The Venue

by T J Payne

  Then, sitting on his knees, he crouched forward and jammed his fingers down his throat. Deep down. Vomiting was his only hope.

  The head bellhop rushed up behind Amy and wrapped his arm around her neck. He shouted in her ear as he choked her. She didn’t hear what he said. Maybe he was screaming down the hall for help. Amy didn’t care. She had gone into a trance. Somewhere in her mind, she probably realized that she was running out of oxygen.

  She cleared a handful of frosting from her dress, reached up behind her head, and smeared it over the head bellhop’s entire face.

  He instantly released her.

  As her oxygen surged back, she glanced over at him. He bent down at the waist, holding his breath as he wiped at his face.

  By this time, the other bellhop was no longer trying to make himself vomit. He didn’t have the strength. He crouched on his hands and knees, quivering, as foamy bile began to pour from his open mouth. His eyes no longer had the awareness to even look up at Amy.

  Amy reached down and picked up his dropped gun.

  The head bellhop seemed to realize the situation.

  “But… but… you’re free,” he quietly gasped out, making an obvious attempt not to ingest any of the frosting that covered his mouth.

  “I just wanna party,” Amy said.

  She didn’t want to make noise. She didn’t want a gunshot to echo down the hall. And so, she swung at the man’s head with the gun. The man managed to get his hands up to block the blow, but the gun smacked into his fingers, probably breaking one or two in the process. Amy swung again, and again. Each blow shattered more of the man’s hands. Each strike made him crumple down further. First to his knees. Then to the floor.

  It was as if she were chopping down a tree with a hatchet. Blow after blow after blow. Pummeling the man’s defenses. Quick, decisive strikes.

  He tried calling for help, but his unwillingness to inhale the frosting made his voice wispy and weak.

  Within a few seconds, the gun made contact with his temple and Amy felt a satisfying crack. The man’s limbs gave out and his body slouched down onto the floor. She swung one more time for good measure and was rewarded with a stream of blood that shot out from the man’s head and splattered onto the polished concrete.

  He didn’t react to the hit. He lay motionless on the floor, a stream of white foam pouring from his mouth as the cyanide took hold of his organs.

  Amy then knelt down. She grabbed the man’s left wrist, the one with the bracelet, and stretched it away from his body. With all her strength, she pounded the gun down onto the man’s left hand like a hammer, smashing his bones in the process. She battered down on his hand a few times, hearing the satisfying crack of his joints breaking apart.

  She squished the remains of his hand up tight and easily slid his staff bracelet off his wrist.

  Then she stood and walked past the assistant, now convulsing on the floor, looking at him only long enough to determine that he was no threat to her. She left him there. He would be dead soon enough.

  Amy marched back down the hall.

  Back to the Control Room.

  She swiped the staff bracelet at the keypad and was greeted by a green light.

  Amy yanked the door open and stepped inside the small space.

  The Event Planner stood behind her control operators. None of them seemed startled or concerned that their door had opened. The Event Planner lazily turned her head to see who had joined them.

  Amy swung out and smashed the gun into her face.

  The Event Planner’s nose exploded in blood. She let out a little yell before she doubled over. She swayed for a moment, the blood draining from her shattered nose, and then she crumpled down and collapsed to the floor.

  The operators turned in their seats to look. Their eyes barely had time to generate expressions of shock or confusion before Amy pressed the barrel of the gun up against one operator’s temple and—

  Bang!

  Shot him through the head. She pivoted and, at point-blank range — Bang! — shot the other. Right in the eye.

  Both men slumped down in their seats.

  Amy pulled the door closed behind her. She dumped one of the operators out of his chair.

  Then Amy took a seat at the controls.

  CHAPTER 27

  Mariko didn’t move.

  All she wanted was for the status quo to continue.

  Linebacker Brad still held her by the throat, but his grip had noticeably loosened. She breathed easily and felt that she could rip his hand away if she wanted to.

  He had lowered the axe a while ago but not in a killing blow. After holding it above Mariko’s head for so long, he had finally brought it down to rest by his side. His eyes had clamped shut and for the past several minutes, he had stood over Mariko, shaking his head and trying not to cry.

  He looked like a little boy whose father had ordered him to put down the family dog. Some part of him seemed to know that he should kill Mariko. That he needed to. That it made the most sense. But he couldn’t bring himself to finish the task.

  And now, he and Mariko were locked in no-man’s land. He dared not release his ticket to freedom. And he dared not cash it in.

  The current situation suited Mariko just fine. And so, she lay there, doing nothing that might result in him changing his mind.

  But then, a woman’s voice spoke from somewhere behind Mariko’s captor.

  “Brad… can I have her?” the voice said.

  The woman stepped up beside Brad. Mariko recognized her. Her slim figure and long, dark hair. She had been at one of the tables at the front of the reception. The table for immediate family. It was Trina, Lilith’s sister — the one who had avoided eye contact as her murderous sister sarcastically toasted her perfection and beauty.

  As Brad held Mariko down, Trina stood over her. She had a knife in her hand. But unlike Brad, Trina’s hand had no tremor.

