I woke up on the sofa, my vision blurred and my body slightly achy. I moaned and sat up, trying to remember where I was. What I could see of the walls and ceiling was a horrible dark pink, and the lighting was an off yellow, making the while room look slightly sick. There was a fireplace in front of me with a fire lit in it, and rows of bookshelves along the wall. It seemed I was in some kind of old fashioned study, the kind you'd think of when you imagined Sherlock Holmes. There was a large carved wooden desk in front of a window too frosted to see out of, and a smaller one against the wall with the door that had a small lunch basket on it. On the other side, there was a tall chair, and a few boxes along side the larger desk, and a big teal gift box on top of the desk.
I got up, and walked over to the door, wracking my brain to think of where 'd been last night but drawing a blank. I couldn't even think of what day it was, I vaguely remembered that I was supposed to visit my sister, but was that today? This wasn't her apartment though, so I'm guessing I never made it there. I tried the handle, finding it was locked, and I frowned, slightly more concerned than I had been a moment before. Pinned to the door by a thin knife was a white envelope with my name on it. I carefully unstuck it, and walked back to the couch to read, hoping it would tell me what was going on...
It read;
Smile, you're on camera! You've been selected as one of twelve lucky women who get to participate in our brand new 'pink room'! game The rules are simple, in the box on the desk, are 12 toys for you to play with, so play with them! It wasn't easy to get 144 of them total for you ladies, so make sure to have lots of fun with them! We won't be letting you out until all 12 of the toys are broken, but in order to make sure you don't just stomp on them to get out of the room quickly, we've added stakes to this little game.
You have to break your toys in the most creative way you can think of, and you'll ONLY be let go if at least one of the ways you broke a toy hasn't been done by any of the twelve other contestants, so think outside the box! If you're not creative enough though, and all your methods were also done by one or more of the other contestants... You'll have the honor of being one of our expert's new toys during our next show!
I felt a chill, 'toys'? What did they mean 'toys'? If I was in danger of becoming a toy, then could they be... I got up and slowly walked over to the desk, and pulled on the ribbon keeping the box's lid on. It came away cleanly, and I lifted the lid, peering inside. I gasped, in the box was a small collection of class B citizens; individuals infected with the compression particles. They looked up at me, terrified. They ranged in size from half an inch, to around six inches, and were a mix of ages and genders. I noticed with surprise that they were all missing the GPS locator anklets that all class Bs wore, I didn't know those could even come off... One of them waved his arms at me frantically
"Miss! Miss, please, you have to help us, we were taken from our guardians, we don't know where we are!"
My breath caught, these people already had guardians? People who would miss them? I'd hoped they'd just be freshly compressed, and bought from the shops, but if they had loved ones... I looked at the letter in my hand, feeling sick.
"Excuse me, can you hear me?" a different voice said, one of the smaller ones, less than an inch tall. Her voice barely reached me "Please, we haven't seen anyone else, we just woke up in this box, do you know where we are?"
I wondered if I should even talk to them, if I needed to kill them to survive, I didn't want to make friends. I whispered "sorry" as I put the lid on, closing them all back up.
I needed to find a way out. I checked the door again, but it was bolted with metal bars on the top and bottom, and didn't budge when I kicked it. Next up, the window... It looked like just a sheet of plain white glass, with nothing on the other side but light; was it even a real window? I picked up a chair, and slammed it into the glass, and it bounced off, knocking into the desk. The tiny people in the box all screamed as the box jolted, and I winced. The glass hadn't budged, and there wasn't a scratch on it. I pressed my face against it to check, and... Sure enough, plastic... Most of the walls were too covered in bookshelves to bust through. Even if I took the books off, they looked like they were made of real wood and were bolted to the wall, and I'd never be able to kick through them. The wall above the smaller desk though... I grabbed a fire poker from the fireplace and slammed it into the wall over and over, standing on the desk and tearing through the wallpaper and plaster, digging into the wood slats behind it. I swung harder into the hole I'd made, and heard a clang, and my heart sank. I looked into the hole and groaned; there were metal bars running left and right inside the wall, too close together for me to slide through. As I was looking around the room, another letter slid under the door, and I dashed over to read it.
If you're done trying to destroy our set, I'd recommend getting started on those toys! We don't want you to rush, but if you're the last one to break your last toy, you lose, even if you did have a unique kill! Some of the others have already started, so don't get left behind!
