The Game by readincloset

Six days until Christmas meant I'd finally be able to visit my grandma. Every year we'd leave on Christmas eve for her lavish estate. My dad hated "grandma Isle" and didn't like us spending much time there. But within a few days, I'd be living with my lovely grandmother.

The day had almost ended and I had planned a big night with Hunter and my bestie Sara. Of course, Tuner had to be there, they'd deemed him Hunter's 6th appendage. It pissed me off to no end. At least he'd leave us alone for our make out sessions. The plan had been set. Hunter and Turner would arrange for the booze We'd use my dad's car.

"Now, we got the booze and the hook up." Turner held up a new bag of weed. "Where ever shall we party?" His body squished between the two front seats, but his eyes had clearly settled between Sarah's cleavage.

"Eyes up cowboy." Sara smacked Turner in the forehead.

"Ouch. We could go to my basement. Mom's and Pop's sleep like logs."

Hunter had rolled a joint and leaned into the driver's side window. "What about The Dollar Twenty?"

The thought of using the old theater sent a lump to my throat. "It's empty. Ever since the fire. I haven't heard of anyone going there to party yet."

"All in favor of partying at The Dollar Twenty, Say Aye."

They'd said the fire happened accidentally when a projector malfunctioned. The lobby and ticket kiosks had burned to the ground within seconds. The ominous look of the place scared even the bravest of adventurers off. Our stupidity outweighed our bravery and we decided to be the only group of idiots to trespass since the accident. At least the theater had steady structure in the back, a perfect venue for our night's activities.

"We'll be there in an hour!" I bounced up and down in the passenger seat.

Hunter had taken over at the wheel and Sara sat mortified, fending off Turner's advances in the back seat.

Sara glared at me. "Where is it?"

"What." It wasn't unlike me to glare right back into her solid blue eyes.

Hunter assured us he could buy some Molly at the creepy shop behind the gas station, a small window through which people bought alcohol and other tasty treats. Turner swore he had heard it from someone at school. But he'd returned empty handed.

"Did you get any?" Sara frisked Turner."

"Hey. What's with the pat down? Not that I don't mind a good rub job from a girl, but what the hell?"

Sara puppy-dog eyed him. Her favorite way to get boys to do whatever she wanted them to do.

"I'll get the Molls." Hunter turned the car off and took the keys. "In case any of you yahoos decides to take off."

I thought I'd have to go home to my dreadful family and wait a week for the stuff. But Hunter, being an exceptionally good boyfriend, returned. Though, he seemed to have brought a friend.

A drug dealer?

The tall awkward looking fellow could be Hunter's father or a way older brother.

"Hey, guys look what I found?"

As if we had known the guy our entire lives.

"And who is this guy may I ask?" Sara suspected everyone. This time I didn't blame her.

"Hi, I'm Nick."

Nick's tremulous voice startled me. His clothes reeked of rust, metal, and a smell I couldn't quite figure out.

Maybe...flesh?

He probably worked at a butcher's shop. Though, he had pockets full of candy. When they caught my eye, he noticed and offered me a piece. I held up my hand. Maybe he mixed the Molly with the candy. An easy way to get kids hooked.

"Who is this guy?" I whispered into Hunter's ear while giving him a mock hug.

"It's cool. He's a nice guy. He'll be coming with us. The least we could do is let him come and party. Since he hooked us up.

Hunter ushered Nick into the passenger side of the car. Turner and Sara had to scrunch together, which Turner didn't seem to mind. While Sara kept watch of the stranger through the corner of her eye.

The car remained silent while we finished the journey to the theater.

Nick mingled with the group as if he'd been part of it his entire life. Was he a menace? I wasn't sure but the smell of dead rodent fur and raw meat didn't help his situation.

Hunter pulled the car to the back-theater parking lot. From the front, the building looked near demolished, but from the back, other than a few bad graffiti tags on the brick wall, it looked good as new. We all piled out and followed Hunter and Nick inside.

By the time we reached the end of the first floor, I couldn't feel my fingers.

Turner blew into his hands. "I'm sur...surprised my breath isn't turning into solid ice. Can we find a heater?"

We reached a dead end on the first floor. Sara put the cooler down and sat on it. Hunter and Nick seemed to have forgotten about the rest of us. They ventured up the stairs and disappeared in the dark.

