The Odds, page 11
“What the shit is going on in here?” a booming voice asked.
Ethan turned around. A man had emerged from a back room. A very large man in his thirties, well over six feet tall, wearing a white t-shirt with several brown stains on the front. He hadn’t shaved in a while. He had a unibrow, except there was a missing strip just over the edge of his left eye, making it look like he had one really long eyebrow and one really short one. He had quite a belly on him, but his arms were thick.
“Yo, Grendie, this guy is looking for a scavenger hunt clue,” said the skinny guy.
“Then why didn’t somebody wake me up?”
“You didn’t tell us to wake you up.”
“The shit I didn’t! I told Benny to wake me up if somebody came here looking for a clue.”
Some guy, presumably Benny, snapped out of a trance. “Huh? What?”
Grendie walked across the room. The floor didn’t shake with each step, but Ethan could imagine that it did, accompanied by a musical theme. Nobody in the house seemed happy that Grendie was awake. The skinny guy stepped far out of the way.
Ethan was hugely relieved to have finally found somebody who knew what he was talking about, though the sight of Grendie walking right toward him was not one that gave him peace of mind. Ethan couldn’t quite identify the aroma that wafted from him, but anything that could compete with the other foul smells in this place deserved respect.
“You looking for a clue?”
“Yes, sir,” said Ethan.
“I’ll sell it to you.”
“How much?”
“No, I take that back. I’ll fight you for it.”
“I’m not here to fight anybody.”
“Well, fucking duh. I know you didn’t come here to fight me. But you’re here, and I’m here, and when I get woke up out of a sound sleep, I like to fight.”
“I’ll happily buy it from you,” said Ethan.
“Are you deaf? I said I wanted to fight. You want the clue bad enough, you’ll fight me for it.”
“I can’t beat you in a fight,” said Ethan. “I mean that as a compliment.”
“Not in a one-on-one fistfight, no,” said Grendie. “We’ll figure out a way to make it more fair.”
“Fire!” somebody shouted. “Fight each other with lighters and aerosol cans!”
“Do we have any aerosol cans?” Grendie asked.
“I’ll run out and get some right now if you do it.”
“Naw,” said the skinny guy. “We can’t be shooting streams of fire indoors.”
“Well, you could take it outdoors, I guess. That would still be fun to watch.”
“Knives,” said Grendie.
“No,” said Ethan. “I’m not going to have a knife fight with you.”
“Do you want the clue or not?”
“Not bad enough for a knife fight.”
“Oh, I think you do,” said Grendie. “I’m not saying we’ll fight to the death. I get why you’d say no to that. What we’ll do is, the first person to get three cuts on his opponent wins. You win, I give you the clue. I win, you walk out of here with no clue and three cuts. Sound fair?”
Everybody but Ethan reacted with great joy to this idea.
“I’ll get the knives,” said the skinny guy, hurrying over to the kitchen area.
“This party sounded like everybody was having a lot of fun,” said Ethan. “Why mess up the vibe?”
“Oh, there’s no party that can’t be improved with a knife fight!” Grendie smiled, revealing teeth that were unsurprisingly discolored and low in number.
This had to be a joke, right? They weren’t really going to make him participate in a knife fight. Was this an official element of the game, part of the reason he only had a 20% chance to succeed, or was Grendie making up his own rules? Ethan supposed it didn’t matter. Unless Grendie burst out into laughter and said, “Juuuuuuuust kidding,” it appeared that Ethan was going to have his very first knife fight.
The skinny guy returned. He had a butcher knife in one hand and a meat cleaver in the other.
“What the shit is that?” asked Grendie, pointing to the meat cleaver.
The skinny guy looked confused. “You don’t know what a meat cleaver is?”
“I know what one is. It’s not a knife.”
“It’s like a knife. I didn’t think it would be fair if one of you had a great big butcher knife and the other one had some dull butter knife.”
