Page 48 of Slay Ride

Eve and Ice Pick each stand behind their chosen wheelchair as their victims squirm and scream through their noses. The Cattle’s hands have been bound behind their backs to prevent injury to participants, and their mouths are glued shut so we don’t have to hear their bitching. Kindra and Ezra were evensmart enough to shackle their shaking legs down so they can’t kick.

“Oh, this is so exciting!” Jim says as he settles in his seat. “I wish my dear friend Ronaldo was here to see this, but he’s overwintering in the Maldives this year.”

I don’t know about exciting, but what we’re about to witness will surely be interesting.

“On my word,” Kindra says as she raises a stopwatch. “Go!”

Eve sets to work right away. With slender fingers, she slices through the seal on her Cattle’s lips, then shoves the tiny doll’s head into the man’s mouth before he can scream. Wearing a smirk, she then grips the two tiny cloth hands and crams them into the man’s nostrils.

Ice Pick has a similar idea, also choosing suffocation as the Cattle’s vehicle to hell. Instead of ripping open the mouth, however, he just starts winding the clear, sticky-sided cellophane around his victim’s head.

“This will take ages,” Grim mutters beside me, and Maudlin Rose nods in agreement.

Eve seems to realize this as well as she watches her Cattle squirm in his chair, his eyes bulging. But what other option does she have? It’s a fucking child’s toy. Companies take extra pains to avoid maiming and murdering their clientele these days, and those safety regulations are working against her.

Eve looks at Kindra and raises her finger. “Question...May I alter the item in any way, or do I have to commit the murder with the item as-is?”

“As long as you kill them with the item, I don’t fucking care,” Kindra says. “I’m a journalist, not a fucking event planner.”

“Thanks, hon,” Eve says as she plucks the elf from the man’s mouth. She turns it over in her hands, looking for a way to turn it into a lethal weapon as her victim sobs incoherent words.

To her right, Ice Pick’s victim has managed to open his mouth by stretching his jaw until the glue lost its grip on his skin. Actually, considering the blood, the skin lost its grip on his lips. Yikes.

“Please let me go!” Ice Pick’s Cattle screams. “I promise I?—”

Ice Pick winds the tape around his mouth. “Whoops! Don’t want you getting any air.”

The man’s muffled screams grow weaker, and he eventually pisses himself and goes limp.

Meanwhile, Eve is still trying to find a way to turn this around, but it doesn’t look good. Jim is already approaching Ice Pick’s Cattle to search for a pulse. She tosses the toy to the floor and takes a seat when Jim nods.

“We have a winner for round one,” Jim declares.

“Oh, thank God,” Eve’s Cattle whispers. “I’ve been spared. I’ll never hurt anyone again as long as I live. I swear it.”

Jim steps closer to the man and smiles down into his face. “Are you ready to meet him?”

“Who?”

Jim presses something against the base of the man’s skull. “Why, God, my dear boy.”

Blam!

Everyone jolts and someone—probably Cat—lets out a squeal as brain matter and blood splash across the center of the semicircle. No one told me there was a designated splash zone, and now I’m sad I didn’t sit in the center.

Jim lowers the gun and pats the man’s shoulder, and what’s left of the man’s head slumps to the side. “Who’s in group two?”

Chapter Twenty

Bennett

There’s only one pair ahead of us now, and it’s Maudlin Rose versus the Heartbreak Killer. It figures that Cat and I would be the last to compete in this event.

Ezra struggled in the last round, and now I’m getting nervous. He pulled a short candlestick and chose to beat his victim to death after first trying to shove the stick through the man’s eye. The flared design made it pretty impossible to hit the brain.

Jim ended up besting him, though only by a few seconds. The son of a bitch lucked out and pulled a carving knife from his chosen bag. If he hadn’t opted to grace us with a Shakespearean soliloquy before plunging the knife into the woman’s abdomen, he’d have won by more than a few seconds.

I’ll never understand theater people.

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