final number for the combination lock attached to the next door, unlocked it and proceeded through.

A fashion mannequin stood in the middle of the next room. It had on a plaid skirt, stockings, chunky black heels, a cardigan tied around its waist, and a fishing rod in one hand. Mandy squealed with delight and ran towards it. "Guess you guys don't want legal action after all!" she yelled at the ceiling.

But when she tried to take the clothing off the mannequin, it wouldn't budge. The arms of the cardigan refused to come untied, and the skirt and shoes remained stubbornly in place no matter how much she pulled. Mandy crouched down and looked under the mannequin's skirt, confirming the presence of pink panties, which appeared to be glued on like the rest of the outfit. "What kind of sick joke is this?!" she cried, feeling the beginnings of tears in her eyes.

As she stood back up, she noticed a message scrawled across the mannequin's torso. It read, "COMPLETE ME." It was a female mannequin, with two plastic bumps on its chest. The meaning was clear.

It was then that Mandy realized the escape room had won. Despite her minor, temporary victory in the fire alarm room, she had lost garment after garment, and was now required to shed the garments that remained to solve this hopefully final puzzle.

In vain she searched the room for some alternate solution, or an additional puzzle to distract her and delay the inevitable, but there was only the mannequin, and there was only one way to proceed. She fingered the top button of her blouse.

No, no, no, this couldn't be what she was about to do. She couldn't let this escape room strip her of everything. She paced around the room again, looking high and low for something, anything that she had missed. It was then that she realized that there was a window in set into the top of the door to the next room. On the other side, she saw room filled with racks of clothing. Dresses, skirts, blouses, pants, shirts, jackets, and everything else one could want.

Well, that was some relief. And if she just solved this puzzle, she could get into that room. Considering things logically, it seemed worth it. To trade her blouse and bra for a full outfit, at the cost of a few seconds of nudity. That felt... acceptable.

Still, Mandy's hands shook as she slowly undid the buttons on her blouse, one by one, until it hung open, exposing her bra and bare, shaved pussy to the world. She then undid her bra and walked over to the mannequin still holding it up to her chest. After a deep breath, she switched the lacy pink undergarment from her chest to the mannequin's in one quick movement. There was a sense of relief as her breasts dropped—she often took off her bra at home after a long day at work—but that was more than counteracted by the shame she now felt at standing exposed in the middle of a weird warehouse.

As she snapped the bra strap closed, a single green light above the exit door lit up. A second light next to remained dark. Just to be sure, Mandy walked across the room, open blouse billowing behind her, and tried the door. Locked. One more item of clothing was required, of course. In her open blouse, she was already functionally naked. Now it was time to get fully naked.

Mandy returned to the center of the room. She let the blouse slide off her shoulders and down her arms, and then placed it on the mannequin. She buttoned it up to the top and smoothed it out, then took a moment to look at it. Collared white blouse, blue plaid skirt, red cardigan tied around waist, sheer stockings and black shoes. This giant plastic doll was now dressed exactly as she had been upon entering the escape room. And she was not dressed at all.

She took the scraps of pink fabric that had been her panties out of the blouse pocket and turned them over on her palms. She could try to put them on somehow, but this seemed pointless with the clothing room just up ahead. So she sighed and dropped them on the floor.

She'd done a lot of things in escape rooms over the years, but this was the first time she had been naked in one. Would she tell the others about what had happened to her today? They'd probably ask why she was wearing different clothes when they saw her. Once she was safely dressed, this could be quite an amusing story, and it would certainly demonstrate her dedication to the team. Though it might give the boys ideas for future rooms...

The second green light had come on, and the lock on the exit door had disengaged. Mandy skipped hurriedly to the door, taking a few fervent glances back at the mannequin wearing her clothes. By now she knew better than to try to remove any of them before leaving.

Mandy opened the door slowly, cautiously peering around it. She hadn't seen a single person since entering her chosen door from the first room. But now that she was totally naked, a natural caution overcame her. She knew that she'd rejoin the others at some point, and she couldn't just barge in on them in the all together. Imagine if they were in this clothing room! She shuddered, but consoled herself with the thought that, should that be the case, she would be able to make a dive for one of the racks.

"Hello?" she asked cautiously.

There was no response. After five seconds, she decided it would be safe to proceed. The clothing on the racks looked warm and inviting. Already she could see a skirt similar to the one she'd previously been wearing, and a blouse that looked a little better than the one she'd left on the mannequin. If the room would let her keep what she chose, maybe there wouldn't be a need for a lawsuit after all. Well, she might still sue for emotional distress.