I felt my heart skip a beat, I was on a timer now? The other girls were already killing their class Bs? The 'game' had just started, what kind of person would start killing people so quickly? I wondered if there even were eleven other girls, or if the person running the room was just bluffing. Class Bs were very rare, only about 3/100 people had the genetic material to compress, and only 1-2/100 of those people compressed enough (without dying) to lose their status as full human and become class Bs; there was less than ten million of them on the entire planet if I remembered right. It just wasn't sustainable for whoever had me here to get 144 of them for a single 'game', right? I was trying to justify it to myself, but that box of class Bs was easily worth a quarter million by itself, and if someone could afford to waste a quarter million's worth of class Bs just to see me kill them, then I wouldn't put it past them to waste three million to see twelve women kill a lot more.
I looked around the room, I needed to focus, I was still trapped, and there was still a box of people I was supposed to kill if I wanted to live. Except... they weren't 'people', right? They were legally considered less than human, that's why they needed guardians and registration and trackers, so... I walked over to the box, trying to convince myself it was ok. I stopped short, my insides churning. What was I thinking? I'd always been an advocate for class B rights; I'd donated to the funds to help people buy back their family members, I'd taken the online course on what to do if you find a class B without a guardian, I'd voted to give funding to online schooling so class Bs could learn useful skills, I wouldn't- I couldn't...
I opened the box and looked at the people inside, my heart racing. Right now, the other girls could be rushing through, killing their class Bs rapid fire, and I was just looking at them, getting closer and closer to being used as a prop in a room like this myself. Except I, like most people, was immune to compression, so whoever was 'playing' with me would be able to take it slow and make every second count across every inch of my full sized body. No quick smashing or something fast like these lucky bastards would get. In that sense, they were lucky, weren't they? I was the one violating my morals, my life and torture on the line. However I killed them, they'd be dead in a split second, most likely, it'd be humane, and I was literally worth more as a person than them, so my life mattered more, right?
"Listen, ma'am, can you please talk to us?" One of the ladies said, a medium sized one "We're tired of sitting in the dark, we just want to know if we're going to see our families and guardians again."
I stared down at her, my heart rate going up. I was doing this, wasn't I? I slowly reached in and picked her up, my hands shaking. I couldn't take this back, if I did this to her, I'd need to do the rest as well or it'd be all for nothing, a wasted life. She squirmed in my hand, trying to find a foothold on my finders, and I tried to think of how I was going to do it.
~
Victim One: Isobel, 48
~
"Excuse me, is this a leash?" she said indignantly "I'm a class B, not a dog, I need to know what's going on here, I have children and a husband waiting at home for me, and I..."
I blocked her out, tears filling my eyes as I sat her on the floor and unspooled the thread up to my waist, cutting it off there. I picked her up again, and carefully wrapped the thread around her body, winding tightly, but not too tight. She was struggling more now, and her shouts were loud enough that I'm sure the people in the box could hear them too. I held the loose end of the string, and took a breath, this was it, there was no turning back after this, I just had to keep telling myself she's not really human anymore. I let go of her, letting her tumble and spin down screaming as I held the other end. Right when she reached the ground, I snapped my wrist, jerking her upwards. There was a small popping noise, and then nothing.
I got on my knees and examined her. Her neck was broken, like I'd expected, her eyes were rolling around, but she wasn't breathing or saying anything, so... I think she was dead? Tears trickled down my cheeks, and I took her back to the desk, laying her beside the box. I had to finish it now, I had to kill the rest of them. I looked into the box and tried to blink the tears away, she wasn't real, she wasn't human, she was just a glorified pet at this point, it was fine.
~
Victim Two: Ingram, 24
~
I set him on the coffee table and wracked my brain. Throwing him in the fire was cruel, and far too easy, someone else would have already done that, same with sitting on him, or even just squeezing him, I had to think of some way to make it unique, but the knot in my stomach made it hard to think. I looked around, creative, creative...
"Listen, I know you're in a bad situation here too..." he said "...But I really think we can figure this out, we can get through this if we work together, ok?"
I looked at the things around the room, a standalone globe, a lamp on the small desk, the books... Maybe the books would have a way to- I had a thought, a way to do it quickly and painlessly. I stood and walked away from him, he couldn't get off the table anyway without breaking his legs, and looked at the bookshelf. Sure enough, they were all old, mostly useless medical and law books. One of them in particular was a large dictionary sized book with a picture of a naked man on the front. It was in Italian or something, but that didn't matter, what mattered was the size. I walked back over to the table and put it down, opening it halfway.
"Is- is that a medical book? If you're looking up compressions, it wouldn't be in there, we only discovered it-"
I picked him up and dropped him onto the book, sliding my hands under the covers. 'Don't look at him, don't look at him, don't look at him' I chanted to myself in my head as I worked up the courage. I closed my eyes as he realized what I was about to do.
