The Game

Chapter 1

A weird metallic smell filled the small dark room, cold cement walls surrounded us, and a big circular table stood in the middle of the room. There were about five people who sat at the table. They all looked worn out and lifeless with bruises covering some of their bodies. The games aren't a place for innocent people. I was about to turn around and tell my friend to leave, that he was making the biggest mistake of his life by following me, but I promised him I'd let him come, so here we are. I took a deep breath and led the way to the table. We took a seat at the table, and one of the men cleared his throat, signaling that we were ready to begin.

"I see that we have a new person joining us." Chris, the one-handed man, said.

"Yes, this is Jimin, he will be joining us for this game." My voice was deep and full of authority. There was a chance that Jimin would be kicked out and possibly threatened to not speak of this place to anyone, but Chris nodded his head, his way of saying he's safe to stay.

What goes on here, with these people, isn't safe and should never be spoken of to anyone. Some of the games cost people their lives; I didn't warn Jimin of what he was getting himself into because I'm hoping this game will satisfy him with what I'm sneaking off to do, but I should've warned him just in case they won't leave him alone after this. He might get into more games. Shit. I didn't think about that before agreeing to take him with me. The game that we're playing today is the safest game out of all of them, a card game, in the card game you play three rounds, and whoever loses the card game gets punished in some way. Some of the punishments can be very painful, but I'm hopeful that Jimin won't fail, he's a smart boy and has a high chance of winning. Whoever wins a round gets a reward of $100. Each game is harder and more dangerous than the last, but you get the right amount of money to do the games.

The first round goes by smoothly with Jimin winning, gaining praise for being a new guy, and the person who lost was me. I tried to do badly just to make sure that if anyone lost, it would be me, and not Jimin. He's a lovely guy who is blind to all the dark and nasty things in this world. It's hard to know there's evil in the world when only good things happen to you, and I want to make sure it stays that way for him. Since I lost the first round, I had to get punished, and the punishment was up to everyone else.

"I think I know what his punishment should be." A low, raspy voice spoke.

"What are you thinking, Gabe?" Asked Chris.

Gabe, the man who hates my guts because we both were in the same game, I ended up winning, which got his girlfriend killed. She died because whoever lost the game would lose someone they truly cared about, and Gabe was stupid enough to join the game, knowing the consequences. He blames me for her death, but I did nothing wrong.

"I say we take his finger," Gabe spoke.

"Take his finger?" Jimin spoke his confusion.

"Yeah, cut it off."

"Cut it off!? Are you crazy?"

"What!?"

"I said, are you crazy, what kind of sick minded person would do that?" I grabbed Jimin's arm and shook my head, telling him to keep his mouth shut.

"It's fine. I can live without a finger."

I set my hand on the table and Gabe pulls out a knife, my breath got caught in my throat as I anticipated the blade cutting through my finger. The blade cut through my finger, getting stuck at the bone for a few seconds before the blade sliced the rest of my finger off. A first-aid kit was tossed at me, so I carefully wrapped up the area where my finger used to be and grabbed a cloth to put pressure on it. Once this game was over, I'd go home and stitch it up myself. If I was ever hurt or seriously injured, I'd never go to the hospital. I'd just go back and fix it up myself. Going to the hospital wasn't something I could do.