by T J Payne
The list went on, but Amy tried not to think about it too hard. She knew it was a bit of a fantasy. In all likelihood, they’d have to select their victims based on opportunity.
Did she have it in her to kill some random person if it meant saving herself?
Maybe.
But did her mom?
It had occurred to Amy that their best opportunity would have been to hang around the ballroom and finish off someone who was already dying. Surely, that would fulfill the requirements. Perhaps it wasn’t too late. There might be four people in the ballroom who were a few heart pumps of blood away from death.
Four tickets to freedom.
It would be easy. Amy’s conscience could be clear.
She hung onto that idea, waiting for the proper moment to convince her family that their only option was to slink back into the ballroom and quietly finish someone off. Someone who might even deserve to die anyway.
But for now, her dad and Mariko had settled on trying to get the bracelets off without having to take a life (or lose an arm).
“The casing is held together by screws, but they’re all on the underside,” Roger said. “Even if we had access to them, it’s not like I have a screwdriver.”
“Could we, I dunno, do something to absorb the blast,” Amy said. “I mean, how much of an explosion can be in that little thing?”
For a moment, no one answered her. Probably because the question itself brought to mind the only evidence they had of the device’s explosive capabilities — the memories of people’s arms disintegrating in a flash of light.
“We need them off,” Mariko finally said. She bit her lip and took a deep breath. “Cover your faces.”
With that, she grabbed her bracelet and tried pulling it over her wrist. It quickly became clear that it wasn’t going to come off easily.
“Careful, Mariko,” Candice said.
Roger gulped and backed away.
“We need some sort of lubricant,” Amy said, looking around the gym. “If only we could get into the room and get some conditioner or something.”
Mariko made a throat cleansing sound and spat a wad of saliva onto her wrist. “My mouth’s kinda dry. Little help?” she said to Amy.
Amy couldn’t help but grin. Mariko was the clean one in the relationship. The germaphobe. The one who religiously wiped down the house twice a week. Whenever they fooled around, Mariko always insisted on taking a shower afterwards, which at first Amy found a bit insulting.
But that was just Mariko.
Although, to be fair, when coming home after teaching three dance classes, Amy would often be covered in a decent layer of sweat and funk. And she had a habit of depositing her socks, bra and underwear wherever she happened to take them off, whether it was on the kitchen table, the couch, or Mariko’s pillow — which, of course, was Amy’s way of teasing her once she discovered how much it bothered Mariko.
And now, at Mariko’s urging, Amy’s tongue scraped around her mouth in search of new saliva to fling at her old roomie’s arm.
“Ok,” Mariko said, spreading the saliva around her wrist with her free hand. “Amy, you pull.”
Mariko sat down on the floor. She braced her legs against one of the racks of weights and extended her bracelet wrist toward Amy. “Hard as you can.”
Amy had no desire to grab hold of that thing. But Mariko had offered up her own device for the group to experiment on and Amy didn’t want her parents to think that Mariko was willing to sacrifice more for the family than Amy. And so, she took a deep breath and grabbed the bracelet.
She took a wide stance, bracing her own feet on the floor. “Okay. One…. Two… three!”
She pulled on the bracelet as hard as she could.
“Careful, girls,” Candice said, moving behind another rack of weights just in case.
Amy kept pulling.
The bracelet crushed up against the base of Mariko’s thumb. Mariko scrunched up her face in pain but didn’t tell her to stop. And so, Amy arched her back, dug her feet in and pulled harder. She could feel Mariko’s thumb tendons sliding out of the way.
But they weren’t moving enough.
Amy shook her head. She let go of Mariko’s bracelet.
They all looked at each other for a moment as Mariko rubbed her sore thumb and wrist.
“We might have to cut someone’s hand off,” Amy said. She reached into the pocket on her dress and pulled out the steak knife.
They stood there quietly for a moment, looking at her.
“Let’s try it,” Roger finally said. “Do it on me.” He knelt down at one of the benches.
Amy gripped the knife.
“Amy, this is silly,” Candice said. “Roger, get up off the ground.”
“Do it, Amy,” he said.
“What’s your plan, Roger?”
“I put on a tourniquet,” Roger said, taking off his necktie and wrapping it around his arm. “Amy cuts off my hand, and I slide off the bracelet.”
“Then what?”
“Then I run out the front door.”
“And?”
“Get help.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, Roger. It took us hours to get here. In a limo. You’ll be bleeding out, in shock, stumbling down a dark mountain, looking for a town you don’t know, with residents who speak a language you don’t speak. The night’ll be over by the time you get back.”
“Then I’ll take y’all with me.”
“Oh yeah, sure. Four amputees bleeding their way down the mountain together. That’ll make it much easier.”
Roger suddenly stood, “Well, what do you want me to do then?! Watch you all die?!”
He glared at Candice, but she glared right back at him.
Amy had never seen this from her parents before. Their gazes locked in on each other, like two grown elk locking their antlers in combat, trying to force the other one down.
“I want you to not be a damned fool,” Candice finally said through her clenched teeth. “We need to stay together. We’re stronger this way.”
