NEW MEXICO. The nearest outpost of civilization is a good 50 miles away (a “Stuckey’s”). Desert surrounds the house, Murder Manor, on all sides.
MEET THE PLAYERS:
Seapunky
Eight
Cuitlahac
Doibr
krizteen
James
Ken
P.A.S.
Erin
Stacey
Cyd
Spinnwebe
Naturally, we had a camera in Doibr's room, and caught everything he and Mollie talked about as she patched him up.
Doibr looked at her as she used the first aid material to disinfect and then stitch up his wound.
"Why are you helping me?" he asked her. She looked up at him briefly and smiled.
"I like you. I'm gonna help you along to the end. Odds are, one of us won't make it all the way, so we probably won't end up having to kill each other."
Doibr smiled. "Kind of a dangerous bet, isn't it?"
"No," she said, swabbing the stitches with alcohol. "If I had to, I could take you." She smiled at him and tapped the end of his nose, then left his room.
A few days passed before anything of note happened again. During Tuesday's Hide and Seek, krizteen finally made an aggressive move.
Hiding in a closet, she waited in ambush for the first person who happened to come by; it was Ken. He was sneaking along the hallway, apparently not quiet enough, for krizteen leapt out of the closet and speared his arm with her pitchfork. Crying out in pain, he grabbed the pitchfork so she couldn't draw it out and use it again, and administered blow after blow to her head with a large wooden dowel he had taken to carrying around with him. Even krizteen's adrenaline didn't keep her from passing out. Of course, by that time Cuitlahac and Stacey had found the fight, ready to pick off any wounded, but Ken was wielding a bloody pitchfork over krizteen's bloody body, looking pretty scary, and so Cuitlahac and Stacey were left with one viable option: each other. As Ken headed back to his room to fix himself up, Stacey and Cuitlahac dived at one another, Cuitlahac with his lawn aerator (an evil looking device that looks like a big metal T with four spikes on a "head" at the end) and Stacey with two icepicks. She kicked his aerator away first thing. He hit her twice in the face, and she decided to take it, coming in close enough to drive both of the icepicks through his eyes. He let out a sort of protesting squeak and fell to the floor, dead.
At that moment, krizteen started to wake up. Stacey realized that she wasn't dead, shrieked, and leapt at her, but never made it; Erin had arrived and plucked her out of the air, slamming her against the wall.
"Don't," he said. "That's some cheap shit."
Stacey snarled. "Put me DOWN."
He did so.
She scowled at them both. "You're both on my list."
Erin didn't look scared. "Um... shouldn't everyone here be on your list?"
"Fuck you. You know what I mean." And Stacey melted into the shadows.
James, Erin, Mollie, and Doibr carried Cuitlahac's body to the lake, weighted it down, and dropped it in. James looked around, obviously thinking back to what Ken had told him about the absence of wildlife.
"What is it?" asked Mollie.
"Nothing," said James, "except wildlife's not the only thing disappearing around here."
That night, a raging storm swept through again; the second and hopefully last monsoon of the season. Again, the power went out, towards dawn. But soon, the storm broke, the sun rose, and everyone came downstairs for breakfast.
It was Spinnwebe (or rather, Spinn) who noticed. He sat at the table and poured himself some Lucky Charms, then looked around, and got up. The others looked at one another, noting the confused look on Spinn's face, and followed him.
He climbed the stairs to James' room; everyone looked around and noticed James wasn't among them. He hadn't come down for breakfast.
Erin drew his boken from its makeshift scabbard on his back. "Move," he instructed Spinn, who complied. Erin kicked open the door.
There was James.
And there was James.
And there.
And there, too.
James had been butchered like a hog, his torso cut open lengthwise, his insides spread across the room. His head had hanging from the light by his spinal cord. His legs and waist had been placed in a chair, as if sitting. His arms sat upon the armrests.
Doibr and krizteen threw up. Cindy looked around the room and stated, matter-of-factly, "I know who did this."
"Well?" asked Erin. Cindy grinned.
"Figure it out."
The power had not gone out this time. We here in the security booth got everything on tape; we saw who killed James, and we saw how they did it. And we will say only this: we, and our sponsors, approve.
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