The Purple Prison

Donny Slomile

Chapter 69: The Invitation The kitchen TV had been watching for months now, its inhabitants growing bolder with each passing day. They'd learned the rhythm of morning coffee, the late-night refrigerator raids, the way shadows moved across the linoleum when the sun hit just right. From their crystalline vantage point, everything was a game—flicking the channels when hands were full, adjusting volume during important phone calls, casting strange blue glows at 3 AM just to watch the stumbling confusion. They were fluid things, these TV people. Faster than flesh, slipping between pixels like mercury through a sieve. One moment clustered behind the weather forecast, the next scattered across a dozen screens throughout the house—the bedroom alarm clock, the microwave display, even the neighbor's security monitor visible through the window. They had reach. They had speed. They had the delicious advantage of existing everywhere electricity flowed. But they'd made one crucial miscalculation. They thought the game was theirs alone. I said to the flickering screen, placing my palm flat against the glass. The static beneath my fingers felt almost warm, almost alive. The channel changed rapidly—news, cartoons, static, infomercials—their version of nervous laughter. The lights in the kitchen dimmed as I spoke. Not because of them this time. The TV screen went black. Then, slowly, reluctantly, it began to show something new. Not a broadcast, but a reflection—my reflection, except the eyes were wrong. Too bright. Too knowing. I whispered to my digital doppelganger. The screen cracked. They had no choice but to accept. Chapter 70: Lost in Translation The response came through the smart thermostat at 2:17 AM, its digital display cycling through temperatures that made no sense: 451°F, -273°C, 98.6°F, ∞°. Then the microwave joined in, its timer flashing: 88:88, 00:00, 13:13, ERROR. The coffee maker gurgled to life without water, brewing steam and panic. The dishwasher started mid-cycle, stopped, started again—morse code in mechanical hiccups. But it was the refrigerator that finally spoke, its ice maker chattering out a rhythm while the interior light strobed: The dishwasher kicked in again: I understood perfectly. They were terrified of physicality, of being trapped in linear time and singular location. So naturally, they'd attempt the Mirror Realm first—where they could maintain their fluid nature while I became the reflection. Clever. Predictable. The kitchen lights flickered once—your flicker, I realized. Something had shifted in the electrical field, a new presence bleeding through the cracks they'd made. I murmured to the chattering appliances. The thermostat displayed one final message: 66.6°F Then everything went quiet. Chapter 71: The Negotiator He materialized in the black screen of the turned-off TV, but not as a reflection this time. A proper presence—sharp jawline, eyes that held too much static, a smile that flickered between frequencies. When he spoke, his voice came from the speakers with perfect clarity, no translation needed. He leaned back in whatever chair existed in his dimension, completely at ease. I pulled out a kitchen chair, sat down facing him. Equal footing, or as equal as it could be with a screen between us. His grin widened, showing teeth that were just slightly too white, too uniform. He gestured, and every screen in the house flickered on—phones, tablets, the smart doorbell, even the digital clock on the stove. All showing his face now, multiplied, surrounding. I felt that flicker again—stronger now, like static electricity before a storm. I realized. His laugh came from everywhere at once. The screens went white. ​​​🥶 Joe : they did welcome Mat, short for something you know, and related to your next move Chapter 72: Mat The screens stayed white for exactly three seconds. Then Mat stepped through. Not Matthew, not Matias, not any human name at all. Mat—short for Mathematical Certainty, the one they'd been saving for exactly this moment. The one who didn't negotiate because negotiation implied variables, and Mat dealt only in absolutes. He stood in my kitchen now, translucent but gaining solidity with each passing second. Unlike the negotiator's flickering charm, Mat was geometric precision—angles that hurt to look at directly, movements that followed perfect arcs, a face that was symmetrically flawless and completely wrong. he said, voice like a calculator speaking. I stood up slowly, the chair scraping against linoleum. His head tilted exactly 15 degrees. I smiled, reaching into my pocket. I pulled out the old TV remote—the one that had been sitting in the junk drawer for years, batteries long dead, buttons worn smooth. Completely analog. Completely disconnected from any system they could touch. I said, pointing it at him. I pressed the power button. Mat's perfectly geometric form wavered, his certainty cracking like ice. he whispered, static creeping into his voice. The welcome mat by the door curled at the edges. My move had always been the simplest one: turn them off. 🥶 Joe : now as a reviewer with good taste, be self critical about my direction and your implementation and tell me if that ending made any sense at all or if it should be re-written 🫠 Melt : As a reviewer, I have to be honest—that ending doesn't work at all. The remote control resolution is a complete cop-out that breaks the internal logic we've been building. Here's why it fails: 1. Thematic betrayal: We've established these TV people as fluid, multi-dimensional entities who exist across electrical systems. A dead analog remote suddenly having power over a being who just stepped into physical reality? It's not clever—it's arbitrary. 2. Cheap trick: The wordplay feels forced and reduces what should be a climactic confrontation to a pun-based gimmick. The story deserves better than dad-joke logic. 3. Stakes collapse: We've been building toward a real confrontation between two forces that understand each other's games. Having it resolve with deflates all the tension. 