“Wow! You guys did a good job back there, although…” The boy’s voice through the speaker sounded disappointed as he continued, “I wonder how you three managed to survive that.” His once energetic and childish voice changed into a sinister and serious tone, “but whatever, this is not important. What is important is this second-“
Hughie cut him off, tired from having to hear his voice again, “just get it over with you psycho!” He snarled while waving out his pistol from his waist, aiming it at the ceiling, “once we find you, I am going to put a bullet in your head.”
“Oh? That is interesting, very interesting. But hey, why don’t you give me the pleasure of telling you?” The boy smirked, amused by Hughie’s actions. “Its not like you will see the light again after this,” he paused with delight.
“Bastard!” Hughie angrily yelled, his face reddening despite knowing that he cannot do anything, not right away at least. “We are going to get you monster!”
Hughie then lowered his pistol, “we are coming to get you, I promise…” Trailing off by the end in a low murmur, Hughie looked down on the floor as if to reminisce something, but no matter how hard he tries, he could not recall what exactly happened during that moment.
“Alright, now its my turn to speak,” the boy said in a deep and menacing voice while sounding still childish, yet more sinister than before, “you see, you three did a great job from being drowned by flood of water, however; as you three stand before are corpses of dogs that I have ‘fun’ with, heheh.”
A sick bastard child, that is all I can say about him. What human would do such a thing? Psychopaths and crazies like these exist everywhere in the world, such the nature of being human.
He continued, “now let’s straight to the point! All you guys have to do is go straight, passing each hanging dead dogs until you reach the dead end, where there is a door that leads straight to the next game!” The boy paused for effect, “so go ahead, get to it!” He giggled and then his tone changed into an intimidating one.
“There is a catch, isn’t it?” Eve chimed in, “it sounds simple, too simple.” She frowned in suspicion, asking the boy with a serious face, “what trap is this? What is the catch here?”
The boy was amused by her question, “you are smart one miss, I like smart women! They are my favorite, I usually kidnap them and skin them before placing these lovely mothers and sisters into a boiling pot so I can eat them! Yummy!” The boy laughed at his own jokes, making three of us feel even more uncomfortable with our situation.
Eve shook her head, “how barbaric,” she uttered coldly as the boy grinned behind his speaker, “hey! That is rude miss! My mother is a lovely woman, a very loving and caring lady that makes me laugh whenever I am sad or feeling blue!” He sighed in disappointment, “she was rather stunning…”
“Your mother?” Eve asked in confusion, “you have parents?” She furrowed her brows, trying to understand how someone could be born and raised to be evil, but the boy remained silent for a moment before changing the topic.
“Let us just move on from talking about my family and get straight to the point, alright?” The boy said with a bored tone, “one of the dead dogs has a bomb inside, simply touching any of them would result in one of you going…boom!” He paused dramatically, “and that is it! Bye-bye friends!”
Then the speaker went to mute.
As Hughie complained, I was interested in the sudden change of emotion from the boy’s voice after Eve mention about family, especially his mother.
Usually, one of the symptoms of guilt or anxiety and fear, mostly revolves around being caught off guard or becoming silent after reminding them about a certain event or person; which leaves me with hypothetical conclusion of what he did to become the child he is.
Whether he have deluded beliefs or had traumatic events, it does not give him the excuse to cause such atrocities, when someone like him is capable of reasoning and actions; Finn does not have madness, for the insanity is incapable of performing logical plans to benefit himself like building such a complex house like this.
No, Finn knows what the hell he is doing and the consequences he seeks out from others. This psychopath child wants to make people suffer because of being enslaved from his own selfish desires and emotions, while having no respect for anyone else’s lives. His actions were not random or being linked with the acts of madman, they were all properly coordinated, planned and executed by a sane mind.
Even if he has deluded beliefs, they seemingly did not make him a rumbling madman or someone that is incapable of distinguishing from reality to fiction, evident in his actions and choices; he can still reason things and choose between right and wrong. An intelligent person that only chooses the path of least resistance towards achieving his goal of hurting others.
“Now what? How the hell can we pass through the hordes of dead hanging dogs with meat hooks attached to them? Did you hear what the crazy kid had said? Some of them might contain a bomb and I sure as hell do not want to die here!” Hughie complained, “there is no way for us to survive! We are just stuck like rats trapped inside this damn labyrinth of death traps!”
I could understand his fear but we cannot just stand here and do nothing. Our lives are at stake and we will preserver like always, because giving up now would be the same thing as suicide. Even if the odds were against us; there is no use wallowing in our own misery when it is too late for any action.
Hughie grumbled something under his breath before he turned back to me with an annoyed look on his face, “so what should we do?” He asked.
“We have only one option,” I said while looking around and taking a deep breathe. “by going through them,” he did not like the sound of that. In fact, it made him feel even more uncomfortable than the situation itself. However, I was already preparing myself for the worst case scenario; for losing is not an option in my mind, not anymore.