"One thing about a burnt down building..." Hunter said, descending the stairs. "...there's a lot of firewood."

Nick followed. Both had arms full of near blackened wood.

Hunter busted out an old window. A snow flurry billowed through the shattered glass.

"How's that supposed to help." Sara danced around.

Nick smiled at her and pulled out the lighter from hell. It had to have had a two-foot stream on it. The wood burst into flames. Then we made a semicircle around the fire and our man-made chimney.

"So, what now?" Turner asked, his mouth full of tiny pretzels.

Nick looked at everyone. "Thanks for the hospitality. I'm happy you all let me come. Now, let's find out your deepest and darkest secrets. I ask you a question and you answer. If I think your answer is honest. You get a piece of candy. What I call a molly-pop."

He laid down a bunch of candy from his pocket and waited for an answer.

"And if we're not honest?" Sara blurted out.

"Well...I'm sure you don't have to worry about that, Sara. The rest of you will be punished accordingly." He removed a switch from his fur jacket and laid it down, watching our expressions, smiling.

My palms started to sweat, and not from the fire. "Hunter? What is this?"

"Huh? I didn't have nothing to do with this." His eyes bobbled back and forth, vacant.

"You're high already?" I smacked him on the shoulder.

"Had a molly-pop upstairs. This is the good stuff."

Nick smiled and removed his stocking cap, revealing an old guy's bald spot and hair resembling an evil clown. "It's just a game c'mon. It's fun."

The answers came fast. They all agreed to play.

His eyes landed on me. "Even if you don't agree, we are going to play."

"Let's start. I'm first." Sara asked some silly questions.

Nick interrupted. "My turn."

"What?" Sara stood.

"Don't be afraid. You won get it wrong, but now I am going to raise the stakes."

One of his hands stayed inside his jacket. He glanced at hunter. "I'll be asking you each a series of questions. Those who answer wrong will be disciplined."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Turner went for the switch.

Nick stopped him with his gloved hand, tossing Turner back with the force of a Sumo wrestler. His shoulders seem to broaden.

Mittens. Why does he wear mittens?

"Can you recite Romans 13:13?" His gaze fell on Sara.

Sara cried. "How am I supposed to know that?"

"You do. Or you don't. Yes, you get only one chance to answer." His gaze seemed to darken.

"Yes! Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension."

Without a response, he looked at me as if he knew what I was going to ask him.

"Is she, right?"

"Don't you know?"

My heart stumbled. "Is that my question?"

"Maybe." His crude grin attacked my insides. "Why do you want to go visit your grandmother? For her or her money? Do you hope steal the money someday?"

One of my oldest lasting nightmares. Was the money the only reason I've loved my grandmother so much? The internal battle waged on. But I knew the answer.

"I love her. She's my grandmother for God's sake. But maybe some little part of it is the money. I'd never steal from her...never."

Sara had enjoyed her lollipop. She'd shown it by laying in the ashes and making an ash angel.

Hunter didn't seem phased by Nick's nerve-racking monologue. Most likely, the drugs had taken over.

Nick looked at Hunter as though he had already made up his mind but regardless, he asked him a question.

"I know the answer to this question, but I am going to ask it anyway. If you are honest you might be spared."

"I ain't scared of you." Hunter's perfect brow furrowed.

"You will be, once we're done. Are you or are you not responsible for adultery?"

"I haven't cheated on Susan." His eyes assured me of his faithfulness.

"Get on with it." Stoned and blitzed out of his mind, Turner came across more eager than usual.

"Ah, your question is the best one. It's why I saved you for last, Turner." Nick flipped his hat inside out. It grew longer and had a dirt filled white ball on the end.

"Do you know how it feels to kill someone?"

The color drained from Turner's face. "What the hell is this? What do you know?" Then he whipped around and started to run. "I don't give a shit I'm not playing anymore!"

Nick's hidden hand emerged from the jacket. The jacket which finally took shape. A shape I'd been pre-programmed to trust my entire life. Except the cotton around the edges seemed to be made from human scalps, blood still trickled from some of them. The buttons also made my stomach churn as they took form of human eyes. A couple still glanced around as if they'd never left their host.

I screamed, not knowing what else to do.

