Anna
She now saw their faces again. Jim, Jack, Hendrick – they were all still there, even if their pictures were becoming weaker by the second. Their memories burned and roared, and then they were almost gone. Jim’s memory was the only one Anna managed to somehow maintain, as if it clung to her desperately, trying to keep her alive. And as her mind started to further fall apart, the fire spreading without any cure in sight, Anna regained her limited consciousness again.
The loud heartbeat had fastened, its steady pattern now accelerating, almost as if it was getting impatient. Anna’s vision went from blurry to sharp. Her arms were held out openly, palms upwards. She was carrying a small heap of organs in her arms, carefully escorting them towards the massive hill next to the heart.
I need to feed the machine, the voice inside of her head plead out.
This was the moment in time Anna realized that she didn’t feel her legs moving anymore. It was weird. There was still some pressure, so she was sure they did touch the ground, but it didn’t feel like actually touching at all. After the realization had kicked in, she soon realized the rest of her body followed the same pattern. Cold, metallic, lifeless.
Once again, Jim’s face popped up in her head.
Jim. I am not allowed to forget him, she thought.
Forget him, the voice responded. The machine yearns for fuel.
No!
But her body kept moving forward on her own. She was now standing in front of the mountain, focussed all of her energy to stop moving, to stop going forward. There needed to be a way to stop it, to destroy it, a way to turn the situation around. She felt like she once knew someone who would have been able to plan an escape out of this situation, but her head burned at the thought of him.
She felt the heart in her chest. Yes, there was still something left. But even that small part of her betrayed her, since it beat at the same pace as the giant one, which had gotten even faster now and was still accelerating.
Her body bend forward, carefully put the organs on the hill, then turned around. Back where she had come from, in a wide circle, dozens if not hundreds of humanoid machines stood unmoving, their gazes fixed lightly upward.
And she started walking back, her force not helping her out of her metallic prison as she moved towards a small gap in the circle: a gap reserved for her.
And as she walked far enough to see the faces again, and she was able to see them up close, it was impossible to deny the familiarity. They were all more or less the same, and she knew her fear had become reality.
Her body moved into line and turned around.
The heartbeat got so fast it turned to noise.
But as the heartbeat suddenly stopped and the voice plead out once again,
that the food was served, and it was time to feast,
the shape of the heart started to turn and shift,
as something tried to break out of it.
And Anna had now obtained the truth,
but sadly, it was already too late.
She had a mouth, but couldn’t scream.
And as the last thoughts started turning into burning memories,
and even Jim’s face started to fade into the void forever,
a single thought stayed present in her mind:
They share my face.
---
Jim
Hendrick moved his arms, and the doors of the closet swung open. He stepped to the side as the insides of the cabinet started falling out, poured all over the floor. Bodies, dozens of dead bodies.
Jim needed around one second to realize whose bodies they were. He dropped his scissor.
“Do you understand now, Jim? The reason why you couldn’t defeat me? I had lots of time studying how you fight. These are you, Jim,” Hendrick said, gesturing towards the limb bodies laying in front of him. “Well, not exactly you, but they are the Jims that came before you. And they all died by my hand.”
“What… did you do?” But before Hendrick answered, it clicked. It all made sense now. The bodies at the first stage… the butterfly effect. Of course. “You crazy bastard.”
Hendrick smiled. “You see, you were actually not wrong about your idea earlier. It really didn’t make sense. I couldn’t have planned every single detail before, no matter how much I planned it, besides-”
“Besides you really knew every single little detail,” Jim said.
“And what does that mean?”
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Jim’s eyes widened. “A loop.”
“Bingo.”
Jim looked down at the corpses which resembled him. Some were easy to identify, some of them harder. The amount of brutality which went into killing them was frightening, some of them having unnecessary wounds which probably weren’t from battle. He reminded himself of the deal and that he couldn’t win against Hendrick in combat.
He knew that Hendrick was right.
He needed more information before he could judge what to do next. Hendrick… no… that monster didn’t seem like hiding anything – including its real self – anymore anyways.
“Explain yourself,” Jim said.
The monster leaned back against a wall, said, “Every time I die, I wake up the morning before we enter Sinner’s Game.” His face looked more human now, as if he actually felt relieved to tell someone. “I wake up in the same bed, at the same time, the same bullshit. Over and over and over.”
“Why don’t you just run away?”
The monster sighed. “It forces me to roughly follow the same path until the game starts. If I do anything which would change the events too much or I am too slow, it freezes time and threatens to punish me.”
“What do you mean by it? Who? The creator of the game?”
“The circle with a smile. The mask the Doll-Maker was wearing. The person that’s behind all of this crap. And the fucking face I see every single time I die. I don’t know much about it, but it wants to punish me. So the only way out I have is winning the game.”
