The Housemates: A Novel of Extreme Terror

by Iain Rob Wright

  Richard looked up at Damien and nodded.

  Then he sucker punched him right in the nuts.

  Damien hunched over and fell backwards, stars clouding his vision as all of the air was forced from his lungs. Richard grabbed his axe back up off the floor and stalked after him, ready to swing the axe.

  Damien tried to catch his breath, put a hand up to protect himself.

  Rage contorted Richard’s face as he chopped the axe downwards.

  Damien closed his eyes and waited to be cut open.

  Something struck Richard from the side and his swing went wide. He staggered to his right and dropped the axe on the floor again. There was a confused, disbelieving look on his face and it soon became clear what had happened.

  Danni knelt down beside Damien, a bloody axe in her hand. Damien looked over and saw the blood begin to spray from Richard’s neck as his hacked-up jugular ruptured. The guy dropped to his knees and tried to stem the wound with both hands, but it was no use. His face was already beginning to grow pale as Death sharpened his scythe in anticipation.

  Damien was still in agony. A wave of nausea had taken over him and he was taking deep breathes to try and send it away. His whole midsection ached as pulses of dull, throbbing pain emanated from his groin.

  “Are you okay?” Danni asked him.

  Damien huffed and puffed. “Yeah…are you?”

  She smiled at him. “I’m great. This thing should finally be over now. We made it.”

  Damien looked left and looked right. Richard and Chris were both slowly bleeding to death. They would each be dead within the next few minutes.

  “HOUSEMATES DANNI AND DAMIEN, CONGRATULATIONS. YOU ARE THE VICTORS. PLEASE ASSEMBLE IN THE LIVING AREA.”

  3

  Damien managed to catch his breath after the blow to his testicles and was now sitting on the sofa anxiously. Was this really all over? Even if it was, would he really be allowed to walk free? Would he be given the money he was promised?

  A million quid each for me and Danni?

  Enough to give Harry a chance.

  Danni leant into Damien and he put his arm around her. She said, “We did it. We stuck together and we made it to the end.”

  Damien kissed the top of her head. “Yeah, we did. We made it.”

  But at what cost?

  “HOUSEMATE DANNI, HOUSEMATE DAMIEN, THE COMPETITION IS NOW OVER. PLEASE ENTER THE ELIMINATION CHAMBER.”

  Damien groaned. “Thought I’d seen the last of that place.”

  “Me too. Maybe that’s where they’re going to let us out.”

  Damien stood up and took Danni by the hand, while also picking up the hand axe he had left on the sofa. He felt better with it. Together the two of them walked towards the elimination chamber door, two survivors ready to leave a warzone.

  Damien held the door open for Danni and they both stepped into the white cube room. It was a place of death and suffering, but perhaps now it was the room where their salvation would take place.

  In the centre was a long metal table. There were two large open briefcases, one at either end. Between them, in the centre, was a large red button.

  Damien stared at the two briefcases on the table and actually let out a whistle. They were both filled with piles and piles of money, stacked neatly in thick wads of fifties.

  “That’s a fuck load of money.”

  Danni looked at him and grinned. “You’re telling me. I guess this whole thing was legit after all. They’re giving us two million pounds.”

  Damien suddenly felt lighter. More and more he was beginning to believe that he might just get out of this thing alive. But there was just one thing he didn’t yet understand.

  What’s that button for?

  “HOUSEMATES, CONGRATULATIONS. BEFORE YOU IS TWO MILLION POUNDS IN CASH. IT IS YOURS TO SHARE EQUALLY. YOU ARE ALSO FREE TO LEAVE THIS HOUSE THROUGH A DOOR THAT WILL SOON OPEN.”

  Damien and Danni exchanged glances and smiled.

  “HOWEVER, YOU HAVE ONE FINAL DECISION AHEAD OF YOU. ON THE TABLE IS A BUTTON. PRESS IT AND YOU WILL RECEIVE 100% OF THE MONEY. YOU WILL NOT BE REQUIRED TO SHARE. PRESS THE BUTTON ON THE CENTRE OF THE TABLE AND YOUR FELLOW HOUSEMATE WILL DIE, LEAVING YOU ALL THE CASH.”

