You walk on the blacktop walkway around lake towards the shining lights of the carnival. A young family passes you by, the little boy giggling excitedly and holding a stuffed animal. You smile. It's too bad you discovered this without your friends, they'd love this place...
The fairgrounds are on huge field of green grass. Booths and rides and food trucks and animal shows line the streets at old angles, and you are jostled and bumped constantly by the huge crowd. You feel your stomach rumbling and walk towards the food trucks. You stop in front of the hot dog one and you can smell them being fried on the grill. You lick your lips and step up to the counter, where an overweight cook with an orange beard and a green shirt stands. "I'll take one hot dog, please." You say, reaching into your pocket for your wallet. "ONE DOG!" the cook yells, and pulls out the tip jar. You frown when you pat your pocket and find you have forgotten your wallet. "Uh, I don't have my wallet..." you stammer nervously to the cook. The cook rolls his eyes and yells "CANCEL THAT DOG!". He looks down at you irritably from the window and says, "Next time, remember your wallet."
Sighing, you turn and are about to leave the carnival (what's good a carnival without money? How are you gonna get on rides and stuff?) when you see an arrow-shaped sign standing in the middle of the path. MONEY, it proclaims in huge black letters. PLAY OUR RIDCIOUSLY EASY GAME AND GET HUGE BUCK$ IN RETURN. Something in the back of your mind tries to tell you how deceptively easy this task is, but the scent of the food trucks and your rumbling stomach are more than enough to drive you to follow the signs. You turn and follow the arrow's direction between two tents.
THIS WAY, says another sign. It's pointing right too. You go right and find yourself facing a small wooden platform, raised about four feet off the ground and a tiny staircase leading up. It's surrounded on three sides by large colorful tents. You are puzzled. There's no game here. Shrugging your shoulders, you walk up the stairs and stand on the middle of the platform. You look up at the evening sky, on fire with oranges, yellows, reds, and a few twinges of navy blue. You look down and notice five seconds too late that you're standing on the outline of a trapdoor.
It opens without warning and you find yourself falling into a pit of blackness. You scream as you look up at the square of evening sky get farther and farther away as you fall. The door closes and for one nanosecond you see the words HA HA written on the underside before it becomes too dark to read. You fall for another twenty seconds before you hit something soft. You shake your head and look down and see you're sitting on a mattress. You roll of the mattress and hit the floor with a dull thud. You groan and realize you were laying on several mattresses piled on top of each other.
The room you've landed in is a dimly lit room with one white lightbulb hanging from a string by the ceiling. The walls, ceiling, and floor are made of metal with a few red stripes around them. You look forward and see the outline of a door in the wall but no handle. Puzzled, you knock on the door with your fist and the "door" lifts up into the doorframe until you are able to walk through. You hear a soft thump as the door wheezes back into place behind you.
You're standing in a wide hallway with grayish-black carpet lined with many, many doors like the one you just entered from. Long fluorescent lights cover the ceiling, making the passageway extremely bright. The hallway curves out of sight to your left and goes on for an unfathomable distance to your right. You look back and see the door you came from is labeled ENTERANCE - ONE WAY. If there's an entrance, there must be an exit... right?
You run down the hallway to the right, reading the names as you go, but none of them fit your criteria. You start to run faster as the names blur and blur until you can't read them. Deciding this is getting you nowhere, you come to a screening halt in front of a long line of doors and inspect them. You decide to go through...