The Writer Games | Once In A Lifetime & World Edition

Finals: Custer Mudd

Custer Mudd looks at the  cool cement floor of the basement speckled with legos, their corners  yearning for a bare foot to feed them pain. A malicious grin creeps on  his face and his eyes glisten, looking forward to the others pain.

This is a death arena after all, not a workout machine.

The thought is once  again pushed away by the main focus of his mind. There is one day left  in the arena, and how can he make sure that he is the only one leaving  it alive. Then he can go home, he can see his mother, running out the  scuffed dirt path leading to the rickety front steps. He can hold onto  his mother and never let go. She can carry him along to the second step  and it would squeak; As it all ways dose.

That would be when she would whack him against the back of his head and accuse him for volunteering.

If he lives.

Lost in thought, Custer  ignores the deliberately quiet footsteps, only betrayed by the moaning  floor boards on the stairs. MeMe peeks out around the molding of the  basement door. She curses under her breath as her shadow flickers in the  light of the lone bulb dangling over Custer's head.

Custer notices the  disturbance and flings his head up with a piqued interest. He raises his  eyebrows gloatingly at Meme and stands up confidently, his arms crossed  and his eyes flitting between the sea of legos and Meme herself. There  was no way those bare feet would trod over the legos; no matter how  careful or pain resistant they were.

"Hello Mercy! Have a nice day."

MeMe scowls as Custer  nods his head in mock politeness and honesty while his smug face betrays  his true self centered cause and his elation at her defeat. MeMe  snatches up the bow she had found, laying proudly on display over the  living room doorway, a ragged bow nailed into it's place of honor to the  left.

Custer barely notices  the new addition to MeMe's ration of weapon before it is stuck into the  side of his head. The arrow whizzes past him, the bent rod sending it of  course. Custer dives behind a clump of machinery with a high pitched  squeal. His scream is followed with a thud and a mass of illegible  snarls pushed through gritted teeth. He swats away at his face and blood  stained plastic flies from his right side. As the pain flows back into  his broken arm he scowls angrily before pulling him self together;  trying to ignore his pain so he can continue his life.

The metallic blocks  protecting him from harm puffed out steam with a low hum and  occasionally a strangled cough. He peeks his head out from his shelter  and his eyes widen when he sees MeMe sweeping away a trail of the small  bricks with a prodding bow. His plan had been foiled.

As MeMe approaches,  Custer starts to pry open a long tube running from one of the machines.  Legos scatter around at his feet, warning him that MeMe was approaching.  The spew of plastic grew until it seemed her sweeping bow was just a  foot away. Custer manages to wrench the tube out of it's socket just in  time.

An array of sprays and  ashes spewed out before the entire piece exploded violently. Shards of  metal and plastic flew at Meme and she fell to the ground with a  sickening crack. Custer could feel ash settling on his cheeks and his  hair blown back from the shock wave.

With a malicious giggle  the inferno of steam choked out leaving a tangible film of haze around  the room. Custer slowly got up to his feet letting out an over  exaggerated sigh of relief. He gingerly scampered around the body of  MeMe, trying to look away from the bloodied body contorted out on the  floor.

As Custer climbs  grudgingly up the stairs the whizzing blare of a cannon brings him up  onto his toes. He realizes it can't be for Meme because she was  unquestionably dead a while ago; It must have been Azure or Liz.

Custer carefully slides  the basement door open and finds himself in what must have been a  kitchen. It is now torn apart and splattered with red. Spices and sauces  are strewn across the floor and and array of equipment is sprawled  around the room. Custer looks around tentatively, but he see no body;  either living or dead. He lets a small grin flash onto his face as his  eyes flit across an iron cast pot laying overturned near the water  basin. He quickly wraps his blistered fingers around the cool handle and  hefts the weapon experimentally.

The tribute from eleven  looks admiringly at his replacement weapon, the perfect weight, size and  a glassy sheen coating the lethal metal. That is when his eyes widen  and his jaw unhinges, leaving his mouth gaping open. Out of the  reflection in the pot he can see a haggard resemblance of Liz, a gash in  her head bleeding profusely onto the floor.

"Well well, look what the cat beat up than dragged in."

Liz flashed a sickly  sweet smile in reply, embedded thoroughly with sarcasm. Her display of  wit buckles under it's weight as she realizes how right she is. Her hand  casually makes it's way to the crushing dent in her head and slowly  traces her finger along the outline. Sometimes she thinks there is  hardly any use in living. Why now, when it would be so easy to die, is  she so determined not to?

To prove something? The thought sends Liz into a bout of confidence and allows her to replace her menacing smile.

"Too bad I'm still going to kill you."

Custer has no time to  dodge from the household hammer flying into his shoulder. The impact  sends him flying to the ground and the back of the head tears of two  clean strips of his shoulder. His head whips into the cold tiles of the  floor and sends him into a paroxysm of pain. His eyes start to blur  around the edges and his thoughts seem to be cut short leaving him  mentally paralyzed.

A jubilated Liz stands  over him, elation blowing into her face. She was finally going back  home. Her secluded abode keeping her away from the problems of the  world. Away from bad news and pain. She could go back to her prison; the  only place she felt free.

Custer stares at the  face of his assailant. He can vaguely feel his hair sticked the the back  of his scalp, and his finger tips shivering in a seeping puddle of a  sticky liquid. His muscles start to slump away from their prior  tenseness.

Liz quickly reaches out  for her hammer, ready to make the final blow when her feet fly out from  below her. Custer kicks her legs with a spasm of movement. Liz falls to  the ground, her head hitting against the floor with a hollow thud. The  sizable dent into her skull bursts open, shooting out shard of bone and  fragments of brain, all doused in blood. Her eyes rolled back into her  lack of a head leaving Custer to stare into the milky white marbles,  flooded with systems of crimson veins.

Today has not been a nice day.