Gripping Thrillers

by Iain Rob Wright

  The tape crackled and ended.

  The television changed from displaying the word WHORE to the grid of twelve silhouettes. Beneath the photo of Jules was the word, CHEAT. Beneath the photo of Tracey was the word WHORE. The remaining silhouettes were attached to the words PEDDLER, CRUSADER, MURDERER, and TRAITOR.

  Day 7

  Damien was sat alone in the living area, cracking his knuckles as he put some of his mental ducks in a row. Everybody else, surprisingly, was enjoying the hot tub in the garden, smoking fags and a new supply of alcohol from the newly reinforced pantry. Although the bubbling water was grimy, the trace amount of chlorine was still the best way available to get clean inside the house. Damien himself would probably join them a little later.

  The bracelet on his wrist had been taunting him for the last hour while he sat alone. The blinking LED lights seemed to be winking at him. The fact that something clung to his body and would not remove itself was frustrating on a very basic level – like finding a tick on your body and crushing it in anger.

  It was still hard to believe the situation he was in. Only a few weeks ago life had been normal, even a little mundane. Damien had spent his days carving wood and fixing joints. He leased a modest flat and wasted his nights shooting noobs on Xbox Live. As much as Damien had turned his life around over the last few years, he realised now that there was still room for improvement. He could have been living life more than he had been. Now he wouldn’t get the chance.

  The main reason Damien had been drawn to crime as a teenager, besides being surrounded by it, was his father. The great Jan Olsson, son of Swedish immigrants, made a name for himself in the suburbs of Birmingham – Redditch, Bromsgrove, Studley, and Alcester mostly. Drugs, prostitution, violence for hire, he had his fingers in a lot of crud-filled pies. But robbing banks had been too much of a stretch for Damien’s kingpin of a father. The bungling idiot had been caught and arrested on his very first try; a shoddy attempt to rob an Evesham building society. He got fifteen years.

  But Damien had still been under his father’s influence, even with him banged up. He was expected to keep ‘the firm’ running in his old man’s absence. Damien had done his best for a while – intimidating people and selling his father’s drugs – but it wasn’t who he was.

  But he had no way out. His father’s influence was everywhere. Damien had been forced to commit to the role and had done many things he regretted.

  Which is the reason I am here.

  But then Harry had come along. At first Damien thought nothing of the man who had started drinking himself to death in the local pub. Harry was just another drunk.

  But then one day, the man just stopped drinking cold turkey; never touched a drop again. It was like he had woken up one morning a changed man. When Damien found out that the man’s heavy drinking was all because of losing his young son to a drunk driver, Damien’s opinion of the man had softened. The man’s love for his son, even years after his death, was honourable.

  For some reason Harry saw something in Damien, too, and reached out with a job offer. Even more fortuitous, he presented an opportunity to move away and leave their old lives behind. They both needed to start again – to leave the painful past behind them.

  Together the two of them moved north and started a business and a new existence. Damien had quickly come to view Harry as somewhat of a replacement father. Harry was kind hearted and intelligent, with a knack for seeing the best in people. He had helped Damien become a better man.

  I’ll never thank him enough for that.

  But then Harry had got sick.

  It began with vomiting and headaches.

  Then he went partially blind in one eye.

  By the time Harry went to see a specialist, the brain tumour was the size of a golf ball. Glioblastoma multiforme – one of the worst kinds of cancer. Harry had less than two years.

  That was why Damien was in this abominable house – the sole fucking reason. The World Health Organisation was running clinical trials for boron neutron capture therapy. It was experimental, but had begun to show promising results. It was perhaps the only chance Harry had, but it cost three-hundred thousand pounds. Add on the cost of getting to South Africa and living there for up to twelve months while the treatment was underway and it became a hopeless dream. Which was why Damien had allowed himself to be convinced by the stranger who had visited him with the proposition of winning the money he needed. Take part in a reality television show for the chance to win up to two million pounds. It must have been fate. Harry would have said that God was offering him a chance, but the truth was that it was Damien who was being offered the chance and he had to take it.

  Harry had agreed to him going, so long as he “kept his integrity.” He said that Damien had worked so hard to become successful and respectful that he couldn’t let a bunch of television producers bring him down.

  But it had all been a set-up. Damien had made a deadly mistake. That mistake left Harry with no hope of survival and, even worse, now no one would even be there by his side at the end. The thought filled Damien with anger. He clenched his fists and snorted.

  “You okay?” Danni was heading through the patio doors from the garden and shivering. She was wearing a bikini that Jade had lent to her. She looked at him and frowned.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “Just…reflecting.”

  She took a seat next to him and brought her knees up on the sofa. The soles of her feet were covered in blades of grass. “I’ve been doing that, too,” she said. “I don’t know how I haven’t gone crazy yet. I mean, we’re all going to die. Why are we not panicking?”

  Damien chewed the inside of his cheek and wondered about the answer. “I suppose we’ve all realised that panicking isn’t going to help, so why waste the energy? If these are our last days then there are more productive things to do than scream.”

