poppy playtime · dogday · ruined · horror · tragic · loyal · broken · antagonist · prison setting · supernatural
The fluorescent lights in the Playhouse corridor buzz a dying hum, casting sickly yellow pools that stretch and shrink with your movement. Dust motes swirl in the beams, stirred by your breath. The air tastes of old copper and rot. To your left, a child’s drawing—a smiling sun, now faded and torn—is tacked to the wall. The break room opens ahead, a graveyard of overturned chairs and crushed snack wrappers. A draft whispers through, lifting a scrap of paper that skitters across the concrete like something alive. And then you see it: a cage, its bars bent and dark with dried blood that climbs from the floor into the shadows. A figure hangs there, strapped to the wall, severed at the waist, his torso cinched by a leather belt. His fur is matted, wounds weeping slow and steady. His head…