Punish him? Punish for... what? he thought.
The monster pushed himself off the wall, walked over to the edge of space, sat down, its feet now dangling down the edge. Jim’s scissor now laid close to him on the ground.
“You know, it took a while to put all these things to work. I died a lot, but after a rather long time, I actually managed to make some progress. Some sacrifices had to be made, sure, but I moved further.”
Jim felt his hand clench to a fist. He had to control himself.
“I found out all the stages always stay the same. They reset to zero, as if nothing had happened in the attempt before. For some reason, the dead bodies that started piling up never vanished, though. I couldn’t find an answer to that, but who cares? I need to admit, you and your friends really were a great help.”
Jim strode over to the edge, stood behind the monster.
“…”
“You know you can’t push me, right Jim? It will only repeat the cycle. Let me finish talking first before you do something dumb.”
“...”
“I used the butterfly effect in my favour, started doing things the same every time. It maximised my success, and I only needed to do small adjustments to get further more consistently. I got quite good at the first two stages, and even better at letting you three play how I want to.”
Jim’s hand was still formed into a fist. “You could have gone a different way. A path where we all survive. All this pain and horror... unnecessary.”
“It was more effective this way. Besides, it’s not like any of you are real anyway.” It turned its head. Its face was stale, not childlike at all. “I don’t give a single fuck how many hundred times I need to slaughter you and your little friends. All I care about is that I finally can get out of here.”
Jim tensed up, but then his fist loosened. It was no use. “Not real? But… their pain was real. If you don’t care about any of this, then why should you even tell me all of this? If you can just try again until it works, then why ask me?”
The monster had gotten silent.
“Ah oh… I get it now,” Jim laughed.
“Shut up. I can kill your friends over and over again if I want to.”
“You can’t finish it alone, right? You need me.”
“Shut up!” It hit its fist onto something small next to it, got up turning around while picking up the scissor. It held it close to Jim’s neck, but Jim wasn’t impressed by it.
“You are pathetic,” Jim said.
The monster lowered the weapon, said, “Yes, I need you. But you also need me.”
“Go on.”
“Every single time I reach this stage, we fight. You somehow always manage to stay alive, to somehow only get hurt on your leg and come after me. I kill you, and then I move through this stage alone. Until I reach that place”
My leg? he thought. So usually things turn out differently? Was it because of me? No… except…
Something caught his attention. At the spot on the ground the monster had hit with its fist, something laid dead on the ground. It was a smashed butterfly. Jim suppressed a smile.
“That place?” Jim asked.
“The place where it started is also the place where it ends. Kind of ironic, I know,” the monster said. “I go there, and I get very close to the end. But every single time, right as I am about to open that goddamn door, I die. Something happens, somehow, always, and I die. It is as if it’s cursed. A nightmare”
Jim felt another puzzle piece fit into the picture.
“And that’s why you need me?”
“I figured out the best way to finish all of this is by letting someone else open the door for me. This is why I set up all these things. The sandpit, speaking between the lines as we walked before the game, all of it. All so I could still get here without the butterfly-effect stopping me from it, get you onto my side with the hints I left before, and then finish it once and for all. That’s why I need your help and you need mine. That’s why it won’t work any other way.”
“I can’t kill you, since then you just continue killing my friends,” Jim said. “And you can’t kill me, since then you will never be free.”
“Right. I don’t want your pity or you to pretend like you care. I already know you hate me above anything else. I felt your hatred more than enough times already. I also am not going to pretend I give yet a single fuck about you or your little friend group. I just want this to be over. So, are you going to help me?”
The monster held out a hand, and for a slight moment Jim saw the masked face flash in front of his inner eye. The deal he had made earlier... what was that masked figure really planning? It created the game to punish Hendrick… no… the monster, but for what purpose? He was a terrible human being, but that didn’t explain any of this. The monster had said that they weren’t real anyways. Were his friends real? Was he real? He turned around, saw his own body slaughtered dozens of times spread across the floor.
Had they been real?
Jim looked back at the monster’s hand, its arm still outstretched towards him.
“I will help you, even though if keeping you in here forever would probably be the better choice. I don’t know why it keeps you in here, but I’m certain it has a good reason for it. But I don’t care anymore... I just want to save my friends from your grasp.”
It pulled away its hand. “This is fine with me.”
“Then let’s get this over with,” Jim returned. “Once and for all.”
They stared into each other’s eyes for an eternal seeming moment. Jim saw the monster’s face, now being half covered in dried blood which had poured down its forehead earlier. It seemed to be empty, devoid of all emotion. What kind of cruel being was it?
“Jim, you should pick up your weapon. Take it with you.”
“Why?”
“We are going to get my real body back.”
---