by T J Payne
“Oh, this will be good,” the primary operator said, sending the video to the main screen.
Tiffany, who had downed three drinks before the wedding service, had passed out on the toilet just after dinner. In the meantime, three of the other restroom stalls had filled with terrified, hiding guests.
But Tiffany slept through it all. It helped that the other guests had stayed completely silent.
The Event Planner had kept an eye on Tiffany. She didn’t want any of her staff to miss this reveal.
This should be fun, she thought.
CHAPTER 17
Caleb smiled, but it was a forced smile. He felt the muscles in his cheeks having to pull the edges of his mouth up.
But smile he did.
The screen inside the photobooth counted down from ten.
Nine… Eight… Seven… Six…
Lilith stood to his right, a smile on her own face larger than Caleb had ever seen from her. Between them, they held up the body of Freddy, although Lilith had taken to calling him “Bernie.” As in “Weekend At…”
Bernie stared daggers at the camera.
Literally.
His eyes were nothing but the handles of two daggers that Lilith had made Caleb stab into him while Lilith held him down. Freddy — er, “Bernie” — had been hired the same year as Caleb. They had gone through their orientation together, and even then, Caleb fantasized about one day killing him.
He was the guy who made Caleb realize that he wasn’t cut out for the brotastic world of finance. The guy must’ve said the c-word at least three times during their sexual harassment training. Whenever a woman spoke, whether it be a female boss or a waitress, Freddy would turn to Caleb and say, “She needs a dick in her mouth.”
When Lilith first started interning at the company, Freddy made no attempt to control his wandering eyes from analyzing every inch of her body. He had a habit of coming up behind her to give her a spontaneous shoulder massage, sniffing her hair as he did.
Lilith once stood up to him and told him to stop hitting on her.
Freddy, of course, responded that he wasn’t hitting on her. He would never hit on her. Not until she lost twenty pounds. When Lilith stormed off, Freddy turned to Caleb and said, naturally, “Boy, she sure needs a dick in her mouth.”
Caleb never told Lilith about that particular catch-phrase. If he did, she probably wouldn’t have committed to simply stabbing him through the eyes. Caleb tried to imagine what she would do instead…
Most likely, she’d have held Freddy down while Caleb pulled out all of his teeth. And then, she might have forced Caleb to drop his pants, pull out his dick, and place it in Freddy’s gummy, bloody mouth. Because Freddy sure needed a dick in his mouth. Fun times.
Three… Two… One…
“Smile!” Lilith said.
The photobooth snapped off a series of three photos. As planned, they hurried to position themselves for three different poses.
The first was smiling with Bernie slung over their shoulders. Caleb gave a thumbs up while Lilith pointed a small sign at the body that read “Party Animal.”
The second photo was of Caleb and Lilith actually holding the daggers, pretending to be in the process of stabbing Freddy through the eyes.
The final shot, which wasn’t well planned out, was some sort of orgy, sex position with the three of them all entangled and humping up against each other.
As the machine printed the photo card, they set Freddy in a chair. A table of goofy props waited nearby and Lilith took a few moments to put a captain’s hat and pink feather boa on his corpse.
The machine spat out their photos. When Lilith picked the card up, her expression immediately turned downward.
“The last one came out blurry.” she said. She studied the photo for a bit. “Let’s do it again.”
“Sure thing.”
Caleb went over to Freddy and slung the man’s arm around his shoulder, preparing to lift one-hundred and eighty pounds of douche-baggery. He didn’t see the point in another photo, though. The Venue already told them that all the photos from the booth would be confiscated and destroyed at the end of the night. It was only here because Lilith wanted a photobooth at her wedding, complete with all sorts of zany props.
Caleb personally detested photo booths. He always felt a weird pressure to be creative, or happy, or to act like a fool. Caleb didn’t like acting like a fool. That’s when people laughed at him.
But nothing else seemed to be bringing Lilith joy at this point.