  “But we’re all just sitting here and accepting it. We’re like lambs lined up in a slaughterhouse.”

  Damien shrugged. “What can we do different.”

  “You tell me. You’re the one that told us to be ready for an opportunity.”

  “And an opportunity is yet to present itself. Don’t worry, though, I’m ready.”

  “Good,” she said, lying up against him, “because I’m relying on you to save us all.”

  Damien chuckled. “No pressure then?”

  “Hey, I’m just asking you to give it a shot. What do you have to lose?”

  “Nothing, I guess.”

  Damien suddenly had a thought. It was something that had been bothering him since last night. “You told me that you were the whore.”

  Danni flinched slightly at the word and then looked at him in confusion. “What?”

  “When I asked you what word on the television belonged to you, you told me that it was whore. You told me about how you cheated on your husband and how he killed himself.”

  Danni nodded. Her eyes wandered off to the side as she failed to look at him. “That’s right. He killed himself because of what I did. I don’t want to go over it all again. It’s painful.”

  Damien nodded at her. He rubbed one of his hands down her naked arm. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “It’s just that one thing confuses me,” said Damien.

  “What?”

  “Tracey was the one identified as being the whore. Plus Jules’s confession in the task that beat Tracey sounded a lot like the story you told me.”

  Danni eyes narrowed at him and she seemed to be getting annoyed. “So?”

  “Well, don’t you think it’s strange?”

  Danni looked angry for a few moments, but then her face softened. She let out a long sigh and rubbed a hand against her forehead. “I lied,” she admitted. “Jules told me why she thought she was in here and I copied her story when you asked me what my sins were.”

  “That makes no sense,” said Damien. “If she so happily confessed her secrets to you, then why did she resist during the task
? She was almost ripped apart by the time she admitted to what she had done.”

  Danni shrugged. “I don’t know. She was drunk and confiding in me. I told her some secrets too. Maybe that’s why she trusted me.”

  “So what is the real reason you are here?”

  “Honestly...I don’t know. I’m not supposed to be here.”

  Damien rolled his eyes. “Welcome to the club.”

  Danni shook her head. “No, I mean I’m really not supposed to be here. The people in charge here wanted Danielle Robinson but my name is Danielle Anderson. I’m Danielle Robinson’s PA.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Damien.

  “When my boss was visited by a strange man and given the opportunity to enter the house and win the prize money she said she wasn’t interested. The stranger seemed disappointed. He left a card with an email address and told Danielle to contact him if she changed her mind. She didn’t. So I made a rash decision.”

  “You pretended to be her?”

  Danni nodded. “We look alike. Same figure, same hair, same age. Only difference was that she was successful and I was fetching her overpriced cups of coffee. I thought that if I pretended to be her I could change my life. Even if the show producers found out, I would already have gotten my face on television. It could be enough to change my life.

  “Guess that’s exactly what it did.”

  Danni laughed. “No shit! Looks like my sins are catching up with me whether I’m supposed to be here or not.”

  Damien shook his head and thought about it. As much as he felt like a victim for being in the situation he was, Danni was even more so. She hadn’t even done anything wrong to warrant being in the house.

  “That really sucks,” he said.

  “Yep, really does. Still, not much I can do about it now.” She moved closer to him, close enough that her shivering, almost-naked body was right up against his. Her face was only inches away from his own.

  “What are you doing?” he asked her.

  “I don’t want to be a lamb in the slaughterhouse anymore. I’m not dead yet.”

  She kissed Damien on the mouth. He resisted for a moment, but then wondered why and allowed himself to go with it. He kissed her back and she draped her naked leg over him and got even closer. Damien felt himself growing hard as his hands roved the smooth skin of her thigh.

  Danni felt the erection and stopped kissing him. She smiled and purred. “Who’s a big boy then?”

  Damien blushed.

  “Get a room or I’ll spray you both with the hose!”

  The other housemates had all re-entered the living area and were standing in a shivering huddle. Jules was grinning and giggling like a schoolgirl, despite the obvious pain that caused her to hunch over like an old woman. It was ironic to see her appreciate their affection after yesterday admitting how she had coldheartedly watched her sister die.

  Damien eased Danni away from him and composed himself. He was forced to place both hands over his lap.

  “Good to see you have your priorities straight,” said Richard. “Maybe you should be thinking more about how to get out of here and less about your todger.”

  Damien shrugged. “And I suppose you have a ton of ideas?”

  “We’re expecting The Landlord,” said Jules, easing down very gingerly onto the sofa. It appeared she might recover from her injuries, but it would take some time. Probably time she would never have. “It’s getting dark,” she said, “and we haven’t been given a task yet.”

  Jade sighed. “More fun and games. Can’t wait.”

  Damien felt his erection dissipate and was comfortable enough to get up from the sofa. He glanced outside the patio windows and saw that the light outside was growing grey. All of the other tasks they had done had been during daylight hours, followed by a head to head elimination in the evening.

  “Well, I’m going to go put some clothes on before I freeze,” said Danni, slithering up off the sofa and brushing past Damien teasingly.

