The Apollyon Game

by Clive Reznor

  Liz was about the business of washing out the white bowl in the sink. She tossed the roach down the drain and wiped the bowl dry before returning to the living room.

  “You all are jerks, that’s the motive,” Liz explained.

  Portia looked at the bowl as Liz sat it back in the middle of the circle. She became preoccupied with it as she continued to talk to what remained of the party.

  “You see, there’s no justice in this world. People like Latoya, who was as fake as you can get, just go on hurting people and no one does anything. Meredith can betray my brother, and I’m just supposed to live with it. Not anymore.”

  “What did I do to you, Portia? Huh?” Kerry asked. He wasn’t scared anymore, as it was likely he would be meeting his end soon if this continued.

  “You? You’re just as fake as the rest of them. But we’ll get to that later, won’t we? Oh, I do have questions for you, my friend.”

  Liz decided to add to the story. “And Callie,” she started, “everything about you is fake. The bible thumping, the Ms. Average Good Girl routine. We know you have secrets. Portia’s told me. You two used to be friends, and you turned your back on her just like Latoya. All of you screwed her over because you thought you could. Because she’s not like you. Because she’s different.”

  “Yes, all of you did,” Portia said coldly, turning the ends of the Pith Die.

  The emphasis on all did not escape Liz. Portia had just as cold a stare for her as she did for the rest of the party. Bewildered at why her friend had turned on her, Liz started to protest being the next Soulcatcher, but Portia would hear none of it. Kerry and Callie had no remorse for her and simply sat and watched.

  “I know you are the one who told my mother I was using. That’s why I was sent to that shithole. Don’t bother denying it. I know it was you. So my question is, friend: why did you do it? Was it out of concern for me?”

  Looking at the Time Card and seeing she had only forty-five seconds to answer, Liz didn’t hesitate.

  “Yes, I was concerned for you, Portia. That’s why I did it. You know I’m your friend. We’re just alike.”

  “We’re nothing alike, Liz. What, because we wear the same clothes you think you’re like me? You’re some goth girl. I never claimed to be that.”

  “Doesn’t matter. It’s my turn though. So hand me …”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Portia stopped her. “How do I know that’s the truth? Let’s wait to see the time run out.”

  “Of course it’s the truth. What, do you think I’m lying to you?”

  “No, not to me,” Portia answered. “I think you’re lying to yourself. You didn’t give a rat’s ass about me being healthy. You did it because of Justin.”

  “Really? You think I ratted you out because of Justin?”

  “Well, time will tell now won’t it?”

  The second hand on the clock continued to tick. Five seconds were left, and Liz began to sweat. She wondered if in her mind she had convinced herself that she ratted Portia out because of concern, but in her heart, it was from jealousy. Justin had been the object of both of their affection for a long time but it ultimately was Portia who won his attention and his manhood. Although, Portia would be the first to admit the boy wasn’t much of a prize. Liz spent years pretending she was okay with it, wearing a fake smile when she was around the couple but secretly seething inside.

  As the second hand reached its final tick, she realized what the truth actually was.

  “Oh no,” Liz whispered.

  Portia turned the Spirit Card over. It was the Jackyl, perhaps the most devious of all the Spirits in the deck.

  Liz looked around the room, terrified that something would happen. She stood up and stumbled over one of the lit candles, knocking it to the carpet. She stomped out the flame and then sought somewhere safe to stand. She didn’t want to be near the bedroom, or the front door, or the kitchen with all the ways she could be murdered in there. Instead, the only place she thought would be safe was next to Portia.

  “Please, please Portia,” Liz cried, grabbing at the Soultender’s shoulders. “Make it stop. Don’t let it happen. You can stop it! It says so in the game book. You can end this if you want to.”

  Callie and Kerry took note of this. Callie immediately went to Liz’s box to look for the book. Portia and Liz continued arguing, which was becoming so intense the two girls had lost all concern for the game and knocked over the bowl and the stack of Challenge Cards. Kerry looked at the scattered deck, paused for a moment, and then began the task of putting them back into a stack.