They had finished off most of the stragglers in the ballroom about thirty minutes ago. Everyone else had run off.
Caleb had suggested that they could hunt down their guests throughout The Venue, picking them off one at a time, but Lilith shot down that idea.
“Why should we be the ones who have to kill all these people?” she had lectured him. “If I just wanted to kill people, we could have had our wedding in a fucking barn in Pennsylvania and burned it to the ground. Oopsie, the candles got too close to the burlap. What would be the fucking point in that? Are we fucking psychos?”
He had thought she was asking the question rhetorically, but she stopped and stared at him, waiting for a response.
“Uh, no,” he finally stammered out.
“These people don’t just deserve to die. They deserve to be punished. The most painful punishments — the ones that really last, that really leave a wound — don’t come from a knife. They come from a mirror.”
“You’re right. You’re absolutely right.”
“Just wait until midnight gets close. When it becomes clear they have no options, they’re going to look deep inside themselves. And they’re going to tear each other apart.”
“Like animals.”
“Like fucking animals.”
With that, she had grabbed him and kissed him. Passionately. Her tongue went deep into his mouth and her hand slid down into his pants.
He took her back to the room. And sure, they had sex. For all of five minutes. Caleb had imagined his wedding night sex would be a deeply sensual, almost spiritual experience. The type of bonding moment that phrases like “making love” fell short of explaining. In his mind, Caleb expected something beyond an orgasm of the body. He wanted an orgasm of the soul.
But that’s not what he got.
Instead, Lilith insisted that they stay mostly clothed, so that they could run out to the balcony and ballroom at a moment’s notice. With her silky white dress hiked up to her waist, she pushed him down on the bed and straddled him. She didn’t even look at him, though. She faced the other way, toward the TV.
She watched all the various feeds from different rooms and different guests in hiding. There wasn’t any action, which seemed to disappoint her. Everyone clutched whatever weapons they could get their hands on and crouched down in various nooks and crannies. Some were hiding only feet from one another. Surely they knew there were other people nearby — people they could kill for freedom.
No one did.
Lilith’s motions, riding up and down on Caleb, became mechanical. When she moaned, it was as though she had to consciously remind herself that sex involved moaning.
Caleb peeked around her to see the screen. Maybe he could catch a glimpse of his parents. Or Amy. Where were they all hiding?
But Lilith then climaxed — or pretended to, at least — and climbed off of him. She pulled down her dress and went back out to the balcony. Caleb quickly pulled his pants back on and followed.
Since then, they had been hanging out with some of their guests in the photo booth. But as Caleb prepared to lift Freddy so that they could try a second round of photos, one of the doors to the ballroom creaked open. He turned.
Freddy’s date, Tiffany, wandered in.
She had been a last minute plus-one for Freddy, who had actually cycled through three different plus-ones since the Save The Dates went out. Caleb never understood why guys like Freddy always seemed to have a never-ending supply of hot girlfriends
. Well, he did have a theory — Freddy was rich and he purposefully sought out stupid girls who were impressed by his riches.
Caleb didn’t know much about Tiffany except that she was from some small central Oregon town and moved to New York to follow her dreams of being a Broadway actress. She probably got some praise for a supporting role in a high school musical, and that little bit of validation set her off on a life altering course. He presumed she met Freddy while she was waitressing in New York and found that sleeping with some rich asshole was easier than an ordinary job.
It occurred to Caleb that Tiffany was one of the few guests he actually pitied. She didn’t ask for this. She didn’t deserve it. If a simple girl like her had only found a nice guy like Caleb, he could have taken care of her. They could have moved back to her hometown, opened an insurance company or some shit, and started popping out babies, all of whom would love and respect their father.
He could have made her happy. And then she wouldn’t have to die.
But alas, she chose poorly.
Tiffany walked through the ballroom. Her face was pale, seemingly not from fear or exhaustion but from a wee bit of alcohol poisoning. Her sandy blonde hair had become matted near her scalp and frizzy everywhere else.