“Why do you even have a meat cleaver? What kind of meat are you cleaving? When was the last time you prepared an actual meal in this place?”
“It was my grandma’s meat cleaver.”
Grendie reached for one of the weapons, but the skinny guy stepped back. “Uh-uh, wait, hold on now. You don’t get to just grab the one you want. It’s gotta be fair. Heads or tails?”
“Heads,” said Grendie.
“I don’t have a coin, but I was thinking tails.” He looked at Ethan. “Which do you want?”
“I want his grandmother’s meat cleaver.”
“Aw, that’s a low class move,” said Grendie, but he didn’t stop the skinny guy from handing Ethan the meat cleaver. Ethan gave it a test swing. He really, really, really did not want to do this.
Grendie took the butcher knife and gave it a test swing as well.
“The rules,” said Grendie. “Slash but don’t stab. Don’t jab your blade into anybody’s eye. Cuts don’t count unless they draw blood. You can quit like a scared little bitch whenever you want, but then you don’t get the clue. Are you clear?”
“I’m clear,” said Ethan.
“All right, then. On the count of three. One...two...”
“Whoa, whoa,” said the skinny guy. “You don’t get to count down your own fight. I’ll do it.”
“Fine.”
“You were also counting in the wrong direction. Should be three, two, one, not one, two, three. I think. Maybe I’m wrong. Your way might have been right. Shit.”
“Just count,” said Grendie.
“One...two...three!”
Grendie let out what sounded like a werewolf howl, then lunged forward with the butcher knife.
14
Tampa, Florida. Two minutes earlier.
“I’m only going to ask you one more time,” said the man in the dark suit. “Where’s my briefcase?”
“I don’t have it,” Harry French insisted. “I’ve never had it. I swear to God, this is all a mistake!”
The man scowled. “Are you saying I’m prone to errors? Are you saying I’ve been given faulty intelligence?”
“I’m not saying anything except that I don’t have your drugs!”
“Drugs? I never said anything about drugs. How do you know the briefcase wasn’t full of collectibles?” He nodded to the bulky man who stood at his side. “Hit him again.”
The bulky man punched Harry in the stomach. He almost fell over this time, but braced himself against his big-screen television.
“I know it was you,” said the man in the dark suit. “I have pictures of you taking it from the drop spot.”
“They’re fake!”
“Oh, they’re fake? I’ve been staring at Photoshopped pictures all this time? Gosh, well, I’m so sorry for this wacky misunderstanding. I guess we’ll be on our way, then.”
The bulky man punched Harry again. This time he did fall.
“I got these pictures from a trusted source. I trust him a hell of a lot more than I trust you. Now, if you’re saying that you can’t get my briefcase back, then I might as well just kill you right now.”
“Please—”
“Please kill you? Put you out of your misery?” He reached into the inside pocket of his suit and took out a pistol. “Don’t be too impatient. I’ve got to get the silencer on here first. We don’t want to disturb your neighbors, right?”
Harry tried to get back to his feet, but lost his balance and fell again.
The man began to screw the silencer onto the barrel of his revolver. “I could’ve had this on the gun already, but I’m doing it now so you know that shit is about to get real. By which I mean, you have one more chance to tell me where my briefcase is.”
“I can get it.”
“I don’t believe you. You were more credible when you said you didn’t know what I was talking about. You swear you can get it?”
“Yes!”
“You’re not just trying to stall for time?”
“No!”
“All right. I’m still going to shoot you—I’m just not going to kill you or incapacitate you. Four flesh wounds. One across each leg, and one across each arm. You’ll bleed but I’ll take you to a guy who can patch you up. He’s not licensed but he’s good. You ready?”
“Please don’t shoot me,” said Harry.
