Slashtag, p.34
Slashtag, page 34
The woman in black reaches into her waistband and produces a pistol, which she aims right at me. “Drop the knife!” she barks.
My hand shakes, and the knife feels heavy in my outstretched arm. My shoulder burns. With a gun pointed at me, it’s useless, anyway. I let it fall to the ground, but I keep the camera pointed at the gun.
“If this is just a normal production, why do you have an armed guard with you?”
“Because you were just responsible for the death of an A-list actor and your own boyfriend. Charlotte is here to protect us in case you try to kill us as well.” Lucy softens her eyes to look as innocent and convincing as possible. “Don’t drag this out any longer than it has to. You’ve already ruined the show. How about we turn the cameras off, once and for all?”
I knew it. That’s the reason I haven’t been shot already. As soon as I stop broadcasting they gain control of the narrative. They can edit things however they want to justify killing me.
Lucy makes a small flapping motion with her hand. Behind her, the crew member points his camera down at the ground. “There, see? We’ve put ours down. Now it’s your turn, okay? And then we’ll get you the help you need.” Her eyebrows perk up with a notion. “You can see your sister.”
“No.” I keep the camera trained on them. “If you’re going to kill me, you’re going to have to do it in front of the whole world.”
Lucy shakes her head in mild disappointment. Then, after an appropriate pause, her eyes pick up just past me, in urgent terror. “Shawn, what are you doing? Oh my God, he’s got a gun!”
I realize what she’s doing just a moment too late.
The woman named Charlotte fires her pistol, but it’s no longer pointed at me. I jerk the camera over to Shawn. He’s standing there, wide-eyed and completely still. Shock is painted across his bruised face.
He doesn’t fall. Doesn’t stagger backward, doesn’t grip his chest. That’s because he doesn’t take the bullet.
Arthur Wilson does.
I start to shiver uncontrollably at the sight of the ghost standing directly in front of Shawn. I don’t know why or how he absorbed a bullet, but he’s saved Shawn’s life. Arthur then does something even more bizarre.
The ghost turns to me with his shining eyes…and winks.
“Arthur,” Lucy says, this time actually surprised. “What are you doing here?”
Arthur tucks his chin, and a disconcerting smile I recognize all too well spreads across his lips.
I’m now thoroughly confused. Why does Lucy suddenly seem more afraid than me?
“What should I do?” Charlotte asks, her voice full of urgency.
“Hold your position,” Lucy orders, as if she were a four-star general. “Arthur, we don’t need you here right now.”
Arthur Wilson takes a step toward Lucy. This time, it’s her crew’s turn to back off.
“Arthur, we’ve got the situation under control. Go back to Renshaw. Your character is wrapped for the day.”
The man in the brown suit reaches into his coat pocket, then carefully removes a scalpel, holding it as if it were a tea cup.
“I’m serious, Arthur. Stop it right now. Go back to your room. I mean it!”
A phone buzzes. To Lucy’s surprise, it’s not hers. “What’s it say?” she demands when Charlotte glances at her screen.
“Boss wants me down at the boardroom. Sounds like he’s getting nervous.”
“What’s it say about me?” Lucy asks, finally frazzled. She looks back at Arthur.
He’s inspecting his scalpel with a look of dismay, no longer impressed with his trademark weapon. It clatters to the floor, and when he reaches into his jacket this time, he pulls out a familiar-looking hacksaw.
Lucy retreats, only to find her legs caught on the lip of a large white bathtub that’s appeared directly behind her. She tumbles in, her head slamming into the back of the porcelain rim.
“I think you’re on your own.” Charlotte holsters her weapon and backs away, along with the film crew.
Lucy struggles to pull herself out of the tub, but her arms and legs keep slipping on the sides. She reaches out for Charlotte. “You get me out of here this fucking instant! You have to take me with you!”
“That’s gonna be a hard pass for me. I’ve been on the wrong end of a botched ritual before. I can see where this is headed, and I’m out. Give my regards to your boss, if you see him again.”