  Amidst all the confusion, a nasal snicker could be heard from somewhere in the room, growing louder and more insane with each iteration. The group soon noticed the sound and Liz immediately began crying. She grabbed Portia by the arms so if anything harmed her, it would harm Portia as well.

  The strategy didn’t work. Liz felt cold, rough hands at her shoulders and claws digging into the top of her chest. The snickering was now in her ear, and she knew what it was that had her. Portia freed herself from Liz’s grasp and stepped back, watching the Jackyl as it caressed its prey.

  “Please … no,” Liz muttered in a desperate cry.

  The sobs only seemed to excite the Jackyl more as it sniveled and snickered uncontrollably. It began humming as it danced its sharpened nails up and down the nape of Liz’s neck. Its face was bright red with tattooed black lines and circles around its mouth, eyes, and nose. The monster wore a needle-toothed smile in a mouth twice the size of normal proportions to the rest of its head. The demon’s reptilian eyes blinked twice and the humming stopped. It remained stiff as a board, still clasping its hands around Liz’s upper body. She whimpered, waiting for the creature to make a move. It didn’t. The Jackyl simply froze for a while, Liz still shaking in its demented embrace.

  Maybe she could get away. Perhaps the thing was petrified, or something had gone wrong. This was her chance if there was going to be one, and she took it.

  Before she could take that first step, the Jackyl let loose an earsplitting howl and began ripping at Liz’s flesh, tearing her into ribbons with each ravenous gash. It cooed and giggled as Liz collapsed on the floor in a heap of her own tissue.

  As her sobs ended, the Jackyl looked over her with a fake frown, stroking her body with the knuckles of its hand. It placed its finger in its mouth, tasting the juices it had collected. The demon looked to Callie, licked its hand clean of blood, and then began snickering again before disappearing into the shadows of the living room.

  Portia returned to her seat in the circle and picked up the Pith Die. Her next target was clear as she eyed Kerry with each turn of the dice. In contrast, Kerry did everything he could to look away from Portia, not wanting to make eye contact with her. His body was shaking even though he tried desperately to control it.

  “Fifty seconds,” Portia remarked as she looked at the Time Card.

  “Just get this over with,” Kerry replied bitterly.

  Portia smiled at his defiance. Callie watched Kerry intently as he waited for Portia’s question, and she couldn’t help but notice beneath the shaking in Kerry’s body a sense of impatience as if he couldn’t wait for her to ask her question.

  “Are you really gay?” Portia asked her Soulcatcher.

  Kerry went to the Challenge Card and turned it over. His task was rather mundane: to fill the bowl with water and drink it. He did so eagerly, and in about fifteen seconds was done with his challenge.

  Something was wrong, and Portia knew it. The look on her face was a mixture of surprise and disdain. Regardless, Kerry had won the round and thus earned the right to roll the Pith Die himself.

  “Now, it’s my turn bitch!” he said with a glimmer of revenge in his voice.

  “I’m not afraid,” Portia said, “it’s my game, and I know the rules.”

  “Whatever, I’m ending this bullshit right now.”

  The door to the apartment shook with a large bang. All three players stood up immediately
, their attention to the door and the heavy thuds that were being levied against it. Someone was knocking and would not be satisfied until the door was opened or knocked down.

  “You answer it. You’re the host,” Kerry said to Portia.

  She scoffed at him and confidently walked to the door and without hesitating opened it. There stood the fat man from the hallway, breathing heavily and still brandishing his bloodied cleaver.

  “Cheater!” he bellowed.

  The words were enough for Portia to know what happened. She looked back at Kerry and pointed to him. Callie quickly figured out what he had done.

  “You cheated?” she asked the guilty party.

  “Not necessarily. I reshuffled the deck when it got knocked over.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yes … well, no. I may have looked for an easy Challenge Card and put it at the top.”

  “That would be cheating, Kerry.”

  “I know.”

  “Cheater! Cheater! Cheater!” the fat man continued.

