XIII: The Tale's Territory
Jacelyn
The thirty-minute break started off being indecent by losing my mouth. So unfair! I wasn't lying, and they know that Lola is a crook. Ramen waves his hand, and bathrooms appear. I don't have to go. Maddie and Laura are keeping me company. Well, talking to each other, leaving me out. My God, this feels like the times when my friends ignored my presence. We wouldn't be here if it weren't for me being an attention-craze rocky road. Marina didn't hesitate to go to the women's restroom. Lola screwed off, probably trying to lick a stalagmite like it's a popsicle.
Maddie turns toward me and does hand signals that I can't muster. I have my eyes, nose, body, and eyebrows to express my language visually. I tilt my head and raise my brows, acting like a puppy dog wondering what my owner is saying because they are not saying 'treat.'
"She is speaking sign language, Jacelyn," Laura explains. "Want me to translate for you?"
I nod. I don't want to assume Maddie is trying to use a Naruto power move, or sibling code, or telling me that Drea, Jaymie, and Ramen put snakes in the toilet.
Laura looks at Maddie. Maddie makes weird hand motions again while Laura says, "Have you seen Marina? She has been gone for a while."
I shrug my shoulders; that's my translation for, I don't know.
Maddie signs again. Laura translates, "Why did Ramen remove your mouth when Lola is lying constantly?"
I raise my wrists, hands, and shoulders into the air. I then try to make the signs on what they mean. I am trying to say that they maybe want to doom herself by gesturing where Lola went before wrapping my right arm around itself with a small hole and the other hand diving into it.
"Girl, you called Lola hydrocolonic," Maddie deadpans, sounding very serious. Laura looks at her oddly. Is she joking?
That sounds about right.
Maddie turns to Laura and asks, "What? Even that method won't get rid of the shit inside herself?"
"The poop metastasized out of the colon and into Lola's brain," Laura goes calmly, almost sounding like a doctor.
"How does that happen?"
"Lola's lies and crap get so saturated, yet she swallows her fecal vomit to hold the crap within her. As a result, poop leaks out of her intestines and leaks into the bloodstream. It's called pooemia– poo meaning feces, emia meaning presence in blood–"
"Okay there, Chubbyemu, calm down. You might be telling what will happen if Jacelyn's colon fails, and the only way out is up, but she doesn't have a mouth–"
I pale while my mind goes into that situation. I will be in pain because my colon has stopped working. Then, the horrible feeling of me trying to vomit fecal matter, yet I have no mouth, so the only way out is through the nose, my shit tears open a new mouth, or I need to swallow it back down. Yuck! Yuck! Yuuuccckk!
"--that is the grossest shit that you ever said, Laura!" Maddie comments.
"I know," Laura squeaks out.
That is the darkest thing I ever heard coming out of Laura. These trials are bringing the worst out of us. I bet other people who heard her got sick to their stomachs too.
"Nah, I find that interesting." All three of us gulp. Hard. We tense up, and our eyes widen in fear as we turn to find Jaymie standing near us, looking down at us. The contestants nearby us look at us in complete fear. They don't know her, but she and her buddies are torturing us so much that it is not funny.
Don't! Get! Any! Ideas! Jaymie!
None of us utter a word. Jaymie doesn't look angry, cold, or malicious. She seems collected– I hope. She lifts her chin at me. "Jacelyn, a word with you."
I quickly get up without hesitation. I become lightheaded and dizzy. No questions asked. The joke's on you; I can't speak. My friends look at me with complete worry. Their minds are begging not to kill me. Funny, I am the one who brought them here, and they don't want me dead. How so? How do they still care about me?
"Yeah, kill that ho!" Lola shouts from the other side of the cave.
Jaymie and I lour at Lola, who has blended into the crowd. Jaymie looks back at me. "Ignore her," she tells me before resuming walking. At least she is not holding my hand like a sick love tale. She takes me to the end, right next to the cliff. Drea and Ramen are looking down at us. I see Ramen wave his hand and feel my lips pop back into place.
