A free story for my readers!

 

HOME 

By Zach Miller and Jaccob Gentry

So this is death, he thought. Not endless and overwhelming darkness, like he’d imagined, but eternal white blanking out all else. It wasn’t for several seconds until he blinked and realized his eyelids brought relief from the overstimulating white that he realized he was not a disembodied spirit languishing in some forlorn realm of the beyond but his flesh and blood body lying still in a room with the lingering stupor of a drug induced coma making his head spin.

As his vision cleared, he took in the room. Featureless, almost seamless but for the light shining harshly from above. Even the corners seemed to merge as liquid with the walls and soon he realized that was the case. He wasn’t within four walls holding a ceiling from the floor, but a pod of sorts. One that housed only his body and the bed on which it lay.

He was fully clothed in a jumpsuit, also of white but including accents scattered in royal blue. Even his feet were covered in simple, generic sneakers. There was also one final thing; a collar fastened around his neck. He felt around it for a clasp but found nothing, and when he tried to pull it from his neck it gave not a stretch. Beyond these things the room offered nothing. Not even a clue of where he was or how he had come to be there until he stood and exercised his first recourse.

“Hello?”

The moment he spoke, a portion of the wall split and began to rise, revealing a hidden compartment within which was situated a number of items that made him seize up in fear.

“Hello, Number 7,” a voice, warbled and deep a modulator, came as if from thin air.

“Who are you?” he questioned the voice from nowhere. “Why—”

“You find before you a shelf with a number of items. Please don the vest and choose your weapons so that we may begin.”

“Begin? Begin what?” When he raised his voice, his body cramped in pain as the collar around his neck sent electricity coursing through him. Crying out in agony, he fell to his knees until the pain ceased.

“Please be quiet. In no uncertain terms; you are a prisoner. And should you interrupt again, you will be shocked even more severely.”

“I-I’m sorry,” he gasped, the fiery ache slowly draining from him.

“You have been selected for a special event planned and conducted by a unique and privileged coterie.. This group would like to see how you fare in a game. You could call it...Last Man Standing. Outside of these walls you will be released onto the playing grounds where you must kill and survive the other players we have selected. Should you refuse, we will kill you.”

“I-” he breathed heavily. “I can’t. I can’t kill.”

“Understandable. But before you decide, you should know the reward for survival. Should you make it through the play grounds and be the final player living, you will be rewarded with payment to supply your daughter with the organ transplant she needs, and enough extra to cover her medical costs for the rest of your life.”

“How? How do you know about—”

“It is what we do, Number 7. It is why you have been selected. We know you will give it your all. Don’t disappoint us. Please, approach the items we have prepared for you so that we may begin.”

Number 7’s head spun, but he knew he had no time to think or even to feel. Those things were luxuries for those dying slowly. If he didn’t move, he knew his death would be swift. Rising to his feet, he approached the compartment and donned the ballistic vest. Once done, he looked over the shelf before him. A hatchet, a machete, a spiked mace, a steel mallet, and two knives were set before him. Carefully, he slid the knives into pockets in the vest before taking the hatchet and machete in each hand.

“Excellent, Number 7.”

With that, the wall on the far side of the room opened up, revealing what appeared to be a lush rain forest complete with a shallow winding river. Large fronds splayed across his vision below trees that shot skyward towards a vaulted ceiling. The sight was truly disorienting and something to behold. Wherever he was, it was certainly some place where escape was futile.

“Listen carefully, Number 7. Outside of this room you will find a number of different game zones, each with its own theme to clearly delineate boundaries. Once you leave a zone, you can not turn back or the collar on your neck will be activated. You must move forward. You may make teammates if you wish and if they agree, but only one will be allowed to leave here with the reward. Keep that in mind, Number 7. Now go forth and slaughter. And good luck.”

-     -     -

However long later, however many fights, however many bodies—though recorded—will only ever be known to those of privileged access, but at the end of it Number 5 and Number 7 emerged from the final zone covered in wounds and blood to a vastly large and empty room where the far wall was one impossibly large window peering out into the starry void of space. Number 7’s eyes traveled to one corner where he saw yet another grand and terrible horror. Planet Earth floating green and blue in the distance, deep in the cradle of that endless dark.

“Oh my God,” Liam said, dropping the blood-slicked crowbar from trembling fingers. They looked to each other and locked eyes and wished they hadn’t the ghosts of all they’d done were looking back at them. A woman’s face caved in, a man’s eyeballs gouged, chests pierced and belly’s slashed open. Their faces carried and would carry the torment of those deaths until they moment they closed their eyes for good.

Liam shook and his legs buckled, urging 7 to catch him as he fell.

