A Tearful Sacrifice Game

● | Two | ●

"Welcome boys, to A Tearful Sacrifice Game. This will last just about as long as it takes for five of you to die.

There are five rooms in this building, that you will progress through at your own pace. Do you notice that gun by the gate? Said gate will lift open and allow you through, and one step closer to freedom. However, it will only open when one of you picks up that gun and shoots yourself with it.

If you take the gun and shoot somebody else becuase you're impatient, you will also die. This has to be a self-motivated suicide of some sorts.
Once the five of you have made it through the gate, you will await furhter instructions.

If nobody wants to make their tearful sacrifice, well, I suppose you'll all starve. Oh, uh, and you've only got one bullet in that gun, so, use it right. Good luck, candidates."

The boys stay in silence for around thirty seconds.

They make eye contact for half a second afterwards, then the purple-haired boy darts towards the table holding the weapon. Roman reaches towards it first, but the emo gets there first. He points the gun up to the room's ceiling as his breath hitches significantly.

"Virgil, put the gun down, let's talk about this." Remus says, making eye contact with the skinny-jean wearing boy.

"What stops me from f-firing this at the ceiling? Then nobody dies, right?"

The firearm subtly shakes in his hand, he's never held a real gun before, and it makes him extremely anxious, as his therapist would say. God, if he survives this, he's gonna need a lot more of those thirty minute sessions that his doctor recommended.

Logan steps forward with two hands infront of his body. "We need to have a formal discussion about this. Virgil, please could you pass me the weapon, as I am slightly scared that you may accidently fire it."

Virgil sucks a harsh breath in before bringing his arm down and holding the gun infront of Logan, who takes it and places it in his left pocket. "Thank you."

Janus then brings his right hand to the bridge of his nose as he speaks. "Right, let's do this properly. Without sugar coating, one of us has to die, right? We should just decide upon who deserves to live the least."
"How do you even decide something that horrible?!" Patton asks, his voice almost cracking a little. He's upset.

"I'd say it's pretty easy," Roman starts, nervously glancing to the soon-to-be cause of somebody in the room's death that sits in Lo's pocket. "We can choose based on a few factors, like, yknow, family that would miss us, who has the most potential for their future, who's done the most good in their life so far, all of that."

"I have three sisters and my dad." Janus says, looking down at his painted black nails.
"Uh, Roman and I have a younger brother, George, and our parents."

The group go around sharing their family members, landing on Virgil last, who just sighs. "This is unfair. It's not my fault I'm an only child with a single mother."

"He's right- this isn't fair. We could be here for hours." The snake beanie-wearing boy says.

After around a minute of silence, Remus steps forward and laughs slightly. "C'mon, guys. This kind of stuff doesn't just happen to random kids! It's pretty damn obvious that we're on some kind of prank show. Look, I'd bet money that this isn't even a real gun."

He reaches into Logan's pocket and pulls the gun out, moving to look directly down the barrel of the weapon.

"Remus! Careful with that, you don't know for sure that it's fake-"

He's inturrupted by the callous ringing of a gunshot that echoes through the room, as a single steel bullet fires directly through the head of the boy holding the gun.
A generous splattering of blood hits the wall as the body falls bacwards onto the concrete, more blood seeping out of the wound as the fired weapon lays beside him. 

The other five candidates let out various levels of screams. None of them have seen somebody die before. Especially not in such a gruesome manor.

Roman immediately drops to his knees and begins to sob and scream in despair. It's understandable. It is his brother after all.

The others stand in silence while this occurs, too shellshocked to know what they're supposed to do in this kind of situation. What even are you supposed to do? It isn't like they teach it in school. Or, if they do, these boys haven't got far enough into the school year to reach that part of the curriculum yet.

"Bravo. And that was our first sacrifice."

"First..?!" Patton cries out into the air, burying his face in Logan's shoulder so that he doesn't have to look at the dead boy on the floor just a few inches infront of him.

"From wence the gate opens, you have ten seconds to get through it, or you'll be locked in this room until you starve. Hey, maybe you'll have to eat the dead kid to last longer. Who knows?"
The only person who found that comment funny was the person on the speaker who made it.

The gate slides open slowly and they all stand still for a moment before skeptically walking through to the next room.

Patton and Logan have to lift a sobbing Roman from his late brother's corpse and pull him away, through the gate before it closes. But, they each make it through.

The six metal rods of the gate drop back through the ceiling, thudding on the floor with a cloud clang noise, as the five of them stand awaitng their next instruction.

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975 words