I massage my lips, somewhat thankful but still upset. "Why did Ramen do that?"
Jaymie doesn't answer.
I continue to ask, "Where's Marina? What do you want?"
She doesn't answer. Her face looks pitiful at best. She invited me to talk, but now she won't talk. Come on! Talk!
I know one thing that might get her talking– Ash. I question, almost interrogating, "Do you regret what you did to my friends? Other people? Me?" I put my hands against my chest, showing my hurt. "What would Ash think if she saw this?"
"Ash is dead, so she has no say," Jaymie states point blank.
"Even when she is alive, she had no say," I point out, "a little rude."
She grows angry. She sways her hand in a slice motion. "Rude?! What you girls did for months is nothing compared to this!"
"As much as I say my friends and I deserve this, but comparing our trauma to hers is just wrong. I'm sorry for what I did. Laura always feels sorry, and Maddie also regrets it. Lola? I don't know about her, probably no."
She grits through her teeth, "It's too late to say sorry."
"Better than never!" I rebuttal. "What would you be doing if Ash is still present?"
"You wouldn't be here."
"What would you be doing if Ash is alive?" I ask. "Killin' people here with Drea and Ramen?"
She stays quiet, only glaring. Her silence is pissing me off even more. I clench my fists.
I growl, lower than she can, as I say, "A contestant is here because she had to kill her boyfriend out of self-defense. You seem like a girl to defend yourself, Jaymie. Something is going on here. You are either ignorant or a lot more terrible than Ash. What do Drea and Ramen want for those who don't deserve torture to be here? Figure that out before you really beyond screwed over, more fucked than us, more fucked that you are going to tortuous pits of Hell." I turn my back against her. "Think about that, Jaymie." I then walk away and head back to the group.
"You're okay! And, your mouth's back!" Laura beams. Maddie sighs in relief as I sit down.
"What did she discuss with you? Maddie ask.
I take a long inhale and roll my eyes, trying to blow out my frustration smoke that I have within me. "Still, a bitch," I go.
We hear boots walking to us. We see Marina with a smile. "Back." She sits down right next to me. "The line was long."
"How many people have to take a dump?" Laura asks.
"What's with you with shit lately?" I ask, raising the brow, almost cringing. "Are you gaining a shit fet–"
Laura cuts in, "No!" She shakes her head.
Marina informs, "Some girl did have IBS and menstruation in there. Poor girl is quietly sobbing, begging for this to end."
"What's IBS?" Maddie asks, scratching her head.
"Irritable Bowel Syndrome. It's either a diagnosis to dismiss symptoms, results show nothing wrong with you but still are in pain, underlying problem, or long-term effects of having a stomach illness."
"Is that why you are talking about bowel movements?" I ask her.
"Nah, Laura shakes her head, "just our discussion lead to it."
I turn to Marina and ask, "So, what will the next round be like?"
Her smile drops, looks at us dead in the eye, and says, "One of them will be the opponents this round." All of us turn pale again. We know who she is referring to– it is either Jaymie, Drea, or Ramen. She warns, "You better follow my lead this round, or else you'll die."
Maddie turns back to Laura and advises, "You better not save Lola this time."
Laura gives a nervous smile. "I won't," she announces. "I'm going to pretend that she's a hallucination by the enemy."
"Good," Maddie nods in approval with a serious look.
Drea lets out a loud demonic laughter that bounces the walls of our cave chambers. It's her, I thought. It's her turn to show her types of punishment. Her laughter is mixed in with a spider hissing. Everything fades to black. I don't see Ramen's wave. My friends and I distracted ourselves to face the issue that we were facing. We didn't hear any rules or tasks. That might be on us; however, the trial's leaders' voices shut us up.