“Hey, it’s ok,” 7 tried to comfort. “We’re here.”

“B-but we can’t both win.”

“Hey!” 7 called out, his voice booming in the large, empty chamber. “We made it! We won! And we’re not killing each other so come out now and give us what we’ve earned!

The echoes faded into silence and they waited for so long that 7 began to wonder if it was all a sick lie, until the ground began to vibrate and a circle of light appeared in the floor in the center of the room. The light grew and rose and soon they saw that it was some sort of containment capsule held beneath the ground, and when it rose to full height the doors slid open and a young crying girl of 10 years old got out.

“Amy!” Number 7 cried and ran to his daughter. Scooping her into his arms, he wept into her hair as she wept into his shoulder. They screamed and cried and shook until their insides felt scooped out, and all the while Liam watched wondering if another capsule would emerge with his wife inside.

“Are you okay, baby?” 7 asked at last, pulling away from his daughter and examining her arms and face. “Did they hurt you. I swear to—”

“I’m okay,” she said, wiping her eyes. “But they told me to tell you to finish it.”

“Wha-what? No.”

The voice from the beginning suddenly filled the air again. “The rules are clear, Number 7. Likewise for you, Number 5. Only one may leave with their reward. Make your choice, or die together.”

7’s face reflected the rage he felt inside for their faceless captors. Phantom agents of some sick, chaotic capitalism run amok. Creedless husks of men living lives of such flaccid repugnance they had to get their kicks by hosting games of blood and death. He wished he could take the lot of them with them, but it was impossible. Now they were merely toy’s in fate’s bloody grip.

He looked into his daughters eyes and slowly slid a bloodstained knife from his vest. As he gripped it hard enough to send pain shooting through his hand, a teardrop fell upon the razor edge, splitting it in two.

“We knew it would come to this,” Liam said from behind him.

7 turned on his knees to find that Liam had moved in quickly, crowbar held high for the killing blow. The look on his former partner’s face was one of profound terror. 7 knew it well when he thought of what they had become.

“I’m so sorry,” Liam said, his features collapsing with his resolve. Lips trembling in agony, he tried to failed to hold back the tears waiting just beneath the surface.

“It’s okay,” 7 said, letting the knife fall to the ground. The futility of it all finally crushing him with full weight. He took a look around and let the hopelessness of the fight sink into his bones. “Do it. And take my little girl home. Take care of her and your wife with whatever they give you. You’re a good man and I trust you. I’ve always hated this fucking race, and now I’m ready to get out. Just promise me you’ll do all you can for her.”

“Daddy no!” Amy cried, but 7 pushed her away.

Liam’s face registered immediate shock. “What?”

“You heard me. Just do it quickly.”

The sadness and terror turned quickly to utmost fury, and Liam gripped the weapon in both hands and flung it as hard as he could away from them “What! After all we’ve done. After the people we killed! What we stole from them for our own gain and now you’re done fighting?”

“Yeah, I’m done fighting.”

“They why didn’t you roll over and die in the first place! Why not save yourself the agony of this—this—” he gestured wildly with both hands, “this fucking hell! Gah!”

Then he collapsed again, falling before 7 and weeping like a wounded child, desperate, broken, and terrified. His tears and snot mingled with the congealed blood on his bruised and swollen face. “I can’t! I can’t kill you. You’re a good person! And we shouldn’t be here! Fuck ‘em all! Whoever they are! They’re just toying with us anyway.”

“You don’t know that, Liam. Kill me and take my daughter home with your wife. At least you can be a family, and maybe—just maybe—you can cure them both.”

“I…” a maelstrom of thoughts swirled behind Liam’s eyes until finally settling with ghostly, utter stillness. “No. They don’t deserve an entertaining end to their sick game. If they want us dead, they can do it their—”

A flash of movement and Amy was behind him.’

“Amy no!”

She drew the knife across Liam’s throat and it opened up in a great waterfall of red. His mouth fell open in a silent scream and his eyes rolled back. His body was frozen for several moments as he bled, as if held in place by an unseen force, until he finally fell over, dead.

Looking up from his friend’s corpse and the lake of blood spreading rapidly from it, he saw a deep, cold emptiness in his daughter’s eyes. Even the hand in which she held the blade did not tremble as she stepped forward and slid it back into his vest pocket.

“I wanna go home,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around him.

In silent despair, he gazed out at the star-filled expanse and spotted Earth once again. That was their home. Its polluted soil was their motherland, it’s smoke-blackened skies and dying seas the only place they had ever known, and he knew without a doubt that their abductors were from there as well. And of all the horrors in the solar system from Neptune’s frozen surface to the toxic clouds of Venus, he couldn’t imagine anywhere in the universe more terrifying than home.