  Richard whistled at Damien once she was out of earshot. “Looks like you decided to go out with a bang, if you know what I mean.”

  Damien nodded. “You’re a master of the single entendre, Richard.”

  Richard frowned. “So, what’s the plan? What do we do if we get another task?”

  “We don’t have much choice but to do it. The Landlord will release the toxin if we don’t.”

  “Well, maybe that’s for the best,” said Jade. “We could end all this now. We just refuse to cooperate.”

  Jules looked at Jade with her mouth open. “And just let The Landlord kill us?”

  “We’re dead anyway. At least this way would be on our terms.”

  “I agree,” said Damien. “If I can’t get at the people doing this, then the least I can do is end their sadistic little games. Never thought I would ever contemplate suicide but…if we’re going to die anyway?”

  “Then we’re going to do this, then?” asked Richard incredulously. “We’re just going to give up?”

  “Giving up would be carrying on like rats in a maze,” said Damien. “This is the only way we can actually go out on our own terms. It’s the only way not to give up.”

  Richard stared down at the floor but nodded his head. “Okay, then. I’m in. Maybe if I’m lucky my corpse will shit itself when they try and carry me out of here.”

  Everybody agreed to abstain from any tasks. When Danni came back to the living area in a change of clothes, they brought her up to speed.

  “So, we just…do nothing?”

  Damien nodded. “It’s either that or we just go through another few days of pain and suffering and then die anyway. We want to just end this now.”

  “But the Landlord said that they will still honour the winner. They said that the prize money was still up for grabs.”

  “You don’t really believe that, do you?” asked Jade. “There’s no way they can let any of us out of here alive.”

  “Why not,” Danni said. “We don’t know who any of them are, or even where they’re keeping us? They could just blindfold us and dump us somewhere and we’d be none the wiser.”

  “This won’t work without all of us onboard,” said Jade. “I know it’s crazy how calmly we’re all discussing it, but when the alternative is torture and eventual death, the idea becomes easier.”

  Danni shook her head. “I…I just don’t know if I can do it. I…I’ll see how I feel when the task is announced. I think we should all see what we’re up against before we make any decisions.”

  Damien scratched at his chin and realised that he had the fuzz of a half-grown beard. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll play things by ear.”

  “HOUSEMATES, PLEASE GATHER IN THE GARDEN. YOUR TASK IS ABOUT TO BEGIN.”

  Damien started towards the patio door. “Guess it’s time to find out what we’re made of.”

  21

  As always, the platform in the garden began to rise up from the surrounding grass, right in front of the painting of an eye. Today it featured a large, multi-coloured wheel. It didn’t matter what it was for, because Damien, and hopefully the other housemates, were not going to play along.

  The large wheel locked into place. It was about seven feet high and cast a long shadow beneath a spotlight affixed to the back of it. At the top of the wheel was an arrow, cut roughly from a scrap of metal. The wheel itself was divided into five segments. Each segment had the name and face of a housemate.

  “HOUSEMATES, BEFORE YOU IS A WHEEL OF FORTUNE LIKE NO OTHER. IT WILL DECIDE YOUR FATE.”

  Damien rolled his eyes. That’s what you think. You can take that wheel and roll it right up your arse.

  “ONE HOUSEMATE MUST COME FORWARD AND SPIN THE WHEEL. WHOEVER IT LANDS ON WILL BE SELECTED FOR TONIGHT’S SOLO ELIMINATION TASK.”

  “What’s a solo elimination task?” Jules asked.

  Damien shrugged. “Who cares? We’re not playing along, remember?”

  Jules nodded. She seemed anxious, but even more weak and w
eary. However afraid she might be, it was obvious that she had had enough. She was ready for it all to end. Jules, perhaps more than anyone, had felt the tortures of this house in full force.

  “WILL ONE OF THE HOUSEMATES PLEASE NOW SPIN THE WHEEL.”

  Instead, all of the housemates sat down on the grass. Damien propped his elbows up on his knees and rested his head in his hands. He relaxed his breathing and prepared himself for the pain that the toxin would soon bring.

  “HOUSEMATES, PLEASE COMPLY.”

  “How about you bite me?” said Jade.

  “Yeah,” Richard growled. “Why don’t you go back to the puddle of shit you climbed out of?”

  “HOUSEMATES, REFUSAL TO CO-OPERATE WILL RESULT IN EXPULSION FROM THE HOUSE.”

  “Big whoop!” said Jules. “We’ve had enough of your crap.”

  Damien looked at Jules, smiled and nodded. Then he looked up at the starry night sky and smiled even wider. At least they couldn’t take the view away.

  “You’re just going to have to kill us,” said Damien. “We’re through taking orders.”

  “SO BE IT.”

  The pain started immediately. Ice and fire combined in every sinew of muscle, blood turning to broken glass in their veins.

  Everyone tumbled onto their sides and scrunched up into the foetal position. It did not help a great deal, but there was some comfort in going out the same way you came in. Jules threw up in the grass. The brownish goop covered her chin as she moaned.