“Your trap is now ready Ed. Please return to your desk or find a suitable place to watch it.”

“Looks like we should head back now.” Ed says, shuffling his hand back into the deck.

“Not fair, I was about to win.” Zara sighs, getting out of her seat and heading to the door.

Putting the deck back into its pack, he sits it down on the table before following after her. Having time to fill after getting lunch, the two decided to find a quiet room and play a game of poker. Now that the time is up, they head back to the office and sit at the desk, both looking at Ed’s screen. The screen flickers, changing to footage of a room slowly filling with water, a middle-aged man lying face down on the floor. The man wakes, immediately booking it for the door

“Good morning, Richard. You must be wondering what is happening right now. As you can see, you are no longer in your mansion. I have trapped you in this room, but you do have a chance to escape. Do you see where the water is coming from? At some point in time, a key will fall into this room so that you can unlock the door. But alas, the waterways aren’t as clean as they used to be, but you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you? You should expect more than just water to come from those pipes. Good luck, Richard.”

I wonder when the key will show up? Ed thinks while watching the room start to fill with cans, straws and plastic bottles.

“You can’t do this to me. I am an upstanding member of society; how dare you try and make me swim in filth. When I get out of here, I will find you, and I will ruin your life.”

“Why do they always threaten us? Can they not see the situation they’re in?” Zara asks.

“It’s because they’re angry and afraid. They don’t know how they got here, and the situation's scary. They’re just trying to let off steam and vent their emotions. Don’t take it personally.” Ed says, trying to comfort her.

Richard starts wading through the water as it rises above his knees, becoming dirtier and harder to see in. The two watch as Richard moves to the door, staring back out at the room.

“Smart. He knows he won’t be able to find the key if he focuses on searching through the water now that it’s dirty, so he’s decided to solely watch the pipes instead.” Ed says, focusing on Richard.

“Look at the pipes!” Zara shouts, her hand drawing Ed’s attention to the pipes. The water coming out from the pipes is no longer clean. “I bet that doesn’t smell good.”

Looks like Buddie’s starting to pump in the raw sewage now, and yet there’s no key. Knowing Buddie, it’s probably going to come out at the last possible moment. Ed watches as the filthy water rises up Richard’s chest.

“Where’s the key you bastard? Where is it?” Richard yells, pounding on the walls.

He’s getting desperate now. The water rises to his head, so he pushes up and starts floating on top, slowly getting closer to the ceiling. Zara watches as the key falls into the water. At the same time, Ed watches Richard swims off towards one of the pipes. The key must’ve appeared. “Did you see the key?”

Zara laughs before she can answer him. “Yeah. It just got stuck in a piece of shit and is now slowly sinking to the bottom.”

Looks like he’ll have to go down, let’s hope he manages to see it. They watch as Richard dives into the water, swimming towards the key. Zara laughs when she sees the dirty water flood into his mouth. He’s got the key. Richard pushes his head above water, violently pushing out all of the water in his lungs. They watch as he uses his shirt to clean the shit off the key. He’s almost out of time. The water hits the ceiling as Richard swims over to a wall. He’s gone the wrong way. They watch as he pushes himself off the wall, racing towards the other side of the room, blood starting to spread in the water.

He grabs on the door handle, and tries to push the key in. They watch as it slides across the lock multiple times, never going in. “He’s not going to make it.” Richard’s frantic movements causing more glass to cut into his skin. Water gushes into his mouth, his movements slowing as something lodges itself in his throat, stopping his breathing.

“Haha, called it.” Zara spins around on her chair excitedly.

“It looks like your bad deeds have finally caught up to you Richard. As you feel your life begin to fade away, do you now understand the damage that you have caused... this filth was collected from the rivers and seas that your company would illegally dump sewage into. Now you have finally seen what it is you were dumping into the water... Enjoy Hell, Richard. Goodbye.”

Zara busts a gut laughing. “Did you see his face? I mean, I was joking earlier when I brought it up, I didn’t expect he would actually die choking on shit.” She sighs, calming herself down slightly. “The fucker deserved it though. Look at what he was doing to the planet.” she says, pointing at the water on screen.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

She’s enjoying this a bit too much. “While I agree with you that he was definitely not a good person, don’t you think it’s a bit insensitive to be laughing at his death like this? I mean, he’s a human just like us.”

She looks at him, confused. “No, he’s not. We were chosen by the company, he’s a sinner. He’s not the same as us.” She says seriously, almost as if she’s lecturing Ed.

