OAKLEAF – It all started with a bottle of Redemption Rye Whiskey.

Oakleaf visual artist Kyle Willis and his friend Tommy had been drinking beers throughout the day and didn’t want to drive intoxicated to grab more alcohol, so they polished off half a bottle of whiskey belonging to Willis’ girlfriend with the promise he would buy her another tomorrow.

He kept his promise and bought the bottle the next day.

“Tommy’s like, ‘hey, she only had half a bottle, maybe we should take a couple drinks out of it before we give her the bottle,’” Willis said.

So Tommy drove into the Oakleaf Town Center to grab a bag of ice and reached a four way intersection. As they started to accelerate, Willis heard Tommy scream, “She’s not even going to stop!”

Willis looked up from his phone with just enough time to catch sight of a student driving a Nissan and texting before she impacted the side of their SUV. The student had run a stop sign while texting.

Their car flipped, an event Willis describes while he waves his arms in slow motion, it was something straight out of the action movie “The Matrix,” he said.

Citizens poured from local businesses to help Willis and his friend out of the vehicle while Willis watched them through the sunroof of the SUV.

Luckily, he said, he escaped with a bruised neck and shoulder.

The crash happened just over a year ago. He’s able to laugh about it now and recall the story with a laugh, partly because Tommy despised the SUV, but mostly because he’s used a portion of his settlement money from the crash to build an escape room.

Escape rooms pit players against real life puzzles and dark plot lines in a race against time to find a way to exit a locked room within a set time limit. Like other escape rooms across the nation, Fort. Lauderdale-based escape room, Escape-topia, is an entertainment venue that offers a 60-minute experience for groups of two to 10. Players must work together, find clues, decode messages and solve puzzles to unlock the door to freedom. If players do not complete all of the requirements, or if they do not finish in the time allotted, they are let out of the room and are unsuccessful in their escape attempt.

Willis’ Escape-topia locks players in a turn of the century circus-inspired set of rooms where players must unravel a storyline of a murderous clown in order to escape. The room opened to the public in late October, joining a zombie and beast escape room owned by his business partner.

Willis gets a cut of his room’s profit every month to help make up for the $6,000 investment into creating the room.

“It’s a nice new revenue stream,” Willis said, “I plan on using that, at least some of that, to bootstrap the next one. I want to open up another location in Jacksonville” and maybe South Florida, Willis said.

“There’s not one in Clay County, if I find the right spot, especially one that’s close to [Interstate] 295 – I’d love to make one in Clay County…Wells Road could use some new blood,” he said.

There are two escape rooms in Jacksonville currently, part of a growing wave of similar real-life puzzle-thrillers that have swept across multiple continents from Japan in the last decade. Willis said he could save on the costs of housing, transportation and food he had to expend to make his first room if he created the next one closer to home.

Willis built the room up from a set of two office buildings with white tile ceilings and carpeting into a horror-themed adventure room in seven weeks with wood, homemade props and a good deal of sweat. He created his own puzzles without peeking at other escape rooms to form a truly unique experience, he said.

Some of his puzzles are math-based, while others use smell to help find the answer. Players find a message from an investigator in the room detailing how the detective has knowledge of Giggles the Clown’s murders and then must discover a timeline of each child’s death through a set of intricate, self-designed puzzles to escape the rooms.

Willis shares the space with his business partner, who – after his previous partner pulled out shortly after opening – got into talks with Willis to add on to the previous two escape rooms.

Throw is a $6,000 investment and Willis owns a horror-themed, cerebral puzzle that started on paper and then materialized. His escape went live to the public in late October while Willis watched via internet cameras he installed.

When pressed for more details on the plotline of the escape room, Willis smiled and said, “I don’t want to give it away.”