Sex, Marry, Kill

by Travis, Todd

  SEX, MARRY, KILL

  A novel by

  Todd Travis

  The following is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living, dead or undead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  Copyright © 2014 by Todd Travis

  Kindle Edition

  Cover illustration by

  Bosa Grgurevic: www.Buddhacandy.com

  Proofing by

  Diana Cox at www.novelproofreading.com

  A geek. A fat chick. A slow learner. A psycho suicide girl. A wannabe criminal.

  Five outcast high school kids with nothing in common except that nobody liked them. Five losers with nothing to look forward to but torment and harassment every day; nothing, that is, until they were introduced to the game.

  SEX, MARRY, KILL.

  An online game that would change their lives and give them power over others. They could do anything they wanted, sleep with anyone they wanted to, kill anyone who got in their way. Their every fantasy fulfilled.

  But at a mortal price. They soon discover that game will consume and destroy them unless they find some way to stop it before it’s too late.

  For fans of Stephen King and Joe Hill, a dark tale of horror, revenge and gaming gone lethally wrong.

  Dedicated to my middle school gym teacher, who hit me with his fist and beat the living shit out of me when I was in the sixth grade.

  You were a fucking asshole, man.

  And so this is for you.

  Chapter One

  Text message from Shakes: “WE ARE GODS OF THE SCHOOL!”

  Darin couldn’t bring himself to erase any of the messages.

  “FURIOUS FIVE RULZ 4EVER!”

  He kept them, very deliberately, as a stark reminder.

  “SEX, MARRY, KILL!”

  Even though he knew he’d ever forget.

  “KILL!”

  Chapter Two

  It was at the disastrous class dinner at the steakhouse, near the end of the day on their October senior trip to Portland, that the five of them would meet the mysterious Mr. Herman and see the course of their lives altered forever.

  “There are five of you, together? How fortunate!” Mr. Herman had said.

  Darin would later wonder if any of it would have even happened had he ditched on the trip, like he’d originally thought about doing. He later found out Valerie had nearly done the same thing, ditched the trip. Had they done that …

  “Five is, ah … a powerful number,” Mr. Herman whispered to them as he tapped his cane on the floor five times.

  Had either of them ditched, none of it would have happened, Valerie would later maintain, because if even just one of them had ditched, then there would have been only four of them, not five, and five was the magic number, that’s what Mr. Herman would tell them over and over again as he ran his fingers over the tip of his cane.

  Darin didn’t think so. Even if there were just four of them at the steakhouse, Darin thought that Mr. Herman would have planted the idea with one of them anyway, Shakes, most likely, and it would have taken seed.

  There needed to be five players to start the game, true, but Mr. Herman didn’t need five to get the ball rolling. He only needed one, and that person would recruit four others. He would have gotten to one of them on that trip, and whoever that was would have gotten the rest. That’s what he told her.

  But Darin knew that was bullshit, and he knew that Valerie knew it was, too, though she didn’t challenge him on it. Because had they not all gone, the five of them, they would have never bonded as a group. Three or four, it wouldn’t have worked.

  “Five of you, you could have so much fun together,” Mr. Herman had said as he glanced over at the tables of the popular kids, laughing at them and the spectacle of this gangly freak with a streak of bright red in his hair sitting down to chat with them.

  “I used to be just like you are right now, on the outside looking in. Listening to the popular kids as they talked about me behind their fists, made fun of me, left me out of everything cool. I was just like that. Like you. Sad. Alone. But I made four friends, friends who had the same problem in common. Together we discovered … a game. One which taught us an immense amount and was much fun. So. Much. Fun.”

  Mr. Herman chuckled at the memory and leaned back, cradling his black top hat next to his cane, his fingernails long and gleaming with black nail polish.

  Darin knew it wouldn’t have worked, had he ditched. Because before the trip, as individuals, not a single one of them could name even one friend they could enlist for the game, let alone four. Even if it had been just Ed, Faye and Shakes at the table, that wouldn’t have worked, because those three didn’t have two extra friends between them. That’s what they had in common. They literally had no friends.

  It was the trip that had brought them together and had any of them ditched, it was more than possible that they would have never dropped their guard with each other enough to join the others and play the game.

  No way he and Shakes would have had the trust with each other to pull that stunt at the memorial service. No way he or Valerie would have gone to Shakes’s house, if not for the trip and what happened afterward. No fucking way. It was the trip that brought the five of them together and opened the door to the game.

  “Would you like to play?” Mr. Herman had asked them.

  Neither Darin nor Valerie said it out loud, but they both knew. They didn’t talk about it after that, because that meant everything that happened could have been avoided had either of them just stayed home.

  Which meant everything was all their fault.

  Chapter Three

  Darin “Detention” Johnson heard a familiar-sounding group laugh, turned in his seat and saw that the jocks in the back of the bus were beating on Shakes again. They were doing their regular thing where, one by one, they’d punch hard as they could on the smaller boy’s shoulder. They’d alternate, and whenever Shakes would turn or try to protect one shoulder, one of the other jocks would punch the other one. They did this so often that Shakes once had to go to the hospital for the massive hematomas in both arms.

