Silence filled the house, both inside and outside of the Elimination chamber. Nothing seemed to be happening and Tracey and Jules shifted uncomfortably on their wooden perches.
Then there was an almighty grinding of unseen gears and the two ladies cried out in pain.
“What’s happening?” Danni asked. Her brow was wrinkled and it was clear that she did not understand what was going on. The view on the television screen showed no obvious cause for the women’s pain, but there was indeed a subtle difference, and Damien noticed it.
“The steel chains have gone taught. The stirrups are being pulled towards the floor.”
Danni looked at him for a moment and then at the television screen. She seemed to finally understand. “My God!” she said, cupping her bandaged hand to her mouth.
Inside the elimination Chamber, there was another sound of grinding gears.
Tracey and Jules bellowed in pain. Their bodies were being pulled down onto the wooden wedge and the pressure was threatening to split them apart from the groin as their legs were yanked down on either side. Both women thrashed and fumbled at their wooden perches, trying to scramble away, but their ankles held them in place.
There was another grinding of gears.
Jules begged for mercy; so did Tracey.
The gears turned again.
Jules threw up on herself and wobbled wearily on the horse. The pain was threatening to tug her into unconsciousness.
Tracey shook her head and gritted her teeth. It seemed like she was trying with all her might not to cry out. Perhaps she was trying to prevent herself from confessing whatever it was that The Landlord demanded she admit to.
Another grinding of gears and the women’s legs looked like they might pop apart at the knees. Their entire bodies were stretched taught and the wedge seemed to drive up several inches into their vaginas.
“It’s going to split them in half,” said Danni.
Another grinding of gears and the ankle restraints tightened yet again. The shackles were now several inches closer to the ground than when the task had started.
Jules seemed to collapse in place, her shoulders and head slumping sideways but her lower body unable to move. Despite her physical breakdown, she began to mutter something. The speakers in the ceiling amplified so that everyone could hear her words.
“I…I…slept with my sister’s husband. Then…one night…I found her in…the bathtub. She had…cut herself….”
Damien tilted his head and listened intently. The story sounded oddly familiar.
Jules seemed to lose consciousness for a moment, but then lifted her head and carried on.
“I…I…wanted her husband and to have…to have our business…our salon…all to myself. I left her there to die. I didn’t call an ambulance. I just went…home. But her husband…he didn’t want me…he blamed me…he closed the salon. He left me with…nothing.”
“HOUSEMATE JULES, YOU HAVE CONFESSED YOUR BIGGEST SIN. CONGRATULATIONS.”
The ankle restraints around Jule’s ankles sprung open. She slumped sideways and fell awkwardly to the floor. There she lay, panting and moaning.”
“HOUSEMATE TRACEY. YOU HAVE NOT CONFESSED YOUR SINS, THEREFORE YOU WILL DIE.”
Tracey was visibly weak from the pain, but her voice was strong as she shouted up at the ceiling. “No, please. I’ll confess. I’ll tell you the-”
The gears cranked.
Then they cranked again.
Tracey howled in agony. Blood began to leak down her legs and drip from the tips of her toes.
The gears cranked again.
And again.
And again.
Tracey’s eyes began to roll into the back of her head. Her body was now pulled so tightly against the wooden pyramid that it seemed like a part of her body.
The gears cranked again.
Tracey’s head slumped forward. She was either dead or unconscious.
The gears continued turning.
Clank! Clank! Clank!
Tracey’s body began to split. Her legs pulled apart like the wishbone from a turkey. Her body lost its form, no long even resembling the shape of a human.
The gears finally stopped turning.
“HOUSEMATES, PLEASE ENTER THE ELIMINATION CHAMBER AND REMOVE HOUSEMATE JULES. THE PANTRY HAS BEEN RESTOCKED WITH SUPPLIES. ENJOY.”
3
Five housemates left and Jules in such a state that she might not even make it through the night.
They had dragged her out of the Elimination Chamber and onto the sofa. She was bleeding from between her legs, but it wasn’t arterial. Her internal workings had been badly damaged, but luckily it seemed like nothing had ruptured. Tracey on the other hand had looked like she’d exploded. Blood pooled beneath her body as if every organ in her body had torn open. The smell of faeces and urine had also been present. The housemates had been sure to avoid her as they dragged out Jules.
Now everybody was sitting on the sofa, drinking the restocked supplies of alcohol and staring into space. They were all obviously thinking about their own survival and how impossible it seemed, but also perhaps about their existence and how they had spent it. Damien was certainly assessing a few things in his own mind.
He thought about his friend, Harry. Harry would have told him not to lose hope, that God would protect those who deserved protecting.
But if I’m in this house, doesn’t that mean that I’m beyond salvation? Isn’t this house full of deplorable sinners? If I’m here then I must be one, too. The fact that I don’t know what I’ve done must mean that I’m the worst of all. I don’t even see the consequences of my own actions. I am unrepentant.