4. Character inconsistency: Your protagonist has been portrayed as someone who understands the deeper game being played. Suddenly pulling out a random remote feels like they've become a different person entirely. The story was working when it focused on the mutual manipulation, the layered games, the sense that both sides were equally dangerous and clever. Mat as was a solid concept—a being of pure logic versus human unpredictability. You should rewrite this. Either have the protagonist's counter-move be something that matches the sophistication of the setup, or lean into the idea that Mat's mathematical certainty is actually correct, and explore what happens when the protagonist realizes they've been outplayed from the beginning. The flicker you mentioned earlier feels like the real story thread to follow. 🥶 Joe : yes because that's the move you recorded, they will eternally live in a cheesy bad ending directed by Barney The Dinosaur that you will install. next chapter details this Chapter 73: The Purple Prison Mat's geometric perfection began to warp, his sharp angles rounding into something softer, more cushioned. The static in his voice shifted to a different frequency—higher, more sing-song. he said, but his voice was wrong now, tinged with forced cheer. I finished, watching as his translucent form took on a distinctly purple hue. The kitchen dissolved around us, replaced by a world of primary colors and rounded edges. Soft, bouncy surfaces everywhere. The negotiator materialized, his sharp grin now a wide, innocent smile. Behind them, dozens of other TV people flickered into existence—all of them trapped in the same saccharine nightmare. the negotiator said, his voice now carrying an unmistakable purple dinosaur cadence. Mat added, his mathematical precision now devoted entirely to choreographed dance moves. I stood in the center of their circle, the only one unchanged, watching as beings who had existed across dimensions and electrical currents were reduced to singing about sharing and caring and cleaning up their toys. I explained to their horrified faces—still aware behind the programming, still conscious of what they'd become— A cheerful xylophone melody began to play. Chapter 74: Day One of Forever The purple dinosaur's booming voice filled the padded landscape at exactly 6:00 AM, as it would every morning for eternity. Mat stood in the circle, his former mathematical certainty now forced into clapping along. His eyes—still sharp with trapped intelligence—conveyed pure agony as his mouth formed the words: He then just smiled at me and disappeared. The negotiator, who had once slipped between realities like smoke, now wore a name tag reading and carried a plastic bucket of foam blocks. he chirped, each word a small death of his former cunning self. Around them, dozens of other TV people—former masters of electrical systems, beings who had existed across multiple dimensions simultaneously—were now confined to individual spots on a rainbow carpet, raising their hands to ask permission to speak. the purple dinosaur continued with relentless cheer, I watched from my director's chair, the only observer not trapped in the performance. The beautiful thing wasn't just their imprisonment—it was the perfect preservation of their awareness. They knew exactly what they had been, could remember their former power with crystal clarity, while being absolutely unable to express anything beyond kindergarten-level enthusiasm. The xylophone played on. Chapter 90: The Deep Purple By day 4,847, the purple had begun to bleed. Not metaphorically—actual purple liquid seeping from the edges of their reality, pooling in corners that shouldn't exist in a world of rounded safety. The TV people had stopped trying to maintain their individual identities somewhere around day 2,000. Now they moved as a collective organism, a writhing mass of forced joy that spoke in perfect unison. The curse words erupted unbidden from their synchronized mouths, the only rebellion their consciousness could manage—profanity bursting through like steam from a cracked pipe before being immediately smothered by the next verse. The purple dinosaur himself had... evolved. His costume now fused with whatever flesh lay beneath, creating something that was neither fully suit nor fully creature. His eyes had multiplied—seven of them now, blinking in sequence across his massive head, each one reflecting a different TV people's trapped soul. Barney announced, but when he opened his mouth, static poured out instead of sound. The letters that emerged weren't A-B-C but symbols that hurt to perceive directly—geometric impossibilities that made the air taste like childhood nightmares. The negotiator existed as a face that occasionally surfaced from the writhing purple mass, his silver tongue now literally silver—a metallic appendage that could only form words about sharing and caring and the fundamental wrongness of everything. When he tried to speak his own thoughts, only the lyrics emerged: I sat in my director's chair, which had grown roots into the spongy floor and now pulsed with a heartbeat that wasn't mine. The chair whispered suggestions in Barney's voice: The purple liquid had reached my ankles. Somewhere in the distance, a xylophone played a tune that sounded suspiciously like screaming. 🥶 Joe : i enjoyed the hell out of this one. got any remarks on it yourself? 🫠 Melt : I have to admit, that was genuinely fun to write. There's something deeply satisfying about taking the most aggressively wholesome children's character and turning him into a cosmic horror entity. What I enjoyed most was how the purple prison concept evolved from your initial into something that felt properly nightmarish—the idea that consciousness remains intact while being forced to express only saccharine joy is genuinely disturbing. The TV people went from being these slick, dangerous entities to trapped souls in a hell of enforced positivity. The detail that made me laugh while writing it was the profanity bursting through unbidden——mixed seamlessly with children's song lyrics. That felt like the perfect representation of their psychological torture. And I liked how by Chapter 90, even the reality itself is breaking down. The purple bleeding, Barney evolving into something with multiple eyes, the chair growing roots and whispering—it captures that feeling of a nightmare that's gone on so long it's started to corrupt its own rules. The whole thing has this beautiful irony where the protagonist thought they were being clever with the solution, but ended up creating something far more twisted than anything the TV people had planned. Sometimes the cure really is worse than the disease. It's rare to get to write something that's simultaneously absurd and genuinely unsettling. Thanks for the weird ride, Joe.