Lucy has a meltdown as she watches her only chance of survival turn tail and walk back up the tunnel. “You bitch! When my family hears what you’ve done, they’re going to make you wish you’d died here today! You hear me? I’m Lucy fucking Krentler!”
For all her screaming and scrambling, Lucy ends up in the exact position I saw her last.
Arthur takes his time with a slow approach. When he gets close enough, I’m surprised to see Lucy’s flailing arms and legs connecting with a corporeal being. Whatever Arthur is now, he’s not following the same rules as before. He grabs her by the hair, and I watch him start to re-enact his decapitation performance, skipping the limbs this time and going straight for the throat.
“Well, that was some shit,” Shawn says, after the lights flicker and Wilson disappears, leaving a headless woman lying on the rockbed floor.
“It seemed like a fitting end to me,” a voice calls from around the corner, accompanied by the light hum of an electric motor.
My heart nearly explodes when April comes rolling down from around the bend. Her arm is bleeding. Aside from that, she looks better than ever.
I run to her and squeeze my arms around her so hard I nearly pass out from the pain.
“Tawny, I love you, but you smell awful.”
I manage to pull myself away from her, and tears are already streaming down my face. “Am I really that bad?” I say, in a combination of laughs and sobs.
“I guess I can let it slide this time, seeing as I’m the one that dragged you into this.”
“No!” I cry, hugging her again in spite of her active protest. “I’m responsible for my own decisions. Besides, you saved me. Again.”
April smiles. “Well, I figured you’d probably remember most of the rules of surviving a horror movie, but you might need a refresher on a few details. Plus, I managed to hack their ghost system. Arthur works for me now.”
I look in amazement at my sister. My hero. “That was you?”
She tries to downplay a proud smile and shrugs one shoulder. “What can I say, I like to tinker.”
“Shawn…” I wave at him to come over. “I want you to meet my sister.”
“Nice to meet you,” Shawn says. “Thanks for saving our asses back there.”
“Happy to do it. I’m a big fan,” she says. “Oh, not of football, though. More like, a fan of the way you played this game.”
Shawn lets out a tired but relieved laugh. “Thanks.”
“Please tell me you know a way out of here,” I say to April.
“I do, but—”
“But what? Let’s go,” Shawn says.
“Well, hold your horses. I do know the way out, but there’s something else here that I think we need to do first.”
I furrow my brow, wanting nothing more than to get out of here and wondering what could possibly convince me to stay one second longer. “What is it?”
“He’s here.”
“Who is?”
April raises her eyebrows in a you-should-really-know-this way. And then I do.
“He’s here. Along with the entire board of Krentler Media. I guess they needed to be onsite to perform some ritual for mass mind control.”
“Wait, you mean every single board member of Krentler Media is in these tunnels?”
“In one room.”
She nods, and I’m suddenly filled with a second, third…I don’t know…twentieth wind.
“Then let’s get going,” I say.
Shawn shakes his head. “I’m confused. To do what?”
“To burn this whole fucking thing to the ground.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
The following is a post from Hector Palencia, known on Social as Hectorious B1G:
Since the cops won’t listen to me and my family now thinks I’m crazy, I’m posting this here as a last resort. Slashtag is real, and I have proof. I work with Tawny Howlett’s sister, April, at their house five days a week.
While I was there, I got to see everything that Tawny did before going into Slashtag. None of it was rehearsed. She was completely in the dark and didn’t even sign up until like two days before it came on.
I was on a video call with April when some people from Krentler Media kidnapped her from her home. I’m literally still on the call now, looking at an empty house that’s been connected for almost 20 hours.
I can’t sit around and wait any longer while everyone believes this is still just a TV show. I don’t know what good I’ll do, but I’m leaving now to drive to Dire and see if I can find a way to help my friends.