Seemingly in defiance, Roger wrapped his necktie around his forearm, just above the bracelet. He put one end of the tie in his mouth and the other in his free hand, ready to pull it tight.
He knelt back down and laid his arm across the bench, exposing his wrist.
“Do it, Amy,” he said.
Amy gripped the knife and knelt across from her dad.
“Ames…” Mariko started, but she had no more words besides that.
“That little steak knife’ll never cut through your arm,” Candice said. “You’ll have to break the bone and then you’ll still have to saw through all your skin and muscles and nerves. It’ll hurt like the devil.”
Amy looked to her father. He nibbled on his lip as he stared down at his wrist. She could see the sweat beading on his forehead. His face had become pale as his hurried breathing took in quick gulps of air.
She felt bile rise up to her mouth (it tasted of prime rib and pinot noir). She tried to push all thoughts from her mind, but she couldn’t help but imagine the slow back-and-forth sawing motion she’d require to cut through her father’s wrist. The image filled her head, playing on a continuous loop. She didn’t think she could do it without throwing up.
Although she knew every piece of equipment and weaponry at their disposal — mostly weights and a steak knife — her eyes darted around the gym for anything else she could use. An axe. Or a machete. Something with a good blade with which she could chop through her dad’s arm in one blow.
A quick strike, she felt she could handle. A surgical amputation with dinnerware, she couldn’t.
“Maybe you could just crush his hand with one of these weights,” Mariko offered, seemingly in response to Amy’s thoughts. It didn’t sound like a firm suggestion as much as an idea spilling out of her open mouth.
Everyone looked at her.
She seemed to feel the need to clarify, although everyone was on
the same page. “If you just crush all the bones in his hand, then you can slide the bracelet right off,” Mariko said. “Probably won’t even need the tourniquet then.” Mariko had a way of continuing to talk and offer advice when she was nervous.
“That, um, that’s a good idea,” Roger said.
Even Candice had gone quiet at this point.
“Use that twenty-five pounder,” Roger said to Amy, pointing to the rack of dumbbells.
Amy robotically rose and went to the rack. She lifted it, immediately having to strain because she misjudged how heavy twenty-five pounds actually was.
Roger, meanwhile, took his hand off the bench and set it on the hard floor. He bowed his head, avoiding eye contact with Amy.
She carried the weight over, her arm suddenly feeling weak, almost nonexistent. It was as if the weight simply dangled from her shoulder by a piece of rope.
As she crouched down over her father’s hand, she closed her eyes. She tried to pretend she was a little girl whose father was ordering her to clean up her room or turn off the TV. The last thing she wanted to do was disappoint him in an emergency.
“Do it, Amy,” he said, his arm outstretched. Even with his head bowed down, Amy could see that his eyelids were clenched shut. The muscles on his face had already pulled themselves tight into a grimace, positioning themselves in preparation for the pain that was sure to come.
Amy raised the weight and lined it up over his hand.
“On three,” she said. It came out a whisper, although she didn’t intend it that way. She took a deep breath to steel herself.
“One…” she said, raising the weight.
“Two…” She was going to do it. She was going to crush all the bones in her father’s hand.
“Three!”
She slammed it down. Her eyes involuntarily shut closed as she did. The weight seemed to move at a fraction of normal speed. She could practically feel every inch of air rushing past her hand as it sped downward.
Somewhere in that instant, the sound of her father shouting, “No, no, no! Wait!” reached her ears. But she couldn’t stop.
The weight whacked into the hard floor, sending shockwaves rippling up through Amy’s hand, arm, shoulder, and finally teeth. The sharp sound of metal on floor ricocheted around the gym.
Her eyes snapped open.
Her dad’s hand wasn’t beneath the weight. He had pulled it away at the last moment. He now sat on his knees, holding his hand close to his chest as he quivered.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I chickened out. Let’s… let’s try again. On three.”
He laid his hand back down on the floor.
Amy shook her head. “It’s okay. Mom’s right. We need to stay together. We’ll come up with something else. We have time.”
***
The staff lounge was always cramped and dim. Some staffers speculated that it was probably the communal section of an old bomb shelter built beneath The Venue.
Pool tables and couches filled the center of the space. Along one wall were bunk beds with privacy curtains for napping — the various jobs required long shifts and late nights. The other end of the lounge had a bar and several tables where the kitchen would bring in food for mealtimes.
An array of screens were mounted on the far wall, broadcasting the hidden camera feeds from within The Venue.
This was the dead time for most of the staff. They were technically on the clock, but there really wasn’t much for them to do while the guests entertained themselves.
Some played pool or ping-pong in the corner. Others snacked on the leftover prime rib from dinner. But most sat on the couches, their feet propped up and their vests and ties loosened, as they watched the big display screens. The Control Room cycled through feeds of interesting developments for them.
Right now, everyone watched the girl in the gymnasium (Guest Number Forty-Five) get down on the floor and hug her father (Guest Number Forty-Eight).
