Fear was, maybe for the first time, catching up with the players.
Most of them were just normal people. No matter how confident they might have been, sitting in a ruined second run out of three was hardly giving them a sense of comfort.
“It’s a complete mess. What are we supposed to do now?”
Aspen was frowning in annoyance. He had tried luring the kids, just to see what would happen, but even if they did hear noises they didn’t leave their room. Their experience was that when their mother was stressed, they had to stay out of sight and be perfectly silent.
Obviously there was the option of luring someone into the building, but that was comparatively much harder.
Everything was uncomfortable, now that no one knew when to make a move.
Papyrus did try some things, but he too failed. Sounds outside of the house did not attract any further shadows. The only ones reacting were the two adult Actors, and that wouldn’t help them.
River opened and closed his mouth several times.
He hadn’t been that worried about this game – unhappy, yes, because it wasn’t fun, but not worried. If he died, he died, and his mind was such a mangled mess that he didn’t have time to care about the wishes yet.
But Aspen was different. He had a goal in mind. Not only a goal, but something for both of them.
After some hesitation, River put an arm around Aspen’s shoulder. The smaller guy blinked at him in surprise, but happily snuggled into the offered half-hug.
“If we don’t have any idea until the last third of the next round, let’s kill the parents and set the house on fire.”
The dark gray pair of eyes in front of him widened. “…Really?”
The unwillingness he had felt began to melt away. “Yes. I may not like it, but that solution does have at least a chance of counting. Let’s give it a try.”
He raised his head. Across the open space to the living room, he met eyes with Papyrus.
A very rough and untidy solution that required everyone’s agreement. It would be very hard to kill two people and set a whole house on fire if there were six others intending to stop them.
But Papyrus gave a nod. He immediately turned away afterwards, resuming his conversation with his group, but the nod was there.
“Since this is ruined anyway, we can use the time to plan our worst-case. Come, let’s find out how to do this.”
“I always wanted to be an arsonist!”
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
“Tbe vb?”
“Rb, yea P vb ilxf olgf. Pa’r qgfaas.”
Ktf iluta-tfjgafv, bvv nblmfr fjrfv atf afcrlbc bo fnfgsbcf jgbecv, jiatbeut cbcf bo atfw gfjilhfv la.
Crqfc aegcfv bea ab tjnf j ajifca obg wegvfglcu qfbqif. Elnfg xcfk atja, yea atlr ujwf gfwlcvfv tlw bo la jujlc.
Qtfgf Elnfg kjr rfjgmtlcu yilcvis, la vlvc’a ajxf Crqfc ibcu ab mbwf eq klat j kbgxlcu qijc atja vlv cba lcnbinf vlgfmais abemtlcu atf rtjvbkr atja atfs kfgfc’a jiibkfv ab abemt.
They didn’t care a lot about the aftermath, only about the means to get to their end. The mother’s probably stress-induced insomnia left a pack of strong, prescription-needing sleeping pills in her locked cupboard.
That it was locked made River pause for a second. There was no reason to lock it, especially when the key was on a shelf just above.
Maybe it was her husband who locked it to make sure the children could never reach them.
Or maybe it was her.
Who knew.
The world turned darker again as Aspen searched up everything to stage a nice, violent flour explosion to happen during the next evening when the children would be upstairs and the parents tired from pills in their late coffee.
It cheered River up to see Aspen bloom like this again. The playful young man was just short of purring like a kitten.
“All ready?”, he asked.
“Yup.”
Aspen yawned as he rested on the sofa.
Dinner had been split into two, with the father bringing something for his children up into their room before joining his wife.
All players were in the living room, all to their own thoughts.
For a while, Bronze and Silver as well as Papyrus had been upstairs, but they had left when the children went to take their baths.
River was rubbing his temples, thoughts drifting away.
Something inside his stomach felt off. He looked through the room, finding everyone again. It was quiet. Serene.
He thought about it again.
Could there be something up?
However, there wasn’t really anything you could do right now. The kids were taking a bath. It was the end of the round. It wasn’t like there was anything special you could do there…
The bad feeling inside his stomach made it lurch.
He didn’t try questioning it. It was instinct, no logical reasoning. Just a feeling. It was so much easier to just sprint up the stairs and check for himself instead of wasting time thinking.
Rather than trust humans, it was better to see for yourself and be done with it. He had learned that lesson especially recently.
Modern bathrooms had safety mechanisms. The circuit breaker, for example. It would just pop out the circuit and things would shut off. That was, in theory, how it should have been for a long time already. But even in River’s time, there were places that held back on installing all kinds of things because it was cheaper.
The door to the bathroom hadn’t been completely closed in the first place. With the kids playing in the bathtub, mostly behind a thick shower curtain, they’d not notice it being opened further.
Neither would anyone downstairs, because the only people upstairs were supposed to be tied up.
Out of all the deaths he had seen up until now, River couldn’t say why this one horrified him so much.
It was the curiosity on their faces. The cruel interest. The children did react when the curtain was drawn back, but the bubbling up of their shadowy skin could not catch up with the falling hairdryer.
There were sounds.
Several sounds.
Buzzing and crackling. A splash, probably.
But all that stayed inside his head was a strangled, oddly twisted, quiet scream.
This reset nearly had him throwing up.
None of the others knew what had happened, so they were looking around in absolute confusion at the far too early end of the last round. If River had looked over, he’d have noticed that Papyrus immediately turned towards him, before directly following River’s frozen gaze to land on the untied girlfriends and the broken cable ties on the ground.
They were stunned like everyone else, although for completely different reasons.
“Huh”, one said, displeasure seeping through her tone. “That was quick…”
“I’m gonna throw up.”
River didn’t say the words out loud for any reason other than to explain himself to Aspen before he rushed outside.
The bathroom they had used the last time was still a suitable place, so River leaned over the sink and emptied out his stomach. Funnily enough, his headache seemed to have vanished with the shock.
“Okay, what happened.” Aspen’s voice sounded, hurried and stressed, followed by the click of the door closing. “How did they get free? Listen, I do want these wishes, but if they did anything to you, I’ll-”
“Not me.” River forced out the words, then dunked his whole head under the streaming, cold water from the tap. A couple calm breaths, then the clarity in his head returned. He regained control. “Just… Trauma. This feels weird to say, but I think I might just have a trauma.”
A hand rubbed his back, very much like he had done for Aspen before. “I mean, I’d imagine you have one, with all you’ve been going through.”
God.
Those sounds.
The scream.
“No, it’s…” River struggled with the words. He sat down on the closed toilet seat and sighed. Aspen threw a towel over the easterner’s head and dried the wet hair dripping down his clothes. “Yes, there are a lot of things that make me feel bad, but I can handle them. This is… It’s the combination. Seeing someone hurt someone younger than them out of pure malice and the enjoyment of seeing them suffer. Not to kill. Just to watch the suffering.”
Not to mention – he didn’t say that part, but he didn’t have to – the children’s situation was far too similar to River’s for comfort.
A sharp inhale. “Fuck. What did they do?”
“Hairdryer.”
Knowing that the children had been taking a bath, that word alone explained everything.
Author’s Note
Who had “the kids die in the bath” on their bingo list? No one here gets any break, especially not when we are working towards the end of the story. (As usual, everyone, watch your mental health.)
Also, flour explodes very strongly. Don’t try this.
Horrific. Don’t tell me the girls did it ?!!!! 😱
That’s the implication
What happened??b😭