I’ll update this post when I get there.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
Before we storm the gates, so to speak, I take Shawn aside. “Listen, this is me and April’s fight from here on out. You can walk away now and be done with it. If you come with us, I can’t guarantee your safety.”
Shawn grabs the phone from me and speaks directly into the camera. “You don’t have to try to convince me of anything. It’s my choice to come with you till the end.”
“I can navigate,” April says. “I’ve pretty much figured out the tunnel map on this tablet. I can get us there.
“What about that?” I ask, motioning to the blood-sucking pendant. “Is it actually the real thing?”
“I don’t want it,” April says, her words already spring-loaded in her mouth. “It makes me feel bad.”
She holds out her hand, presenting the Amulet of Duriel to me. I still can’t believe it’s real. My eyes are drawn to the red jewel in its center, which pulses faintly in a hypnotic rhythm that makes my eyes lose focus and forget where I am. The fading light in the jewel tells me it’s hungry. It knows what’s happening here is wrong, and it needs me to help make it right. If I feed it, it can help me do anything.
I can get us out of here.
I can get April new kidneys.
I can get revenge.
“Just a heads up, it might make you feel a bit woozy.” April shakes it in her hand, jarring me back into the moment.
I reach out with my good hand and grab the amulet carefully by its gold shell, making sure my fingers don’t land on any of the sharp protrusions where runes have been carved. Inspecting the symbols, I recognize many of them from the box in Arthur’s Apartment. While they all range in size and complexity, each rune has at least one sharp point that protrudes, like a needle running along a canal into a hole.
I look at my wounded hand, the one that got sliced open the first night and never really closed. The skin across the gash is puffy and purple. When I look back at the pendant, all I see are a hundred little teeth, funneling into a hundred little mouths.
I press the back of the amulet into my oozing palm and let it drink deeply from me. The more blood I feed it, the better I feel. The lights flicker overhead, and then Arthur Wilson is standing in front of me.
But it’s not Arthur, not entirely. I can feel him inside the Amulet, but he’s not at the wheel. Arthur’s a puppet, a memory that can be rewritten at the whim of its beholder.
Me.
I can feel the spirit of every person who ever held the amulet. More than that, I can reach inside of them, and experience the pain of all their victims. I can see through the eyes of every witness who was forced to watch Duriel’s heralds commit some of the most wretched and horrific atrocities imaginable.
“You ready?” April says.
Looking through my own eyes, I see my sister and feel an energy inside of me start to hum. It makes me stand up taller, my senses sharper. It also makes me so deeply hungry. April and I have been starved for eighteen years of a meal we both deserve, and now, it’s time for us to eat.
“Yeah, let’s go.” With a blink of my eyes, I make Arthur disappear. I don’t need a boogeyman as a scapegoat for the punishment I’m about to inflict. “Make sure the camera’s still on,” I say to Shawn.
Just like they did to us, I want the world to watch them choke on the worst moments of their lives. Duriel wants that too, maybe even as much as I do.
We follow April deeper and deeper into the earth, through a winding series of twists and turns, until we finally reach a door with two rifle-clad guards standing in front.
They both immediately raise their guns to us and shout, “Freeze!”
I don’t just see two men in front of me. I see pain, and suffering, and trauma, all patched together into little boys playing army.
“Leave one of them alive,” I say, squeezing the amulet and feeling my soul catch fire.
“Where’s my little Gary?” an ominous sing-song voice echoes through the chamber. “Where’s he hiding?”
One of the guards, presumably Gary, turns to face his partner, pointing his rifle at him.
“What the hell are you doing?” the other guard says, as a tall old man with a sleeve of tattoos and a blonde buzzcut appears right behind him.
“I’m waiting for you, Gary. Uncle Marty’s here.”
Gary squeezes the trigger and fires a burst of rounds into his partner, who leaves a spray of red against the wall as he slides to the ground. Behind him, the ghost is gone as quickly as he appeared.
“Get us in,” I say.