"Oh, no, gods, stop! Please, you can't-"
I heard him scrambling, and I slammed the book on him, hard. I felt something squish and I shuddered in horror. I slowly opened my eyes, and saw a single arm sticking out of the pages, all he'd been able to get out before I slammed the book. Blood pooled in the pages, and I tossed the book away, not wanting to see any more of it. I had no idea how much time I had left, but I couldn't let myself wait, I needed to finish fast, and get more creative than I'd been so far. I went to the box for the next one.
~
Victim Three: Paul, 36
~
I already had an idea of what I needed to do for the next one, and they'd need to be a little larger. I looked around the box, and saw that there were two men around the six inch mark, and decided to go with the taller one. The class Bs all screamed and scattered when I reached in, it seemed they had figured out what was going on, but I steeled my nerves and roughly pulled the one I'd chosen out of the box. I brought him and the box of office supplies over to the smaller desk, and lay him on the ground. He began screaming with I pulled out the stapler, but I had other plans, I didn't want to hurt him any more than I needed to, and death by stapler would be gruesome.
I stapled his arms and legs to the ground, making sure not to break the skin, and moved on to my second part of the plan. I unplugged the lamp, and used a pair of scissors to cut the wire in half. It was harder than I'd thought, and it wasted far too much time, but eventually I had a cord that led nowhere. I pulled the two sides of the cord apart, and stripped the wires of any rubber with the small knife that had been on the door. I then stapled the exposed wires on top of him, one on each arm, and gritted my teeth. This was either going to be quick, or the most horrible thing I'd ever done. His screams were unintelligible, but I could tell he was suffering the longer I left him there, at least mentally, and I didn't want him to suffer... I quickly plugged in the cord, and there was a pop, and all the lights but the fire went out.
Well, that was unexpected... I unplugged the cord and looked at the body in the light of the fire, and found that he was bleeding from his face, and looked burned all over... The good news was, if all the other girls were here in this building somewhere, at least none of them had done what I'd just done, or else I'd have noticed the lights going out already. Unfortunately, the fact that I'd done it also meant I'd just given away my idea. The lights came back on, and I realized with mild interest that the 'window' behind the larger desk was actually just a light, and it'd came back on when the lights did. That meant I could be anywhere, underground, in an apartment, in a warehouse, anywhere, not just somewhere with big windows. It didn't really matter though, I knew I couldn't get out at this point, and trying to do so would be like wasting the lives of the three class Bs I'd just killed. I planned my next move, and went for the next toy to break.
~
Victim Four: Halie, 31
~
I held the girl in my hands, she was the second smallest, and was hugging my finger trying to be heard with her tiny voice. She was saying something about her guardian paying me a fortune for her, but if I couldn't get a message to them, it really didn't matter. She wasn't here to bribe me, she was here for me to dispose of.
I wracked my brain for some way that the other women here wouldn't think to use, but I was already drying up... I had 8 more of these, damnit, I couldn't be running out of steam now... Oh, hm... That gave me an idea. I opened the lunchbox that had been on the smaller desk and pulled out the water bottle. It was metal, but it had a plastic lid, if I could.... I gouged the top in an 'X' shape with the scissors to wear the plastic down, making a stress point on the top. I rubber banded the girl to a ruler from one of the boxes, and poked the metal end of the water bottle into the fire, where the coals were. I covered my face, and held her directly in front of the 'X', and waited.
After what felt like an eternity, I heard a ticking noise, and I peeked over my arm to see the plastic lid twisting and warping, the back end of the bottle glowing red. I braced for it, and a second later, a loud BANG sounded out, and I was showered with sizzling water and melted plastic. I hissed and quickly brushed it away, glaring at the red spots on my legs and arms. I glanced at the end of the ruler, and started in shock. The girl was fully eviscerated, her body just a red and brown stain on the end of the wooden stick, no trace of her flesh or bones left. ...At least it'd been quick for her, that was the important thing.
I needed to pick up the pace through, this one and the last one had taken way too long. I needed to get ahead at least a bit with the next one, even if it meant being less creative. Time to use a classic; the method of death that had led to the infamous lawsuit that ended with class Bs being labeled as class Bs in the first place...