No amputation. No smashed bones. No fiddling with the bracelet enough to trigger a detonation.
A chorus of boos rose from the staff. Some threw popcorn at the screens. Others exchanged money from a wager regarding whether or not the guest would go through with the amputation.
The screens switched over to a new show.
A large man sat huddled by himself in the lobby, hiding behind a plant. Somehow, he had gotten his hands on a small screwdriver. His bracelet was just loose enough for him to angle the screwdriver beneath the bracelet’s main casing. A quarter turn at a time, he began removing the screws.
A murmur rose among the staff as they watched the man.
Money changed hands.
***
The Event Planner crossed her arms.
She stood behind her operators in the Control Room, watching the man unscrew his bracelet. With no one at this party being particularly aggressive on the whole “kill someone by the end of the night” rule, he had a good chance of escaping the premises unscathed.
The man never should have been allowed so much slack on his bracelet. The shift manager needed to be more vigilant when he scanned the guests at the beginning of the reception. It would only take a quick clutch of a person’s wrist to “accidentally” tighten their bracelet, just as she had shown the manager multiple times.
“Should we issue a warning to Guest Eighteen?” one of the operators asked.
“Do we know where Guest Eighteen obtained the tool from?”
The second operator scanned through recorded footage of the man. He rewound various videos of the man at the reception, at the service, and then finally all the way back to the man getting dressed in his hotel room.
“Eye glass repair kit,” the operator announced. “He tightened some screws on his glasses, put the screwdriver in his coat pocket and forgot all about it.”
The Event Planner nodded. It was a good enough explanation. She didn’t believe any of her staff would have handed him the tool. Thank god no one had left a tool kit unsupervised either.
“Was it clearly stated in the rules that the control devices must not be removed?” she asked. She probably should have known the answer, but she was tired. All that hassle with the clients in the bridal suite had disrupted her schedule.
The secondary operator pulled up a video of the groom announcing the rules to their guests. A transcript also appeared on the screen. “Just so you know, anyone who doesn’t have blood on their hands by midnight will face a penalty,” the operator read from the transcript. “Also, anyone who tries to leave The Venue or tries to remove their tracker bracelet will face the same penalty.”
“Good,” the Event Planner said. She was glad the groom actually said it out loud. This couple had been so emotional and distracted that it wouldn’t have surprised her if they neglected a simple task like explaining the rules to their guests. “Issue a warning.”
The primary operator punched a few commands on his terminal. “Issuing warning to Guest Eighteen.”
On the screen, the man’s bracelet lit up. It flashed red lights, looking very much like one of those “your table is ready” alert devices.
The man dropped his screwdriver and leapt to his feet. He didn’t seem to know what to do, as he appeared to both want to run away from his own arm while also wanting to tuck it toward him to protect it.
“Guest Eighteen, twenty seconds to detonation. Nineteen… eighteen… seventeen…”
Ultimately, all the man could think to do was freeze in place. He stared at the flashing bracelet on his wrist. His eyes stayed wide, and his face pulled tight, as though all his muscles were trying to pull themselves away from the blast.
“No, no, no!” he shouted to no one in particular.
“That should be a sufficient warning,” the Event Planner told her operators. “Disarm.”
“So… detonate?” the primary operator responded.
The Event Planner looked at him, confusion on her face.
The primary operator spun in his chair an
d flashed her a wide grin. “Get it? ‘Disarm.’ Dis-arm. Like, ‘disarm’ him?” He pantomimed pulling off his arm as he spoke.
The secondary operator shook his head and chuckled.
A wide grin broke across the Event Planner’s face. She gave both her operators good whacks on the shoulder. “Disarm! Oh my. Why have we never made that joke before?”
The screen lit up with a flash, washing out the entire image. It took a moment for the cameras to readjust. When the image returned, the man lay on his side, half his body singed. His arm gone. Blood pooled out of the stump where his arm had been, traveling along the grout in the tile floor, speeding away as though it were its own lifeforce, still trying to get out the door.
The Event Planner knew that she should have cared that the warning had escalated to a detonation, but it was late, and a little morale boosting humor among the staff never hurt anyone. Except the occasional guest.
“Disarm,” the Event Planner said again, shaking her head. “You guys.”
She realized she probably found it so amusing because a deep exhaustion had overtaken her. Most of the staff only saw her as stiff and proper, but back home, with a couple drinks on a late night, she was prone to get the giggles.
Tonight appeared to be one of those nights.
She gave another little laugh that turned into a snort.
The operators both smiled.
“I need coffee,” she said, rubbing her eyes.
But before she could leave for a quick trip to the kitchen, something on one of the screens caught her eye.
“Well, well, well. Sleeping Beauty is awake,” she said pointing to a camera feed from the women’s restroom.
Sure enough, Guest Thirty-Two — the Event Planner believed her name was Tiffany — slowly raised her head off the toilet seat. She spat the few remaining chunks of vomit out of her mouth into the bowl. Then she grabbed a few squares of toilet paper, held it to her nose, and blew out a wad of bile-filled snot.