  “Please…” Mariko managed to croak out. It was the only thing she could think to say.

  Trina looked down at her. Despite the stillness of the knife in her hand, her eyes and face seemed remorseful. She then looked away. “I have a baby back home,” Trina said. “She needs me. I have to get back to her. Please understand.”

  Mariko tried to speak, tried to plead, but Trina closed her eyes and shook her head, as if to tell Mariko that words were useless now.

  “I’m doing this to get back to my baby. I’m doing this for my baby,” Trina said, more to herself than to anyone in the room.

  The blade’s cold metal pressed against Mariko’s neck. She felt it dig in, opening a small slit in her skin. She tried to keep her throat relaxed as she feared that tensing would push more of her flesh into the knife’s edge. Without taking a breath, as that too felt dangerous, Mariko tried to calm her heart.

  She hoped it would end quick.

  And painless.

  Click.

  Mariko heard it — it sounded almost like a small, electronic chirp — but she had no idea what that tiny sound meant. It was followed by silence.

  Brad released his grip on her. The knife moved away from her throat. Suddenly, Mariko was free.

  She opened her eyes and twisted her head to look at her captors. Both Brad and Trina stared down at their bracelets. The red lights no longer glowed. Trina tentatively reached over and undid the clasp. It opened easily. She moved slowly, carefully pulling the strap through the clasp one painstaking millimeter at a time.

  The bracelet didn’t vibrate. It didn’t flash red lights.

  It slid off her wrist.

  Trina let it fall to the floor with a clunk.

  Upon seeing this, Brad dropped his axe and fumbled to undo his own bracelet. The moment he got it to release from his wrist, he flung it across the room, shuddering slightly as he did, seemingly in anticipation of an explosion.

  But no explosion came.

  The three of them stayed in those positions, unsure how to proceed. They quietly waited for whatever was coming nex
t.

  ***

  It had taken a little guesswork, but Amy was thankful that the switch she had chosen to flip ended up deactivating the bracelets instead of detonating them.

  Amy now watched the monitors with satisfaction.

  Throughout The Venue, guests timidly examined their bracelets. The ones who removed theirs did so slowly, as though they were diffusing a bomb, which, in a sense, they were.

  After they were free, they stood in their places, too afraid to move.

  The monitors showed dozens of these statuesque people, dumbly remaining in their hideouts, seemingly convinced that this was, perhaps, just another part of the game.

  Even at the front desk, Mariko had now lifted herself into a sitting position but nothing more. A silent standoff had commenced between her and the two people who, just moments earlier, had been ready to slit her throat.

  “Don’t just stand there,” Amy said out loud. “Do something, dumbasses.”

  Something rustled on the floor beside her. Glancing down, she saw the Event Planner, her bashed nose still bleeding, reaching for the headset and walkie-talkie that had been knocked from her face. It lay just out of her reach. She had to pull herself toward it and the buttons on her blazer dragged across the concrete, making a faint scraping sound.

  Amy picked the gun up off the console and stood.

  The Event Planner rolled onto her side and put her hand up. “No… No,” she said. “We budget for these situations. Name your price. Anything you want, I can—”

  Amy slammed the gun into the side of the woman’s face, sending her head bouncing off the concrete floor.

  The woman lay still.

  For a moment, Amy watched her, trying to decide if she was merely acting unconscious, but she remained motionless. It felt wise to leave such a senior member of the staff alive, just in case, and so Amy kicked the headset across the room and sat back down at the console.

  The distraction allowed her to look at the console with fresh eyes because, for the first time, Amy noticed a particular set of switches among the sea of controls.

  The label simply read, “Door Locks.”

  Amy smiled.

  ***

  The hotel manager was the highest ranked employee in the staff lounge.

  It was his job to ensure that the various departments — Housekeeping, Kitchen, Front Desk, etc. — were at their designated locations and performing their duties on time.

  He usually spent the final hour of an event awakening any staff who were napping, calling an end to the billiard games, and generally getting his crews ready to begin cleanup. The staff would slowly gather in front of the main screens in the lounge and begin the assessment of damages that had occurred throughout the night.

  Every broken window, gouged wall, or blood-soaked mattress meant work for someone. It was a good time to take stock and to tease one’s coworkers on the level of cleanup that their area required. The pool boy’s workload, for instance, was always hit-and-miss. Sometimes the pool would be perfectly clean at the end of the night. Sometimes he would have to drain it, scrub it, and refill it. And sometimes, he would have to sift out an entire family’s worth of bloated, decapitated corpses.

  You never knew what you were going to get when you worked at The Venue.

  The staff lounge usually hummed with conversation at this time.

  But tonight was different.

  The staff lounge had grown quiet as everyone stared in confusion at the screens.

  Throughout The Venue, the guests, who had been on the verge of breaking into a bloodbath, let their bracelets fall harmlessly to the floor.

  It was weird.

  The manager flipped through his copy of the night’s schedule of events.

  “I don’t see this on the agenda,” he said, mostly to himself. The rustling of his papers soon became the loudest sound in the room.

  Until…

  Clunk.

  Everyone heard it. The sound was familiar, but nobody could place it — a sharp sound of a piece of metal sliding into, or out of, place.

