“FIVE! FOUR! THREE! TWO! ONE!”
I dove, landed flat on the ground before Gristle, and just as time ran out. My return had taken longer than I thought, resulting in a fair amount of worry. I wasn’t sure I even needed to make it back in time. I had my hider tucked firmly under my arm, having collected him with time to spare. But the last thing I expected that terrible place to be was lenient.
As it turned out, I was right to be cautious. A few other kids came jogging in behind me, their haggard breaths barely a wheeze. Some collapsed beside me, exhaustion getting the better of them, while a few decided to be cute and not spare their poor, trembling legs a moment’s relaxation. They must have been trying to impress the clown as if hiding their fatigue would earn them brownie points. But Gristle wasn’t their overbearing gym teacher.
“And he saves it with a slide!” He exclaimed. “Fantastic, my boy. Simply fantastic. The rest of, well, rules are rules.” His voice guzzled with gleeful anticipation, tongue dragging itself over his teeth. What hope the boys had held died on the spot, their faces filling with fear. I myself counted amongst them. My heart beat against my ribs as if trying to flee my chest while sweat soaked my clothes once again. If I had the energy, I’d have been right alongside the ones who fled. Thankfully, I was too tired to even stand at that point.
“Oooooh! Runners. I was hoping there’d be a few” Gristle reached into his mouth and pulled out a handful of throwing rings. He struck a pitcher’s pose before chucking one of the rings. It landed over a runner’s head as if it were a peg, specifically the runner that was the furthest away. Then, with a snap of Gristle’s fingers, it began to shrink around the kid’s neck. The kid gagged and clawed at the ring, only for it to tighten further. I thought it was trying to strangle him. It certainly seemed that way, with the kid gasping like a dying fish. Then the ring got tighter and tighter and tighter, cutting into the runner’s neck. The skin gouged, purple bruises sprouting all over as his neck approached its limit. Soon, the ring crushed the boy’s neck into fine pulp, and his head came tumbling to the floor.
Screams rose from every kid except for me. It was a gruesome sight, but I’d seen and done worse. So while everyone ran and cried for mommy and daddy, I stared at the body with lifeless eyes.
“Not impressed?” I looked up and saw Gristle staring right back at me. He stretched a ring out to me in offering. “Think you could do better?”
I readjusted the pinata held under my arm. “Yeah. I think I could.”
It was a tempting offer. I wasn’t gonna chuck the ring at a kid. God no. I was gonna see how badly that fucking clown needed a head. When I reached for the ring, however, Gristle pulled it back and let my hand close around nothing.
“That’s the spirit! But I’m afraid these are for official clowning purposes only.” He chucked the ring at another kid and watched in delight as their head too tumbled to the floor. “See? You could poke your eye out. But don’t worry. You’ll have your chance to clown around soon enough. In the meantime,” Gristle unfurled three rings like a ran. “Think I could hit three in one.”
He tossed the rings out, and all three landed on a kid at once. As the blood pooled around their headless corpses, I still didn’t feel a thing.
While most of the kids were cut down running away, one in particular tried approaching Gristle, and I feel obligated to tell what happened to her. “P-Please. I was only a few seconds late.” She held her pinata out in front of her like a shield. “I got one like y-you wanted. S-See?” At that moment, the pinata slipped from her hands and clattered to the floor with almost comedic timing. Behind it was a little girl with Mosquera running down her cheeks. I think she’d been trying to be a goth girl or Wednesday Addams type and all makeup made it real easy to see her tears. She froze as we saw her, arms stretched out and eyes wide.
“Wait!” Gristle demanded. “Don’t move. Keep that pose, whatever you do.”
Confusion passed over the girl’s expression before giving way to pleasant surprise. “Really? C-Can I go if I do?”
Gristle tossed a ring over one of her arms and watched it contract around her shoulder. Her arm came crashing to the floor as a geyser of blood exploded from the stump. She barely had time to scream before a second ring slipped over her remaining arm. Red sprayed in every direction, and the girl tripped on the pool gathering at her feet. She flailed around like mad, clearly trying to grab at something while her arms lay several feet away.
“This is going to be perfect.” Gristle muttered to himself before raising a pair of rings to his face like a bowling ball. He then casually tossed the rings and hooked over one of the girls flailing legs.
