Castle Game #3: Hide the Belt [5/5]

The shard was removed and my wounds semi-treated. A huge white bandage is wrapped tightly around my abdomen, and I'm a fair bit paler from the blood lost. But I'm alive. I'm alive. That'll do for now.

I don't expect I'll be as fast or as strong after being stabbed in the gut a few hours ago, but I still have it in me to kill these brats and take home the crown. Or have enough fun to die trying, I suppose.

"Attention players. I will now read the rules of the third game!"

I listen to the explanation of the game with a half-grin on my face. As fun as this sounds, I've lost a lot of blood and my energy is low. I hate to admit it but I'm not firing on all cylinders for this one, I'm gonna need lady luck on my side if I'm gonna not get a bullet in the head.

But eh, people have been shooting at me since I was a teenager and I've made it this far in life. I'm unkillable.

We all start spread out, everyone's eyes already scanning for the gun, and then the music starts. Quickening frantic vibrato, made to panic the weaker minded among us. I start to walk about, turning over the room in search of the gun. Once I have it, someone's gonna die. Been a while since I shot anyone. Be good to see the horror in their eyes again when the trigger is pulled. It's a horror that stays on their face in death.

I spot 007 not to far from me and I move over to search near her.

"It'll be somewhere obvious. They want us to find it." I say to her, "Probably out in the open somewhere."

I open a drawer, empty. But it'll be somewhere like that. Someone will find it in the first few minutes.

Why help 007? I dunno. She's got guts. More specifically she got my guts, with a shard of glass. More fight than most of the bums here.

I try a nearby box.

t6m|CAnrnb1-20

[+1 = 9]

[gives +1 advantage to 007]

Toby had heard of this game before, but had never played it, which made him a bit nervous. It made him even more nervous knowing that this game could get him killed, but he knew what he was getting into when he came here. There was no backing out now. It was win or die.

He didn't really have a strategy for this, but maybe he'd be able to develop one as things went along. That's how it'd worked out for him in the other two games. He just had to hope that that strategy came to his mind rather quickly, because death wasn't hard to meet here.

Death's grip was cold, firm and, of course, fatal. So, he had to avoid it. He didn't want to see the grim reaper today. He didn't want a bullet in his head. He didn't want anything to kill him, and dammit, he wanted that money.

So, when they started off, Toby began looking for the belt— er — gun. He didn't want to have to shoot anybody, but he'd do what he had to. He tried not to rush around the room too quickly at first- he could miss what he was looking for. So, he walked around and scanned it all with his eyes, looking for wherever it could be. Surely they'd have it tucked somewhere that could be easily missed.

He searched.

"Where the hell is it?" He muttered to himself.

OAg|C|g_fO1-20
+2 for for full advantage

No one wanted to play his game.

Sure, he's not exactly the most relatable of them, but they could at least let him have some fun before he gets to watch them all die. Where's the grit? The determination? The desperation? A yawn from his lips as he had walked past someone who was irrelevant to his game of death. The world seemed to mold to his fingertips as he looks around for just a second. A western place that reminded him of the 67th from all those years ago when the reruns would come on and bore him to death. There's a silence as he listens to the rules, understanding the concept.

The word gun reaches his ears like a pleasant sound as he lets himself bask in the memory of gunpowder and death. The excitement behind his fingertips growing and growing as he just waits patiently to start. Death would be in his grasp. People's lives would be at his fingertips and he can just taste it. The excitement building under his skin; ignoring the gold they'd seen come from the ceiling before. As the game started, he moves with a new form of energy as he scrambles through the western town. Words on his lips.

"Oh this is going to be so much fun!"

A giggle to the air as he runs with a joyfulness.

"I can't wait to see which one bites it. The smell of gunpowder always is the best! Oh boy! Oh boy!"

His eyes scoured the western room, moving from object to object. Only time would tell with who would find it! Surely, whoever did got to play executioner and he so badly wanted to see what would happen. Even if his blood spills to the floor, there'd be five new killers.


tObkyjuUY_1-20
(14+1= 15)

Table by Rave

Summer evenings back home, not Nine, home home. With his dads and his sister and the sun cutting through long grass as it sets, painting everything gold. They flattened out the grass in a big circle and laid a blanket down, first to watch the clouds, then the stars. Long summer afternoons when this fathers would talk about paradise past District Twelve, when they'd promise there was somewhere better and Ochre had never understood.