  He didn’t wait for any invitation from Portia. The butcher pushed his girth past her on a straight course for Kerry. Not wanting to see what the punishment for cheating this kind of game was, Kerry ran into the kitchen to put something between him and the fat butcher. It wouldn’t do him much good as the butcher smashed into the waist-high countertop that separated the living room from the kitchen, swiping at Kerry with his cleaver. The third swipe came close enough to Kerry’s mouth that he could taste the metal of the blade on his lips.

  With a terrified screech, Kerry jumped over the counter and ran towards the door. The butcher wasn’t far behind and quickened his floor-shaking pursuit, repeating the word cheater as he went. Portia was knocked over by Kerry as he sprinted past her and out the front door, down the stairwell, screaming for help as he went. She smartly moved out of the way of the butcher who was still swinging his cleaver wildly.

  Two were now left. Portia and Callie watched each other to see which one would move first. Portia was concerned that Callie would try to escape as Kerry had, but the young blonde did not move from the living room. She simply waited for something to happen. Her mind told her to make for an escape but who knows what other barriers — demonic or otherwise — the game would throw at her to keep her from leaving.

  “We don’t have to finish this, Portia. You’ve made your point.”

  Portia took offense to Callie’s words. “My point? You don’t know what my point is! This is not about making a point; this is about justice.”

  “How is this justice? You’ve murdered your friends.”

  “Give me a break, Callie. Friends? You think those people are my friends? You think you are my friend? You’re dumber than I thought you were.”

  There was a muffled grunt coming from the opened front door of the apartment. Callie could see a large shadow moving up the stairwell outside the apartment. As it moved towards the door, she gasped as the butcher returned with what remained of Kerry.

  The body was barely held together by bones and threads of flesh, but the meat had been hacked all over. Kerry’s arms, legs, torso, and neck all bore deep slices that spilled red. Surprisingly, Kerry was still alive. His head was barely hanging on to the rest of his body, his eyes moved back and forth beneath ever-closing eyelids. He was trying to speak, but the butcher’s hand covered his mouth.

  The fat man threw Kerry’s body to the ground in the foyer and pointed at it. His shirt was afresh with new stains from Kerry’s fluids as he wiped sweat from his brow.

  “Cheater,” the butcher exclaimed one last time.

  Kerry turned his eyes up to Callie. His head was twisted at an angle that was only possible because his neck was sliced halfway through. There was such sadness there. She wondered what prayers or deals he was making in his mind to the spirit world. Something was going on in his head, some moment of reckoning that in these last few seconds, she hoped he resolved.

  A second later, the butcher raised his cleaver above his head and brought the sharp edge down with such force it split Kerry’s skull in two. The contents of his head spilled onto the carpet, brains and fluids exposed like the insides of a cantaloupe sliced in half.

  Callie couldn’t look, but Portia did with a breath of satisfaction. The butcher quietly left through the front door and in an unsettling gesture of civility, closed the door gently behind him.

  Two were left.

  Callie was so frightened at what would come next her stomach was turning over itself. Her palms were glistening with perspiration. She had to do something before she was the next, and final, victim of Portia’s twisted game.

  “Why him?” she asked quietly.

  “As I said, he was a phony. Kerry and I slept together, regularly, but he kept acting like he was a queer. I have no idea why. Maybe because it’s en vogue now, who knows. All I know is that he treated me like some dirty secret. It was disrespectful, and he deserved to pay for it. You all do.”

  “What did I do to you, Portia? Huh? What am I so guilty of that you’re going to throw me into this meat-grinder you’ve thought up?”

  Portia laughed to herself, “I didn’t think this up. This game has been around for centuries. It’s made for the victimized to get justice.”

  Callie watched as Portia reached for the Pith Dice. There wasn’t much time left. She had to keep Portia talking while she simultaneously thought of a way out of this.

  “It sounds more like a petty way to scream at the world,” Callie uttered under her breath.

  Portia heard the comment and it enraged her enough to want to defend herself. She put the Pith Die down for the moment. Callie needed to be set straight before the game ended.

