End Game

Prologue

"We are all victims in waiting."

_________

Reverberating, the devastating shrieks of their torment explode in your ears, transforming into a relentless, piercing cacophony that ricochets violently within the confines of your skull. Their agony; a symphony of horror, a deafening crescendo that drowns out your survival instincts. The very fabric of the arena tears apart around you, a hailstorm of debris marks your inevitable end. Paralysed, you had yet to move and, still, every pore of your skin wept rivers of sweat as though you were melting, consumed by an unseen inferno, salty rivulets abandoning you before you can muster the courage to bolt towards the only escape - the entrance you walked through just moments ago. 

Escape.

Their screams are blocked out by the incessant, pulsating rhythm of adrenaline coursing through your veins. Explosions erupt forth from the earth with the ferocity of geysers, as though we were being smited - every gland in your body pumps and pumps, until the very thought of it consumes you, seizing control of your every sense.

Escape.

It's easy to think that you would survive an apocalypse. That you'd know exactly what to do; where to run, where to hide, who to trust. It's easy to believe when watching or reading that you wouldn't feel quite as much of the emotion that possessed the players.

—That you would be remorseless. An empty husk of what a human is supposed to be, devoid of any emotion, any comprehension, any thoughts, any feelings. Anything. It's easy to think that when their blood stained your clothes as they fought for their life that you wouldn't release the same guttural, terrified bellow for forgiveness as though some omnipotent, omni-benevolent, omniscient being hidden within the clouds would hear you - as if such a being would allow something like this to happen in the first place.

Maybe you would remain dormant amongst the horror.

But all it takes is that singular image of desperation - of agony and mangled flesh, ruptured and mutilated until it resembled the crippled remains of torn fabric - to stain your vision for life.

Humans have a tendency to believe, then push it just a step too far. Just a little shuffle across the precipice between acceptable and horror. This was the latter; Horrific.

After all, it's always the innocent, the ones who simply shuffle over the precipice of horror while others dive into the abyss — It's always those who dare for just a second, commit one simple sin, that experience the horrifying, torturous reality of humanity while those who bound over the line receive not an ounce of their poetic justice.

But as all-believing humans we surely must know that if you're guilty, you're guilty - no matter the crime.

Right?

As you navigate through the wreckage, swimming through the rubble, you imagine them living freely while your skin is brutally flayed from your muscle. While your bones were pulverised to dust. As shards of glass nick at your internal organs like pin pricks, you imagine all those execrable freaks of nature, free from this torture, running amok like lawless children, as you drag your battered body away from the foul spectacle the puppeteer of this nightmare called a 'game'. Possessed by an inconceivable rage, you are yet to notice the eerie silence that has descended upon the venue. Their screams, once an agonal chorus, had halted simultaneously with the constant thundering of your heart in your ears. Then you notice it; an arm protruding from the top of the debris, jutting out like a gravestone, held up by the remains of the bleachers. The layers of skin, fat and muscle ripped apart, revealing the gruesome tableau beneath, the texture of the innards laid bare, the stark ivory of the exposed bone discernible amongst the carnage.  

"Game Cleared!"

A round of applause. You scream.

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