Mandy stepped through the doorway, eyes focused on her prospective outfit. But as her feet crossed the threshold, they gave way from under her.

The floor! The floor was falling! And so was Mandy!

III

Mandy screamed as she fell. The clothing room disappeared from view and was replaced by pure darkness. Her butt hit smooth, slanted plastic, and she began to slide down a long, winding tube, screaming the whole way. "My clothes!"

After what seemed like an eternity of skin sliding down plastic, the ride came to an end. The tube stopped abruptly in the middle of a dusty room and Mandy shot off the end of it, landing face-first on a slightly uneven surface of soft rubber. She lay still for a while, wondering if she'd broken anything. But her body felt fine, if a little cold.

"Uurgh," she groaned, finding the strength to roll over onto her back. She blinked her eyes rapidly, only to suddenly have them filled with a blinding light.

"Mandy!" shouted a familiar voice. "Holy shit!"

She put up a hand to shielded her eye from the light, which quickly receded. Then her brain connected the dots of what was currently happening to her. The voice she'd heard belonged to Stephen, leader of the Escape Artists. He had been shining a flashlight in her face. And now he was shining it on her body. Her naked body.

"Eek!" she squealed. But before she could move her arms to cover herself, she felt hands clasp each of hers and hold her arms out to the side.

"Mandy, whatever you do, don't move," said Caroline. "Thomas, hold firm to that arm."

Mandy whimpered. What the hell was going on now?

The light shone on her body again, moving around slowly and methodically, a little too slowly, really. "Yep," said Stephen. "It's all over her."

Thomas gasped, "Oh shit, Mandy, I didn't realize you were... um, totally, uh..."

"What happened to your clothes?" Caroline asked. "Wait, you can tell me later. What's important for now is that you don't touch yourself."

The boys snickered.

"Ew guys, get your heads out of the gutter. Mandy, look down."

Mandy did as she was commanded. She saw her an expanse of pale flesh. Breasts, stomach, pussy, legs, all exposed to the eyes of her friends. And across her bare torso, an intricate series of markings in glistening purple ink. "Is that... a map?" she asked.

Caroline nodded, fixing Mandy's gaze. "It's the map we need to solve the final puzzle. And the ink is still drying. Hence, don't move."

"But Caroline, I'm—"

"Naked, yes, I can see that. But we only have one copy of this map, and we're mere minutes away from solving this room in under four hours. Just keep still, and we'll beat the record. By an hour!"

Mandy glanced at the timer on her watch, the one covering she had managed to retain. With everything else that had happened, she'd totally forgotten to check the time. The timer read 03:47. Caroline was right.

Thomas shone another light on Mandy's back. "There's some back here too, guys. This is a pretty big map."

"And it's got a lot of intricate details," added Stephen. "We'll have to study it carefully." He was already paying intense attention to the markings across Mandy's breasts.

Caroline rolled her eyes. "Try to focus on ink parts, guys. And Mandy, just hold still. If we want to beat the record, we've all got to work together."

For the next few minutes, Mandy sat, and then, when it was pointed out that some of the map had printed on her ass, stood in silence. The rubber press that she'd landed on seemed to be single-use, crushed by her weight, so the map really was only on her body. A rolled up sheet of white paper lay unused in one corner of the room.

Mandy was thankful for the room's dim half-light, which shrouded her from view in the brief moments that a flashlight beam wasn't exploring her body.

The other three Escape Artists scurried around, fiddling with compasses and astrolabes and telegraph machines, unlocking boxes and reading clues, and taking every opportunity to study another corner of the map. The boys seemed to divide the bulk of the map analysis between them, with Stephen focusing on the top half and Thomas focusing on the bottom half. Given how often she'd caught Thomas looking down when walking behind Caroline, she figured this had more to do with each one's favourite part of the female anatomy than anything else.

Mandy noticed Caroline throwing a few inscrutable glances their way as Thomas studied part of the map that had imprinted on her ass. Was she... jealous? She didn't even like him!

Stephen's next map consultation took a while longer than usual. Mandy found it best to turn her head to the side and avoid eye-contact, pretend this wasn't happening. The flashlight beam was warm against her chest. "Uh, Mandy, could you..." Stephen asked, determinedly looking her in the eyes. "There's a bit I can't see just beneath your boobs."