“Hallelujah! Both at the same time! I’m amazing!” He exclaimed as the girl’s legs were gouged from their sockets. Not that she felt much of it. She mustered maybe one more minute of screaming, flailing around her bloody stumps before finally going limp. It was so eerie to me. She was dead, but her face had frozen in the fearful expression held in her final moment. It looked like she might resume squealing at any moment. Not that she nor any of the others ever did.
“Well, that was fun, but time to get back to work. If there are any hiders still out there, you can come out now!” His words echoed between the playpen, but no hiders came out.
“It’s alright now. You won. It would be bad form for me to punish you all now.”
Shockingly, no one was encouraged by this.
“Come now. I know some of you are still out there and if you don’t come out, I’ll consider it a forfeit.”
Even I was terrified by what that could mean. One by one, kids started crawling out of the woodworks looking much worse for wear. None of us seekers could make eye contact with them. We simply clutched our pinata tight and prayed no one asked where they came from. There was only kids who caught my attention and not in a good way.
I recognized her right away. One green eye, one blue. She wore a tattered, stained Dorothy dress that she’d clearly been forced into by over eager parents. Her hair was a frizzled mess and her feet were caked in blood and grime without shoes to protect them. Her face was twisted into a permanent scowl even before she saw me.
She might as well have had a hand around my throat. What felt like dozens of knives started tip-toeing across my skin and long, spindly fingers gripped my heart. Nothing felt like it was trying to kill me, rather keep me well aware of how easily they could. She knew what havoc she wrecked on me, I could see it in her eyes, and she was glad for it. Worst of all, I couldn’t blame her.
I looked away when she got close and tried to hide my pinata. She settled in the crowd just a few feet away from me, causing my spine to shiver as she did.
“Five, six, seven hiders, plus the five back there means 13 seekers found someone. So thirteen hiders are gone, plus the one, three, six, here, that means” Gristle counted on his hands. “We’re two seekers and six hiders short. Perfect! Gives me something to do while waiting.”
The clown spun on his heels and addressed the crowd, “Congratulations for winning the first game. You are all one step closer to becoming a member of our wonderful family here at the Contortium. Now, all of you seekers, if you could line your hiders out on the floor here.”
We did as he asked and were glad for it. With the pinata’s on the ground, however, we got a good look at their struggling. They rocked back and forth, muffled screams just barely audible. I couldn’t imagine what they were thinking, but that was a challenge my brain couldn’t ignore.
Can anyone hear me? I’m here! I think. Where am I? What happened? I can’t move. Oh god, I can’t move! Why can’t I move? Someone help me. Please. Mom! Dad! Kyle?
And then they’d scream and scream and scream, but never be heard.
I looked away, finding comfort, oddly enough, in Gristle’s visage. Once the pinata’s had all been gathered, he reached back into his mouth and, this time, pulled out a dozen or so baseball bats. My gut twisted in anticipation.
“Now then, before we can begin, I’m going to need you all to smash up these for me.” His words summoned a palpable fear from the kids. No one moved except to back away, and some kids looked like they were on the verge of vomiting. Even with happy smiles and bright eyes painted on them, no one could forget what the pinatas really were.
But I was eager to forget. Without thinking, I strode forward, grabbed a bat, and brought it down on the pinata’s shaking figure. Instead of candy, however, blood and gore exploded out of the doll. Truth be told, I might have been fine with that. It was just a game, after all. That’s what I’d say to myself and everyone who asked, and it’d all be over. They’d understand. What monster wouldn’t? If only those kids hadn’t screamed.
You scream for monsters. You scream for evil things waiting in your closet. You scream for things that people need to be afraid. And in that moment, everyone was screaming at me. It was hard not to understand them, not with the evidence splattered all over my face. In that moment, what I did became wrong.
Yet, the kids didn’t scream in total unison. Someone else stepped from the ground and grabbed a bat off the ground. She didn’t look me in the eye as she started swinging away, further staining her Dorothy costume. I thought I was hallucinating. Literally, at any second, I expected the girl to disappear in a puff of smoke. Instead, she clobbered at the pinatas one after the other until the shock of it all faded. It seemed so casual to her, and that impression spread to everyone else. The screaming slowly died down until only the sound of cracking plaster echoed through the playpen.
