Free The Creature from Club Lagoona by R.L. Stine

squeezed.
    I couldn’t use my hands anymore. Now what? I refused to give up. I shook with disgust, but I couldn’t think of anything else to do.
    I opened my mouth wide. On the count of three, I told myself.
    One. Two.
    Chomp! My teeth dug into the tentacle.
    Yuck! Bleehhh! A horrible taste filled my mouth.
    And nothing happened. The creature didn’t even seem to know I had bitten it.
    I tried again. This time I aimed my mouth at a sucker. Maybe they would be more sensitive.
    Chomp!
    Ugh! The rubbery sucker wriggled in my mouth. Disgusting slime oozed into my mouth and down my chin.
    The tentacle thrashed, but it didn’t release me.
    Another tentacle reached for my head and wrapped around it like a turban. The tentacles bound me up like a mummy. Then another tentacle floated in front of me.
    Thwap! A gigantic sucker as large as my head landed square on my face.
    I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even see.
    I was doomed!

17

    I gathered the little bit of strength I had left. I couldn’t give up. I had to make one last try.
    I jerked my head from side to side wildly.
    I kicked and squirmed and thrust my arms and legs out.
    I opened my mouth and screamed harder and louder than I ever screamed in my whole life.
    It worked.
    When I opened my eyes, I wasn’t drowning.
    I wasn’t even in the water.
    I was in a dark and quiet room. Alone. I was sitting in a deep, comfortable chair.
    I was okay!
    I glanced down at myself.
    The suckers! The creature’s suckers were still allover my body! I was still its prisoner! I tore at them, ripping them off me! Grabbing the wires and flinging them across the room. . . .
    Wires?!
    I realized I held something else in my hands too. A pair of strange-looking goggles.
    â€œHey, Tad, are you okay?”
    Neal’s voice, I realized, calling me from outside the room.
    â€œWas that awesome or what?” Mark! Mark was there too!
    But wait—I thought. The creature ate Mark and his whole family. Didn’t it?
    I sank back into the deep, comfortable chair and tried to think.
    I remembered arriving at Club Lagoona, where everyone was water crazy. Okay.
    Mark and Neal were my new pals from my swimming lessons. Images of the different club attractions flashed in my head: the Creature Water Slide. The Atlantis Swimming Pool. The neon Games! Games! Games! sign with the bubble-blowing fish.
    But I couldn’t remember anything else I did that night. And the next morning, strange things began happening. Crazy things went through my mind. A drain. A slimy green tentacle. A giant eyeball. Polly screaming.
    I shook my head. What was real and what wasn’t?
    Then it hit me. I was in the arcade.
    I’d been playing that virtual-reality game Underwater Terror 2.
    I followed the weird little guy with the bucket into the games arcade. But then I lost him. As I searched the place for him, I found the game. And as I was about to play, I ran into Neal and Mark.
    Yeah! It was all coming back to me!
    I remembered Mark challenged Neal to a game of Aqua Doom. I found the virtual-reality game and decided to try it.
    I remembered putting the virtual-reality glasses on and the voice saying, “Get ready for the water adventure of a lifetime!” The same thing I’d heard when we first arrived at the resort. I had to enter my Club Lagoona name and my room number. Then the game told me to put those electric suckers all over me.
    I thought it was weird—I never had to do that for Underwater Terror 1—but the game wouldn’t start until I put them on.
    Yes, I told myself. And everything after that had all been a game.
    I thought hard. So, what was real and what wasn’t?
    Club Lagoona? Weird but real.
    Mom and Dad and Polly? Very real.
    Neal and Mark? Definitely real.
    Mark and his family being eaten? Not real. Whew!
    I climbed out of the booth. Neal and Mark stood beside me now. They looked worried.
    â€œBoy! You were