“You’re getting a pretty sweet deal. I wouldn’t complain if I were you. We’ll do the left leg first.” The man crouched down and placed the barrel of the pistol against Harry’s upper leg. “It’s going to go in here...” He tapped the other side of Harry’s leg with his index finger. “...and come out there. Which sounds really bad, and kind of is, but it won’t go deep. It’ll stay near the surface. It’ll hit the bookcase when it comes out. I don’t want to mess up your books, so how about you turn around—like this—yeah, like that—see, now it’ll hit the wall. All set? Say yes or I’ll shoot you in the head.”
“Yes,” said Harry.
The man squeezed the trigger. Harry screamed.
“I apologize,” said the man. “I got the angle wrong on that. It’s okay. We’ve got three more chances to get it right.”
Grendie’s first swing with the butcher knife missed, but not by much.
His second swing, which he was able to get in before Ethan did his first, slashed Ethan across the left arm, crisscrossing the cut that was already there and slicing right through the bandage.
Ethan winced in pain.
“First cut already!” said Grendie, holding up his arms in victory. “It’s like you don’t even want the clue.”
“Hold up, does that count as one or two?” asked the skinny guy. “He’s bleeding on both sides of the bandage. I think he needs to take it off so we can see if it’s one continuous cut or if the bandage blocked part of it.”
“What the shit kind of loopholes are you trying to find?” asked Grendie. “It’s one cut.”
“Just trying to help you out.”
“You think I need your help? I don’t need to win this on a technicality. Go somewhere else. Nobody appointed you referee.”
The skinny guy hung his head and stepped out of the way.
“You ready?” Grendie asked Ethan.
“Yeah.”
They both lunged at each other at the same time. Both missed.
“Nice one,” said Grendie. “I felt the air swish.”
Grendie slashed at him again. This swing would have, if it hit its mark, cut Ethan from nipple to nipple. He stepped back out of the way and tripped on one of the hundreds of pieces of garbage on the floor. He reached out to keep his balance, grabbing the woman who’d been on his lap. They both struck the floor.
Grendie laughed. “I’ll let you get up.”
Ethan got up. Something was stuck to the back of his shirt but he didn’t reach back there to find out what it was.
“No more freebies,” Grendie told him. “We’re playing for real now.”
“He grabbed my tit,” said the woman. “That’s ten bucks.”
“He grabbed your arm,” said Grendie. “I saw it.”
“Then you weren’t watching very close.”
Grendie lunged at Ethan with the butcher knife. Missed again. There was no rule saying that Ethan had to stay in the same general area, so he hurried past a few people into the kitchen area.
Grendie followed.
Ethan quickly spun around, hoping that Grendie’s momentum would take him right into the blade.
It didn’t.
Grendie swung the knife. The blade slashed across Ethan’s knuckles and he dropped the meat cleaver.
Ethan looked at his hand. It wasn’t bleeding. “It didn’t break the skin.”
“You need to sharpen this thing,” Grendie called out to the skinny guy. Then he swung the knife again before Ethan could even think about retrieving his weapon.
Ethan grabbed a frying pan off the counter, which stuck to a plate, which stuck to a fork. He took a swing at Grendie’s head that fell short, though the fork came loose and almost hit a woman who was standing in the corner.
“He can’t use other weapons!” said the skinny guy.
“That wasn’t in the rules!” said Ethan. He might only get credit for cutting Grendie with the meat cleaver, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t knock him unconscious with a frying pan first.
He took another swing. This time the plate came loose and struck Grendie’s face. It fell to the floor and shattered.
Grendie had previously seemed to be having fun with this whole experience. Based on his expression, that was no longer the case.
He stabbed at Ethan with the butcher knife. Ethan deflected it by using the frying pan as a shield. Grendie lunged with the knife, aiming lower this time, and the tip of the blade tore across Ethan’s side. He cried out and clutched the wound.
“Let’s see it,” said Grendie.
Ethan removed his hand and held up his bloody palm.
“Two to zero,” said Grendie.
Ethan bolted away. He scrambled back around the counter and picked up the meat cleaver. He almost felt like he should just hold out his arm, accept the third and final cut, and hope they’d finally let him leave. But no, he’d keep trying, even if he was quite clearly not going to win this.