I was stunned at first, but after a while, I joined her. I raised my bat again and brought it down on a pinata next to her. “I’m Kyle,” I remember saying, but the girl didn’t say a word. She wouldn’t even look me in the eye. Being ignored may have put a pit in my gut, but she’d already done so much that I couldn’t help but smile.
“Fantastic,” Gristle exclaimed when we had finished before looking at the other kids. “Would’ve preferred you all to have chipped in. Y’all must be fun in group projects. But whatever gets the job done.”
He flipped open his mouth and leaned over. We all braced for whatever mentally scaring thing the clown was sure to do, but instead, he started vomiting up spools of thread. Not human hearts or bouncy balls made of kidneys; thread. And a decent amount of needles along with them. “For your next game, children, you’re going to be making your very own clown costumes using the raw materials we’ve generously provided.”
A sickened murmur that threatened to break into full-blown panic passed through the crowd. Even I stared down at the organs with a newfound disgust. Vomit burned the back of my throat at the idea of putting a needled through them. The girl, on the other hand, didn’t react in any way.
“You’ll all have thirty minutes to complete your designs, upon which you will be judged based on the quality of your craftsmanship and creativity of your designs. In the meantime, I’ll be retrieving your little friends who decided not to join us. So no rough housing while I’m gone. That being said, I wonder if there are enough materials for all of you. Best of luck!”
He turned from us and started wandering down the road between the play structures, calling in a sickly sweet voice, “Ooooh children! Would any of you like some candy?”
Not one of us moved until Gristle stepped out of sight, and the sound of his voice faded into nothing. When we were finally left alone, however, it was complete bedlam. A few kids started speedwalking toward the organs, which prompted everyone else to surge forth in a great cascade of stomping feet and outstretched hands. The seekers pulled out their pikes and swiped at nearby kids while the hiders dove for the bats. A few kids got pricked and shriveled up into more pinatas. I think one got trampled and hit over the head. Everyone else was on the floor wrestling with someone or aimlessly swinging bats at the raging crowd.
I, on the other hand, ran. Not far, but just enough to escape the havoc. The problem was the organs were too close to said havoc. Kids had already begun snatching up organs only to be beaten black, blue, and red for it. It became clear to me that if this kept going, none of us would win. On the other hand, the madness was thinning out the competition. Maybe I could try stopping it in a few minutes, I thought.
The girl had a different idea. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her rush to a nearby jungle gym and start scaling the side, bat in hand. When she was high enough, she started banging the bat against a nearby bone. The sound rang throughout the playpen and cleaved through the clatter. Kids slowly looked to the source of the commotion, forgetting each other for a split second. A second she put to good use.
“Enough of this,” She exclaimed before the kids could lose interest in her. Her voice was sharp and older than its owner, instilling in us the image of a scornful adult who’d caught us making mischief. “Are you all really going to let him play you like that? While you’re out here killing each other, that clown is out there laughing at us behind our backs. He knows that if we keep fighting each other, none of us will make it back home. Do you honestly think he’s gonna let any of us go? No! He’ll keep making us play his fucked up games until there’s no one left.”
Her words settled in us like hot coals. Kids hung their heads and shuffled in place, trying to shake off the guilt creeping up their spines. Some dropped their bats and pikes as if trying to disguise their involvement. A palpable shame was shared by all, apart from me, that is.
I was just glad no one was looking at me anymore. Everyone was a monster in that moment which meant I was just a face in the crowd. I almost felt like a kid again. I’d almost forgotten that was possible anymore, and to be reminded by that girl of all people was wild.
“Look around you.” The girl continued. “He’s given us baseball bats and those weird spear things. If we work together, we can take that guy down and force him to let us out of here! All we have to do is rush him when he comes back.”
A nervous mutter passed through the crowd. “Are you retarded? He’ll just kill us too.” One kid said with murmurs of agreement following him.
“Not if we catch him by surprise. When he comes back, we all pretend to be making dresses or whatever, and when he gets close enough, we jump him. We can use the baseball bats, break his knees, and beat him to a pulp. And if he’s still dangerous, then we’ll use the pikes.”
“How are gonna get out then?” Another kid asked.
