1 | Liam
Liam
“GET HER.”
Nate’s voice echoes into the night as he speeds up, chasing the woman through the dark maze.
It’s time to hunt, and she is our prey. She runs with all her strength, avoiding stacks of hay as we trail behind her on our motorcycles.
She is trying to escape us, running through the abandoned maze as if her life depends on it.
And it does. But what she doesn’t know is that none of the women who played this game before her ever got to escape with their lives.
You see, this isn’t a fair game. The rules only exist for our entertainment, and the prey has always been just that—prey.
“Keep running, little slut,” Mike taunts from behind me, and I laugh as I watch the poor woman fall to the ground.
She is truly trying her best. You can tell she is determined to survive, even if her failure is unavoidable.
In her delusion, she might truly believe that the rules will save her.
She quickly gets back up and runs again.
She is searching for the scarecrow—that little glimpse of freedom.
The rules of our twisted little game are simple, and they are always announced by Nathan.
Each night we hunt, he stands in front of our prey and announces the rules with a steady voice, as if he is not sentencing them to death just by standing there.
If they get to the scarecrow, we will spare their life.
In addition to this, if they remain hidden until the sun rises, they may try another night.
At least, that’s what Nathan tells every woman before they start running for their lives.
Of course, the rules don’t really matter, and none of the women who have played our game have gotten out alive.
It is the false sense of hope that makes them fight, and that is the only part all three of us love.
It’s a thrill watching someone fight for their life—observing how a human being turns into a wild animal when that fragile tie to this mortal world is threatened.
And it is quite the ride when you are the one who holds the scissors over that little thread of their life.
Like a god of destiny, deciding who lives and who dies.
An angel of death, conjured by sheer terror.
Because no one turns into a monster without going through their share of terror in their lifetime. And we have had more than enough.
It feeds the need, the desire inside us—to hunt, to hurt the women we chase.
It’s a desire rooted in bloodlust. It’s a compulsion we all feel to some extent, but one of us feels it the most. Watching them fight for their lives, running and screaming, trying to figure out a way to remain hidden or to locate a scarecrow in the middle of a hay maze or the edge of a forest they have never set foot in—this alone can make my night.
They get so desperate that their screams fill the night along with the sound of our engines.
A deadly game under our rules. Some of them almost get close to the scarecrow; some almost remain hidden for the entirety of the night.
Others give up from the start—those I don’t like.
You can see them give up from the moment they start running.
They know their fate, and I can’t keep myself from wondering how someone ends up in a life-and-death situation and doesn’t fight.
I am not a therapist, but I am pretty sure those are the ones who are already broken.
They gave up before we even got our hands on them.
There was never a chance for those. They are ghosts wandering the earth, and in a way, we are their saviors.
Ending their suffering is almost noble, if you think about it.
There are two types of people in this world who survive trauma.
You have the ones who come out of it victorious: the fighters who wouldn’t kneel even if death himself tried to torture them into submission.
They will sell their souls to survive, burn the world to the ground, and roast marshmallows while they watch everything turn to ash.
Those are the ones I love hunting. The ones who fight back.
The ones who run through the maze with the delusion of their upcoming salvation, even when the game is lost before they even start running.
Then, you have the ones who give up and accept fate.
You can see it in their eyes the moment we recite the rules.
There is no will to fight. No desire to be saved.
They just sit there, wondering what they did to deserve this fate, but the reality is that it wasn’t their doing that put them in our path.
It’s all a matter of luck—a wrong place, wrong time type of thing.
Mike and I always belonged in the first category, sometimes more literally than others.
We burned my house to the ground once with my father inside when we were still boys ourselves—young enough to not know better, but old enough to fight back.
And it was with grave sadness that some innocent lives were lost that night.
But even with that truth weighing our actions down like a heavy blanket of regret, I know it had to be done.
It was a matter of life and death; if we had waited, we would have been the ones under the dirt while the man responsible shed fake tears over our graves.
And that we couldn’t simply let happen. You see, we are fighters.
And fighters never give up, even when the game is long lost. Fighters do just that: fight.
Even if that fight takes their soul, it is a price well paid for the chance to come out victorious.
Maybe that’s why we started playing this game—the need to cause the pain we received.
A twisted way to cope. Mike needs it more than I do; he is the one who started it all.
He suffered through so much horror that this is the only way he copes.
Through blood and screams. Violence calms his inner demons.
It feeds the monster he has become. And Nathan?
He simply loves his man too much not to give him the satisfaction that this little game of death brings him.
I am fully aware that this is a twisted sense of fun we have.
I am sure an actual psychiatrist would have a field day trying to figure out how our psychotic brains work.
I would love to be a fly on that wall, watching them try to solve the puzzle that is our minds, to figure out what drives this bloodlust we feel.
I speed up and circle the woman, who is now more scared than ever, but I am not the one she should be afraid of.
I have never once been the one to kill any of them.
The kills do nothing for me. It’s all about the chase.
Their blood is not what I desire. Their screams, though—that’s something else.
The thrill of the chase is what makes my body feel alive; taking a life has never been my thing.
My cousin is another case entirely; he loves the bloodshed.
He lives for the kills and the adrenaline that comes from them.
If it weren’t for the rules, Mike would be out hunting every night.
He would pile their bodies on our doorstep, letting his reckless side roam free in the process.
But I am not a fool, and my rules are what keep us free.
And I value that freedom too much to allow it to slip away into the darkness, like everything else I have lost through the years.
“Hello, little one,” he coos at her, smiling. A pretense of sweetness—he only allows his victims to see, but I know better. Nathan is the only one who’s truly allowed to see any glimpse of humanity in Mike. He is the one person in the world, apart from me, who truly knows him.
Mike has ditched his bike and is now on foot with a knife in one hand and a twisted smile on his face.
He is fucking insane, and I love him to death, but this side of him even scares me sometimes.
His eyes have a spark they only get when he holds a knife or a gun to someone.
It’s like their fear works as a drug for him.
“Did you really think you could escape us?” Nate taunts from his side, his bike missing too. He has always mirrored parts of his boyfriend, but I doubt anyone else notices besides myself.
I climb off my motorcycle and join them.
Nate has always been calmer and more calculated, but you shouldn’t let that fool you.
He seems to enjoy the hunts the least, but if I had to guess, I would say he is the one getting turned on by them.
Lust pools inside his eyes with every drop of blood shed on the ground.
I don’t pretend to be above it myself; we all find something erotic in the game.
That has always been what drives us to continue, apart from the darkness calling our names.
But Nate’s lust for it is different. It’s monstrous.
Like I said before, he mirrors parts of the monster he beds every night.
Even the fact that he fucks Mike every time we finish one of our hunts proves my suspicion. Those two are like a weird old couple that uses murder as an aphrodisiac, and I’m the third wheel they can’t seem to ditch.
She bolts again, running along a path she seems to be the only one who knows, while all three of us follow close behind.
This woman seems to have a plan; she is looking around with purpose.
It looks like she is calculating something, searching for the scarecrow.
She acts like she knows this maze, but I wouldn’t bet any money on her finding it.
She is running deliberately, following a path only she knows exists.
I am pretty sure she is confident that she will survive this—delusional in every sense of the word, if you ask me.
Suddenly, she stops. Despite my doubts, she has made it to the scarecrow. I can see the change in her body once she realizes the glimpse of freedom she was searching for is right in front of her.