Damien rubbed at his face and felt the fuzzy tiredness in his eyes. The longer this all went on, the more and more he needed sleep. With a bedroom containing Catherine’s corpse and the sofa not designed for napping on, it was difficult to snooze long and deep. The exhaustion was beginning to take its toll. But as much as Damien felt tired, he still also felt strong and fearless. He knew that with the right opportunity, he would still have what it took to strike. His only intention now, since survival seemed impossible, was to enact revenge on at least one of the monsters that kept him here. For they were monsters, too.
The television screen came on. It displayed the word WHORE. An audio tape recording of a man’s voice began to play.
“Tracey was one of the best politicians I know. She fought for equality, human rights, and safety within our society. I don’t know why she eventually quit at such a young age, but then a lot of things in politics cannot always be explained. I had heard rumours that she was planning to move abroad with the small fortune she had inherited from her mother.
My respect ran much deeper than mere attraction for her. I was sad when she decided that she no longer wished to date me, but there wasn’t much I could do, so I said goodbye and tried to move on.
A few months later, when I began feeling under the weather – I was constantly getting the sniffles and stomach aches – I went to see my doctor in Hammersmith. He had a pretty grotty office, but he was good at what he did and I had always been a happy patient of his. Still, when he told me that my blood test results came back HIV positive, I doubted him. I thought maybe the old guy had lost it. But when my results came back the second time, from a different physician, I had no choice but to accept what I had been told.”
The tape crackled for a moment, but then cleared up.
“The thing that I couldn’t get my head around was that the only person I had slept with in the last year or so was Tracey. I couldn’t fathom that it may have been her that had given it to me. She must not have known. I was furious at her, but also saddened and sympathetic as a fellow sufferer of a terrible disease that we both now shared. I thought I would be delivering devastating news to her, but when I told her, she didn’t seem worried at all. A couple weeks later, she gave me a call to say that her own results had come back negative. I didn’t understand how that was possible. The stupid fool that I
was, I even apologised to her for causing her undue stress and worry. She told me not to worry about it but to tell no one that we had slept together as it could damage her reputation. Of course I promised to keep my mouth shut.”
The tape crackled again, this time for longer.
“It wasn’t until James Jeffrey stepped down from the cabinet, due to undisclosed health reasons, that I became suspicious. I mixed in the same circles as James and I also knew that he was a friend of Tracey’s. I went and visited him at home. After some gentle prodding, he admitted that he had HIV and that he had also given it to his wife. He admitted to cheating on her frequently and was now paying the price. When I asked for some names, he reluctantly gave them to me. Tracey was among the list of women.”
After some digging – not all of it legal – I managed to discover that Tracey had been diagnosed with the disease two years before I even slept with her. She had HIV and was spreading it around without any shred of a conscience. She had given it to me in the throes of passion that, at the time, I assumed were the beginnings of real love and affection. I had been upset when she had ended it, but what I felt at that moment went far beyond mere anger. I wanted the woman dead. After all, she had killed me, one way or the other. I thought about going to the Police, but I knew that it would destroy the reputations of any fellow politician that had been involved with her. Many were innocent like me. I decided to deal with things unofficially. I once heard about an organisation that could solve these kinds of problems. Luckily a friend of mine had their contact information – he had used them to take care of a man who had assaulted his wife. I paid their asking price happily. I might die one day due to this disease, but at least I will go knowing that Tracey died first. Revenge is one of the few pleasures left to me.”
The tape crackled and ended.
The television changed from displaying the word WHORE to the grid of twelve silhouettes. Beneath the photo of Jules was the word, CHEAT. Beneath the photo of Tracey was the word WHORE. The remaining silhouettes were attached to the words PEDDLER, CRUSADER, MURDERER, and TRAITOR.
Day 7
Damien was sat alone in the living area, cracking his knuckles as he put some of his mental ducks in a row. Everybody else, surprisingly, was enjoying the hot tub in the garden, smoking fags and a new supply of alcohol from the newly reinforced pantry. Although the bubbling water was grimy, the trace amount of chlorine was still the best way available to get clean inside the house. Damien himself would probably join them a little later.
The bracelet on his wrist had been taunting him for the last hour while he sat alone. The blinking LED lights seemed to be winking at him. The fact that something clung to his body and would not remove itself was frustrating on a very basic level – like finding a tick on your body and crushing it in anger.
It was still hard to believe the situation he was in. Only a few weeks ago life had been normal, even a little mundane. Damien had spent his days carving wood and fixing joints. He leased a modest flat and wasted his nights shooting noobs on Xbox Live. As much as Damien had turned his life around over the last few years, he realised now that there was still room for improvement. He could have been living life more than he had been. Now he wouldn’t get the chance.
The main reason Damien had been drawn to crime as a teenager, besides being surrounded by it, was his father. The great Jan Olsson, son of Swedish immigrants, made a name for himself in the suburbs of Birmingham – Redditch, Bromsgrove, Studley, and Alcester mostly. Drugs, prostitution, violence for hire, he had his fingers in a lot of crud-filled pies. But robbing banks had been too much of a stretch for Damien’s kingpin of a father. The bungling idiot had been caught and arrested on his very first try; a shoddy attempt to rob an Evesham building society. He got fifteen years.