She can’t be serious. I have to say something. “-”

“Think about it Ed. Why would the company have chosen us? There has to be a reason as to why we were chosen over everyone else on Earth. Clearly, we are different from them.” She cuts him off before he can speak. She grabs his hands, making sure that he’s paying attention to her. “There’s no need to put yourself in the same group as those sinners.” She drops the serious attitude, going back to her normal cheerful voice. “Come on, it should be time to watch my one. I promise you are going to love it.” She pulls him across to her screen.

She’s more twisted than I thought. I need to find a way to fix this. But Buddie’s everywhere, I can’t let the company catch on to what I’m doing. I need to find a way to help her without letting the company know. Lost in his thoughts he doesn’t notice as the screen changes, showing a pristine white private room in a hospital.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

The beeping of the heart rate monitor snaps Ed from his thoughts. In the room are two people; a nurse and a patient. Both are sleeping. The muffled sounds of conversations come from outside the room. The nurse wakes up, rubbing her head before walking over to check on the patient.

After checking on the patient, and making sure the cost is clear, she starts rummaging through the patient’s stuff. At least she checked to make sure the patient was fine. I guess that counts for something. Ed watches as the drawer jams in place, only leaving a sliver open.

As she squeezes her right hand through the gap, a second camera angle appears on screen, showing what’s going on inside the drawer. I’m going to have to watch it happen, aren’t I? They watch as she scrounges around through the drawer, feeling everything until she reaches the back and grabs onto the necklace. All the while, the wire is slowly closing in, following her movements. As she pulls back, the wire tightens around her wrist. The first camera zooms in on her face, showing her biting her lip in pain.

“Good morning, Cathleen. You seem to be in a bit of a bind right now. As you may be able to feel, a metal wire is now gripping tightly onto your wrist... Your days pocketing patients’ belongings are over, and I hope that this will act as a reminder any time you get the urge to steal something again. Just try to be quiet, because after all, the patient could wake up at the slightest sound, and you don’t want to get caught stealing, do you? Imagine the consequences. Good luck.”

They watch as she moves her hand back, the wire digging into her skin. She goes to put her other hand in but stops herself. Good. She would’ve lost both hands if she did that. She moves her right hand forward only for the wire to dig in even more, blood dripping onto the drawer. She stops herself from screaming, instead focusing on taking the top off. That’s a bad idea, she should just pull back quickly, and focus on not making any noise.

Zara laughs as she watches the nurse use the knife to unscrew the top. “That’s not going to work.” She says melodically, almost singing to herself.

Having watched her unscrew the top, they watch as she tries to put the photo frame on the ground but is stopped short because of her arm. She gets back up, looking for a place to put everything. Stretching her leg out, she tries pulling the chair in but comes up shy of touching it. The wire tightens, cutting through to the bone, as she takes a step back, putting herself in range of the chair.

Pulling it towards her, she clears off the top of the table quietly before lifting the top off in one go. The camera inside catches clearly as the wire snaps shut, cutting off her hand, blood shooting out of her arm. She drops to the ground as all noises stop.

The door slams open, a team of doctors and nurses enter the room, staring directly at her, their faces split open with a chilling grin. What the fuck. Oh god, is this the surprise she came up with? Why would I love this? Ed watches as the nurse backs up into the bed, the patient sitting straight up, and hanging over her. Ed watches on in disgust as the patient starts chewing on the severed hand. Why are they eating her?

“Unfortunately, it seems like you failed to free yourself without alerting people Cathleen. I told you that you shouldn’t have woken up the patient, now you have seen the consequences. You should have known that you would get caught eventually, just one slip up and your entire life would go down the drain. So why did you keep on going back for more? Enjoy Hell Cathleen. Goodbye.”

Ed watches as she’s dragged out of the room by the team of doctors. The camera feeds shut off, the screen turning back to normal. He turns to face Zara, noticing an expectant look in her eyes and a big happy smile.

“So, what did you think? Did you like the surprise? I remember you telling me about the woman eating the heart and thought that you would really want to see something like that again. So, I came up with this? Pretty cool, right?” She bombards him with questions, hoping that he liked it.

I really need to figure out how to help her. This is disgusting. He looks into her eyes. But I can’t tell her the truth here. That'll just push her away, and I need to stay close to her if I want to have a chance at helping her. This is going to be tough. Ed puts on a smile. “Thanks Zara, what a fantastic surprise. I can’t believe you remembered that. You really didn’t have to do this for me, you should just design the traps how you want them to be.” He squeezes her hand tightly, hoping that she won’t do this again.

“Yay, I’m so glad you liked it.” She pulls him into a hug.

“Now that you have both completed your projects, you are free to spend the rest of your day doing whatever you want. You have each been paid ten credits for your traps.” Buddie cuts into the conversation.

She breaks off the hug. “Come on, we just got paid, let’s go find something to spend it on.”