We emerge, sitting on a forested ground. It is slightly foggy and darker, and the woods are mostly pine trees. Few trees are standing tall and proud. Luckily, we are with each other with no Lola in sight. We look around. This forest is so quiet. Our breaths are amplified. No animals, no wind blowing through the trees.
Then, we heard it– a woman's screech meld in with an elk cry and a deer roar. "What is that sound?" Laura asks very quietly.
I was wrong. Drea sounds like a spider woman getting angry at someone trying to steal and eat her eggs. Ramen is always quiet, never yelling or roaring. It leaves one person in the picture: Jaymie. Jaymie had a similar pitch when she roared at us when we first entered the trials. It's the same girl who talked to me minutes earlier who is the one trying to kill us.
I stare in the direction of Jaymie's vocals echoed from. I find myself unable to move, only concentrating on that noise. The monsters in these rounds are usually strangers that scare us, like in a haunted house; however, we face a monster we've known before. She would do the same memo, trying to cause pain and suffering as much as possible.
Maddie tugs on my shoulder, knocking me off balance. "Jace, we need to climb high and quickly!" She tells me.
I snap out of my daze. Maddie grips my hand as we approach the pine tree closest to us. Laura and Marina are already climbing. Laura stops and looks at us, and she quickly gestures to us to come over here and hurry up. She has panic all over her face.
I waste no time climbing. Maddie, on the other hand, struggles to climb. Her free hand is shaking. I look down and ask, "Maddie, are you okay?"
"I-I'm try-trying," Maddie replies, shaking. Her focus on climbing the tree requires more focus than a person with two arms. We should've thought this out.
Her hand slips, and she falls from the tree. She gasps in surprise and lands on her bottom, knocking more wind out. She pants and relaxes on the ground. Marina looks down at her for a moment before looking back at us. "You girls finish your climb. I'll be back!" She informs us before letting go, dropping meters in height. I watch her pick Maddie up.
"What are you doing?" Maddie whispers. Marina shushes her.
Marina walks up to a tree, and her hand goes into her jacket. She pulls out an amulet– a talisman made of yellow metal with red symbolic engravings. She raises it to the tree, and it glows blue. A portal opens. We hear an agonizing cry from the distance. Laura and I wince in that direction. It is hard to see from the fog.
Laura looks up and points to an area where leaves from another tree cover a section of our tree, "Jace, we need to get up there!"
"Got it!" I nod before resuming climbing, but I keep looking down. A portal has opened at the bottom of the tree. She gives her amulet to Maddie.
"Whatever you do, don't drop it or break it," Marina warns her while her finger taps Maddie's collarbone.
"Alright! Thank you," Maddie takes the amulet and enters the portal. The portal closes behind it. Marina resumes climbing the tree, and we are already at the branch. The branch is large and sturdy enough, but Marina goes higher to help prevent our branch from breaking. It is still covered in leaves. She is behind us and five inches higher.
I ask Marina, "What was that?"
"A token from my second job," Marina explains.
"Sec-second job?" I stutter, baffled, "in-in Russia?"
"One of their sites is in Russia," she states, putting her hair in a ponytail.
"What does that token do?"
Most importantly, how is she allowed to have it?
"The token gives off many abilities. One of them is to go through walls and objects. The bonus is that if you are in a large object, you can hide there until the coast is clear."
I ask again, bewildered, "Where do you work?"
"I will tell you later," she tells me. She presses her fingertips against her mouth.
Distorted screams pick up again. Laura and I look to the west. We see a contestant emerge from the fog, but something is off about her. She is covered in bruises and gashes. She also looks very pale and skinny. Her eyes are sunken in. She is hunched over. She stops in front of our tree but not looking up. Laura covers her mouth and takes a deep breath.
We hear a guy angrily shouting in the distance. The contestant screams distorted again before charging faster than a human. Why are some contestants monsters if Jaymie is the monster in this round?
"Don't you dare fucking eat him!" I hear a woman shriek not five seconds later.