Grendie came around the corner, swishing the butcher knife back and forth, trying very successfully to be intimidating.
Ethan backed away.
Then he lost his balance. Somebody had tripped him intentionally. He wanted to protest, but if he could use a frying pan, he had to accept that there was no specific rule about a spectator purposely tripping him.
Ethan landed on something spongy.
He deeply regretted making Grendie so angry. The huge man lumbered toward him, then dropped to his knees, hovering right over him. He wasn’t going to try to kill him, was he? He certainly had a homicidal look on his face.
He slammed the knife down.
Ethan slashed with the meat cleaver.
Grendie’s eyes went wide.
His hand went to his throat.
Ethan had not intended to slash at his neck. It had just been a blind slash, trying to defend himself.
How deep had he cut Grendie?
Blood trickled through Grendie’s fingers and rained down upon Ethan’s chest.
Pretty deep.
Ethan scooted out of the way.
Everybody stared silently as blood continued to spew out between Grendie’s fingers. He dropped the butcher knife. Then he flopped forward.
None of the people in the house moved.
Ethan got up. “It was an accident,” he insisted. “You saw what he was trying to do. He would have killed me.”
Nobody said anything.
“I’m leaving,” said Ethan, cautiously making his way toward the door.
He’d killed somebody. Slashed a man’s throat with a meat cleaver. Accident or not, he’d taken a human life.
He needed to save his complete mental breakdown for later. For now, he just needed to get out of this house.
Everybody just watched him as he continued moving toward the door.
“No,” the skinny guy finally said. “You murdered our friend. You ain’t going anywhere.”
Ethan frantically shook his head. “It wasn’t a murder.”
“Everybody saw it.”
“Good! So everybody saw that I was defending myself!”
“I saw you open up his neck!”
“He was out of control. Somebody call 911.”
Nobody took out their cell phones. It was immediately clear that none of them wanted the police to show up here, even if it was to save their friend.
Grendie was beyond saving, anyway. The pool of blood was expanding rapidly. A plastic wrapper was floating away in it.
Ethan took another step toward the door.
“You stay where you are,” the skinny guy said.
Ethan swung the meat cleaver back and forth in the air. A droplet of blood struck the woman who’d been on his lap.
“We have to kill him, right?” the skinny guy asked the others. “We can’t let him walk on out of here.”
The woman wiped the speck of blood off her face. “Yeah, let’s kill him.”
Rick, Gavin, and Butch sat in the back of the van, listening to the audio feed they were drawing from Ethan’s phone.
“I’m going to try to get permission to pull him out of there,” said Rick.
“They won’t go for it,” said Gavin. “Whatever happens, happens.”
“But that scumbag with the weird eyebrows was supposed to give him the clue. He wasn’t supposed to take a nap, and he wasn’t supposed to start a knife fight. He didn’t follow the instructions.”
Gavin shrugged. “Bad luck for sure. Everybody knew it wasn’t going to be completely fair.”
“No, but we can at least get rid of the uncontrolled elements. The drug dealers are actors. Everybody is fine with that. So why not have the crackhead with the clue be an actor, too? Why have so many variables?”
“You’re mad because it’s your player who’s about to get killed.”
“I’m not mad, I’m frustrated. And I’m frustrated because it’s not necessary. It’s stupid to leave so much up to chance.”
“I guess you should have chosen a more reliable crackhead.”
“I picked somebody within the parameters that I was given.”
“Hey, I agree with you,” said Gavin. “I’m not the one you should be bitching at. Maybe everybody else is having the same problem.”
“Seriously, though, the whole point to this part of the challenge was to see if Ethan would put himself into a dangerous situation to get the next clue. It wasn’t supposed to be a knife fight challenge. What kind of jackass would go take a nap and then make a knife fight part of the deal?”