  Since there were girls around, Shakes was trying not to cry in front of them. He was smaller than everyone else in the senior class; he was only fifteen and got bumped up a couple grades sometime in junior high, Darin had heard one of the veteran teachers explaining the Shakes situation to a new staffer once when Darin was cooling his heels in the office, waiting for the principal to chew his ass.

  It was back then that Jason Goodwin, the homecoming king and starting quarterback, so anointed even at fourteen, had made Shakes his special project. He’d basically been beating on the kid for years since. It was all to “toughen” the smaller kid up, Jason maintained to this day.

  Darin had gone through that bullshit himself at a few schools when he was in junior high and he knew there was nothing tough about it, it was just torture of the small and weak, plain and simple. He’d only been at this one for a year and a half, but it was pretty much the same at every school he’d attended.

  Darin glanced at Mr. Healy, the gym teacher, who sat across from him on the charter bus, engrossed in a game of NBA 2K on his smartphone. Healy had insisted that Darin sit up in front by him, where he could keep an eye on him, Darin was told. And Healy warned him that if he caught Darin with any weed or pills on this trip, he wouldn’t be allowed to graduate with the rest of the class.

  Yeah right, Darin had thought but didn’t say out loud at the time, that’d be perfectly terrible, not being able to stand with this group of gaping
fuckholes just to get a worthless diploma.

  Their other chaperone on this senior trip, a music teacher named Ms. Arnett, sat somewhere in the middle of the bus with her headphones on listening to classic shit like she usually was, oblivious to what was going on four seats behind her. She was a tiny woman in her forties and was probably born a spinster. Most other students were used to the Shakes show by now; they either ignored it or enjoyed it.

  Darin always stayed out of this shit, the jocks didn’t usually mess with him much because they were some of his best customers, especially Jason Goodwin, who was high on pot and pills for nearly every practice and game. Not that they were afraid of him, the jocks called him Detention, since he spent a lot of time there, and he’d been voted Most Likely to Commit A Felony last year in the class yearbook. They were afraid of nothing, the jocks, they were the kings of the school, after all.

  Darin just ignored it all, the teachers, the social cliques, everything. He made his money off the pot and pills and then tucked it away, counting the days until his birthday in March. Once he was eighteen, he was getting the hell out of this place, diploma or no. He figured he’d get his GED when he was ready.

  But today the beat down of Shakes irritated him for some reason. He leaned over toward Healy. “Hey.”

  Healy ignored him at first, concentrating on his game, cursing. Darin had swiped Healy’s previous phone, hacked the security code and discovered that Healy liked to play the All Star Game so he could stack his team, usually the West Coast, with talented white guys in the starting lineup and play a team with all black players, usually bench players in the other lineup, and juggle the options so that he could beat the black guys with the white guys.

  Healy had long suspected that Darin had stolen his phone, but could never prove it. Darin had disabled the GPS, jailbroke the phone and sold it online, but not before he duped everything on the phone. There were some naughty pictures and videos stored on it that might be of use at some point. Healy didn’t like black guys, but he loved porn with black women, especially the ones with big butts. And even though he was married, he’d carried on some illicit text messaging with a couple of teacher’s aides and, of particular note, Ms. Arnett. It was racy shit, but Darin was saving it.

  “Hey. Hey!” Darin said again.

  Healy cursed under his breath and paused his game, glaring over. “What is it, Johnson? And my name is not ‘hey,’ it’s Mr. Healy to you, understand?”

  Darin didn’t say anything to that, just jerked his chin toward the back of the bus at the ruckus. There was an even louder smack as Jason landed a knuckle punch on right on the nub of Shakes’s shoulder and the younger boy cried out in spite of himself. The jocks all giggled and looked away. Healy finally turned around.

  “Hobart!” Healy shouted. “What are you DOING back there?”

  “Nothin’,” Shakes said, trying and failing to keep the tremor out of his voice.

  “Then why do I hear you yowling? Unless you want to stay on the bus for the entire duration of the trip, you’d better get your act straight, young man.”

  “Yeah, c’mon, Shakes, get your act together, man!” Goodwin said. “What the hell, you trying to ruin this outing for the rest of us?”

  His gang of jock goons giggled. Darin rolled his eyes.

  “All of you, you’re supposed to be young adults and I expect you to act like it!” Healy said. “This means you, Hobart. Man up, son.”

  Healy glared at everyone for dramatic effect, then turned back front and returned to his game. He felt Darin staring at him and looked up.

  “Way to go,” Darin said. “Especially liked the part where you stopped Shakes from kicking the hell outa everyone back there. It’s good someone finally stood up for those poor, victimized jocks, man.”

  “Since when have you cared about anybody but yourself?”

  “Good point. I don’t. But I’m not the class chaperone, either.”

  Healy leaned toward him. “Nobody likes a squealer, Johnson.”

  “I’ll remember that next time you bust me for no hall pass.”