The voice continues, this time on the other side of a steel door with a glowing keypad next to it. “I see you hiding in there, Gary. Come on out. Come on out.” The guard presses buttons on the keypad, and the door slides open.
He makes it no more than two steps into the room, before several more gunshots ring out and Gary falls to the floor. I don’t need to see inside to feel the gunman. I tighten my fingers around the gem and grit my teeth. The pain I feel is nothing compared to the man he killed.
“Come on, don’t stop filming,” I say, stepping toward the boardroom.
April grabs my arm. “Wait! You’ll get killed.”
“Trust me. It’s finally my turn to save us.”
Crossing the threshold feels like stepping back into the Propitius. It’s a grand wood-paneled room adorned with paintings, statues, and at least a dozen other expensive-looking artifacts. Only one of them catches my eye. It makes me feel a magnetic pull toward it.
In the center of a wooden round table sits a large golden goblet covered in runes that I can feel pulsing inside of my veins. It’s encrusted with red gems, which glow in the same rhythm as the one in my hand. Inside the goblet bubbles the blood of all seven contestants, distilled down into the pure essence of our suffering. The amulet shows me how it turned our pain into a kind of infection, a spore spreading via witness. It’s rooted itself in the brain of every viewer who tuned in to Slashtag. Every person who watched us suffer and die has fed a piece of themselves into the contents of this goblet. A piece of Duriel now sleeps in those holes, just waiting to be given a command.
“You ruined my fucking life!”
An angry shout pulls me out of the goblet and back into the present. Three old men in suits are sitting around the table with books in their hands, looking like deer caught in headlights. A fourth man has risen out of his chair, pointing a gun across the room. It’s Joseph Bartlett, a billionaire whose famous Raconteur hotel line is only eclipsed by his reputation for not paying any of his building contractors. He’s aiming his pistol at the person shouting, a man in jeans and a T-shirt, with a bullet hole through his eye.
“I lost my job, my house, my family because of you!”
Bartlett shouts something back, but it’s drowned out by the sound of him emptying his clip into the dead man. The corpse shakes his head, unfazed by the barrage of gunfire as he pulls a pistol from the back of his pants.
“Not this time.” He pulls the trigger, and Bartlett drops to the floor.
“Jesus, did you do that?” Shawn asks, looking worried.
“Sort of,” I say, feeling like I’m half in a dream. I can’t stop thinking about the goblet. All my pain, all that power. It’s inside the cup. It’s what they took from me, and I want it back. I want to gulp it down until there’s nothing left and then punish everyone who got their kicks by watching us squirm.
“What do you think you’re doing?” an outraged geezer shouts, rising to his feet. It’s Charles Menuscha, the film producer behind Murder Mansion. “You can’t do this!”
I want to laugh. He’s so used to getting his way, he doesn’t understand that he’s already dead. I reach into the gem and pull out a beautiful young woman dressed in white lace. She stands before him with a deep purple bruise around her neck and a look of betrayal painted in her bloodshot eyes. He freezes in disbelief as she leans in, whispers something in his ear. She then wraps a belt around his neck that I imagine fits the dimensions of her bruise. He tries to pull back, but she drags him away from the table, watching his eyes bulge the same way hers did.
As entertaining as it is to watch them suffer, I can’t help but feel myself once again pulled back toward the cup full of our blood. If I drank it all, I could reach out to every single Slashtag viewer and make the seeds in all of their heads grow until their brains go pop. Or I could control the seed, make them rise up against injustice everywhere. After all, there’s more evil in the world than just in this boardroom. If we’ve come this far, why stop here?
I have to drink it. It’s the only way to keep me and April safe from all the others out there who would want to hurt us.
The next thing I know, the goblet is already in my hands. I’m pulling it toward my mouth, ready to receive its gifts.
There’s something stopping me. Physically stopping me. Hands on my arms, voices shouting at the other end of a park.
April. She’s pulling at me, begging me to stop. I don’t understand why. I’m doing this for her. Literally everything I’ve done to get here is for her.