“Then we wait. He keeps about the big show and how important it is. If we’re missing, someone will come looking for us. Then we attack them, and if they won’t let us out, we’ll attack the next and the next and the next until someone frees us!”
She thrust her bat up over her head, eliciting an uproarious cheer from the kids. It was easy enough to get that reaction. We were all scared kids desperate to be told everything would be alright. Those words could’ve come from Hitler himself, and we wouldn’t have cared. If only the plan itself gave me such confidence.
She must be crazy, I thought as I crept towards the piles of loose organs. Who knows what kind of crazy stuff Gristle had up his sleeve. Even thinking he was human was a leap in logic. I mean, was the smile not a big enough tip-off? Whatever plan she had, I wanted no part in it. I intended to stay alive.
However, there was one benefit to the idea: While everyone else was waiting for Gristle, I’d have full access to all the materials I needed to make my costume. I snatched up as much thread as my pockets could carry before scooping up the organs. Nobody noticed me, being too caught up in the girl’s soaring words. When I couldn’t hold any more, I carried them off without a single protest.
With how big the playpen was, it was easy enough to find a nice secluded spot. The organs landed on the ground with a wet plop, and I set to work. I might not have been a surgeon, but I knew a thing or two about sewing. Being in an upper lower class household, we had to make our clothes last, so skill with a needle was essential. What made things easier were the organs. They were firm and tore like paper, likely due to whatever concoction was in those pikes—because of this, making progress was disturbingly easy. I might have even finished my costume if I wasn’t interrupted.
I didn’t even hear her walk in. A shadow passed over me, and I jumped. Standing behind me was that very same girl in the Dorothy outfit, eyes as sharp as ever. I felt the cold spotlight pass over me again, especially with my work splayed out before me. She glanced over every slab of meat and blood and then the reddened string in my hands. I dropped the needle and shot my hands as if someone had pointed a gun at me.
“This isn’t what it looks like.” It was all I could think to say.
“I bet it does.” She stepped around me and looked over my handiwork.
“It was supposed to be a net! To help catch the clown.”
“A net shaped like a person?”
“What better way to catch a person than with a person-shaped net?”
“And pockets?”
“To hold him with?”
“And sleeves?”
“It could have been a fancy net?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Was it worth the effort?”
“On any other day, no.” I tried giggling, but she clearly wasn’t buying a word. “Please don’t tell anyone. I-I’ll put all the…stuff back and-and I’ll help fight Gristle. I promise.”
The girl looked over my uncompleted suit. “You did all this?”
“And I-I’m sorry! Really!”
“Don’t be.”
“But I…wait, what?”
She knelt beside the pile of organs. “This is a much better idea. And now, you’re going to make one more of these suits. Understood?”
My mind struggled to comprehend the one-eighty I was witnessing. “I thought… weren’t you planning to beat up Gristle?”
“I’m planning to go home, and if I don’t, then neither do you. Start sewing.”
She was acting so casual about all this, which made it harder to wrap my head around. Was this a trick? It had to be. She’d just rallied all the kids against Gristle. Unless…
“You didn’t think we could beat Gristle,” I spoke as it came to me. “You were just gonna let them die and weed out the competition!”
Her eyes darted down for a split second. “If the bats or pikes were really a danger to him, he wouldn’t have given them to us.”
“You lied to those kids!”
“I’d say, hypocrite if I needed to.”
My jaw dangled limply as if someone had socked me in the gut. “That…Fuck you! You’re lucky you were a hider. I had too…” It was hard to say out loud. “I had to ki…I had to do that…he could’ve done the same to me! I saw hiders do that. No one has to die here. You could have helped everyone make a costume. Don’t act like you’re better than me.”
“I’m not. I’m a horrible monster, and so are you. But we’re monsters who are going home.”
“I’m not a monster!” Even I didn’t believe it.
“Then go out there and tell those kids to give up. You know that clown will kill them. So do it.”
Her words struck me like hit nails. I wanted to tell her I would, but the words refused to come out. If the other kids didn’t prepare for Gristle, they’d be making their own costumes. Competition meant I might not make it out of here. I tightened my grip around the needle and thread.
“Right. So stop blaming me and get sewing.” She sat down on the other side of the organs while making sure her bat was always in arms reach.
