Chapter - 19

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UNTYING THE KNOTS

"You mean, you killed Maddy, and she was your childhood fiance?" Evan repeated, emphasizing each word he said. 

The recorder was on, and he wanted a clearcut confession to be recorded in the voice of the criminal himself. 

Mason nodded slightly with tears of guilt rolling down his face. 

"I killed Maddy, my childhood fiancee, the love of my life, the one I was going to get married to in a few months." Mason wept, hurt encompassing his voice.

I swallowed a ball of tears. 

Why would he do that? 

"Even though I know you have the right to not talk about anything in the absence of your lawy--" 

"Lawyer. I am not filing a case. I just confessed in front of you, dude! Don't make this any harsher for me. I am willing to take every punishment you have for me. This is the least I can do to keep myself sane." He pleaded, interrupting Evan's talk. 

"Fine," Evan sighed. 

Turning the record off, he bent forward on the table, placing both his hands on it with fingers entangled. 

"I have some questions for you. And we are doing this off-record," Evan pointed towards the recorder, which he had just switched off. "Is it okay, eh?" 

"I'm fine with it," replied Mason with a nod of approval. 

"Good," Evan appreciated with a stern face. "The first and most obvious question is, why did you do it? What was your motive?" Evan interrogated. 

"It was accidental. I didn't mean to do it." He denied shaking his head in desperation. "What happened is she called me to meet at Kaslo Park, as we always used to. But unexpectedly I got another insisting me to tell her to meet near the old office. I agreed as I wanted to keep going through the game. He threatened to disqualify me from it." Mason narrated.

"Wait, what game are you talking about?" Evan demanded, giving dubious looks. Wrinkles started gathering on his flawless forehead while his eyebrows were raised.

"The game of murders and secrets. Don't you know about it, eh?" He turned towards me and raised a brow. 

"What's up with her?" Evan asked as soon as his gaze lifted up to my uneasy face. 

"You started that game too, right?" He inquired, completely ignoring Evan for a second. 

"I don't understand. What are you trying to get at?" I was really clueless as to where he was pointing. 

What game is he talking about? 

"The one whose dices were rolled once again in the Murder Party." He added, and I felt the earth slipping down from my feet. 

He continued telling me about that game. According to him, the game was built in a series of events. These events, if once set in motion, had an intimate impact on its players. 

All of the students who participated in it at the party, including Mason, Maddy, Janice, Grace, Hannah and I, were a part of it now. Even though we didn't realize it earlier, the knots started untying once he narrated the sequence of events every gamer has to go through. 

The first was of truth-based questions. We passed this stage when we were at the party. The game was schematic and followed the pattern in which the truth bits were answered.  

Hannah was the first to answer the question from the bowl. Next went Grace, the last being me. Following the pattern, the tasks were landed on each one of us. If we failed to do it, another player might succeed and have a task done on you. 

Hannah was told to leak the personal news of the student from the butcher's family. She ignored it, and her harness was broken by some other gamer who just went by completing his task. 

Next was Grace, who was told to attend an inappropriate gathering with her new crewmates. She denied it, leaving their house at midnight. In turn, for her refusal, another player kidnapped her and did a task on her. 

And lastly, it was me. It hit me at my nerve. Using Grace's kidnap as an excuse, he made me do a task. And I did. I couldn't ignore it. Unlike Hannah and Grace, my situation was more abrupt. 

Nevertheless, once a person passed this stage of Tasks, he ascended towards the next phase, which was the worst. It was a dare to murder a real-life human being in the worst possible manner if you had what it got to ascend further as a winner. 

But, there was something strange in this murder plan. They planned on killing someone in a disguised Halloween costume. This stage was called A Murder In Disguise. Just one murder, and then you have what it takes to be declared a winner. 

Mason arrived at the spot where he had also invited Maddy. However, before Maddy arrived, Mason found a trunk full of his favourite special wine decorated with his name. Unable to resist the temptation, he drank almost two and a half bottles of it, and when Maddy arrived, he had lost his senses. 

He got a call from someone. He just listened to it without replying with an answer. After he ended the phone call, the animal inside him provoked, and he held Maddy by her neck, making her choke on her breaths. 

Without thinking twice, he hurt her at various spots kicking and slapping his attempts to get free before finally strangling her to death. 

Leaving her in the torn-off cottage, he fled. Cowardly, he waited for someone to discover her corpse. And when the day arrived, finally he couldn't take the guilt anymore. He saw Hannah and Grace interrogating people about Maddy. So with the last part of conscience left inside him, he approached us to let the truth out. 

He also revealed that the phone number on Maddy's mobile was his.

Remember the one named gibberish! It was Mason. 

And now here we were, disclosed by this whole stupid master game circling between the youngsters, provoking their instincts and degrading their ethics. 

Turning them into human monsters. The ones that were worse than real monsters or ghosts people feared about

*******
Oh mahh gawwdd!!!
Second last chapter!!!

Ohk I'm going crazy, so I'll leave...

I hope you enjoyed the chapter.
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Anyways, take care.
See you in the l-a-s-t chapter ;_;

~Toodles ;(

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