I imagined they differed from the others we’d seen thus far, like his.
“For those new to our devilish carnival of horrors, pay close attention to the screen before you and take note of who you chose to bestow a wager.”
There was a bright flash, followed by instant murmuring and some cheers from the crowd.
“Ohhhh, I see some disappointed faces out there. Some excited ones too! As you can see, we’ve got a few contenders with some stellar survival odds and a few, well, things aren’t looking to good right now. However, don’t you go counting them out quite yet! Anything is possible in Kink’s world.”
As the announcer continued speaking, going into a monologue about this Kink’s world, me, and everyone else turned to see the screen behind us.
Our numbers now had percentages beneath them that were meant to represent our chances of survival.
“Damn,” Dion mumbled solemnly.
I didn’t blame him for being less than thrilled, but on the brighter side of things he had a decent forty-two percent chance of survival odds. While that may not have been amazing or anything, it was still far better than what number eight and four got. They were given odds below twenty.
“You’re almost at half of a hundred,” Mel pointed out encouragingly.
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“You could be whoever ten is,” Grace replied.
“I’d rather be twelve. Or one of you.”
I was going to state the obvious and changed my mind. None of us were at one hundred, we just had higher odds overall.
When you refused to die and easily followed the kill or be killed mantra that was to be expected.
The announcer began speaking in the same rapid-fire tone I’d heard moments ago, going down a list of to-dos so fast the only things I caught were, never remove our masks and to try and stay alive for as long as we could.
The pandas began ushering us towards the opposite end of the stage while the announcer was still speaking. The gate was opened and down the stairs we went. I expected another passage but the arena fencing, and chutes were gone, in their place was a tall chain link fence that we couldn’t see through.
At the end of this were two more guards standing near the massive face of a clown. Its gaping mouth served as the black-holed entrance to Kink’s House of Fun.
A woman near the front of the line began to freak out as soon as she saw it.
“I can’t go in there,” she quavered.
She attempted to turn and force her way back the way we came. One of the masked panda’s made as if to move towards but before they could someone beside the woman forcibly dragged her forward, mummering something I couldn’t hear.
I dragged my feet, trying to stall the inevitable while my mind raced with scenarios of what we might face next. No one wanted to go in here, but there wasn’t any other course of action.
Just before we entered, one of the pandas handed each of us a small metal item. Passing through the clowns open mouth, I realized it was a Swiss army knife. I hadn’t seen one of these in ages. I wanted to examine it better but the second we were fully inside, darkness cocooned us.
The clown’s mouth slammed shut, caging everyone inside it. The air was cool here reminding me of an old warehouse. Nervous and fearful energy rippled through the group. I could hear people shifting nervously.
“What do we do now?” A man’s shaky voice filled the space.
Three soft beeps came in response before the voice I’d learned to expect began speaking from a hidden speaker system.
“Welcome to my house of fun. I’m so excited to have you here, but to truly enjoy our time together I must ask of you a teensy tiny favor. Break the cage around your ribs, remove the bones from beneath your skin, let what’s simmering inside you out to play. Chaos and bloodshed will save your life.”
“What? What does she mean by that?” A woman loudly questioned.
The inside of the funhouse was suddenly filled with blacklight lighting in various colors that gave our masks a neon glow.
I clutched my pocketknife and carefully peered into each arched tunnel that was now visible in front of us. There were three in total. One going straight and two veering off in opposite directions. A manically robotic laugh carried through the funhouse, sending a trickle of apprehension skirting down my spine.
“Reap what you sow, you’re playing my game now,” Kink’s voice spoke to us one last time before music began to blare through the speakers and lights started to flash.
I didn’t know what the hell was happening or would be happening, but I knew we needed to move.
“Let’s go left,” I said to my group.
I didn’t give a damn what any of these other people did.