“A drug addicted jackass, presumably.”
Ethan turned around. A man had emerged from a back room. A very large man in his thirties, well over six feet tall, wearing a white t-shirt with several brown stains on the front. He hadn’t shaved in a while. He had a unibrow, except there was a missing strip just over the edge of his left eye, making it look like he had one really long eyebrow and one really short one. He had quite a belly on him, but his arms were thick.
“Yo, Grendie, this guy is looking for a scavenger hunt clue,” said the skinny guy.
“Then why didn’t somebody wake me up?”
“You didn’t tell us to wake you up.”
“The shit I didn’t! I told Benny to wake me up if somebody came here looking for a clue.”
Some guy, presumably Benny, snapped out of a trance. “Huh? What?”
Grendie walked across the room. The floor didn’t shake with each step, but Ethan could imagine that it did, accompanied by a musical theme. Nobody in the house seemed happy that Grendie was awake. The skinny guy stepped far out of the way.
Ethan was hugely relieved to have finally found somebody who knew what he was talking about, though the sight of Grendie walking right toward him was not one that gave him peace of mind. Ethan couldn’t quite identify the aroma that wafted from him, but anything that could compete with the other foul smells in this place deserved respect.
“You looking for a clue?”
“Yes, sir,” said Ethan.
“I’ll sell it to you.”
“How much?”
“No, I take that back. I’ll fight you for it.”
“I’m not here to fight anybody.”
“Well, fucking duh. I know you didn’t come here to fight me. But you’re here, and I’m here, and when I get woke up out of a sound sleep, I like to fight.”
“I’ll happily buy it from you,” said Ethan.
“Are you deaf? I said I wanted to fight. You want the clue bad enough, you’ll fight me for it.”
“I can’t beat you in a fight,” said Ethan. “I mean that as a compliment.”
“Not in a one-on-one fistfight, no,” said Grendie. “We’ll figure out a way to make it more fair.”
“Fire!” somebody shouted. “Fight each other with lighters and aerosol cans!”
“Do we have any aerosol cans?” Grendie asked.
“I’ll run out and get some right now if you do it.”
“Naw,” said the skinny guy. “We can’t be shooting streams of fire indoors.”
“Well, you could take it outdoors, I guess. That would still be fun to watch.”
“Knives,” said Grendie.
“No,” said Ethan. “I’m not going to have a knife fight with you.”
“Do you want the clue or not?”
“Not bad enough for a knife fight.”
“Oh, I think you do,” said Grendie. “I’m not saying we’ll fight to the death. I get why you’d say no to that. What we’ll do is, the first person to get three cuts on his opponent wins. You win, I give you the clue. I win, you walk out of here with no clue and three cuts. Sound fair?”
Everybody but Ethan reacted with great joy to this idea.
“I’ll get the knives,” said the skinny guy, hurrying over to the kitchen area.
“This party sounded like everybody was having a lot of fun,” said Ethan. “Why mess up the vibe?”
“Oh, there’s no party that can’t be improved with a knife fight!” Grendie smiled, revealing teeth that were unsurprisingly discolored and low in number.
This had to be a joke, right? They weren’t really going to make him participate in a knife fight. Was this an official element of the game, part of the reason he only had a 20% chance to succeed, or was Grendie making up his own rules? Ethan supposed it didn’t matter. Unless Grendie burst out into laughter and said, “Juuuuuuuust kidding,” it appeared that Ethan was going to have his very first knife fight.
The skinny guy returned. He had a butcher knife in one hand and a meat cleaver in the other.
“What the shit is that?” asked Grendie, pointing to the meat cleaver.
The skinny guy looked confused. “You don’t know what a meat cleaver is?”
“I know what one is. It’s not a knife.”
“It’s like a knife. I didn’t think it would be fair if one of you had a great big butcher knife and the other one had some dull butter knife.”
“Why do you even have a meat cleaver? What kind of meat are you cleaving? When was the last time you prepared an actual meal in this place?”
