Chapter Twenty-Three
Freezing Temperatures


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Joey strained his eyes to see throughout the pitch blackness of the room. The heavy breathing had stopped and now a chilling wind was blowing through the room. He ran his hand along the wall until he found a light switch. He turned it on and stared around the room.

An open window was straight across from him, the curtains waving from the breeze. An only painting was hung on the wall right next to it, slightly crooked. It was the picture of a beautiful young woman in a light blue dress. The room also contained a wrought iron bed and a dresser across from it. Another door led off from the room to Joey’s left.

He looked up at the ceiling and was surprised to see a light bulb, unlike every other room which just had candles. Joey pushed himself off of the wall and slowly walked over to the window. He looked outside but only blackness lay there. He shut the window and turned around to go into the other door, curious about what was behind it. Just as his hand touched the door knob, he heard a voice say, “What are you doing?”

Joey jumped backwards and slowly turned around to see where the voice was coming from. Standing in front of him was the woman from the painting. She was standing next to the bed and she had this weird glow about her. Joey looked at the painting on the wall and stared at it in shock. The woman in the painting was gone.

“What...how....” Joey stuttered.

“I guess you’re a little shocked about me coming out of the painting, completely understandable,” the woman told him calmly.

“Who...who...are you?” Joey asked quietly, staring at her wide eyed.

“Maybe if I changed my appearance you could recognize me a little better,” she told him.

Joey watched in shock as the woman transformed before his eyes into...Ms. Calhoun.

“What the......” Joey trailed off.

“You are now in the room I use to live in. I locked myself in here when my period of playing “The Game” was over. I knew there was nothing I could do but I wanted to stop it from taking over me. I wrote in a diary about everything that happened,” Ms. Calhoun explained to him.

“Why are you doing this to us? If you’re are so against “The Game” then why are you making us play it?” Joey asked her.

“Because I had to go through it. It wasn’t fair for me to go through it and now I have been corrupted into an awful thing that haunts this house day and night. Whenever someone comes to my house, I, at first, feel pity for them but then I realize I’m getting my revenge for everything that happened to me. No one can get away from “The Game” and you and your friends won’t either. You might as well give up yourselves now,” she said with a smirk.

Joey backed up to the door. “No....no...you’ve got it all wrong. We’ll win. I know we will.”

Ms. Calhoun slowly started to advance towards him. “You think you can defeat pure evil? Even if you do defeat “The Game” I WILL have my revenge again at some point. If I lost “The Game” then everyone else deserves to lose it also!”

Ms. Calhoun transformed again and Joey screamed when he saw her now. She had changed into the skeleton with the glowing eyes. It kept advancing towards him stopping a few feet away. “Have fun playing your part of “The Game!” she said.

“What....didn’t I just....play it?” he asked meekly.

“Think again,” the skeleton replied.

The room was swept into darkness and Joey felt a cold wind blow through the room. He shivered and felt the room get even colder. It was like he had just been put into a freezer. His teeth began to chatter from the cold and his whole body felt like ice. A dim light flicked on in the room and he stared at the floor in shock and horror. A bunch of dead bodies lay on the floor, their bodies pale from the coldness in the room. The blood that had come from them, lay in icy red puddles around the room. The room was totally closed off with only a heavy metal door to the right.

Joey looked around in absolute panic. How was he going to get of there? He could tell that the temperature was dropping even more. That’s when he noticed a movement among the bodies that lay on the floor. Joey stared in utter disbelief as the bodies slowly started to get up off of the floor. He gasped when they all turned around to face him. They were all mangled severely in some way or another and....they had no faces.

The bodies started to walk towards him like zombies, chanting something. Joey was having trouble telling what they were saying. The freezing temperature of the room was making him very sleepy and his brain fuzzy. Joey slid his body down the wall because his legs had gone numb and could no longer hold him. The bodies were moving closer and closer to him. Was this how he was meant to die?

“I guess I lost “The Game,” Joey muttered, before he blacked out.


Chapter Twenty-Four - Caught In The Void

Go back to 'The Game'