  “Listen to me,” Portia yelled as she came face to face with Callie, “this isn’t about me wanting to scream at the world. This isn’t about revenge, even. It’s about doing something right. There are too many of you phony people in the world — the uncreative, the unimaginative, and worst of all people like you: the self-righteous.”

  “I’m self-righteous?” Callie sarcastically replied although Portia missed the implication.

  “Of course you are! All you religious people are. That’s why you’re the worst, and the last, in this game. You abandoned me when you ‘found Jesus’ and couldn’t spend time with your friend of fifteen years because I was a bad influence. Isn’t that right?”

  “Portia, I—”

  “No! Isn’t that right?”

  “Maybe,” Callie confessed, throwing her hands up in admission. “Yeah, perhaps you cutting yourself, getting high every single day, having sex with anyone who would pay attention to you … yes, maybe that didn’t mesh well with my beliefs.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to try and save me?”

  “I knew better than to do that.”

  Portia scoffed. She turned back to the circle and went for the Pith Die again. Callie still needed more time.

  “Would you have listened? Or would you have just dismissed me?” she asked.

  Portia picked up the dice and turned back to answer Callie.

  “Probably not. I don’t have much use for religion.”

  “So either way, I would be doing wrong in your eyes. No matter what, you would have dismissed whatever I had to offer you because you have already predetermined my beliefs as being crap.”

  “Not your beliefs, just the organization that goes along with it. All those judgmental, tight-passed, middle America jackasses.”

  “And what you just said isn’t judgmental? What you’ve done tonight isn’t passing judgment on people?”

  “People like me aren’t the oppressors! Don’t you get that Ms. Perfect? People like me aren’t abusing little children. People like me aren’t damning anyone who doesn’t fit in our little box to Hell.”

  “So, you think anarchy, violence, and spitefulness is far better than even considering anything someone like me has to say?”

  Callie’s words were penetrating somewhat, but Portia had come too far.
The voice in Portia’s mind reminded her of how just her cause was. Callie was one of them, the type that she despised with everything in her being. The family life, the house, and the so-called values they had. It was everything she found offensive and oppressive. This, right here, tonight, was her liberation from that. It was her chance to spit in the face of that very concept, and she wasn’t going to let any doubt prevent that from happening.

  “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven, right?” she smirked.

  She spun the dice and proceeded to pick the Time Card. It was a long session, two minutes. Seeing that her time was up, Callie calmly returned to the circle and sat down. After seeing this game play out, she knew Portia was going to ask her something she either wouldn’t answer or would be tricked into answering wrong. She had to answer correctly, no matter what. The Challenges and the Spirits were things she undoubtedly wanted to avoid at any cost.

  With a deep breath, Portia asked her question.

  “If you’re a believer, do you think all that crap they say to you on Sundays is right? Do you think your God is going to save you tonight?”

  The clock was ticking. Even though an answer sprung to her mind immediately, she didn’t want to say it. This was a time to think, a time to learn from what the others had done wrong, which led them to have their body parts strewn about the room she sat in now.

  Oh, that smell! The detritus from all of Portia’s victims were beginning to sicken Callie. It was becoming a distraction. The more she thought, the more intense the odor got. It was to the point that she believed it was penetrating her skin, sticking to her insides and crawling underneath her flesh.

  No! Concentrate!

  “What’s taking so long?” Portia shouted. “Come on! Answer the question, Callie! You know the truth.”

  Callie just sat in the circle, her head down and her hands clasped in prayer. Of all things for her to do, this was the funniest to Portia. She stood up and hovered over Callie like a hawk over its prey.

  “That’s right, pray bitch! There’s nothing there! There’s no one to pray to! There’s no one who is going to save your life, your ass, your soul tonight! God is a damned joke, and if He ever existed, He’s long since died. Even if He did exist, as your pathetic people think, do you honestly think He could give a rat’s ass that you play lacrosse and have perfect attendance at church and live in a beautiful house?”