Cannibals. How predictable. Yawn.
"The people are turning into monsters," Laura notes, almost freaking out. "It's making them eat others." She shakes violently and puts her hand against their head. "Will they be alright?! Are we going to turn?!"
"You are not going to turn," Marina says with an eye roll.
"How do you know?!"
I quickly warn, "Keep your voice down."
Marina rolls her eyes again and groans. "You haven't seen the extent and limits to Jaymie's abilities. Jaymie looks like she is based on two legends– Indian and Filipino."
Marina quickly slams her fingertips to her mouth, urging us to stay quiet. Laura and I look down again. Something else emerges from the fog. It is a creature taller than all three of us. It is wearing Jaymie's dress. The skin is whiter than a sheet. Their fingers extend into claws, and their tongue leaks out of its mouth. The ears are pointy. Their veins glow orange as if something is still hidden within the creature. Horns grow out of its forehead, along with antlers sprouting from the sides of its head. Its physique is very, very skinny, bones sticking out. The hair is white as its skin and goes down past mid-back. Its eyes are still fiery like Jaymie's but not afraid to show the evil within fully. A small glimpse of the eyes gives me goosebumps and drains all hope from my body. Laura covers her mouth again as it swings its head. Three bloody scratches go down both of its eyes. The creature makes a low grunting noise before moving.
Laura and I stay silent, in disbelief of who or what we just saw. Jaymie is no longer the girl we saw in school; she is also not the creepy girl we saw on the cliff. She was this beast. The only clues of her were Jaymie's dress and the fiery eyes.
Laura softly whispers, "Jaymie looks like a wen–"
Marina cuts her off by side-kicking her cheek. Laura mutters, "Ow," as her body whips around. Her ribs hit the tree.
"Ma'am, are you trying to make Jaymie find you?" Marina angrily asks.
Laura raises, gripping her ribs in pain, hissing tone. "No. All I was saying was that–"
"I heard what you said!" Marina spat. "You know the legend but don't know the lesson not to say its name?!"
"What do you mean?" Laura dumbfoundedly asks.
"Saying its name attracts them," she says between her teeth.
"Sorry," Laura mumbles. She speaks louder, "You didn't have to kick me and risk me falling out of the tree."
"I know that Jacelyn won't shut your mouth. If you complete the word, you will give away our location. I might as well kick you off, so she goes to you, not the rest of us."
"Good point," Laura reluctantly agrees, regretting what she did.
The funniest part about this whole round is that it is not scary. There is no task other than survival, hiding, and not dying. It becomes rather boring once you get used to the screams, which I did (My God!). Laura, Marina, and I make small chats until Marina gives us a signal that a ravaged contestant or Jaymie goes by to search for survivors. The more times this happened, the more unbothered by it we become. At the back of my mind, I hope one of the screams is from Lola. She probably pulled the same stunt back at the farm by climbing the tree and sitting out.
We also watch a contestant with one eye get tackled by Jaymie. Finally, some action to watch. Her claws and teeth sharpen, and her tongue slices him up. He yells and begs for mercy, but she ignores him. His body starts to sizzle from the heat from her orange veins. As much as Laura wants to look away, she watches without a sound. Marina observes with no emotion as if she is used to this. Jaymie slurps up the skin, bones, muscles, and tendons and licks the blood off the bones like a sucker. She lets out that groan again before speeding away.
"That's one way to get KFC," I utter.
Laura blows air out her lips violently. Instead of yelling at me for saying that's horrible, she howls with laughter. She starts to make me chuckle. Marina watches us lose our minds, neither laughing, angry, or smiling. She expects this stuff from us. Usually, Laura is the one who scolds us with jokes or comments, but now, she is taking it to heart. Yeah, the darkness is coming out of her too. This could be the surface of it, and it might blow into something dangerous down the line. "Glad that my mom was banned from KFC," she boasts between laughs.