  Damien sighed. “That’s messed up,” he said. “We’re not about to betray each other after all that we’ve been through. A million each is more than-”

  Danni sprinted over the table and pressed down on the button with both hands.

  Damien had remained rooted to the spot for the single second it had taken for Danni to betray him. His mouth was hanging open. He did not understand.

  Danni turned around and faced him from the table. Her remaining bracelet sprung open and clattered to the floor. She was finally free.

  Damien shook his head at her. “W-why?”

  Danni grinned. She was suddenly very ugly and distorted, like a complete stranger. “Richard was the ‘crusader,’” she said. “He burned down a mosque in Leeds and tried to incite a local race war. “And it’s pretty obvious that you’re the ‘peddler,’ what with all the poison you helped push on desperate people that needed help more than they needed a line of coke. So, who does that leave?”

  Damien sighed. “Traitor.”

  Danni smirked at him. “Pity you figured it out a little late. It’s been fun playing you like a fiddle.”

  “What? Are you saying that you were a part of this?”

  “Duh!”

  “But why? What was the point of you pretending to be like the rest of us?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Why do you think? I’m here to make sure that no one walks away the winner. Can’t have you spilling the beans, can we? You can call me the contingency plan if you like. Oh, don’t get me wrong. You’re the winner, but as for letting you walk free, that just can’t happen.”

  Damien couldn’t make it add up in his brain. “But the tasks, the games… Why put this money in front of me if it was all just a scam.”

  Danni held her bandaged hand up in front of her. She unravelled it to show that she had no injuries – no acid burn. “The wasp stings sucked pretty bad, but all of the other tasks were faked. There was only water in my bowl during the acid task. The task I was in with Jade was weighted in my favour. There was a slight incline to the floor that gave me a little helping hand from gravity. Of course I made it look close, but it never really was. As for the money, well that’s payment for me and my team. We’re a cash only kind of organisation. Every time we do this, we get a couple suitcases of cash sent down from the people running things.” She ran a hand over the money in the suitcases. “God, how I love payday.”

  Damien snarled. “You bitch!”

  “Hey, I’m one of the good guys. All of you deserved to be here. You’re the scum of the earth.”

  Damien shook his head. “No. I changed.”

  “Perhaps, but there’s a kid called Gaz Brown that hasn’t walked since the day you beat him to a pulp. Poor kid doesn’t even know what day it is.”

  Damien sighed, and then actually laughed to himself.

  “What?” Danni asked. “What’s so funny?”

  “I didn’t lay a finger on Gaz Brown. My father was responsible. He just let me take the street cred for it. You got your facts wrong.”

  “We never get our facts wrong. Gaz Brown’s father paid a lot of money to see you held responsible.”

  “Well, sorry to break it to you, but he’s got the wrong guy.” Damien tightened his grip on the axe in his hand. “And now I’m going to hold you responsible for the fuck up.”

  He ran at Danni but only made it half way. An unbearable burst of agony shot through his left wrist. Immediately he dropped the axe and keeled over. The pain took over him in waves. His diaphragm seized up and his mouth filled with saliva. The steel collar sprung free of his neck, any chance for the counter-agent gone.

  Danni came and stood over him. “Nobody ever gets out of here alive. I’m very good at what I do.”

  Damien stared
up at her and gritted his teeth. “I’m…going to…kill you.”

  “Not in this life.”

  Damien used the last of his strength to grab the hand axe from the floor beside him.

  Danni’s eyes went wide. She leapt back and put several feet of space between them. Then she began to laugh. “You idiot. You’ll be dead within minutes and yet you still fight.”

  Damien grimaced, but managed to pull a smirk across his face. “The axe wasn’t meant for you.”

  Before Danni could realise what he meant, Damien chopped the axe against his left wrist. The flesh and tendons split apart and fragile bones broke.

  He chopped again.