~
Victim Five: Sanders, 55
~
'I'm sure this is way, way too obvious, everyone will think of it first, so no one else will do it, right?' I tried to convince myself as I held the tiny man and got ready to end him. I really, really wished I was wearing shoes for this, but if this was a sexual thing for the people watching, and I was almost positive it was, then my lack of footwear was intentional. I tipped my hand and let him fall, watching him as he flailed. He hit the ground with a small thud, and he thrashed from the pain of the broken bones. I lifted my foot. This, at least, would be a mercy now. He was in pain, I couldn't draw it out, right? I stomped, and felt him snap and pulp under me, his hot juice spraying out from under my feet. I grimaced. It felt gross, and his little bones hurt worse than I thought they would, like stepping on a lego. At least it didn't take long, that was the whole point of this one, right?
I scraped him off my skin, and smiled slightly as I thought of my next method.
~
Victim Six: Robyn, 22
~
This one, I was looking forward to, just a bit. I was starting to get into the swing of things, and I was feeling good about it all. I should be ok time-wise, so I could most likely relax a little. I was cheating, to be honest, I'd seen this in a movie once, but it'd stuck with me, so I thought it'd be a flashy kill for whoever was watching. I stabbed the knife from earlier back into the wooden door, and carefully set the woman on top of it, with her legs straddling the blade. She was trying to hold herself up by pressing her knees in and pushing against the blade with her hands, slicing them up in the process. It didn't matter though, I wanted her death to be a lot more dramatic than that.
I put my hands under her feet, and propped her up, letting her stand on my fingers, and she braced herself against the door, looking at her ruined finger and hands. I frowned, she shouldn't be that worried about them, didn't she realize what was happening? Once my hands had raised her about six inches over the knife, I moved my hands apart, and twisted them, dropping her directly onto the razor sharp surface.
She slid down about halfway, up to her ribcage before she got stuck, and she smacked the polished metal with her hand, her throat gurgling and her eyes lolling around as she shook, one leg twitching, the other still. I sighed, and picked her back up, she was supposed to get cut all the way through, but she was too light for that, apparently. I dropped her again, and this time, she split all the way, her tiny fragile ribcage cracking open, and the her body sliding down, ending with the left side of her face getting sliced off as she fell to the floor, her two halves spilling their internals into each other as they impacted.
I hadn't liked that it'd taken two tries, I wasn't trying to make her suffer after all, but if that wasn't impressing the watchers, I didn't know what was.
~
Victim Seven: Jason, 39
~
I held the can of compressed air and looked at the man. The can felt half empty, and I'd gotten it out of the office supply bin, so I wasn't sure if it was unique to my room, or if it was standard for all the pink rooms, but I could only hope it was just for me. It seemed like a pretty basic idea, a simple way to get a kill, but if it was an item unique to me, it'd be dumb not to use it...
I'd prefer to use the 'back alley' for this one, but... Somehow that felt like too much, even for a kill method, and getting the nozzle up in there would be a pain, and might tear some internal organs on the little guy too. Instead, I opted for the boring method, and carefully pried his mouth open, and slid the bright red tube down his throat, dripping superglue around his mouth to hold it in place.
Once it dried, I held the can out in front of me, the man skewered on the end like a kebab, and pressed the button. Nothing happened at first, but after the hissing stopped, there was a popping noise, and the man's stomach distended. I smiled, and braced for the explosion, I'd seen enough old cartoons to know where this was going...
To my disappointment, the explosion never came, and the man's stomach just ruptured, his organs and fats oozing out the sides with a hiss. I sighed and pulled him off the nozzle, most of his mouth and throat staying attached as he was pulled away, and I tossed him on the floor. That could have gone so much better... Still, I had one more use for this can of compressed air, one that I hoped the other women didn't know about, even if they did have it in their rooms.
~
Victim Eight: Dorothy, 60
~
Her tiny, wiggling body writhed as I pointed the nozzle at her face. She was taped to the ruler, on the other side of the same end as the other girl I'd blasted with steam, and I smiled at the irony of her situation, the yin and yang of her death and the other one's. She didn't even know, but it was still funny to me regardless.
"Oh, oh gods, please..." She moaned, trying to get the tape off "I just want to go home, please, you can let me go, I'll never tell anyone about this, I swear!"
I knew she wouldn't, either way. If I let her go, she'd just be recycled back into the next game, more than likely. She had been dead the moment I opened the box, even if neither of us had known it. The people who were running this game didn't seem like the kind of people who would treat class Bs well anyway, so me killing her now was just stopping them from doing something inhumane later. I half wondered if 'inhumane' was the right word when talking about class Bs as I flipped the can upside down and pressed the button. Icy cold air shot out, instantly covering her in a layer of frost and shutting her up. She gasped and shook her head, every breath pure chemicals and frost. Her face flaked off as she moved, and blood began to pool up, before that was frozen too.
