10... 

"Huh?  Where am I?"

9...

"Are you ok?"

8...

"Who are you?"

7...

"I'm here to help you out of here.  I'm guessing you're friends with all the other people?"

6...

"What other people?"

5...

"Lara, Veronica, Liza, Ash, and Alex.  Or am I wrong?"

4...

"No... you're right.  But what about-"

3...

"I can talk to her later about that.  I'm sure you I can get you to contact Lukey sometime.  Now c'mon, we need to get you out of here first."

2...

"Wait, so who are you?"

...

Finish the countdown Charlie. 

I snapped out of my thoughts and jumped at the sudden voice.  It wasn't the announcer this time, no, it was something else.  It didn't sound like anyone around me at all.  The voice was deep and it had a sort of echo to it.  I looked around but nothing seemed unfamiliar.  When I looked back down to my tablet I realized my thumb tapped the screen when I'd been startled and I'd accidentally voted for someone.  Let's just hope I still voted for Kees. 

"Aaaaaaand the votes are in!"  The speaker announced.  "Since the last error we've encountered messed with a whole bunch of things and I can't just magically repair this old machine within the day, I've decided to hand count these final few votes myself.  It may take a bit, so get comfy.  Or don't.  I have no say in the matter." 

It shut off once again and we were all left to wait in a very intense silence.  Jo looked more nervous than almost everyone else in the room.  I don't blame her, we're all nervous about this.  We always were every time we'd be voting someone off.  These were our friends, dare I say our family.  It was bad enough to see them get murdered, but to drag around the guilt of killing someone ourselves, even if they were evil, it's scary. 

A few minutes passed, and the announcer finally spoke again.  "Alright, I finally tallied up the votes!"

"The house believes Kees is the Murderer."

Welp, no surprise there.

"The conclusion is..." 

"Correct!  The Murderer has been identified as Kees!"

I sat there in complete and total shock.  It felt like my limbs were cemented into place.  I didn't even dare to breathe.  There was no collective gasps or screams, it was dead silent.  There was nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  And to be honest, it was more terrifying then when there was noise. 

It was him.  He watched as we voted for Veronica and Ash and Alex.  He killed Lara and Liza and John and...

me. 

One of my best friends tried to kill me. 

That's not your friend anymore.

I shivered to myself again.  Where the hell was that voice coming from and why can no one else hear it?! 

"Congratulations remaining survivors!  You've won this round of Flicker!"  The announcer happily exclaimed. 

"So are you gonna let us go now?"  Jo said, though her voice was hushed.

"Well first I'm gonna have to do something with our culprit over here.  He has been found guilty after all.  Mr. Cornelis,

there's a special place in hell awaiting you."

Kees looked up at everyone for the first time since the announcement. He looked like he was about to cry, and all he muttered was, "No hard feelings, right?"

The lights flickered out one last time. Kees screamed and grabbed on to the table, at least I assumed he did since the whole thing shook. Despite his efforts, he was eventually dragged away, only this time from what I could tell by his screams, he wasn't dragged upward like the rest of them.

He was dragged downward.

Once the silence settled back in, the lights turned back on. The chair Kees once sat in was now broken on the floor, and right in front of his seat were faint claw marks on the table. The speaker piped up again shortly after.

"There is an exit door in the Solitary room, it's been unlocked for all of you wishing to exit. That is, unless, you want to stick around for another game!"

"I think I can speak for all of us when I say no." Ally said.

"Ah, oh well, I tried. I'll give you all ten minutes to look around one last time, maybe put some items back, and after that anyone that is still inside this building will be immediately killed, curtesy of myself."

Most of us got up to walk around. I saw Jackson set a kitchen timer for 9 minutes, I guess so we could all make it out in time when we needed. Vinny took his photos back from Jo, and Jo took the book and just sat down on the couch with it. Thomas stayed in his seat, wrapping his arms around himself and shaking more than usual. I sat back down next to him.

"You ok?"  I asked him.  He just turned to me sadly. 

"No.  I defended a murderer man!  He almost killed you and I vouched for him!" 

"You didn't know, none of us did."

"But if I'd just paid a little more attention... argh!"  He growled in frustration.  I wrapped my arm protectively around his shoulder, to which he responded by whipping around and hugging me tightly like he'd done when I first woke up the third night.  I hugged him back for what felt like a long while until I pulled away and just pat him on the shoulder. 

"I'm gonna go talk to everyone else, see what's up.  Don't do anything I wouldn't do."  I said.  He just faintly smiled and nodded at me.  I really might as well just be his older brother.

