Sometimes, along the walls of the hallways and strange rooms, there were clocks. The little group had no way of knowing if they were correct or not, but they seemed to all be telling the same time, so they all were roughly aware of how much time was passing: it was a lot.

Eventually, the clocks became more of a nuisance than a help, and the group started ignoring them whenever they showed up. The insistent ticking was starting to sound annoying.

Also, sometimes there was food. Again, the group had no way of telling if it was good or not, but they suddenly found that they were so hungry that they scarfed it down within seconds anyway, barely caring if it was good or bad. The first time, it had been set up like a feast, and Dipper, Wirt and Norman had finished the whole thing. After that, it showed up as a fruit bowl, and they ate that, too.

But as they continued on through the house, the food started to get worse and worse, more and more old and rotten, until it was more mold and flies than food. Dipper, Wirt and Norman stopped eating them, no matter how hungry they were.

And then there were the paintings, paintings that never appeared in the original house, but were so prominent now that Wirt found himself second guessing that. At first, they started out full of all kinds of different people, some who appeared in other paints, and some who only made one appearance. But soon, the amount of people in the paintings started thinning out, until there was only one person, and the paintings became portraits: an old lady with kind eyes, staring out at the person looking in. She looked like she had something to tell them.

Norman started pointing out how the portraits seemed to glow, but no one else could see it. Once, Norman told them that one of the pictures blinked. Wirt didn't know if he was joking or not.

Their little group walked through the halls for a long time, enough for the rooms, where everyone was stranger than the last, started to blur together. Either that, or they were going in a loop of the same rooms every time, but Wirt's direction sense was pretty good, and they'd pretty much only went straight one way. They didn't take many breaks, and they'd stopped talking among themselves about the rooms as that quickly got boring, so they were usually walking in silence until someone broke this. This time was the longest yet, and when Wirt (accidently) glanced at the clock, he saw it had been nearly two hours since they talked last, at least until Adam groaned and sat down, stopping the group in its tracks.

"Come on, Adam, you don't get tired," Dipper reminded, but he himself sounded exhausted, and Wirt, too, found fatigue weighing on him like a heavy blanket. He was going to collapse under it soon.

"I know I don't!" Adam huffed at him from the ground, and he didn't even sound remotely tired, like Dipper had said. "But I do get annoyed, and you know what? This isn't working! It just looks like we're going somewhere because the rooms keep changing, but we're not! We might as well just be standing still for all this is doing!"

Dipper and Norman frowned at him, but Wirt could see that they saw what he was saying. None of them were really walking towards a destination, they were only wandering around aimlessly.

"Then what do we do instead?" Dipper asked him, and that was a good point. Apparently, unless the house wanted them to go somewhere, it wasn't going to happen.

Adam didn't answer right away, he just hummed, looking thoughtfully at the green, liquid-like walls around them. When Wirt reached out to touch them, it felt like he was touching some loosely held-back jelly stuff, or maybe it was more like a sort of disgusting goo. Wirt quickly took his hand away before he could do something he regretted, but Adam gave him a look.

"No, Wirt, hold on," he said, and Wirt froze, his hand still reaching out. Adam turned to the wall, glaring at it. "I don't think we're going to get anywhere by playing by this the house's rules. We've got to divert somehow."

"Divert?" Dipper repeated, and Adam nodded.

"Make our own path," he confirmed. "Wirt, try and get through this wall."

Wirt was taken back. "W-What?" he said. "Me? Why do I have to do it?"

"Why- well, any of you can do it, just hurry up!" Adam told them, and Norman reached out, taking a hold of the strange of the strange substance, and pulled, it looked like he was pulling at a clear plastic bag, and as he pulled, the green jelly underneath pulsed threateningly.

"That doesn't look safe," Ash noted, but Norman shrugged.

"Adam's right," he said. "We can't keep going around in circles forever. Besides... I think there's something in there."

