The game of life

‘Ok people, we have a contest on our hands,’ Lenny shouted at the six broken and bruised faces in front of him. He walked around the room, the girls all sitting shackled to flimsy wooden chairs. ‘We have to decide who dies!’ he laughs a high-pitched laugh, the sort that made fear shiver down your spine.

Sinead sat there, her fingers blue as the shackles were so tight. She couldn’t remember the last time she could feel them. She couldn’t make out the last time she had seen daylight. She had been stuck in a room with five other sniffling girls who all just wanted to go home. The room was damp, the concrete walls were dripping with a substance that was coming from above. Sinead guessed that they were underground. She was shivering, cold as the concrete she could feel her bare feet rest on.

She looked down and noticed she was wearing what once was a white wedding gown, or a communion dress, but was ripped and torn and didn’t look white anymore. She noticed the dress was maybe two sizes bigger that her usual size. Then again, she hadn’t eaten much since she got there and noticed the other five girls fading away in front of her so there was a faint possibility that it usually would have fit her.

Lenny clicked his fingers in Sinead’s face and screamed ‘PAY ATTENTION!’ his spittle entering a wound on her cheek, making it sting. She winced, something that you should never do in Lenny’s company as he was a narcissistic psychopath who got off on making young women flinch. She could see in her peripheral vision that he was smiling. She kicked herself for giving him something to smile about.

‘You ladies are going to be cut from your shackles and will be given ten minutes to flee. Myself and my good friend George over here,’ he pointed to George in the corner, ‘will then hunt you down and kill you. If we don’t and you end up free, then you have won the game. If you die however, we have won!’ he smiled sadistically and looked at his watch. ‘Ok George, cut them free!’

George came at each of the girls with a knife that he got from a leather case around his ankle and released the shackles from their wrists. They all rubbed their hands together to try and get the blood circulating to their fingers again. Lenny nodded in George’s direction and he opened the door with one of the many keys he carried around unnecessarily.

‘Three, two, one…...run!’

All six girls got up from their respective chairs and clamoured out of the door which led to a damp set of concrete stairs. They weren’t working as a team as it was everyone for themselves. Sinead watched as the other five went off in different directions but she decided against that. She decided that she would wait around and try to kill the two sadistic bastards who raped her and beat her for weeks.

Instead of running, Sinead climbed. She climbed up the mound of earth that encased the door she had just come from and lay on her stomach, keeping her centre of gravity low. As she waited for those ten arduous minutes to pass, she looked at the other girls and what they were doing. Some were running for freedom, others hiding in the nooks and crannies that made the woodland so seductive for Lenny and George.

Sinead knew Lenny was the brains of the operation and that George was simple in his ways. She had been studying the pair since they captured her and could see that George was just as scared of Lenny as herself and the five other girls were.

As the time passed, Sinead imagined the welcome she would get if she ever got to see her family again. Her brother, Michael, who was a very emotional guy would cry. Her mother would want to know all the details of what they did to her and want to know about her fellow captives. She wasn’t sure whether her father would care or not if she was honest. He didn’t really care much about her when she was around so why would he when she reappears?

She heard the door beneath her open, the ten minutes up. She tried to steady her breathing and make herself less obvious in the dark forest. She heard Lenny order George to go to the right while he would go to the left. It was like a game of cat and mouse…the winner, the last one standing.

After George went to the right, Sinead waited a couple of minutes, tracking the path he went, before following him. As she ran after him, her dress caught on every branch possible so she took it off as it was slowing her down. She heard George up ahead talking into a handset to Lenny. He was telling him that he had found the first girl. She crept up behind him as he assembled his gun from the contents of his backpack. She picked up a big rock, one she could hardly carry due to her muscle density decreasing when she was locked in that god awful room. As George was putting the last bit of the gun onto it, she lifted the rock above his head and slammed it into his head as hard as she could. Then as he turned, she repeated the process until she was sure he was dead. ‘Me one, them zero!’ she said to herself.

After bludgeoning George to death, she moved his body out of her way and looked through the scope that turned out to be infrared. She smiled at her brilliance of letting him assemble the gun first. She wouldn’t have had a notion as to how to do it. She looked through the scope and could make out five heat signatures that were varying in intensity. Then she repositioned the scope and could see Lenny in the distance. He was easy to spot because he was the brightest on the scope.

Georges radio sounded, ‘George, you get her?’ Lennys voice crackled into the darkness. As George was dead and therefore couldn’t answer, Sinead figured Lenny was obviously going to come to see where he was. She watched as Lennys heat signature intensified and began to get bigger. She didn’t have it in her to shoot him with the big gun, so instead she pilfered through George’s clothes and found a hand gun in his belt and his trusty knife that he kept in a case strapped to his ankle. She hoped that was enough.

She unscrewed the infrared scope off the fancy gun and heard a gunshot. She looked in the direction of Lenny through the scope and then to where her fellow captives were and saw one of them was down. ‘Me one, them one.’ She said to herself.

She scoured the area for a good place to hide. It was almost impossible in the dark. Eventually, just as Lenny was getting close, she hid in the roots of some of the trees in the area. She was able to fit into the tiniest gap, the only problem was that it was right beside George’s body. ‘Man did I kill him!’ she said as she wretched at the man whose face she had just caved in.

She didn’t need the infrared scope any longer as she could hear Lenny breathing heavily as he approached.

‘Oh for fucks sake!’ he said when he saw his fallen comrade. He made no sign that he had found Sinead and when he bent down to try to lift George up by the arm, they locked eyes. His expression was that of surprise, hers was of determination. As he fumbled, his hands trying to reach for the handgun in his waist Sinead had hers ready for this. She hoped that she would get the chance to see him flinch for once, which he did when he heard her take the safety off the gun.

Sinead pulled the trigger like it was second nature to her. She closed her eyes as the blood splattered in every direction. She climbed over George to get out of the sea of tree roots and when she rose, she kicked the faceless Lenny in the back. ‘Two to me you bastard!’ she said and spat at him.

With the aid of the scope she could see that two of the girls were still running, two hiding, and the fallen comrade was still alive but she didn’t know if she was hurt or not.

She climbed up an old tree with low branches and screamed at the top of her lungs that she had killed them, ‘I shot Lenny in the face and bludgeoned George to death!’ she said with pride.

Sinead went to gather the girls. First, she went to the injured one, who turned out to be Rachael. She was delighted that she was only shot in the leg and ripped some of that ridiculous dress off to form a ligature to slow the bleeding. Then she went towards the pair that were hiding. She ensured Sophie and Olive that they were dead and it looked like Katie and Teresa had escaped. The four girls together began to make their way out of the forest and bask in the glory of freedom. Their captors dead, they had won…. they had won the game of their lives and it was all down to Sinead.

Once reunited with family, she was right in the prediction that Michael would cry and that her mother would ask her lots of questions. She was also right that her father was nowhere to be found…but that was another game for another day!

picture from pixabay