The fourth round was the personification of death, a skeleton on his white horse in Gustave Doré’s famous painting.
Round five, I’d used a Rubik’s cube to hint at where I’d hidden Chloe in a car alongside a bomb. If her little brother hadn’t found her in time, the blond girl would have been blown sky-high.
“Fuck…you won almost every round,” I grumbled, sliding my finger down to the sixth round, which was connected to Hard Candy and malware I’d used to spy on his little slut and make a video to blackmail her.
I still had that video in my possession, but I had a different goal: I wanted to see my last target bleed.
“Only the seventh one left to go…” I chewed thoughtfully on the inside of my cheek and pulled a pencil out of the glass holder, tapping it against the paper.
It wasn’t easy, thinking up a puzzle, but it was exciting. I could feel the adrenaline pumping through my veins.
I had spent so many years wondering what my purpose was and now I knew it: I was meant to do evil, to keep myself afloat in this shitsack world.
I allowed my madness to take form on the paper.
I moved my hand, drawing lines, words, and scribbles, generating my final masterpiece, my last riddle, the seventh level.
It was no accident that this game had seven rounds. I had always had a special love for the number seven.
In Pythagorean philosophy the number seven was associated with a perfect union of the material and the spiritual. In sacred geometry, the number is linked to the circle, and that was precisely why I’d chosen it. I was going to close my circle. I was going to complete my game, and I was going to destroy my opponent utterly.
I was interrupted then by the squeak of the door opening.
She moved slowly into the room, and I watched her shapely legs as she did. I set down my pencil, and for a moment, just appreciated her feminine shape.
“Are you working without me?” she asked, giving me a sly smile. I stared deep into her eyes as I leaned back in my chair, arrogantly folding my hands over my abdomen.
“You’ve already done your part,” I answered bluntly. She moved closer and put her hands on the desk. She stroked the surface of it with her long fingers as though it were my body. Then she leaned forward to give me a better look down her shirt at her firm tits.
“I still want to help,” she said in a naughty whisper.
“How? By acting like a slut?” I sneered, and she recoiled. I could smell her fear, and it excited me. “You’re children, all of you. I’m the one who makes the rules around here,” I said pointedly. “Now get out of here and wait for me in the bedroom,” I ordered, gesturing to the door with a jerk of my head. I would absolutely fuck her later; at the moment I had more important things to deal with.
I turned back to my puzzle.
My prey was going to take the bait, and then I’d have him in my clutches, and I would butcher him.
I wanted to hear his cries of pain, taste his blood on my tongue… Fuck, my hands were trembling just thinking about it.
He would never make it out of my labyrinth alive, and I would be right there, listening to the very last beat of his heart. Watching him crawling to me, pleading for mercy like the disgusting worm that he was.
“I’m going to watch your face as you take your last breath.” I turned the pencil over in my fingers, thinking about that moment when our eyes would meet. Then, I opened the desk drawer and slipped out the mask that I would wear.
One last time.
20
“Neil had never known the sweet smell of a rose
because all he had gotten, his whole life long,
were the painful punctures of the thorns.”
Selene
It was May third.
Neil’s birthday. And that wasn’t the only thing that made the day special…