  Then one more time, as hard as he could manage before shock sent him weak.

  Damien’s left hand slithered across the floor as his arm came away from it. The bracelet that had circled his wrist fell to the floor and leaked a yellowish liquid that must have been the toxin.

  Danni’s eyelids were stretched wide open, making her eyes look like marbles inside her head. “Get me out of here,” she shouted and backed up towards the opposite wall. “The fool’s lost his mind.”

  Two large men immediately entered the room through a hidden back door. They bundled Danni through it to safety and then started towards Damien. One of the men was the big fucker in black overalls.

  Damien’s head was spinning. He felt sick and close to unconsciousness, but he had to get away.

  He managed to get up off the floor and stagger backwards, keeping his eyes on the two approaching men, while making his way to the door that led back into the house. In his right hand, he still held the axe but it felt unbearably heavy in his hand.

  The two guards said nothing. They just stalked after him with murderous intent. The man in the black overalls was smiling.

  Damien reached behind himself and fumbled for the door handle. He found it and was relieved when it turned.

  The men picked up their pace. Damien fell backwards through the door back into the house. He landed on his rump, but quickly got himself together and kicked the door closed again, before the two larger men could come through it.

  He sat on the floor, axe held ready in his hand, eyes on the door.

  The door remained closed.

  The two men were not following.

  Why aren’t they coming in here to get me?

  Damien looked down at the gushing stump where his hand used to be and knew the answer.

  I’m bleeding to death. They don’t need to come after me. They can just wait until I die.

  Damien managed to prop himself up on his one hand and slowly climb to his feet. He took a deep breath and tried to keep his mind from spinning.

  I’m not dead yet, you ass hats.

  Damien turned on the spot, looking for a way to preserve his life. It didn’t take him long before he found one.

  He stumbled over into the kitchen and placed himself in front of the cooker. With his right hand he twisted the knob for the gas hob and pressed the clicker to ignite the flame. The lower left hob hissed and then lit up with a bright blue flame that slowly turned orange.

  Damien began to hyperventilate but caught himself just in time, before he went into full blown panic. He watched the flame with grim fascination. The destructive force of fire might possibly be about to become a life saver.

  Damien shoved the bleeding stump of his left arm over the naked flame and screamed as he forced himself to hold it there. Every automatic impulse firing from his brain ordered him to remove his flesh from the burning agony, but he fought it. He fought it for almost twenty seconds before he flopped backwards against the cabinets behind him and slid to the floor in a gibbering daze.

  He stared down at his stump to see that it was blistered and blackened. But it was no longer bleeding. His veins, arteries, and capillaries had been cauterised. He was no longer bleeding to death. Infection would probably be the thing to kill him now.

  But not for a while. I have time for a little payback.

  Damien reached up from the floor and rummaged around in the drawer above his head. His hand came back with a 12-inch chef’s knife held firmly in its grip.

  They would be coming to get him, Damien knew, but this time he was ready for them. It was time for the owners of this house to play one of his games.

  And it’s a game you’re going to lose, Mr Fucking Landlord.

  4

  Damien had grown thirsty. He didn’t know how long he’d been slumped on the kitchen floor but it seemed like a while – maybe hours.

  He climbed up off the floor and bent himself over the sink. Turning on the tap, he placed his mouth beneath the faucet and then gulped and gulped until he was out of breath. He let out a gasp and wiped his mouth.

  Right, so what’s the plan? I might be free of those damned bracelets, but I’m still inside the belly of the beast.

  Damien looked around the kitchen and managed to find a spare bandage from the first aid kits they’d been given during earlier tasks. He wrapped up the burnt stump of his left wrist and yelled out as a fresh burst of pain reignited itself.

  He rooted around the kitchen until he found half a bottle of whiskey and quickly unscrewed the cap. He downed the entire contents. The spirit burned his throat and made him gag, but the warm fuzz immediately flowed through his veins and made the pain in his wrist melt away.