At first, nothing happened as the plastic was stretched to its limit, unbreakable, made to last forever. As he pulled, Wirt suddenly remembered the rope. Norman's hands had returned to normal, but Wirt's hands had never hurt in the first place, and they still felt completely fine, with that slight pink sheen on them.

Suddenly, the plastic broke, and Norman fell back with the goo spilling all of him, like a blanket. Almost immediately, it began steaming, and Norman screamed.

"Norman!" Dipper cried, surging forward. After a second of pure horror, Wirt did as well, and they both grabbed their friend, pulling him back.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," Norman gasped, and when he was out of the goo, they saw he was holding something in his hands. "The plastic protected me... mostly."

Norman rubbed at his arm, and Wirt caught a glimpse of a horrible burn mark on his arm, reaching from his elbow up to his shoulder. Dipper and Wirt stared at it, and then exchanged a wince.

Meanwhile, the goo was still spilling out into the room, marching out of it's protective seal with a vengeance, and Dipper and Wirt pulled their friend back, nearly to the door.

"What now?!" Wirt cried out to Adam, who looked like he was trying to avoid the goo until his mind caught up to him, and he stood in the midst of it, unharmed.

"I-," Adam glanced at the goo, which had no sign of stopping or running out. "I don't know!!"

Dipper rolled his eyes, and reached forward.

"Here!" he said, pulling at it until it tore. He ripped it into pieces, passing some to Wirt and Norman. "The plastic protected Norman last time, so we'll use it again! Put it on your feet!"

After a split second of hesitant, Norman and Wirt were quick to comply, and as he moved, Wirt saw a glimpse of dark marks on Norman's fingers, and he winced as he moved. Wirt blinked. Perhaps the plastic didn't protect him as much as he let on...

"Oh, you were right, Adam!" Ash suddenly cried, poking his head out from the hole Norman had ripped. "There is something back here! You can stop the goop!"

"I can?" Adam cried, and Ash paused.

"...Well, not you," he corrected, and he turned to Dipper, Norman and Wirt. "But, you know, someone who can touch it."

The three of them looked at each other. They all knew what the other was thinking, but...

Eventually, Norman stood up, looking weary. "Here, I've already been, so-."

"You got burned, Norman!" Dipper interrupted quickly. "That's not worth it!"

"Well, we can't let two people get burned," Norman muttered in defense, but as he flexed his fingers, he winced. "We need to decide quickly. You both can go wait in another room while I-."

"I'll go," Wirt offered, and the other two gave him a surprised look. Wirt understood, after all, that was a big turn around earlier, when he refused to touch the goo, but they really didn't have time for that. Wirt shook his head. "I... I'll be fine, I have an idea. Just give me your guys' plastic, and you can wait in the other room."

"What idea-What!?" Dipper asked. "What are you talking about, Wirt?"

"What are you planning?" Norman asked, and he looked just as nerve-wracked as Dipper.

Wirt shrugged, uncomfortable. "Just trust me, I'll be fine, probably."

Dipper still looked unsure, but the goo was climbing up, and they had to make a decision soon, or they were all going to get burned. Norman shook his head, and pulled them both along.

"Here, first we'll go in here and make sure you're protected," Norman told him, pushing open a door. As soon as they were all in, Dipper quickly shut the door behind them. Adam and Ash popped in after.

"Ash, keep an eye on the level of goo, please?" Norman asked, and Ash blinked, and then nodded. Norman turned back to Wirt, and took his own makeshift plastic shoes and pants off of himself, giving it to Wirt. "Here, we'll make this quick."

Dipper frowned, a bead of worry in his forehead, but after a second of thought, he sighed, taking his plastic off, too. "I guess... If we have to do it. Be safe, Wirt."

"I-I'll try," Wirt said, and he noticed he was stuttering again. He really was nervous, huh?

"Put on like a spacesuit," Adam suggested, and under his instructions, Wirt was able to wrap the plastic around himself in a way that felt mostly protective and hole-less. However, after a bit of though, he forgoed the plastic helmet because he still kind of needed to see and breathe.