The can ran out, and I dropped it, flapping my now icy hand to warm it up. Her face was locked in a scream, with most of her skin and hair gone already. I held the ruler over the table, her facing upwards, and pulled it up, snapping it down on the hard surface with a crack. Her head and upper body spit and cracked, not shattering like I'd hoped, but splitting open, held together by the fleshy parts under that hadn't gotten frozen yet. A chunk of her skull slid off and clattered to the table. I giggled. That was creative, but I could do better. I was going about this all wrong, I needed to get complicated.
~
Victims Nine, Ten, and Eleven: Axton, Mona, and Elliot, 29, 41, and 52
~
I looked at my work, and smiled to myself, it was beautiful. One of the remaining two men, the last six inch tall one, was pinned under a stack of books with his head poking out, the other was glued to the flat part of the fireplace shovel, and the third person in my little machine was taped up, and lay in the circular cutout on the handle of the shovel. I only had one shot to get this right, and while I was pretty damn sure it was all lined up, I was very nervous something would go wrong. Eager to see my work in action, I climbed up on the chair, and jumped.
My feet hit the stack of books with a thud, and before he could even utter a sound, the man under them was crushed, the impact exploding out from under the books with a splash, but most importantly, the sudden pressure caused his head to pop off violently, shooting across the room and slamming into the base of the fireplace poker I'd set up. The poker tipped over, slowly, and my breath caught as it looked like it was going the wrong way, but it twisted on the way down, the front spike slamming into the second man's chest, impaling him and springing the shovel like a see-saw. I felt my grin grow wider and wider as the taped up woman flew through the air, unable to do anything but scream as the trajectory deposited her directly into the fire. She burst into flames, and lurched forward as the tape melted away, collapsing and sizzling in the flowing orange as her muscles charred and shriveled.
My heart was pumping, it had worked, I'd like to see any of the other girls do that, death by Rube Goldberg machine. I was absolutely sure I was winning now, I was home free. I felt good, I felt like I'd regained a part of myself I'd been denying, and I wanted to feel it again. There was one more toy left, but I didn't know if I wanted to waste her here...
~
Victim Twelve: Carmen, 19
~
I looked down at the half inch tall 'person' in the corner of the box. I'd been saving her, she was the smallest, barely able to survive even without my intervention. Most class Bs that size were killed almost instantly by mistake, and the ones that lived ended up becoming malnourished over a few months because of how expensive food that had been compressed that much was, and how little nutrients were left in it at that point. In a way, she triggered my motherly response, and in another, I wanted nothing more than to smear her across the inside of the box with my fingers, putting her in her place, and out of her pathetic, subhuman misery.
I pulled her out by her dress and dangled her in front of my face. I had a choice, I supposed. I could kill her quickly and get out of here safely, or... I could try my luck and see how good the cameras really were, and end up with a toy of my own for a while afterwards too. I went with the second option, and I tilted my head back, dropping her into my open mouth. I felt her hit my tongue, her little fragile limbs scrambling and clawing at the slick surface. I closed my mouth and flipped her under my tongue, pinning her down as I placed my fingers on my throat, and made a big show of 'swallowing' something difficult. I gasped for air, letting the air in my mouth under my tongue, and the small lady stopped fighting, realizing what was happening. I had to suppress a smile, if she knew the things I had planned for her, she might not be so quick to give up fighting...
I looked around the room throwing my hands up in a shrug. I'd done my part, where was my exit? Nothing sounded out, no change in lights... The other girls must still be- A letter slid through the door, and I rushed over and picked it up.
Congratulations! You have finished the game! There was only one other contestant left when you finished, you got very lucky! She was on her last toy, too. You were able to break your toys in seven unique ways, and while I can't give away which ones they were, I will say that you got the highest number of anyone! Exit is out the door to the right, your clothes and items are in the basket next to the exterior door. Your phone is dead, but there will be a taxi waiting for you outside the building to take you home. Remember, you just killed 12 'people', so going to the police would be very, very foolish. Thank you for playing!
I sighed in relief, and watched as the bolds on the door slid away. I'd made it, barely... But... I felt almost wrong leaving like this, like I was walking away from something wonderful and secret and special. I knew that if I left, I'd never get to experience this power and freedom again, and that scared me more than the thought of being tortured to death if I lost. My little secret under my tongue would only last so long, and I needed more, and I couldn't even afford one class B, even if I could get away with killing them...
I stepped up to the door and turned around as I left.
"I'll leave, but..." talking squished and sloshed the woman in my mouth, and she scrambled not to get slung around. I tried to think of a way to say it that didn't involve moving my tongue too much, and finished "...If you do this again, I want back in."