The Angel of Death

V

I felt something warm splatter on my cheek. A metallic smell. It awakened my senses, and I dragged myself up to survey the scene.

What I saw almost made me throw up, but I forced it back down. 

Alexander's bloodied and mangled corpse was strewn around—everywhere in bits. I could see bits of him everywhere I turn. His finger was on the floor next to me. Charred bits of his hair laid disconnected from his body on the stairs. His blood splatters were printed on the ceiling like a gory pattern out of a horror movie.

In the corner of my eye, I spied the twins. Huddled together, their eyes were wide open to take in the awful scenery. I quickly covered their eyes with my hands, but I knew it was too late. They had already seen everything.

My heart sank. I missed the times when the world was only lollipops and rainbows. When you could truly live in the present without worrying about the past or the future. When you were too young to understand the bitter taste of coffee and liquor. Gullible enough to hold dreams for the future. And naive enough to live without regrets in the past. Untainted by the dangers and darkness of the world.

From the empty nothingness, emerged a little girl with a still silent heart. She was always alone, even with others around her, creating different facades to cater to those around her. They thought they knew her. They thought they understood her. After all, they smiled together. Laughed together. Cried together. But really, inside she was hollow. She was only a meaningless vacant shell borne from the void. And I saw her turn to me.

I realized my palms were wet as their sniffles and cries broke me out of my spell. I tried my best to comfort them, embracing them in a gentle hug.

"Don't worry," I assured them, "I'll make sure you guys won't get hurt." But even as the words left my lips, I knew it was an empty promise. What could I do?

"Big sis Emi!" Apollo blubbered, "is the monster gone now?" I smiled and nodded, carefully coaxing the pair to return to the bedrooms. As I tucked them into bed, I felt a strange sense of deja vu and my head thundered. Why did this feel so familiar to me somehow?

I returned to see Asher had awakened though he was a bloody mess.

"Are you alright?" I asked.

"I have had better days," he chuckled, "but I'm fine. This isn't my blood by the way. You should take a good look at yourself too." I felt disgusted that I had someone else's blood on me...yet again. When will this nightmare end?

"I just put the twins to bed," I said gesturing toward their bedroom. "How are these two?"

"They both seem to be alive," he informed, "just a bit injured." We agreed to move them to the other empty bedrooms so they could rest and hopefully feel well enough to tell us about what happened. Everything had happened so fast that Asher wasn't able to get a good look. 

As we both hauled Katsuo into the bedroom, I noticed that everything had been cleaned up. The voting box and ballots had disappeared. And so had Sophie and Tajana. The room looked perfectly pristine like nothing sinister had happened in it previously.

After peeking into the other rooms, I noticed the same thing. The corpses were missing: Zhen, Isabella, and Rahim. They were all gone too. I tugged on Asher's shirt to catch his attention as we walked back into the meeting room and confided my findings to him. 

"I'm glad you pointed it out because I noticed the same thing," he said, "there must be some kind of trap door around here. Multiple probably." I remembered that Katsuo had mentioned something like that earlier in the Russian roulette game. Something came down to decapitate Tajana when she refused to drop the gun. And now their corpses were missing as well. It sent shivers down my spine. The perpetrators were running circles around us, and we were still as lost as we were when we first started. 

"Let's stick together" I advised, "I can't stand being alone if I know they're still crawling around here somewhere." I took a quick glance at the wall. Could they somehow be running around inside there?

He nodded and added, "and while we still have the chance, we should conduct a careful investigation of this place."

I went along with his plan and flipped almost everything in the vicinity upside-down, desperately searching for any clues on how to get out. I noticed soon that the bedrooms were almost indistinguishable from one another except for the painting on the wall. Could that possibly be a clue?

Room A with Katsuo had a scattering of tiny blue flowers.

Room B with Jun had two blooms of bright orange flowers.

And Room C with the twins had a field of long-stemmed purple flowers.

As I stared into the painting in Room A, I felt a throbbing sensation in my head. It seemed like the flowers were an intentional choice. Why else would they be different from one another? What could the flowers mean?

As if reading my mind, Asher noted that the blue flowers in Room A were called forget-me-nots.

Forget-me-nots. 

There must be something they want us to remember here then. We looked around the room, but nothing stood out. We took everything in the room apart and carefully examined it and put it back together. But nothing came of it. 

Maybe I was reading into this stuff too much. My face was fevered red with frustration. I bit my tongue to stop myself from uttering a curse. I needed to calm myself down. I can't let my emotions overtake me, especially not at a time like this.

Suddenly I heard a distressed groan. It was Katsuo. I sprinted to his side. His injuries didn't seem to be healing. In fact, they looked even worse now. He seemed to still be unconscious and didn't respond when I called out his name.

"I don't think we have any first-aid supplies," I said. "What should we do about them?"

He placed his hand on his chin and appeared to be deep in thought. "Emi..." He trailed off, leaving his thought unfinished. I looked back at him expectantly.

"Would you forsake your own life to save others?"

I rolled my eyes at him and replied with my own question, "What kind of question is that?"

"I'm serious Emi. Really." He had a somber look plastered on his face. 

I gave in. "Hmm...I don't know. Right now, I would probably say no, but you probably know me better than I do myself. After all, I'm still an amnesiac." I turned toward him. "Why ask the question? Right now, we should be focused on surviving this death game."

He let out a sigh and rebutted, "And what do you plan to do? Kill everyone else?"

I was speechless. I really hadn't given our circumstances too much thought. I had been so engrossed in surviving that I lost focus of the primary objective of the game. It was a death game after all. And there could only be one winner. 

"Well isn't this the perfect opportunity then?" He reasoned, "everyone's injured and vulnerable except for me and you." He opened his arms wide, inviting me. "And if it'll make you happy, I'll let you kill me."

I took an unsteady step toward him. Then another. And another. And my pace quickened as I finally lunged forward at him.