Mandy looked down. Stephen's hand was hovering dangerously close to her chest. She cringed and put her hands to her breasts, lifting them so that Stephen could inspect the undersides, which he did for a solid minute, flicking the flashlight this way and that.

"Ah, that's it!" he said at last. "Thanks Mandy, you're a real team player!"

The solution to the final puzzled seemed to have something to do with the distance between different capital cities on the map's imaginary fantasy landscape. "We'll need to check the scale, just to be sure," Thomas said, pointing towards the scale marker printed on Mandy's left hipbone. He and Stephen locked eyes in a silent challenge. Mandy gulped.

"I'll do it!" cried Caroline, to mixed disappointment and relief. Then, acting with clinical quickness and precision, she measured the size of the scale between two figures and quickly jabbed those across Mandy's belly, breasts and back, rattling off numbers.

"That tickles!"

Stephen and Thomas grumbled to themselves, but then set about putting Caroline's numbers into the final lock. They were correct. The padlock clicked open, the final box was opened and the final key produced. Stephen held it aloft, like King Arthur wielding Excalibur, and clicked it in the lock of the final door.

There was a brief buzzing sound as the door swung open, and then a mechanical voice spoke from the ceiling. "Congratulations, your time was... three hours, fifty-eight minutes, twelve seconds."

The Escape Artists looked at each other. They had succeeded in beating the previous record by more than an hour. "Yes!" shouted Thomas. "We did it! And by a whole lot!"

The team ran around high-fiving and hugging each other, elated by their victory. "Yes yes yes! We did it! We really did it!" Mandy was just as happy as the rest of the team, and, as she normally did after they beat a record, started dancing around madly. Then she felt the eyes of her teammates on her body, remembered her state of undress, and immediately turned bright red. "Uh, guys, could—"

Mandy's words were interrupted by the entrance of a stranger, who now stood before the team, slow clapping. It was a woman in her forties, dressed in blue overalls. "Congratu—oh wow, are you... what happened?"

Mandy blushed deeper and wrapped her arms around herself. The light pouring in from the entrance made her state of undress abdundantly clear.

"Uh, well, uh," the woman continued, her composure shattered. "Right, well. Uhm. Your team, the Escape Artists, has set a new record for the completion of my Mega Ultra Escape Room, beating the previous record by over an hour. This is highly unusual, but I'll grant that it may be possible. Please, tell me how you did it. Starting with you." Her gaze settled on Mandy.

"Could I get something to wear first?"

The woman put a finger to her chin, a funny look in her eyes. "No, I think you can stay like that a while. At least until I figure out whether or not you're a cheater."

Mandy's previous stridency withered at the woman's penetrating gaze. Her friends made no move to contradict the lady or insist that she get some clothing before saying anything. The boys obviously wanted to keep her this way as long as possible, those dicks, and who knew what Caroline was thinking. Mandy was starting to realize she didn't really have anything in common with these people apart from their shared love for escape rooms. And hers had taken a heavy knock today.

The woman in blue overalls appeared very serious and proper, completely unlike the fat, perverted old man Mandy had been imagining as the room's creator. She thought back to the curses she'd leveled at the room's designer and suddenly felt very small. Then, with a quaver in her voice, she recounted how she'd solved her portion of the escape room. She recounted every puzzle, every point at which she'd lost some piece of clothing. Reliving the whole thing in her mind while standing naked in front of everyone was humiliating, and she was relieved that the woman didn't interrupt her with questions.

"... and then I got the map all over my skin and the others told me not to move because the ink was still wet."

"Extraordinary," said the woman. "Those are some very... unorthodox... solutions. I wonder why Paul didn't alert me earlier?"

"P-Paul?" asked Mandy.

"He's the control room guy. Watches the teams and opens the doors, resets the puzzles, that sort of thing. You wouldn't have met him, there's no intercom system because we don't do hints for this room."

Mandy shuddered. So this Paul was the one she'd been shouting at all day. The one she'd been... stripping for. On camera. She felt a bit better about the cursing.

"Well, he probably didn't want me to spoil the show," the woman continued, raising an eyebrow. "Although really, I ought to disqualify your team for your use of personal items, but... no, I don't think that would be in the spirit of the room. You certainly displayed ingenuity and no small amount of bravery!"

Mandy couldn't believe what she was hearing. "What? Unorthodox solutions? What are you saying? But... but my challenges were designed so that losing my clothing was the only solution!"