His hand slapped the ground like a ton of mud dumped from a two-story window. The theater shook. A thick slimy rustic glob hit my face. Sara's screech tore through the darkness and I knew what had happened. When I tried to run, the goo stuck to my shoes. He had us right where he wanted us.

Hunter regained his faculties fast. He'd been laying down on an old armchair. Nick's evil blob hadn't hit him. "What did you do? You sick..."

Turner had disappeared up the stairs. Hunter grabbed an old movie pilon and streamlined it toward Nick's head. His gloved hand caught the weapon midair and tossed it down the hall. He used several rows of razor sharp teeth to remove the glove, revealing a twisted, decrepit hand. Five knife-edged fingernails split Hunter into pieces. Each bloody slab slid off in different directions.

I couldn't stop screaming.

Sara had pulled away from the sludge. Her clothes hadn't made it off the floor. She ran towards me and pulled me away. She backed us into a corner, creating a human shield...me.

"We never finished our story with hunter. Now it's time for beautiful, mystic, Sara to shed some light."

"What's he talking about. I attempted to turn but Sara had me by the shoulders.

"I don't know?" She held steady. I had no idea the girl had so much strength in her.

"Feeble little Sara. Tell us and I'll know if you're lying. And you know what liars get." The small switch had turned into a cat of nine-tails whip. Bloody chunks of human flesh clung to the fishhooks and bones.

Sara opened her mouth to say something. Nick's evil whip flew between the two of us, a fishhook caught Sara's tongue.

He pulled.

It came up without much notice and I vomited on the floor.

Sara's timid screams waned as he pinned her to the wall in a backward, upside down cross; her bareness for all to see.

"What happened on that couch, Sara?" His whip hoisted near the ceiling. He brought it down onto her naked torso and backside. When he pulled back, flesh and blood scattered across the room.

"Cat got your tongue."

His gaze took mine from his evil eyes down to the last piece of flesh on the whip. Sara's tongue wiggled back and forth like a worm on its hook. Ready to catch the big one. But it seemed he had. The biggest liar of the bunch.

I didn't care that he'd minced my boyfriend and had my BFF in torture mode. I only cared about the question. What had happened on the couch? Someone needs to wake me from this nightmare fast, before I completely lose it.

Nick didn't have remorse, empathy, apathy, or any kind of feeling. He'd come to do a job and now he'd started. The whole trip had taken an evil turn somewhere at Loser Ville where Hunter found him. All aside, he'd done his job well.

This was his work.

Now I knew why he'd smelled of rust, flesh, and metal. He was a butcher. A butcher of men sent to weed out the filth and the liars.

I'd somehow sat down next to the top portion of Hunter's body. I twirled my fingers in his luscious brown locks. Nick's eyes dug deep into my soul and I watched as Nick deflowered my best friend on my couch.

"Don't worry, she'll never find out," he'd told her.

"She's my best friend I can't." Sara had confessed. But the damage had been done.

I whipped back to reality with something digging deep into my right leg. My shrieks came from pain and the realization I had lost my best friend, my boyfriend, and...

"Where the hell is Turner?"

Hooks and jagged fish bones tore the flesh from my leg as Nick dragged me up the lobby staircase. At one point an exposed nail caught the inside of my arm, lacerating my bicep to the bone. My head thumped with each burnt wooden step he took.

The next thing I knew, I'd been hurled into the air and landed somewhere near the second row in one of the theaters. Chairs crushed and flew in different directions as he thrashed his whip from left to right and back again.

Thoughts left me. Only one thing existed. The truth. And I asked him for it.

"Who are you?" I asked as he hovered over me.

"Who are you," I cried.

"They call me the Belsnickel."

"Do you know where you are, ma'am?" someone asked.

"Why did you do all of this?" I kept asking.

"She's gonna be okay, right?" Hunters voice?

"How much did she take?" a woman's voice asked.

My eyes grew heavy as my mind returned to the theater. Belsnickel had his whip high above him, slashing toward me through rows of people. Blood spatter covered the burnt seats.

People screamed.

Nick laughed.

He turned to Sara with the whip high above ready to tear through her skin. The last words I heard, "you missed out on 'jealousy'."

The voices around me melted into a long tone.

"Time of death..."