I thought about jumping her. My pike still rested in my pocket, sharp end pointed away from my leg, of course. If I was fast enough, I could stab her before she had time to react. The idea made me giddy as if it were sugar coated and served with sprinkles, but it was for that exact reason I didn’t follow through.
I’d enjoyed the thought of killing her. Even if it was just a means to get back home, what kind of monster grinned at something so horrible? The realization punched a hole through my stomach like Alex was dying all over again.
I got back to work without another word and found little comfort in it. On top of stitching two of those damn things together, it was hard to do so with that girl watching me. I felt like a toddler caught with his hand in the cookie jar. On top of that, I couldn’t stop thinking about what would happen if someone else stumbled on me. At best, I’d have to make three suits, and two was already a struggle. I didn’t even know her size let alone what to make. What did Gristle even want in a costume?
Who was I kidding? It didn’t need to be good. There wasn’t gonna be a competition.
It didn’t need to be good. With every kid waiting to jump Gristle, who did we have to compete against? I cut open the organs and flattened them out before sewing the ends together. There was barely enough for both of us, so I had to skip the sleeves and pant legs. In the end, I managed to piece together a pair of patchwork suits. They looked like bad Frankenstein costumes with the stitches racing all across mangled flesh. The texture was also weird, feeling dry and yet somehow also sticky. I felt guilty about the way they’d turned out. Considering what was done to get the materials, I should have at least made something more substantial out of them. Or would using their bodies as decoration have been worse?
“What do you think?” I asked the girl. She barely looked at the costumes before snatching up one.
“It’s fine.” She started to walk away, only to stop a few feet behind me and say just the last thing I expected to hear from her “Thank you. Really.”
It was strange of her to say. She hadn’t exactly given me a choice. Despite that, she’d sounded so genuine. Maybe she was also trying to pretend. I wasn’t sure, but I latched onto the idea like a leech to a vein—anything to not be alone.
“You don’t really think we’re bad people, right?” I asked.
Looking back, I regret asking. How could she have known what to say? She was just a kid, and I was desperate for validation. It might have been for the better that she never got the chance to answer.
A voice cut through the heavy air, “FIFTEEN MINUTES, CHILDREN!! I HOPE YOU’VE BEEN PRODUCTIVE!”
We looked at each other, sharing in our fear. I’d forgotten all about Gristle, and now, judging from the volume of his voice, he was heading back to the kids. A million thoughts raced through my mind, the first of which was warning the kids, but I shrunk back in time. The girl rushed away with her suit in hand, and I quickly changed into mine. My only source of motivation for putting on a human being suit was what Gristle might do to me. Unlike the girl, however, I didn’t rush out to meet him.
It began with screaming and lots of it. Battle cries bounded between the playpens, followed closely by the sound of running feet. Then the sound of a bat striking something rang out, and it wasn’t alone. One after the other, I heard bats collide with bones until something eventually snapped. Then came the mushing when there was nothing solid left to strike, which soon led to an eerie silence.
I shouldn’t have let myself get my hopes up. Soon after the quiet, a strange, almost alien noise rose in the distance. The image of meat squelching in a grinder came to mind, but meat that strained against the gears in a futile attempt at escape. An audible pressure built as the sound grew as if a guillotine rose over the entire room. I couldn’t imagine what sort of horror could make such a sound, and am glad I never figured out.
The screams returned before long and were, this time, bloated with terror, and a violent choir accompanied them. Tearing meat made the strings and breaking bones, the percussion. You may think I’m being dramatic, but there was a clear rhythm to it all. Gristle was making music out of the sounds of their suffering. In fact, looking back, I think it was the Merry Go Round song. Sadistic fucking clown.
Not that I was much better. I was scared, don’t get me wrong, but not for the kids I heard being torn to pieces. My terror stemmed solely from the idea of sharing their fate, and I was well aware of the difference. I tried making myself feel something, only for boredom to creep in instead. Can you imagine? Dozens of kids dying and wanting them to hurry it up?
I’m horrible, I remember thinking to myself. I’m horrible, I’m horrible, I’m horrible, but no matter how many times I thought it, it did nothing to drown out the scream nor make me care for their owners.
I’m horrible
I’m horrible.
I’m horrible.