Day 53 - Darwin's Game - Chapter 2 (1501 words)

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DARWIN'S GAME

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 2 

Still on a black screen the text faded and then slowly highlighted more text.

“We are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it.”

Then below it faded in the attributed author.

(~Charles Darwin)

The blackness slowly lightened and showed what looked like a warehouse that was largely empty but for a simple table in the middle of the room that had a single black box on it, about a foot square. The camera panned and shrunk back and showed that the space was quite large and had the high windows blacked out so it was impossible to tell if it were night or day, the artificial light was coming from spotlights stood on tall lamps, ringing the space that could be seen on camera.

The screen went black and then faded back to light once again, this time there were twelve chairs ringing the table and in each chair was a person. A man each time and all of them blindfolded and gagged, secured by metal wrist bands and cuffs on their ankles.

Some of the people bound there stayed still and patient, the others struggled constantly, others sporadically. There was little consistency in the group. From the skin that could be seen over half of the group was white and the others various shades of tanned to dark skin.

The camera settled on the center view and pulled back after a sweep of all the trapped figures in the chairs. Then a roll call of names scrolled up the screen like a credits sequence at the end of a film and all the while the picture did not change just showed the view of the chairs and the bound, trapped and immobilised people.

John – Murderer (5)

Mark – Rapist (7) Murderer (3)

Wynton – Murderer (3)

Evan – Murderer (10)

Garth – Rapist (2) Murderer (2)

Peter – Paedophile (17)

David – Murderer (3)

Julio – Rapist (3) Murderer (2)

Evan – Murderer (12)

Jackson – Rapist (1) Murderer (2)

Wilson – Murderer (5)

Thomas – Paedophile (1) Rapist (2) Murderer (3)

The credits rolled away and then there was a very loud sound of a gong in the room, the noise reverberating through the space and getting the attention of the captives. Most of them stopped moving at the sound though one of them struggled mightily at the sound, thrashing at the bounds and trying to get free. The camera zoomed in on the man's legs and showed that the violent nature of his escape attempts were cutting his flesh and he was bleeding on the restraints.

When the pain got to him or the futility of his attempts was apparent he stopped and then the gong sounded again. A loud click was heard and then the various restraints and cuffs all sprang open simultaneously and freed the men who were in the chairs.

Their reactions varied greatly as they were given freedom, the man who had cut his flesh in his attempts to escape did not move at all. Others grasped at the blindfolds first, some leapt to their feet first all of them except the man who thrashed so violently moved. That man remained seated and deprived of his senses.

The men saw the others there and one by one they warily stepped away from the chairs to the open space about themselves and tried to get their bearings. One man made a beeline for the door and rattled at it furiously trying to open it, but it was as immovable as their chair prisons had been earlier.

One of the men, came back to the centre and stood in front of the still seated man and with a little hesitation he reached out and removed the blindfold and the gag, the man looking up at him and tears forming in his eyes.

He started talking rapidly, but there was no soundtrack to the video at all. The Gong sound must have been added in or the microphones turned off afterwards, but now there was silence. The person who had taken off the gag spoke to the others in the room and pointed to the man now streaming with tears. It looked like he was shouting, in fear or rage it was impossible to say.

Some of the other men crowded around, a few looking amused and more looking angry and scared at being trapped in this room, annoyed perhaps at the crying and apparently noisy man crying and talking animatedly. One of the more imposing figures leaned in and violently shouted at the man, quite close to his face. The man in the chair shrank back immediately his hands raising to protect himself.

One of the group put his hand on the bigger man's arm to try and get him away, but all it did was provoke him and he spun to put a large fist into his stomach, doubling over the man who was trying to be a Samaritan and give the crying figure some respite.

The large man beat the interloper harshly and stood over him yelling, nothing making it to the soundtrack of the video recording. The interloper rolled away and banged into the table knocking the box and it's contents off the top and to the floor. A series of white cards scattered to the ground and one of the nearby men picked one up as the man on the ground, the beaten man, picked up the box and in doing so dislodged the final content of it. A gun, a handgun.

The beaten man held the gun tightly and stood up training it on the larger man who had beaten him so severely seconds ago. The rest of the people there moved sideways, away from them both and getting out of the line of any potential shot. The seated man remained seated.

The scene stayed that way for a while and it appeared that no one was talking until everyone turned to look at the person who had picked up the cards, he was waving them frantically at them and then pointing at himself and a couple of others. There was a stalemate of sorts as the standoff between the larger man and the man who now had the gun went nowhere, but one by one the men in the room came and took a card from the man who had picked them up.

The gun was still trained on the larger man, but obviously something else was going on as the man with the cards came and gave a card to the big man, who looked at it and seemed to look even angrier at what it said, then there were three cards left. The man who had them pocketed one and waved the other two at the man with the gun, he shouted something that was inaudible on the video and then the last man, the crying and seated one did not look up as the last card was thrown at him, fluttering awkwardly and landing at his feet.

There was more shouting, and the gun was still trained on the big man who was pointing at the seated man and also yelling.

The group circled around the man in the chair he had stopped crying and was nodding and looking at this feet, his hands grasping at the arms of the chair as if wishing for the restraints to be locked on him again.

The man with the gun had moved to stand in front of the chair, and though the gun was still pointed at the man who had beaten him, he was screaming something, frothing with rage at the seated man who was still staring at the floor in front of him.

The gun moved and flashed on screen silently and the man in the chair jolted violently, jerking about and then slumping forward to the floor, bleeding from a gaping chest wound, shot at close range in the heart.

Nobody in the group moved for a few seconds as the body spasms slightly in death, the larger man grabbed the gun away from the man who had shot it in a display of speed and dexterity that shocked everyone watching and everyone in the room. He pulled the trigger a few times, pointing it ineffectually almost trying to will the bullets out of the gun in a throwing motion, but it appeared there was only the one bullet in the gun.

In rage he threw the handgun at the body, it bouncing off and landing in the blood pooling around the corpse. He settled for kicking at the dead man, viciously. The man who had shot him joined in with a few kicks, as the scene faded to black.

The black faded to the card that was tinged in blood now and shot in close up.

“Peter – Paedophile (17 Victims)”

The video faded to black and then ended.