The world melts away, back into a cave. All of us are standing in a circle, surrounding three contestants. All of them are very young and still in that state.
"Ree, Kaden, Roy, are you okay?!" I hear Tevin shout.
Their bodies start convulsing. All three of them are shrieking as this black blood oozes out of every orifice. They start to glow orange as if it is a ritual that burns and cleanses them. I see Drea laughing from up there. Ramen and Jaymie stand next to each other. Jaymie is now in her normal form.
Ree's, Kaden's, and Roy's bodies start to warp back into their normal shape and form as the final remnants of the toxin leave their bodies. Ree immediately collapses on her knees, breaks down crying, and vomits up body parts that she had consumed, causing Kaden and Roy to get sick as well. Kaden is projectile vomiting. We all stand back so we do not get hit by this pandemonium.
"All I could do is watch!" Ree cries, pulling her hair out. "My body and mind was controlled by something else."
After the sickness fiasco is over, Ree, Kaden, and Roy are in a sobbing and anxiety attack mess. Ramen waves his hand, and the mess is gone. Thank goodness we don't have to see that, fall in it, ...or use it as a slip and side. No promises, I won't stop.
"Here is your token, Marina," Maddie whispers to Marina as she hands back the token.
"Thanks," Marina whispers back as she returns the token to her jacket's pocket.
"Why didn't you let us be inside a tree with Maddie?" I ask, slightly fussing.
Marina retorts, "Not enough room. I can't give you a free way out. You girls can climb, not Maddie."
"How did you sneak that token into the Bully Trials?"
"I'll explain to you later."
This leaves so many questions. How did she smuggle that into the Bully Trials? She appears to know Ramen and Drea and can establish information about the rounds, yet why is she fighting for her survival just like us? Like we have a connection to Jaymie, Marina knows Ramen and Drea. Perhaps, we can use the information she gives us to help us get far enough or win.
The circle disperses, going into different ends of the cave, some going to help the poor three back on their feet. Maddie, Marina, Laura, and I just stay here, talking.
"That is the highest kill count thus far," Marina states, "eighteen. That makes sixty-three casualties."
"That explains why the cave is starting to look more spacious," Maddie comments.
"Which means we are almost done," Laura says happily. She stretching. "We are almost done."
"Hey, girls!" I hear Lola's fake cheery voice as she walks to our group. Maddie and Laura are giving the 'oh shit' look. Not seeing her that round was fun, and we are now back to our drama special.
"GOD FUCKING DAMN IT!" I shriek at the top of my lungs, enraged beyond what I felt. My words shake the walls of the cave. Lola tilts her head, confused and hurt. I snap my head towards Jaymie, who is looking in my direction. Drea and Ramen are too. I point to her and scream, "YOU DIDN'T KILL HER! YOU FUCKING FAILED! UNLIKE ASH, YOU FAILED YOUR ASSIGNMENT! JUST KILL HER ALREADY!"
Skeletons In Our Closet
1. Ace took her time researching the legends. She was warned not to say or write their name because it would draw their attention. Ace lives close to the woods in the area mostly cold. She told Jamie that when she was in the bathroom, having a flare-up, she heard feet stomping in the tub and saw the spirit appear. She ignored it and was gone after a few days. Its name would be cut off, censored, or changed to minimize attraction. Ace's house is already haunted, and she doesn't want Jamie's to get unwanted visitors.
2. The chapter was originally supposed to be all serious and spooky. Jamie wanted to add comical relief to it because the friend group has been in some rounds, so they are getting desensitized.
3. The last bit with Jacelyn wasn't in the outline, but Jacelyn is learning what she did was wrong while she is getting pissed at Jaymie.
4. Yes, there is a Chubbyemu reference in there. Jamie and Ace love his channel.
5. What do you think about Marina's connection to Drea and Ramen?
6. What would Ash think about Jaymie's actions?
7. No music this time. Enjoy the ambience.