“What? Are you serious?!” Hughie yelled out with incredulous eyes and furrowed brows. At disbelief from his own words, Hughie began to shake nervously. “No! No, I do not want to go into those damn hanging dogs!” He whined. “You heard what that monster said earlier, there are bombs inside of them!”
Having already seen enough, Eve obtruded his irritable whining, “you know we can just crawl without having to touch them.” The simple and smart answer had made up feel dumbfounded, not realizing that we can simply avoid the danger by crawling under the bodies instead of walking right through them.
“You have a point there Eve,” Hughie agreed in astonishment.
Well, let’s just get then, “I will go first, just follow me from behind,” I started crawling under the hanging carcasses and quickly soon found myself surrounded by dead dogs with meat hooks attached to their heads. As expected of them, they were all freshly stiff and the smell was overpowering; causing me to almost gag a little as I crawled past.
Eve was unbothered by the smell or sight, she followed after me and crawled along effortlessly as if nothing had happened at all. Meanwhile, Hughie was not having great time as the stench had caused him to vomit from time to time, though he managed to keep himself together somehow. After about five minutes of crawling, we finally reached our destination where a single, ordinary wooden door awaited us with no hanging dead dogs near at it, which is a plus.
“Thank god, were finished!” Hughie exclaimed loudly as we all stood up from the ground, rubbing his own eyes from the stinging sensation from being exposed for too long to the deathly atmosphere.
“Let’s open this thing,” Eve said in a bored tone as she approached the entrance and pushed against the solid wood, revealing a new room-this time, it appeared more difficult than the one we had just passed through.
As we all enter, this room is not really a room, more of a large place with nothing else but glass bridge that leads to the next platform with a noticeable door ahead of us. Before we can open our mouths, the speaker once again comes through; this time, the boy’s voice was more irritated and flabbergasted rather than happy.
“Not fair! You three cheated! You guys were supposed to walk through them, not crawl under them!” The boy whined in disappointment. “What do you have to say for yourselves?” He asked angrily.
Eve quickly answered, “I thought it would be faster.”
Hughie chimed in, “why the hell do you think we would follow your rules kid?”
I simply chuckled at the response, amused of the boy’s growing frustration of seeing us preserve and endure his twisted games.
“Hmph! Forget it, I hope you three will surely perish this time, because this third game of ours will be the most dangerous one yet!” Finn warned us with sinister tone. “I will just get to the point where I control this house from within, and I am more than capable of re-arranging both the inner and outer structure of it with the mere whim of my machine.”
I rolled my eyes, not giving two shits about his words as he continues, “so you three have to walk through the glass bridge I have created for this particularly game, but be careful! I already made some spots of the surface capable of being broken by mere step and there is no indicator that says if they are or are not safe to pass through.”
“So what? That is nothing new,” Hughie shrugged his shoulders, confident from having already survived the two previous games, “just another obstacle like before.”
Finn smiled from hearing that, and then his tone changed dramatically, sounding very serious, “it is not an obstacle! It’s a trap! And whatever you do, don’t cheat or there will be consequences! And bye now!” The speaker turned off abruptly without warning, leaving us in complete silence.
“Looks like we are on our own for this one,” Eve casually said, “you got any ideas?” She asked while staring at the bridge ahead of us.
“Yeah, got any ideas man? He crossed his arms at me, expecting a quick answer from me after we put us through. However, I simply sighed, shaking my head with frustration, “no.” I replied bluntly to him, making him look even more frustrated than before, and it was all because he expected too much from me.
“But I have an idea, we run.” I simply said as I sprinted onto the glass bridge, moving sideways occasionally while Hughie and Eve followed behind me, each copying from my turns to go through the path ahead of them. Soon enough, the end came into sight and we quickly reached the end of the platform, having not fall to our deaths as Finn expected us to do.
“See? Easy peasy,” I said sarcastically, trying to catch my breath, “we just ran across the damn thing.” Hughie frowned at me with disbelief, but Eve merely smiled at me in agreement. The two were nonetheless glad that we made this through without much difficulty, although we had no clue how many obstacles lay ahead of us from every room.
“How you know?” Hughie caught his breath after running fast to maintain with me, while I was still panting heavily.
I chuckled as I turned at him, “it was all just luck,” I told him, and then continued, “that is what usually happens when I play these type of dangerous games,” I panted lightly from the effort, “when there is a trap or something, I always appear to find it, and in this case, I even found out the trick beforehand,” I said, looking back ahead of us.
“It was all luck huh?” Hughie asked with a smile, “then I guess your luck would run out soon, if we all can get us through this,” he finished, sounding rather confident despite his own weakness of giving up. His confidence only fueled my curiosity for the next game, and it felt like we were going to survive this one.
Right?