  Healy lowered his phone, anger in his eyes, and moved at Darin. Stopped himself and took a breath. “We have six more months together, Johnson, then we’re out of each other’s hair for good, just as long as you behave yourself. I get that you think you’re bad, I get your bullshit pose. It’s what you ‘think’ passes for cool. But I’m not gonna stop trying to make a responsible citizen out of you, and while you may not like it, you’re gonna have to suffer it in silence. Because if I get too much lip from the likes of YOU, you’ll spend the entirety of what’s remaining of your senior year in detention. You have my promise on that.”

  Healy gave Darin one of his patented badass stares. Darin stared back. Healy lifted weights regularly with his basketball team and still considered himself an athlete despite being on the high side of forty, complete with a hard protruding belly. He loved to throw his weight around, especially with non-jocks. Last year he’d grabbed Darin by the arm and shook him hard enough to make his teeth rattle when one of his senior basketball players got caught with pot and claimed to have bought from Darin. Two other teachers had had to pull Healy off of him as he threatened to give Darin a beating.

  They could never prove the pot came from Darin, since the player later recanted and was bounced off the team anyway, but Healy had hated Darin ever since that moment and Darin could tell the gym teacher wanted any excuse to put his hands on him. It’s one reason he swiped the teacher’s phone, as insurance, in case he tried that shit again or busted him for pot. They stared at each other, their hate mutual.

  “You got anything else to say, Johnson? Because if you do, I can arrange for YOU to stay on this bus with Hobart for the duration of this trip while the rest of us take in the sights, have fun and eat a nice dinner. Is that what you want? Let me know right now and I’ll arrange it. You want that?”

  Darin let it go and shook his head, sliding back into a slouch.

  “What was that? I couldn’t hear you. Is that what you want?”

  Darin pushed his hair from his eyes, stared straight ahead.

  “No.”

  “No what?”

  Christ, Darin thought. Is he serious? This is what I get for sticking my neck out.

  “No … what?”

  Darin sighed. “No … sir.”

  Healy grunted and turned back to his video game. “I’ll make an upstanding citizen out of you yet, Johnson, even if I have to drag you kicking and screaming into responsibility.”

  Darin slouched down in his seat and sighed again. Lesson learned, keep my nose on my shit and my shit alone, he thought. When he finally turned eighteen, he was fucking out of this place, for real.

  Chapter Four

  Samuel “Shakes” Hobart rubbed his shoulder and forced himself to think of other things. He should have never taken a seat this far in the back of the bus, he knew better, but as they were lined up to board, Valerie Weems had glanced his way in a manner that was, in Shakes’s mind, much more friendly than was the usual.

  He couldn’t help himself, not when it came to Valerie Weems, and so he followed her to the back. She always sat near the back, by herself whenever she could, with her headphones on and her long hair down over her eyes.

  He’d helped her with some programming homework a few times since school started and so she occasionally said hi to him, which was epic because Valerie never said hi to anybody. She never spoke to most people, just sat there with her dark hair and black clothes, her blue eyes nearly always down at the ground. But she smiled at him today, or rather a Valerie version of a smile. Valerie didn’t smile like most folks, her lips were always nearly together and the edges locked down to the floor.

  But Shakes knew her well enough by now that he could tell she had different versions of her usual grimace, one of which could be interpreted as a smile. One tip of the edge of her mouth went up. That counted. That counted as a smile. So he followed her as they trooped on the bus, all
the way near the back, planning to ask if he could sit next to her. But before he could even open his mouth, Linda Sue Palmer cut in front of him and plopped into the seat next to Val, Linda Sue smiling that scary plastic bible-beating smile she always had plastered on her face.

  Shakes groaned, because now that he’d gone this far to the back of the bus there was no way to turn around, the rest of the class was pushing on in and plus, Valerie would know that he’d only come back this far just to sit next to her. He found a seat next to Special Ed Kaminski; he hadn’t wanted to sit next to Special Ed, who was large and slow, but he’d preferred that to any of the other guys. Special Ed was big but he wasn’t mean. Ed just sat there and stared out the window, humming to himself.

  Jason Goodwin saw him back there and his eyes gleamed. He stretched but it was a fakeout⁠—Shakes could tell, he knew everything there was to know about his tormentor’s moods⁠—and once he got close enough, popped Shakes hard on the shoulder.

  “Shakes, my man!” Goodwin said. “You got your pubes yet?”

  He punched Shakes again as he passed by the smaller boy.

  “This should help ya, put hair on your chest and testicles!”

  More of the jocks, all wearing their bullshit letter jackets, shouted and followed suit as they tramped on. Shakes gritted his teeth and hoped that, maybe once the bus started up, he might be able to swap seats and move up forward. But the bus driver started it up and he found out he was stuck there, smack dab in the center of hostiles. They waited until they knew both teacher-chaperones were busy, then they started in on him again. Shakes tried to smile through it, tried to take it like one of them, but he couldn’t. He just couldn’t. And they kept on doing it whenever the teachers weren’t looking.

  And then later when that asshole Coach Healy FINALLY noticed the commotion, singled him out and humiliated Shakes in front of everyone, in front of her, especially, it took all of Shakes’s willpower not to breakdown right then and there. He held it in just long enough to make it back to the bathroom and, once he got inside, let himself cry, silently. He turned on the water faucet and cried it out. Washed his face and killed time until someone pounded on the bathroom door.