“It was my grandma’s meat cleaver.”
Grendie reached for one of the weapons, but the skinny guy stepped back. “Uh-uh, wait, hold on now. You don’t get to just grab the one you want. It’s gotta be fair. Heads or tails?”
“Heads,” said Grendie.
“I don’t have a coin, but I was thinking tails.” He looked at Ethan. “Which do you want?”
“I want his grandmother’s meat cleaver.”
“Aw, that’s a low class move,” said Grendie, but he didn’t stop the skinny guy from handing Ethan the meat cleaver. Ethan gave it a test swing. He really, really, really did not want to do this.
Grendie took the butcher knife and gave it a test swing as well.
“The rules,” said Grendie. “Slash but don’t stab. Don’t jab your blade into anybody’s eye. Cuts don’t count unless they draw blood. You can quit like a scared little bitch whenever you want, but then you don’t get the clue. Are you clear?”
“I’m clear,” said Ethan.
“All right, then. On the count of three. One...two...”
“Whoa, whoa,” said the skinny guy. “You don’t get to count down your own fight. I’ll do it.”
“Fine.”
“You were also counting in the wrong direction. Should be three, two, one, not one, two, three. I think. Maybe I’m wrong. Your way might have been right. Shit.”
“Just count,” said Grendie.
“One...two...three!”
Grendie let out what sounded like a werewolf howl, then lunged forward with the butcher knife.
14
Tampa, Florida. Two minutes earlier.
“I’m only going to ask you one more time,” said the man in the dark suit. “Where’s my briefcase?”
“I don’t have it,” Harry French insisted. “I’ve never had it. I swear to God, this is all a mistake!”
The man scowled. “Are you saying I’m prone to errors? Are you saying I’ve been given faulty intelligence?”
“I’m not saying anything except that I don’t have your drugs!”
“Drugs? I never said anything about drugs. How do you know the briefcase wasn’t full of collectibles?” He nodded to the bulky man who stood at his side. “Hit him again.”
The bulky man punched Harry in the stomach. He almost fell over this time, but braced himself against his big-screen television.
“I know it was you,” said the man in the dark suit. “I have pictures of you taking it from the drop spot.”
“They’re fake!”
“Oh, they’re fake? I’ve been staring at Photoshopped pictures all this time? Gosh, well, I’m so sorry for this wacky misunderstanding. I guess we’ll be on our way, then.”
The bulky man punched Harry again. This time he did fall.
“I got these pictures from a trusted source. I trust him a hell of a lot more than I trust you. Now, if you’re saying that you can’t get my briefcase back, then I might as well just kill you right now.”
“Please—”
“Please kill you? Put you out of your misery?” He reached into the inside pocket of his suit and took out a pistol. “Don’t be too impatient. I’ve got to get the silencer on here first. We don’t want to disturb your neighbors, right?”
Harry tried to get back to his feet, but lost his balance and fell again.
The man began to screw the silencer onto the barrel of his revolver. “I could’ve had this on the gun already, but I’m doing it now so you know that shit is about to get real. By which I mean, you have one more chance to tell me where my briefcase is.”
“I can get it.”
“I don’t believe you. You were more credible when you said you didn’t know what I was talking about. You swear you can get it?”
“Yes!”
“You’re not just trying to stall for time?”
“No!”
“All right. I’m still going to shoot you—I’m just not going to kill you or incapacitate you. Four flesh wounds. One across each leg, and one across each arm. You’ll bleed but I’ll take you to a guy who can patch you up. He’s not licensed but he’s good. You ready?”
“Please don’t shoot me,” said Harry.
