Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Bennett
T he rec room is tucked away in the sprawling basement, along with a metric fuck ton of other amenities. Jim built more below ground than above, it seems. I stroll past a small theater, a narrow kitchenette, a gym, and a mini spa before I reach the large double mahogany doors at the end of the hall.
Pushing them open, I step into a massive room lined with more of those fake windows they have upstairs, only larger. An entire wall showcases a winter scene, complete with the occasional squirrel or deer visitor.
If I look at the windows for too long, it makes me feel sick. It’s not the sweet sentimentality of the scenery, either. It’s the fact that my brain knows I’m underground while my eyes believe I could step through the windows into that scene.
Maybe that’s why the situation with Cat makes me feel sick too, only my dick is the one who can’t seem to sync up with my brain.
Ice Pick waddles through the door and gives me a wave before he heads toward a few arcade games against another wall. With a scratch of his hairy stomach, he settles on Galaga. Excellent choice.
Grim and Rose aren’t far behind him, but instead of heading toward the billiards tables or the arcade games, they choose to have a seat in the chairs that have been arranged in a semicircle in the center of the room. I go and join them.
“What exactly are we doing in here?” I ask Grim as I sit in the chair beside him.
Grim pulls off his glasses and begins wiping the smudged lenses. “ Unwissenheit ist ein Segen .”
“My apologies, but I seem to have left my German translator at home.”
“It simply means sometimes it is best to know nothing.”
I don’t know why I expected more from him. He loves speaking in cryptic phrases.
With no help to be found, I look around and try to find something to clue me in, but this room isn’t giving me much to go on. This is clearly a killing field, judging by the rolls of tarp covering the precious carpet underneath the chairs, but how will we kill? Do they expect us to beat our victims over the head with pool sticks until something falls out like some macabre pinata?
I mean, I’m game.
Cat enters the room next, accompanied by Kindra and an unfamiliar woman with long, thick braids and cheekbones that could cut glass. I try to keep my eyes on anything else, but my attention keeps returning to Cat. Those tall black boots hug her calves, and I’d like to see her in them without the rest of her outfit.
Her gaze meets mine, but she quickly looks away. Now I wish I’d forced her to give me an answer in the hallway. The anticipation is killing me, and she isn’t giving me any hints.
The three women take a seat on the opposite end of the semicircle, meaning I’ll be facing Cat for this little circle jerk. We’re both on the very ends. Kindra sits between the women. As she engages the taller woman in conversation, I wait for Cat to look at me. When she doesn’t, a flare of rage fires off in my gut.
She really isn’t thinking about me. This bitch.
The doors open behind us, and the rest of the merry crew saunters in amidst a flurry of loud conversation. Ezra, Jim, and Maverick walk together at the rear, each of them holding a large bowl in their arms. Once they’ve placed the bowls on a nearby table, they join everyone else and take a seat.
Kindra clears her throat and addresses the group. “I just want to thank everyone who chose to join us for this inaugural venture into winter retreat territory. I planned to make this speech last night at the party, but someone fucked that up for everyone.”
She levels me with a pointed stare, and I smile and wave. Her death-dagger glare might work on Ezra, but it’s powerless against me.
Undeterred by my arrogance, she continues. “It seems that Mother Nature also wanted to fuck with us. We had originally planned to host the Winter Olympics outside, but a sudden storm forced us below ground.”
“But we still get to kill someone, right?” a male voice says from the center of the group.
Kindra takes a deep breath, probably to stop herself from calling the guy a fucking moron, as is her way. “That’s the entire point of the retreat, and we haven’t lost sight of that. As for the masquerade New Year’s Eve party, that will be held on the last night.”
I groan internally. The last thing I want to do is cram myself into a tux and attend what is essentially a winter formal. Missing that stupid party was the singular consolation prize for getting lost in Alaska and discovering a latent attraction to the bane of my existence.
Though, I guess I have to stop calling her that, now that I’ve had her asshole in my mouth. I mean, you don’t exactly do that for someone you hate.
“Since we had to bring the games indoors, we also had to do a bit of last-minute brainstorming,” Ezra says from his chair. “If the games are rubbish, I take sole responsibility.”
“I’ll share the blame,” the unfamiliar woman beside Kindra says. “I’m Eve, by the way, for those of you who haven’t met me yet.” She gives a small wave, then pulls her braids over one shoulder.
She’s a stunning creature, but something tells me I’m not her type. The small scissor tattoo hiding behind her ear probably doesn’t represent being president of the quilting club.
“For our first game, you’ll be competing in pairs,” Kindra says. “We’ll each draw a number from a bowl, and the two matching numbers will go head-to-head.”
Ezra must have forgotten his cue, because he leaps out of his seat like a man possessed when Kindra glares at him. He runs for one of the bowls on the table, then weaves through the chairs, letting everyone pull a number from inside. He and Kindra pull last.