  Damien picked up the chef’s knife from the counter and took it over to the heavy metal door where he and the other housemates had originally entered the nightmare of the house. As he expected, it was locked tight, impenetrable.

  Next, he checked the doors for the pantry and the elimination chamber. Both had been locked from the other side.

  They’ve caged me up in here. Left me to rot.

  There were no other doors that Damien could try. He kicked and hefted his shoulder against the pantry door but it wouldn’t budge. Unless he chanced upon a sledgehammer, he would never get the door open. For all he knew, Danni and her cohorts could be locking the place down right now, deserting ship. He would be trapped inside for days as he slowly starved to death or died of infection.

  I can’t let it end that way. I have to get out of here.

  Damien was feeling better as the whiskey saturated his system. He was confident and relaxed, but he was also a little fuzzy. Despite the slight inebriation, he was still crystal clear about one thing: The longer he was trapped inside the house, the less chance he had of getting to the people responsible for putting him there.

  Maybe I can get out through the bedroom.

  Damien headed out into the rain-soaked garden and trudged across the courtyard into the bedroom. The smell of death hit him immediately. Catherine’s body had been stagnating for several days now and Jules had joined her not long ago.

  Damien pulled his hoodie up over his nose to keep away the stench. Catherine’s face had turned a mottled alabaster with sickly patches of purple. The wrinkled skin of her old face had begun to slide back as though it were making a break for the back of her skull. Damien had never seen a decomposing body before and he would gratefully have this be the last time.

  And if I don’t get out of here, the same thing is going to happen to me.

  It didn’t take long before it became clear that there were no points of egress inside the bedroom. Not a single door or window had been built into the walls. Escape via there was not even a possibility.

  Not wanting to be around the dead housemates any longer, Damien headed back out into the garden. The sight of Patrick’s body in the far corner made him sigh. There was death everywhere. It seemed even more pervasive now that his was the only heartbeat left in the house. He was alone in a mausoleum.

  There has to be something I can do. I just need to think.

  He scanned the garden and thought about trying to scale the walls. It might be doable if he tried stacking up furniture and climbing the ten-feet to the top, but the thick layers of razor wire would have made it impossible to make it over to the other side. He would
be cut open like a peach against a cheese grater.

  He peered up at sky and let the rain caress his face. The rhythmic patter allowed him to focus inwards, to put his thoughts in order. It was almost like he was connecting with some calming, intangible force that sought only to inspire him.

  Perhaps that’s what God is.

  Eventually something occurred to Damien. There was maybe just one single way that he could escape the house; one last exit that he hadn’t tried. And he was standing right next to it.

  The raised platform that had brought the housemates the axes with which to kill each other was still in its upright position. The fact that it had risen almost every day with different equipment on it suggested that it lead to another area of the facility, and therefore would lead to a way out.

  Damien hurried over to the platform and stood inside the compartment that had housed the hand axes. If he could just find a way to make the platform descend, it would take him out of the courtyard to some place new. But there were no controls or buttons that he could see to operate the pneumatic platform.

  Damn it.

  The platform had two girders on either side that held the patch of grass above which provided its disguise when the platform was lowered. Running up both girders was a coarse black wire. Damien prodded the wires and discovered that they were firm, yet slightly pliant. Their sponginess suggested that the rubber shielding housed not copper wires or fibre optics, but something else: gas or air.

  It’s part of the pneumatics. The air pumps through these cables and lowers and raises the platform.

  Damien tried to pinch the cables closed, but they were too strong. Then a better idea occurred to him.

  Damien realised that he still held the chef’s knife in his hand. He held it up in front of him. Then he slashed at one of the cables. Immediately there was a hiss of air. Damien slashed at the cable again and it split apart, the two severed ends pointing in separate directions.

  The platform grumbled and shifted.

  Damien spun around and slashed at the remaining cable.

  More air hissed. The platform began to move. It tilted and then settled, before easing downwards as if sinking through a vat of custard. The ground beneath Damien’s feet descended slowly. He used the time to prepare for whatever came next. The last thing he saw was the great staring eye painted on the wall beneath the spotlights.