✔️ Online Horror Show | 🥇 Ambys Awards Top Picks 2023

[One] For The Money

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Darkness was all he could see. Screams were all he could hear. The air was suffocating. The last memory that floated in his mind before this dreadful place was of his body hitting the ground.

"HELP," people yelled from everywhere, their voices were scratchy, packed with fear and agony.

"What is this?" the boy said as he slowly regained his consciousness. "Help!"

He stood up, pounding the narrow walls of his dark prison. His arms barely stretched, confined in a cramped space. His blows barely made a sound, more like beats, racing with his own heartbeats.

"Where am I? Get me out of here!"

His prison moved automatically then stopped suddenly.

A woman asked a person in a nearby prison, "Money, Strength, or Luck? Pick one now."

The person cried. "What do you mean?"

The woman firmly said, "Don't ask questions. Just answer, or you'll die."

But the frightened man kept asking more questions. "What are those options?"

"Dying, it is."

"No, wait! Why is it so hot here? No! AAAAAHH."

The man's painful cries mixed with the sounds of blazes. It didn't end until a smell of burnt meat arose with occasional crusty sounds.

The prison moved again. Now, it was the boy's turn to choose.

Panic swelled up inside his guts, twisting and churning. He became hysteric. The faster he breathed and the more he punched, the worse his claustrophobia grew. He felt like a mouse trapped in a cage full of cats. A way out of this furnace was all he was thinking about.

"Money, Strength, or Luck? Pick one now."

"Money!" the boy immediately answered.

"Money, it is."

The prison moved, then stopped. And moved, then stopped. And moved, then stopped. Until it quit moving.

A voice on a speaker silenced the tortured sounds:

"Dear contestants. Listen carefully. I will only say this once."

Other than the faint sounds of crying, no one dared to speak. The trapped visitors were listening, especially the claustrophobic boy.

"Soon, the iron boxes you're in will open. When that happens, do not lift your feet off the platforms or even move them. Dare to ignore this warning and... well, let's just say that the consequences are deadly."

The boy gasped as he feared for his life. His palms steadily slipped down the walls while his panic rose and disrupted his breathing.

Then, just like that, the man on the speaker ordered:

"Begin!"

The walls of the rectangular box screeched as they fell, revealing a slim teenager of petite size who was scared out of his mind. He was trembling, yet he didn't move his legs, obeying the speaker's commands.

He folded his arms around him as if to protect himself from the three pairs of eyes in front of him.

There were three judges, sitting behind a desk connected to a larger design; a square building reached up to the ceiling where bright lights illuminated the large, stadium-like field. There were also three judges behind every one of the four walls of the building, studying other people scattered all around the place, but the boy could only see his judges and the ones to the left and right of them.

A man's uncontrollable screams came far away from the boy to the right. The boy turned his head just in time to see the man lifting his leg to step off of the platform and...

BOOM!

The man exploded.

The boy covered up his head from the flying body parts.

The judges laughed as the screams of the people raised.

The boy slowly peeked to see a big splash of blood in the platform where the man used to be. His breath hitched in his throat, heaving his chest and shaking his little body. He stared down at the levitated, metal ground he was standing on and his face paled as he realized that that could happen to him too.

He snapped his head to the left when he heard a woman hysterically shouting in the platform in front of the left judges.

"WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED?" she shrieked while covering her head. "WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?"

"DON'T," the boy extended his palm and yelled at her when she attempted to move her legs. Despite the terror that was eating down his voice, he managed to say, "Don't leave that platform. A man just died because he got off of it."

She stopped moving when she learned about what happened. She couldn't have known about it because the judges' square building was blocking her view since it was in the middle of the stadium. All the people on the platforms were facing the judges of each wall of that building.

The judges were still laughing until the man in the speaker said:

"Well, now you know what happens when you ignore the rules."

The man in the speaker was one of the boy's judges, the one in the middle. He had frizzy white hair that was a little longer than the other judges. His hand was hovering on top of a board with many buttons that were all glowing red except for one; it was the one that belonged to the man who just died.

"You simply... explode."

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Money, Strength, or Luck. What would you choose?