She wandered over to Caleb and smiled her drunken smile at him. It was sweet and cute. He could see her pupils struggling to zero in on his face. She apparently didn’t see the large pools of blood nor the general disarray of the tables and chairs. To her eyes, it must look like the night had ended and the ballroom was in the cleaning stages.
“Great party,” she said, her words slurring ever so slightly.
“Thanks.” He smiled at her.
“Thanks for having me.” She swayed on her feet and patted down her disheveled hair.
It was so adorable, her trying to pretend that she hadn’t spent most of the night with her head in the toilet. Caleb wanted nothing more than to scoop her in his arms, carry her up the stairs to her room, and tuck her into bed. Bring her a few glasses of water. Hold her hair back as she puked. And when she awoke, the first thing she would see would be him, sleeping in the chair beside her bed, protecting her dignity.
Her gaze broke away from his face and looked around the room, still not quite seeing things for how they were.
So sweet, so simple. Caleb took a breath. He couldn’t pull his eyes off her.
“Well, well, well. And where have you been, sweetie?” Lilith said as she stepped out of the photo booth and came to stand beside Caleb. The blood that had soaked up through the bottom fringes of her dress and up the lace of her sleeves was hard to miss.
The same with the knife in her hand.
At that moment, Caleb noticed Tiffany’s body stiffen. The fine, blonde hairs stood out on her arm from the goosebumps that had suddenly formed.
“I, uh, I was in the bathroom. Just looking for Freddy.”
“Isn’t that Freddy?” Lilith said with a friendly point.
Tiffany slowly turned in that direction. Freddy stayed slumped in his seat, still wearing the captain’s hat and pink boa. Still staring daggers out at the world.
Tiffany didn’t seem to have the wherewithal to even form a reaction. She stood, mouth slightly agape, and stared. Caleb could almost see her innocent mind churning, trying to fit the pieces together to make sense of what her eyes showed her. Is this a joke? she seemed to be thinking.
As Caleb watched her, he felt Lilith’s grasp. It wasn’t a tender or warm touch. She was slipping something to him — a heavy, metal handle wrapped in a leather grip. He looked down. A sickle had been pressed into his hand. Its rusted blade curved back on itself in a crescent moon shape that came to a sharp tip. He didn’t know where she had picked it up from, although he kind of remembered seeing it on one of the tables.
“She’s all yours, dear,” Lilith whispered in his ear.
He gulped. “I thought we were gonna let everyone else be the hunters.”
“Oh, I can make an exception. This is my gift to you. It’s your special day too.” There was something about her tone. Something that said this wasn’t optional.
“We got other events to get ready for. I don’t want to get too dirty,” Caleb said.
The false sweetness dropped out of Lilith’s voice. “She is so pretty. Too pretty. Shave off her face.”
“You can go ahead and have this one,” Caleb offered.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I haven’t been the one eye-fucking her all weekend.”
Caleb’s face reddened. He didn’t believe that he had necessarily been doing that, but he couldn’t argue. Not with Lilith. A shame and embarrassment welled up out of his stomach and washed hot, burning waves through his cheeks.
He gripped the sickle tightly and stepped forward.
It had become abundantly clear that Tiffany could hear them, but the girl continued looking away. She stared out the window. Her body had gone still. It struck Caleb that he was witnessing the extent of Tiffany’s fight-or-flight response. If she stood still, perhaps they’d never find her.
Lilith let out a disgusted sigh. Was she annoyed that Tiffany wasn’t fighting back? Or was she disgusted at him and his hesitation?
“Go on,” she said. “We’ve got a schedule to keep.”
Tiffany now broke into tears. Her whole body quivered and her expression contorted into one of terror. She didn’t look at Caleb, though. Her body stayed rigid, refusing to move, refusing to give up her hiding place, even if that “hiding place” meant standing in the middle of an empty ballroom. It was all she seemed capable of doing. Even possums knew to lay down when they played dead.