"Yeah, that looks good," Adam eventually decided, smiling. "Man, I used to do this all the time with Kai and Mira."

Wirt gave him a strange look. "You used to wrap each other in plastic?"

"No, cosplay!" Adam corrected, but the he thought about it. "Well, I guess it's sort of the same thing. Anyway, we used to make pretty good cosplays."

"Hm," Wirt said. Once, he'd tried to cosplay Robert Frost, but he'd been disappointed by how many people just thought he was wearing his normal clothes (technically, he HAD been wearing his normal clothes, but that was only because he wasn't willing to pay for anything else).

"You seem to be good..." Dipper said, stepping back, but he still didn't look very convinced himself. "Ash, how high did the goo get?"

Ash pulled his head out of the door. "Uh... it's going a lot slower now. It's like up to my knees," he told them, showing them with his own knees.

Wirt gulped. He had made the observation earlier that it LOOKED like it was alive, but was it really alive, and waiting for him? Wirt gulped.

"Are you ready?" Norman asked him, and even now, he still didn't seem completely on board this idea, like Dipper. Wirt nodded, trying to keep his own fear off his face, but he was certain he was failing.

"Y-Yeah, I am," he said, nervously. Adam nodded at him.

"Alright," he said. "Me and Ash will guide you."

"If... you say so," Wirt said haltingly. And with nothing else to do, he stepped forward, opening the door to the creepy green goo filling the room. It seemed he had been right, all at once, the goo seemed to surge towards him. Wirt backed up quickly, and the goo seemed to follow him, right up to the door that had been closed behind him.

"What are you waiting for?" Adam called, snapping Wirt out of his thoughts.

"Come on, over here!" Ash called to him, slightly kinder, and Wirt instantly rushed over. After all, he only had until the goo reached his head, and it was already up to his waist.

"Follow me," Ash told him, and Wirt did, keeping close to him as he went through the hole Norman made. In the hole, goo rushed at him at both sides from the wall. Wirt stood on his tiptoes, but even that was a close call, and the good was rising by the second, now nearly up to his neck.

"Oh no," he heard Ash mutter, and he craned his neck to try and take a look. When he saw it, his eyes widened.

"Oh no," he said, because through Ash, he saw a waterfall of goo pouring in from somewhere. To get to the other side, he would have to go through that, somehow.

"What's the hold up?!" Adam cried from behind Wirt, but before anyone could answer, Adam apparently figured it out, and he swear under his breath. "Dammit! I guess we should have had that helmet..."

Wirt didn't trust himself to answer, little prinks of pain from goo droplets were already landing on his face, and he didn't want it in his mouth.

"Hm..." Adam said, like he was thinking. "Hold on... I think I still enough left, hold on!"

With that, Adam disappeared, but before Wirt could even begin to wonder where he'd gone, Adam had appeared again, carrying a sheet of plastic.

"Here!" he cried, sounding panicked. "Take it! Take it before I-!"

Before Wirt's very eyes, the plastic dropped through Adam's hands, falling down towards the goo. Before it could touch, though, Wirt quickly grabbed it, and using it as an umbrella, ran through the goo water as quick as he could, right before the goo closed up behind him.

Wirt laid on the floor, relieved, but he didn't get anytime to relax, because suddenly the goo was seeping into this room.

"Over here, over here!" Ash called to him, motioning to a wheel resting on a pipe. Wirt quickly surged up and gripped it.

"Turn it!" Ash demanded, and Wirt tried to, but the wheel slipped from under his plastic gloves. No matter how hard he gripped it or turned it, the wheel stayed strong, not moving an ich.

"On come on!" Adam groaned. "You got to be- What are you doing. Wirt? What are you doing?!"

"I'll be fine."

Adam gave him a look of disbelief.

"Wirt, stop, you'll just hurt yourself again!" Ash cried, but it was too late. Wirt shredded his plastic gloves off, and then gripped the wheel with his bare hands. With the power of his panic and fear combined, the wheel finally began to turn, and somewhere, Wirt heard a drain gurgle.