But Damien had still been under his father’s influence, even with him banged up. He was expected to keep ‘the firm’ running in his old man’s absence. Damien had done his best for a while – intimidating people and selling his father’s drugs – but it wasn’t who he was.
But he had no way out. His father’s influence was everywhere. Damien had been forced to commit to the role and had done many things he regretted.
Which is the reason I am here.
But then Harry had come along. At first Damien thought nothing of the man who had started drinking himself to death in the local pub. Harry was just another drunk.
But then one day, the man just stopped drinking cold turkey; never touched a drop again. It was like he had woken up one morning a changed man. When Damien found out that the man’s heavy drinking was all because of losing his young son to a drunk driver, Damien’s opinion of the man had softened. The man’s love for his son, even years after his death, was honourable.
For some reason Harry saw something in Damien, too, and reached out with a job offer. Even more fortuitous, he presented an opportunity to move away and leave their old lives behind. They both needed to start again – to leave the painful past behind them.
Together the two of them moved north and started a business and a new existence. Damien had quickly come to view Harry as somewhat of a replacement father. Harry was kind hearted and intelligent, with a knack for seeing the best in people. He had helped Damien become a better man.
I’ll never thank him enough for that.
But then Harry had got sick.
It began with vomiting and headaches.
Then he went partially blind in one eye.
By the time Harry went to see a specialist, the brain tumour was the size of a golf ball. Glioblastoma multiforme – one of the worst kinds of cancer. Harry had less than two years.
That was why Damien was in this abominable house – the sole fucking reason. The World Health Organisation was running clinical trials for boron neutron capture therapy. It was experimental, but had begun to show promising results. It was perhaps the only chance Harry had, but it cost three-hundred thousand pounds. Add on the cost of getting to South Africa and living there for up to twelve months while the treatment was underway and it became a hopeless dream. Which was why Damien had allowed himself to be convinced by the stranger who had visited him with the proposition of winning the money he needed. Take part in a reality television show for the chance to win up to two million pounds. It must have been fate. Harry would have said that God was offering him a chance, but the truth was that it was Damien who was being offered the chance and he had to take it.
Harry had agreed to him going, so long as he “kept his integrity.” He said that Damien had worked so hard to become successful and respectful that he couldn’t let a bunch of television producers bring him down.
But it had all been a set-up. Damien had made a deadly mistake. That mistake left Harry with no hope of survival and, even worse, now no one would even be there by his side at the end. The thought filled Damien with anger. He clenched his fists and snorted.
“You okay?” Danni was heading through the patio doors from the garden and shivering. She was wearing a bikini that Jade had lent to her. She looked at him and frowned.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Just…reflecting.”
She took a seat next to him and brought her knees up on the sofa. The soles of her feet were covered in blades of grass. “I’ve been doing that, too,” she said. “I don’t know how I haven’t gone crazy yet. I mean, we’re all going to die. Why are we not panicking?”
Damien chewed the inside of his cheek and wondered about the answer. “I suppose we’ve all realised that panicking isn’t going to help, so why waste the energy? If these are our last days then there are more productive things to do than scream.”
“But we’re all just sitting here and accepting it. We’re like lambs lined up in a slaughterhouse.”
Damien shrugged. “What can we do different.”
“You tell me. You’re the one that told us to be ready for an opportunity.”
“And an opportunity is yet to present itself. Don’t worry, though, I’m ready.”
&
nbsp; “Good,” she said, lying up against him, “because I’m relying on you to save us all.”
Damien chuckled. “No pressure then?”
“Hey, I’m just asking you to give it a shot. What do you have to lose?”
“Nothing, I guess.”
Damien suddenly had a thought. It was something that had been bothering him since last night. “You told me that you were the whore.”
Danni flinched slightly at the word and then looked at him in confusion. “What?”
“When I asked you what word on the television belonged to you, you told me that it was whore. You told me about how you cheated on your husband and how he killed himself.”
Danni nodded. Her eyes wandered off to the side as she failed to look at him. “That’s right. He killed himself because of what I did. I don’t want to go over it all again. It’s painful.”
Damien nodded at her. He rubbed one of his hands down her naked arm. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s just that one thing confuses me,” said Damien.
“What?”
“Tracey was the one identified as being the whore. Plus Jules’s confession in the task that beat Tracey sounded a lot like the story you told me.”
Danni eyes narrowed at him and she seemed to be getting annoyed. “So?”
“Well, don’t you think it’s strange?”
Danni looked angry for a few moments, but then her face softened. She let out a long sigh and rubbed a hand against her forehead. “I lied,” she admitted. “Jules told me why she thought she was in here and I copied her story when you asked me what my sins were.”
“That makes no sense,” said Damien. “If she so happily confessed her secrets to you, then why did she resist during the task? She was almost ripped apart by the time she admitted to what she had done.”
The Housemates: A Novel of Extreme Terror Page 12