“You’re getting a pretty sweet deal. I wouldn’t complain if I were you. We’ll do the left leg first.” The man crouched down and placed the barrel of the pistol against Harry’s upper leg. “It’s going to go in here...” He tapped the other side of Harry’s leg with his index finger. “...and come out there. Which sounds really bad, and kind of is, but it won’t go deep. It’ll stay near the surface. It’ll hit the bookcase when it comes out. I don’t want to mess up your books, so how about you turn around—like this—yeah, like that—see, now it’ll hit the wall. All set? Say yes or I’ll shoot you in the head.”
“Yes,” said Harry.
The man squeezed the trigger. Harry screamed.
“I apologize,” said the man. “I got the angle wrong on that. It’s okay. We’ve got three more chances to get it right.”
Grendie’s first swing with the butcher knife missed, but not by much.
His second swing, which he was able to get in before Ethan did his first, slashed Ethan across the left arm, crisscrossing the cut that was already there and slicing right through the bandage.
Ethan winced in pain.
“First cut already!” said Grendie, holding up his arms in victory. “It’s like you don’t even want the clue.”
“Hold up, does that count as one or two?” asked the skinny guy. “He’s bleeding on both sides of the bandage. I think he needs to take it off so we can see if it’s one continuous cut or if the bandage blocked part of it.”
“What the shit kind of loopholes are you trying to find?” asked Grendie. “It’s one cut.”
“Just trying to help you out.”
“You think I need your help? I don’t need to win this on a technicality. Go somewhere else. Nobody appointed you referee.”
The skinny guy hung his head and stepped out of the way.
“You ready?” Grendie asked Ethan.
“Yeah.”
They both lunged at each other at the same time. Both missed.
“Nice one,” said Grendie. “I felt the air swish.”
Grendie slashed at him again. This swing would have, if it hit its mark, cut Ethan from nipple to nipple. He stepped back out of the way and tripped on one of the hundreds of pieces of garbage on the floor. He reached out to keep his balance, grabbing the woman who’d been on his lap. They both struck the floor.
Grendie laughed. “I’ll let you get up.”
Ethan got up. Something was stuck to the back of his shirt but he didn’t reach back there to find out what it was.
“No more freebies,” Grendie told him. “We’re playing for real now.”
“He grabbed my tit,” said the woman. “That’s ten bucks.”
“He grabbed your arm,” said Grendie. “I saw it.”
“Then you weren’t watching very close.”
Grendie lunged at Ethan with the butcher knife. Missed again. There was no rule saying that Ethan had to stay in the same general area, so he hurried past a few people into the kitchen area.
Grendie followed.
Ethan quickly spun around, hoping that Grendie’s momentum would take him right into the blade.
It didn’t.
Grendie swung the knife. The blade slashed across Ethan’s knuckles and he dropped the meat cleaver.
Ethan looked at his hand. It wasn’t bleeding. “It didn’t break the skin.”
“You need to sharpen this thing,” Grendie called out to the skinny guy. Then he swung the knife again before Ethan could even think about retrieving his weapon.
Ethan grabbed a frying pan off the counter, which stuck to a plate, which stuck to a fork. He took a swing at Grendie’s head that fell short, though the fork came loose and almost hit a woman who was standing in the corner.
“He can’t use other weapons!” said the skinny guy.
“That wasn’t in the rules!” said Ethan. He might only get credit for cutting Grendie with the meat cleaver, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t knock him unconscious with a frying pan first.
He took another swing. This time the plate came loose and struck Grendie’s face. It fell to the floor and shattered.
Grendie had previously seemed to be having fun with this whole experience. Based on his expression, that was no longer the case.
He stabbed at Ethan with the butcher knife. Ethan deflected it by using the frying pan as a shield. Grendie lunged with the knife, aiming lower this time, and the tip of the blade tore across Ethan’s side. He cried out and clutched the wound.
“Let’s see it,” said Grendie.
Ethan removed his hand and held up his bloody palm.
“Two to zero,” said Grendie.
Ethan bolted away. He scrambled back around the counter and picked up the meat cleaver. He almost felt like he should just hold out his arm, accept the third and final cut, and hope they’d finally let him leave. But no, he’d keep trying, even if he was quite clearly not going to win this.