The room becomes a vacuum of mutters and mumbles as everyone tries to figure out who they’re up against. As luck would have it, I’m up against Cat. I hear her telling Eve her number.
Before last night, I would have seen this as an opportunity to kill-block her once again. Now I see this as a major problem. If I lose to her, I’ll look like a fucking chump, but if I beat her—and that’s almost a guarantee—she’ll get pissed off, and there goes any chance that she’ll wind up in my room after this.
I lean closer to Grim. “Any chance you’d want to swap numbers?” I say.
“No swapping!” Kindra shouts.
Flopping back in my seat, I try not to pout. Either I kill-block Cat and shoot myself in the foot or I lose to Cat and shoot myself in the ego.
“It wouldn’t be the retreat Olympics without another twist.” Kindra grabs a second bowl and begins pulling large paper bags from inside. “Now you’ll choose your weapon, then figure out a way to kill your victim first to win!”
As if on cue, part of a wall slides away and two lackeys wheel in a couple of Cattle in wheelchairs.
“Who’s up first?” Ezra says with a clap of his hands.
I feel like I’m on the set of some fucked-up game show. This is when the crowd would cheer and the theme music would blast through the television screen as someone races to the killing field.
Ice Pick and Eve raise their hands, and Kindra motions for them to choose a bag.
“But no cheating,” Kindra adds. “You can’t lift the bag until you choose it, and once you touch it, it’s yours.”
Eve chooses a bag quickly, then opens it. From the brown paper, she produces one of those elves that parents destroy the house with.
What shit luck.
Ice Pick goes next, and luck isn’t on his side, either. While Eve tries to murder her victim with a toy, Ice Pick gets to do it with a roll of gift-wrapping tape.
Eve and Ice Pick each stand behind their chosen wheelchair as their victims squirm and scream through their noses. The Cattle’s hands have been bound behind their backs to prevent injury to participants, and their mouths are glued shut so we don’t have to hear their bitching. Kindra and Ezra were even smart enough to shackle their shaking legs down so they can’t kick.
“Oh, this is so exciting!” Jim says as he settles in his seat. “I wish my dear friend Ronaldo was here to see this, but he’s overwintering in the Maldives this year.”
I don’t know about exciting, but what we’re about to witness will surely be interesting.
“On my word,” Kindra says as she raises a stopwatch. “Go!”
Eve sets to work right away. With slender fingers, she slices through the seal on her Cattle’s lips, then shoves the tiny doll’s head into the man’s mouth before he can scream. Wearing a smirk, she then grips the two tiny cloth hands and crams them into the man’s nostrils.
Ice Pick has a similar idea, also choosing suffocation as the Cattle’s vehicle to hell. Instead of ripping open the mouth, however, he just starts winding the clear, sticky-sided cellophane around his victim’s head.
“This will take ages,” Grim mutters beside me, and Maudlin Rose nods in agreement.
Eve seems to realize this as well as she watches her Cattle squirm in his chair, his eyes bulging. But what other option does she have? It’s a fucking child’s toy. Companies take extra pains to avoid maiming and murdering their clientele these days, and those safety regulations are working against her.
Eve looks at Kindra and raises her finger. “Question...May I alter the item in any way, or do I have to commit the murder with the item as-is?”
“As long as you kill them with the item, I don’t fucking care,” Kindra says. “I’m a journalist, not a fucking event planner.”
“Thanks, hon,” Eve says as she plucks the elf from the man’s mouth. She turns it over in her hands, looking for a way to turn it into a lethal weapon as her victim sobs incoherent words.
To her right, Ice Pick’s victim has managed to open his mouth by stretching his jaw until the glue lost its grip on his skin. Actually, considering the blood, the skin lost its grip on his lips. Yikes.
“Please let me go!” Ice Pick’s Cattle screams. “I promise I?—”
Ice Pick winds the tape around his mouth. “Whoops! Don’t want you getting any air.”
The man’s muffled screams grow weaker, and he eventually pisses himself and goes limp.
Meanwhile, Eve is still trying to find a way to turn this around, but it doesn’t look good. Jim is already approaching Ice Pick’s Cattle to search for a pulse. She tosses the toy to the floor and takes a seat when Jim nods.
“We have a winner for round one,” Jim declares.
“Oh, thank God,” Eve’s Cattle whispers. “I’ve been spared. I’ll never hurt anyone again as long as I live. I swear it.”
Jim steps closer to the man and smiles down into his face. “Are you ready to meet him?”
“Who?”
Jim presses something against the base of the man’s skull. “Why, God, my dear boy.”
Blam!
Everyone jolts and someone—probably Cat—lets out a squeal as brain matter and blood splash across the center of the semicircle. No one told me there was a designated splash zone, and now I’m sad I didn’t sit in the center.
Jim lowers the gun and pats the man’s shoulder, and what’s left of the man’s head slumps to the side. “Who’s in group two?”