Battle of the Killers

62 | Deep Thoughts & Fast Food

LAYLA. Her face blinked in my mind, consuming all my thoughts until Fee popped in, clogging all my senses until I let out a long agonizing breath, letting everything slip away for a second.

Thick rivulets of scalding water sloshed over my head from the square shower nozzle, seeping down my back before pooling at my ankles. I leaned my forehead against the tiled wall, embracing the warmth and peacefulness before my mind became bombarded with more racing thoughts again.

I couldn't stop thinking about the events from earlier. Layla was dead. Truly gone. The image of her corpse lingered in my retinas, and it wasn't because I was in shock. She wasn't the first dead body I've seen — my brother's corpse popped my first-dead-body cherry.

And, since being on this stupid show, I've seen tons of people die. I've sort of become numb to the whole dead-body-murder-thing, but when it came to Layla, everything felt surreal for some reason.

Maybe because it happened so fast. Just hours before she was ranting and screaming, and now she was cold and dead on the floor of my room. And Fee, what the hell was he doing with that bag? Did he kill her? Could it be that simple?

The soft tugging coming from my left side told me it wasn't so cut and dry.

I wanted to confront Fee about his filthy appearance, but Khan said we should wait and regroup with everyone else first and get their take on it.

So, we went back to my room and grabbed the rest of our allies and went to Khan's room to relax, eat some food and discuss everything.

When we got there, I immediately went to the shower. No one questioned me about how I got so dirty, so I never offered up an explanation. No reason to bring attention to something they didn't need to know about anyway.

But that secret passageway.... there was food containers in there so it must not

was it a secret place that the creators didn't even know about? Probably not. After seeing all those wires, someone had to be down there to put them in. That area must not be off-limits though because Jookie would've probably brought it up when he saw me earlier.

And the way he'd been acting, offering me up as a special slaughter prize for everyone, he'd probably enjoy disciplining me, so the area must be free game. I'm not gonna tell anyone else about it yet though, not until I investigated it more.

My soaked hands slicked back my hair, letting the droplets streak down my ears and chin in long ribbons. Once the water turned cold, I shut it off and dried myself with a towel before wrapping it around my body.

I sat next to my dirty clothes on the floor, my knee bumping against Layla's journal. My fingertips grazed the worn leather cover, electric shooting up my tips.

Sighing, I opened the journal to the first entry, which talked about her second day in the house. She went on and on about the hellish game itself and how everything and everyone reeked of death, evilness and the devil. The only person she liked at that time was me; she thought I was nice and that I added a bit of humanity to the house, and she felt like we had some connection.