Grendie came around the corner, swishing the butcher knife back and forth, trying very successfully to be intimidating.
Ethan backed away.
Then he lost his balance. Somebody had tripped him intentionally. He wanted to protest, but if he could use a frying pan, he had to accept that there was no specific rule about a spectator purposely tripping him.
Ethan landed on something spongy.
He deeply regretted making Grendie so angry. The huge man lumbered toward him, then dropped to his knees, hovering right over him. He wasn’t going to try to kill him, was he? He certainly had a homicidal look on his face.
He slammed the knife down.
Ethan slashed with the meat cleaver.
Grendie’s eyes went wide.
His hand went to his throat.
Ethan had not intended to slash at his neck. It had just been a blind slash, trying to defend himself.
How deep had he cut Grendie?
Blood trickled through Grendie’s fingers and rained down upon Ethan’s chest.
Pretty deep.
Ethan scooted out of the way.
Everybody stared silently as blood continued to spew out between Grendie’s fingers. He dropped the butcher knife. Then he flopped forward.
None of the people in the house moved.
Ethan got up. “It was an accident,” he insisted. “You saw what he was trying to do. He would have killed me.”
Nobody said anything.
“I’m leaving,” said Ethan, cautiously making his way toward the door.
He’d killed somebody. Slashed a man’s throat with a meat cleaver. Accident or not, he’d taken a human life.
He needed to save his complete mental breakdown for later. For now, he just needed to get out of this house.
Everybody just watched him as he continued moving toward the door.
“No,” the skinny guy finally said. “You murdered our friend. You ain’t going anywhere.”
Ethan frantically shook his head. “It wasn’t a murder.”
“Everybody saw it.”
“Good! So everybody saw that I was defending myself!”
“I saw you open up his neck!”
“He was out of control. Somebody call 911.”
Nobody took out their cell phones. It was immediately clear that none of them wanted the police to show up here, even if it was to save their friend.
Grendie was beyond saving, anyway. The pool of blood was expanding rapidly. A plastic wrapper was floating away in it.
Ethan took another step toward the door.
“You stay where you are,” the skinny guy said.
Ethan swung the meat cleaver back and forth in the air. A droplet of blood struck the woman who’d been on his lap.
“We have to kill him, right?” the skinny guy asked the others. “We can’t let him walk on out of here.”
The woman wiped the speck of blood off her face. “Yeah, let’s kill him.”
Rick, Gavin, and Butch sat in the back of the van, listening to the audio feed they were drawing from Ethan’s phone.
“I’m going to try to get permission to pull him out of there,” said Rick.
“They won’t go for it,” said Gavin. “Whatever happens, happens.”
“But that scumbag with the weird eyebrows was supposed to give him the clue. He wasn’t supposed to take a nap, and he wasn’t supposed to start a knife fight. He didn’t follow the instructions.”
Gavin shrugged. “Bad luck for sure. Everybody knew it wasn’t going to be completely fair.”
“No, but we can at least get rid of the uncontrolled elements. The drug dealers are actors. Everybody is fine with that. So why not have the crackhead with the clue be an actor, too? Why have so many variables?”
“You’re mad because it’s your player who’s about to get killed.”
“I’m not mad, I’m frustrated. And I’m frustrated because it’s not necessary. It’s stupid to leave so much up to chance.”
“I guess you should have chosen a more reliable crackhead.”
“I picked somebody within the parameters that I was given.”
“Hey, I agree with you,” said Gavin. “I’m not the one you should be bitching at. Maybe everybody else is having the same problem.”
“Seriously, though, the whole point to this part of the challenge was to see if Ethan would put himself into a dangerous situation to get the next clue. It wasn’t supposed to be a knife fight challenge. What kind of jackass would go take a nap and then make a knife fight part of the deal?”
“A drug addicted jackass, presumably.”
