Wolf pushed Iliya towards the door, and placed his body like a wall between Iliya and the charging Roman.

Roman ran towards Wolf, swinging his lighter turned sword madly, as if he was aiming to swat a pesky fly with its brilliance. Wolf stood his ground until Roman was close enough to meet him. Then, he striked. Moving low, he dodged Roman’s desperate flailing. With clear, precise movement Wolf dashed to the side, towards the piano in the room. As Roman hurriedly changed directions to face him, Wolf raised his fist and smashed it down onto the main body of the piano. Whether it was due to Wolf’s strength or the piano’s half rotting structure, it could not take the pressure. As if it had been sliced in half, the piano crumpled to the floor in a messy heap.

A sickly sweet stench filled the room. Something had been inside the piano.

“What the fuck!” Rina screeched, running to the corner of the room. Roman looked torn between running with Rina and investigating whatever had been inside the piano. Iliya could understand that feeling- his desperately curious personality wanted him to check out the piano, but everything inside of him was screaming that it was a horrible idea. And then there was the fact that Wolf had warned him about it in the first place.

Iliya had made up his mind, and was about to investigate when Roman turned his sword in Iliya’s direction. “Don’t even think about it,” he warned. Wolf, who had by then returned to Iliya’s side, took a step in Roman’s direction, but Iliya grabbed the corner of his shirt with the arm that wasn’t cradling Peaches. Roman pointed his sword at the two men.“You two, stay over there. Don’t move.”

“Let him,” Iliya whispered. Wolf’s phoenix eyes searched Iliya’s face for information and when he found what he was looking for, he nodded. Who knew what was inside the piano? If Roman wanted to take the initiative to possibly confront something dangerous, Iliya would let him do so happily. From where Iliya was, it looked like something wrapped up in one of the old clown costumes. He couldn’t see clearly though, due to the debris surrounding the object that had been hidden within the old instrument.

Roman went over to the piano, and nudged at the instrument with his foot. The destroyed body shook with the movement, but that was it. Nothing happened. “Check the inside,” Rina instructed from the corner. Roman agreed, and bent over the piano to look inside.

“What were you trying to hide-”

And suddenly, without warning, something burst forth from the piano. Covered in piano splinters and dust, a mangled arm reached out. Iliya realized that the lump within the piano was a body, folded up and pressed into the grand instrument’s inner section, where the chords would have been. It had long, untrimmed yellow fingernails. Flesh had rotted off sections of its arm, revealing pieces of red tissue. Iliya gagged as the arm found purchase on the broken bits of piano. Then, its other arm.

“What the fuck is that!” Rina spat out. Iliya had a good feeling he knew.

“Smells bad,” Peaches said in a small voice so that only Iliya and Wolf could hear her. “Not good eating.”

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Roman screeched like a barn owl and attempted to escape. His haste made him just fall on his ass. The broken body in the piano continued to slowly unfurl as the others watched from corners of the room, and Roman tried to scoot away. However, Roman wasn’t fast enough. The corpse in the piano had already begun to clamber out, giving Iliya a good look at it. As expected, it was a clown. The peeling makeup on its face was in the shape of a wide, distorted toothy smile. Its clown wig was missing, and hair was falling out of its loose scalp in clumps. The clown wore a jumpsuit similar to that of the Moderator and the clown outfits in storage, though its bright colors had dulled with age. The only bit of brightness left on the suit came from a large circle of blood in the center of its chest. The dried blood was flaking, bits of it falling off with the skin and hair of the clown.

Iliya thought about what Peaches murmured, about it not being good eating. The meat’s gone bad, he thought to himself, a bit nonsensically. He didn’t know what else to think, or even do.

Roman screamed, loud, and pulled out his lighter sword, though he was still on the floor. With an unnaturally fast movement, the clown’s neck snapped down, down to look at poor Roman on the floor. Roman pissed his pants. He was too terrified to even raise his flaming sword and attack the corpse. A hand reached out towards Roman, who whimpered piteously.

“Help! Help!” Roman screamed as he crawled away from the clown. It was too late though. The clown had already unfolded its horrible body and bounced onto its bare, taloned feet.

Iliya was about to turn to Wolf, and ask him to help, when Peaches interrupted. “You can’t help him. It thinks that man was the one who woke him up. And he’s hungry now.” So it was better to let the thing sate its hunger, and then deal with a less frenzied attacker.

“Your lighter!” Rina yelled at him in a shrill voice. It was still lit in his hand, but Roman didn’t have the reflexes to fight beat into him. He was scared. Roman just wanted to get away. Unfortunately, Roman couldn’t crawl away fast enough. With an oversized clawed hand, the clown picked up Roman by the back of his neck. Roman screamed in abject horror. Finally he tried to strike with his lighter sword, twisting his arm back in an attempt to reach the clown. It was too late. Roman failed to strike his arm, and the clown just kept Roman aloft in the air by his neck. The clown started shaking Roman as if he were a doll and the clown a malcontented child. For a few moments, Roman gurgled on his own spit, eyes wide with fear. Then, there was a sickening snap and Roman’s face went slack. There was a clatter as the lighter dropped from Roman’s opened hand to the floor, then faded into nothingness.

The decaying clown dropped Roman and he collapsed like a puppet whose strings were cut. Rina let out a banshee scream. Iliya wanted to look at her but he couldn’t. He couldn’t move his eyes from Roman. This was the first real death Iliya had seen inside the game rooms, and even more horrifying, Iliya had watched the man die without doing anything to stop it. And now the clown was inching towards Rina, who was trembling in the corner with no discernable way to stop it or escape.

“We have to help her!” Iliya yelled at Wolf. The man looked torn, but he agreed and the two ran towards the clown’s back.

Wolf threw out a punch towards the clown. With inhuman reflexes, the clown dodged without even turning around. Wolf was fast, much faster than anyone Iliya knew, but he could not compete with the clown’s reflexes. Thankfully, it was more interested in slowly progressing towards Rina who was looking more and more pale and faint every second.

“Clown, look at me!” Iliya yelled. “I know who murdered you!” That certainly got the clown’s attention. Its head turned at an unnatural angle to face Iliya, though its back was still to him. There was something bright in its eyes that had not been there before it had murdered Roman. Wolf tried again to attack the clown, but it neatly side stepped the punches. Its body whipped around to face the direction its head was in, and it changed directions and started walking towards Iliya.

Iliya took a split second to weigh his options. “I am so sorry,” he told Peaches. Just as she was about to ask what for, Iliya threw her at the clown.

Peaches yowled in anger as she flew in the air. The clown watched in still shock until the small kitten hit his face. It looked like it wanted to swat Peaches away with its talons, but Peaches quickly did what she did best. She unhinged her jaw and swallowed the clown’s head whole. The sound of bones crunching reverberated through the room, and then there was a pop.

The clown’s body dropped to the floor, and Peaches went with it. For a moment, neither of them moved. Peaches, with her now bloody and scabby mouth, glared at Iliya. “That was absolutely disgusting! I said it was bad eating! If I get food poisoning, I’m going to flay you and feast on the marrow of your bones!”

Seeing as Peaches had just eaten the head of a murderous clown, the threat should have been more terrifying than it was. However, Peaches was still an adorable kitten. It seemed to have worked for Rina though, who fully collapsed against the wall of the room in a dead faint.