  The manager looked toward the sound.

  The doors.

  He motioned for the head chef, who stood at the rear of the group and closest to the doors, to investigate.

  The chef walked over. The keypad flashed a small green light. He held out his hand and gently pushed against the door.

  It swung open easily.

  The magnetic locks had been shut off.

  Everyone gawked at the swinging door. They all seemed to sense what had happened.

  “That’s not good,” the manager said.

  ***

  Mariko climbed off the desk and into the alcove beneath the stairs. Her legs felt weak, but her mind was focused. She had to know if the sound meant what she thought it meant.

  Trina and Brad only watched.

  Mariko stepped toward the “Staff Only” door. She gripped its handle and gave a firm pull.

  The door swung open.

  A steel staircase descended to a concrete hallway that curved beyond her view. Mariko stared.

  “Does this mean…?” Trina said. She didn’t need to complete the question.

  The three of them looked at each other. Mariko felt her muscles tighten. Her blood, which she knew she had precious little of by now, rushed to her face. She felt hot. But it wasn’t the nervous, terrified heat she felt before.

  This was a heat fueled by anger.

  A smile spread on her lips, lighting up her eyes as the blood pumped aggressively through her body.

  “We have to tell the others,” she said.

  CHAPTER 28

  Mariko didn’t know how long the fatigue would be gone from her. She didn’t give a shit about that. She didn’t give a shit about anything right now.

  She strode into the ballroom with Trina and Brad flanking her.

  The DJ rocked-out in his booth. Justin Timberlake blared through the speakers. The DJ swayed around, feeling the beat with his very soul.

  As Mariko climbed up onto the stage and strutted toward his booth, the DJ put his hands in the air and motioned for her to raise the roof. Mariko grasped the handle on the booth’s glass door. She grinned as she gave a little tug.

  The door swung open.

  The DJ’s eyes went wide with shock and confusion. He immediately grabbed the handle and tried to pull his door closed, but Brad jammed his axe blade into the door crack, wedging it open. Using his axe as a lever, he pried on it.

  Trina got her fingers in the crack and pulled too.

  Yanking together, they ripped it free from the DJ’s grasp.

  Brad stepped into the booth.

  The DJ backed as far away from the door as he could (all of two feet). He put his hands up. “Whoa, man! Wait, wait, wait!”

  But Brad didn’t wait. Mariko saw no tremble in his hand or axe this time.

  In the tight space, he didn’t have much room to perform a full swing, so Brad opted for short, choppy, half-swings.

  Again and again.

  Brad hacked his way through the DJ’s outstretched hands.

  The DJ screamed. He tried to reach for his controls, his walkie-talkie, anything.

  Brad grabbed him by the neck and dragged him out of the booth. He threw the man down onto the stage by Trina’s feet. She grasped onto a clump of his hair, yanked his neck back, and slit his throat with her knife.

  That wasn’t enough, however.

  Brad stepped out of the booth, raised the axe over his head and swung it down hard, cleaving the DJ’s head off in a single blow.

  As Trina stomped down on the DJ’s carcass, Mariko stepped into the booth. She wiped the DJ’s splattered blood from the controls and turned off the music. Then, Mariko picked up his microphone and traced the cable back to his mixing board. She was looking for a switch. The P.A. system.

  She turned it on.

  With a crackle of static, she soon heard her own breathing flowing out from the speakers mounted throughout the walls.

>   Mariko grinned.

  “Dear friends and family of Caleb and Lilith,” she began. “It may have come to your attention that the bracelets no longer work. The door locks also no longer work. We’re not each other’s enemies. But we know who the real enemy is. We know who the sick fucks are who invited us here. And we know who imprisoned us here. You and I, we’re all on the same team. We always have been. From the moment these games began, it hasn’t been us versus each other. It’s been us versus them. So, meet me in the ballroom. Let’s finish this wedding right.”

  She took a deep, angry breath.

  “Let’s kill these fuckers.”

  ***

  Amy clicked through the various camera feeds.

  She watched as the ballroom filled with guests. At first they were timid. Most groups and families seemed to send one member to scout out the situation. Amy couldn’t blame any of them for suspecting a trap, but she wished they’d hurry it up.

  The scouts crept out, cautiously peering around every corner before proceeding. They ducked and hid if someone else slinked past. Eventually, each group’s scout arrived at the ballroom and peeked through the door. They saw other guests grabbing weapons from the wall. They felt the energy in the room. And then, they seemed to sense on some intuitive level that no one in this room wanted to harm them.

  A switch flipped in each person at that time.

  The timid mice vanished.

  Amy watched as they sprinted back through The Venue, back to their group in hiding and announced that, yes, it wasn’t a trap. It was real. People were arming up to storm the staff areas.

  Faster and faster, Amy watched the guests pour into the ballroom and yank the medieval axes, machetes, and maces from the wall.

  Amy clicked through to other camera feeds.

  She found a series of camera angles showing the staff corridors.

  Her view came to a large room that looked like a beer hall. There were couches and pool tables, although none of them were currently in use. Several dozen red vested staff members gathered in a corner.