I walk over to Jackson, Vinny, and Sabrina in the kitchen.  Jackson was just standing next to Vinny and Sabrina was drinking one of the grape sodas by the fridge.

"Hey Charlie!"  Vinny said as Jackson gave a small wave from beside his shorter friend.   Sabrina noticed me walk in, but she just stayed silent and looked at me. 

"Hey you guys." I said, waving back.

"How's your head by the way?" Vinny asked.

"Not bad." I shrugged. Really, it felt like shit, but I wasn't gonna just tell him that.

"Well that's good!  Oh, and I almost forgot to give you this last night."  He reached into a little bag he had slung over his shoulder and pulled out a chocolate chip muffin, promptly handing it to me.  "These muffins are really weird, but I don't think they're dangerous and I only get one every night."

"Thanks, but how are they weird?"  I asked.

"They never go bad and every time someone eats one it just reappears in the empty wrapper.  Jackson's been eating his since I gave it to him and he's finished it like 5 times."

"Wow.  You think they'll stay like that when we leave?" 

"Probably not, but I hope so.  They're really good!"

I nodded and smiled at him, taking a bite out of the muffin.  Vinny wasn't lying, this is pretty good.  "One question.  For Jackson and Sabrina, I mean." 

Jackson tilted his head at me and Sabrina looked up.  "What?"  She asked.

"I thought it was because you two were the Twins, but since Dan and Lukey are, why have you guys been talking a bunch all of a sudden?"

The two looked at each other for a moment.  Unsurprisingly, Sabrina was the one to speak up.  "We always talk, I don't know what  you mean by 'all of a sudden'."

"Really?  I've never even seen you guys this close to each other until now." 

"Look, it's none of your business Charlie.  You can leave." 

They can't hide forever.

Ok, now that's just getting annoying. I sigh and walk out of the kitchen and into the living room, where Jo was seated on the couch facing away from the kitchen, the book in her hands. She didn't seem to notice me when I first walked in until she picked her head up.

"Hey Jo, what're you doing?" I asked.

"Deciding on what I should do with this, I guess." She said, holding up the book. "I know that announcer guy said he does this 'game' all the time, and this thing's really useful but... I don't know, it feels special to me in some way, if that makes any sense."

"Well it makes more sense than anything else in here at least."

It's mine. She'll get it when she needs it. Put it back.

I sighed. "You should probably leave it here. It is pretty useful."

"You're right." Jo nods and props the journal against the side of the couch. So whoever's freaking me the hell out wrote the book? Or are they just lying to get me on their good side? I don't have the patience or the headspace to think about it enough. I suddenly hear the egg timer Jackson set up start to ding, and he turned it off pretty quickly afterwards. We all gathered into the solitary room, dried blood still stained on the floor in the corner of the room. It seemed that after every night when we moved the bodies here, they disappeared right after. At least it kept the stench away.

The last person to join us was Ally, who still had the patch over her left eye. She looked about as much of a wreck as I probably did, and I would've gone to talk with her had someone not already opened the door to the outside.

From the other side, there was nothing but a blinding white light that took no time in making me black out.

***

"No hard feelings, right?"

I jolted awake, quickly sitting up in my bed.  I looked around in a panicked mess, realizing that I wasn't in that house anymore.  I was home.  Wait, was it all just a dream? I placed a hand on my head and felt something soft wrapped around.

The bandages.

It wasn't a dream.

I got up as fast as I possibly could and ran to my bathroom to look at myself in the mirror. Yep, those were bandages alright. I looked paler than I usually did, but what scared me the most was my eyes.

They weren't always purple, were they?

Before I could panic completely, I heard my phone ringing from my room. I ran back to pick it up, figuring out that it was Thomas. I immediately answered.

"AGH! TELL ME I'M NOT GOING FUCKING INSANE!" He screamed from the other end. "ALL OF THAT HAPPENED RIGHT?! KEES ISN'T ANSWERING, LARA ISN'T ANSWERING, I EVEN TRIED CALLING ALEX BUT-"

"Thomas!"  I cut him off.  "Take a deep breath for a minute ok?  Where are you?"

"M-my house."

"Ok, can you call someone else and get them to bring everyone back to the bonfire for me?  We need to talk about this together, as a community." 

"Ngh, ok, fine.  J-just be careful."

"Alright, I will.  See you there."

"You too man."

***

"Is that everyone?"  I asked.  Jo nodded at me.  There were 17 of us left, now standing before the place where it all first happened.  The bonfire was put out, the tents were still there, but only because they were protected by a long strand of black and yellow tape surrounding the area. 

"So,"  I finally spoke up after a long moment of silence.  "where are we gonna go from here?"