It's been months since that happiness, Ochre's been running ever since, a long time since he's been home. Last night he dreamed about the house he grew up in, about the hardwood and the way it was cold in the house on winter mornings, white stucco exteriors and the fire place always burning in the winter. His sister's voice always the loudest, the high tones mixing with their father's and creating music to his ears.

He wasn't made for games like this.

Ochre stands there silent, expression ashy. Gentle boy, he never learns dhow to shoot. "I don't think I can do this one," he tells no one in particular, "I don't want to be a killer."

Will he still be able to dream after today?

They're released from their cell and Ochre follows the rest of the players out into what seems like an old western. He's seen the 67th reruns and that movie based on it a few times like everyone else. That isn't enough to tell him where the gun might be hiding though.

He moves fast, in the opposite direction of everyone else. If he can't find the gun, at least he'll find somewhere to hide.

aCuMJdo0PO1-20

A day becomes a week before my eyes, and I still can’t figure out the rhyme or reason of this place.

Every few days I’m summoned to a killing floor where I’m forced to partake in some god forsaken children’s game and watch as our group is cut, cut, cut down like the trunk of a rotting tree. The days in between that follow are lonely, and quiet, filled with nothing more than brief glances and wondering stares around the room as I wrestle with my growing guilt. I spend most of my with Theo, sitting in stoic silence, our two beds pushed together as metal scrapes against metal, and I don’t know whose idea that was, but I’m grateful for the company in our conjoined bedposts.

I wish I was brave enough to say more to her, to be more than an uncertainty – I wish I could tell her that maybe in another lifetime, we could have been friends. But most of the time I keep my head bowed, my lips sealed, pretend I don’t notice the way 010 has been looking at her for the last two days, like he has a tombstone already picked out for her. And there’s a fierce kind of flame in my chest that feels too close to a desire to protect when I’m still trying to figure out this place – friends and enemies, strength in numbers or solitude.

It’s been days since the last deadly game, and the patterned tiles of my nightmares won’t let me forget what it took to still be here, crouched on my bed and filled with dread. Days of wondering when the next blow will come, and if I’m going to fall down this time, finally.

So I don’t find myself surprised when we’re roused from our hideaway and herded into yet another room, following those never-ending paths that make me wish I’d been a bit braver and explored the narrow passageways when I had the chance.

But for now, we’re a party of ten, waiting to be cut down yet again, and as the rules of the next game wash over me, I struggle to understand them, dizzying and confusing. I can barely follow one word as it trails into the next, my head fuzzy from the restless nights and meagre meals.

And then the game is starting, as the other players set off running, searching for a gun of all things, and it seems pointless to even try when I’ve never even held a weapon in my life – probably couldn’t even lift it off the ground if I tried. But Theo doesn’t give me the chance to falter, finding me and griping my hand tightly, voice low and hurried as she whispers instructions and the game slowly begins to take shape in my head. “Think of it like an egg hunt,” and it seems simple enough when Theo puts it that way. But I know I’m at a disadvantage even before I blindly follow her, hanging onto her words, nodding my head and all but hoping that if I stay close to her, the bond of our numbers will save me – that history may repeat itself, may be kind.



OoMCr|Aq1U1-20

Someone beat him to it. Shit.

The guy who picked up the gun pointed it between Toby and another player. This wasn't good. Toby clenched his jaw and his fists as he stood there, watching the player who held the gun in his hands.

Bang!

Toby would live another day.

"Holy shit," he muttered to himself with a sigh of relief. He'd almost just been killed. He was not ready for this. He had to be the next one to get the gun in his hands. He couldn't let someone else beat him to it again, even if it meant he had to kill someone with that gun in order to be safe.

Toby didn't imagine coming here and ending up a killer. He knew he'd see people die, but didn't imagine it'd be at his hands, but if it ended up that way? Well, it is what it is, he supposed. He just didn't want to die.

yVrIMLe3mf1-20
+2 for for full advantage