“Wow,” Lilith said, shaking her head.
Caleb walked up to Tiffany.
He raised the sickle.
Tiffany’s face twisted into a terrified cringe as Caleb swung the sickle’s curved blade right across her freckled little nose.
CHAPTER 18
Amy glanced at the clock on the gym wall.
Eleven p.m.
One hour until midnight. One hour until they would be forced to find someone to kill or sit around and wait for someone to kill them.
The Venue had been quiet for a while, the only sounds being the occasional sharp pops of explosions, followed either by more silence or howling screams. In all that time, it didn’t seem as though anyone had experienced any success at removing their damn bracelets.
Her parents seemed resigned to the idea that their arms would eventually explode off their bodies. Candice, who had been a school nurse for many years, had fitted all of them with tourniquets near their elbows. She took off both her nylons and then cut them in half so that each person could have a strip of the wide, stretchy fabric.
Candice said that the key to a good tourniquet was the “cone of pressure,” meaning the tourniquet needed to sufficiently compress all the blood vessels and muscles in the area. It needed to be wide and tight. A wire or string wouldn’t do it.
For several minutes, the four of them practiced pulling their tourniquets. It was a matter of holding one end of the nylon with one’s teeth as their free hand pulled on the other end of the nylon. Then they were to take one of the pegs Candice had pulled from the weight machines and insert the small rod into the knot, twisting and torqueing it tight.
Easy-peasy.
… as long as one wasn’t writhing on the ground in shock, weak from blood loss, and completely disoriented by the fact that their arm had just exploded.
But Candice assured them that if done properly, a good tourniquet could save their life.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please turn your attention to the north end of the ballroom for the presentation of the wedding cake,” the DJ announced, his voice blaring out through the gym and hallways beyond.
Amy jumped at the sound. Her ears had been in a constant state of strain, anxiously listening for approaching feet.
There must be speakers in the ceiling, Amy thought.
And prob
ably cameras.
“This is a red velvet cake with a cream cheese and cyanide frosting,” the DJ continued.
Did she hear that right? Cyanide frosting?
“So, if any of you want to kick back and relax for the rest of the night, come to the ballroom and enjoy a slice of cake,” the DJ said.
“What the hell?” Mariko whispered out.
“Cyanide kills fast,” Roger said. “It’s what the Nazi generals used before they could get captured.”
“It’s a suicide cake,” Amy said.
“But why? Why give us the option?” Mariko asked.
Amy shrugged her shoulders, but she believed she knew the answer.
The DJ continued, “I’m being told by the kitchen staff that the cake does contain nuts. So, if anyone has an allergy, just eat the cyanide frosting.”
Amy glanced toward her mom. Candice’s face, which had been so tight with stress, appeared to relax ever so slightly. Amy knew her mom could never hurt, let alone kill, another human. She was destined to be the weak antelope in the herd. The one that the true psychopaths would target. Candice would become someone’s ticket to freedom.
Which was exactly what Caleb and Lilith probably wanted to avoid — easy kills for other people. Let the soft ones, like Amy’s mom, take themselves out of the equation so that whoever remained could have a true fight to the death. If given the chance, Amy bet her mother would eat the cake.
The DJ continued, “And now, turn your attention to the main stage as Caleb and Lilith have their first dance as a married couple.”
A familiar song played through the speaker — Sweet Caroline.
Amy loved that song. It reminded her of road trips with her parents. Of all the oldies and classic rock that they listened to in the car, that was their song. Whenever it came on, all conversation ceased. All naps would end. The three of them would lean up in their seats and belt out the lyrics together. As a family.
She felt her heart pound and her muscles clench. Caleb and Lilith — those fucking psychopaths — were now twirling on the stage, staring goo-goo into each other’s eyes, pausing only to shout out the chorus to Amy’s family’s song. She had probably been the one to teach the song to Caleb back in the day.