I wish I could tell you that after we voted to quit the accursed game that we never saw those perverted goons again. I wish I could tell you how we went back to our normal lives and lived happily ever after.
But this isn't that kind of story.
--
There's no city like London in the summer.
Unless you're broke, all your friends have left town, and your brother isn't speaking to you. Then it kind of sucks.
I was on my way to another soul crushing shift at The King's Head. Meandering, as I did most days, to drag out the last seconds of fresh air and freedom.
So I couldn't tell you exactly how I came to be on that street. It was unfamiliar. Off the beat track. Which explains how I'd never seen it before, I guess.
The Battling Aces.
I peered through the white washed windows at the vacant space inside. A foreclosure notice on the door confirmed that the board game cafe had been closed for six months.
"Excuse me."
Someone stepped past me and began unlocking the door.
"You!"
The mousy girl near enough jumped out of her skin.
"Me?"
"It IS you. Lisa, right?"
Lisa cleaned her bottle-top glasses and studied me blankly.
"Lisa, from the game."
Lisa's face paled as the penny dropped.
"I...I...don't know what you mean," she mumbled, hurriedly locking the door to the shop, "I've got to go."
"Lisa, wait!"
"I've got a busy," she called, scuttling away from me, "I'm thing!"
--
The jukebox was playing the same cheesy trash that the regulars queue up every night. The kind of song you could go mad to. It crossed my mind that maybe I already had. Bumping into Lisa had brought back all those buried memories.
The kiss. The goons in their pink jump suits. The buzz wire. The collective vote to leave.
That's why I didn't notice the old man leaning on the bar. Not at first.
"What can I get you?"
The old man just smiled, wobbling slightly on his feet.
"Sir?"
I rubbed my temples. Damn, I hated that jukebox.
"Look, mate, are you going to order or..."
A flash of recognition.
It was the old man from the bunkbed beside ours at the games!
"Sir!"
"It's you right? Team 21?"
I nodded.
"Yes, sir." I confirmed, glancing round the pub to check we were out of earshot from the pissed builders swaying in the corner. "That's me. What are you doing here? Do you live round here?"
"No. I have a friend who lives nearby. Akari couldn't afford my home's fees any more, so I'm staying there."
"Would you like a drink? It's on me."
Grandpa took a seat on one of the bar stools, nodding.
"You're not going to believe this but this isn't the first time today that I've seen someone from the games."
"What are the chances? Maybe we were meant to meet."
Grandpa reached for the frothy pint but a sudden thought made me pull it away.
"Are you allowed to drink? Will it mess with your meds?"
With surprising speed, Grandpa swiped the pint from my hands and necked half of it. Wiping the suds from his whiskers, he winked.
--
"I've decided to go back."
"Go back where?" I asked, wiping peanuts and beer from the bar top.
"There."
I froze. The pub was empty. I hurried over to the door and bolted it.
"The games?"
Grandpa nodded.
"You know, I don't have long left. I want to have something to leave behind for Akari. Something to prove I was here."
"But..."
"When we played buzz wire, we finished before you did. We might win."
"Still, that place is..."
"Now that I'm out, I realise the truth. It's a worse hell out here."
"I don't know..."
But I did know. My life was going nowhere. Fast.
Grandpa slapped a familiar card on the bar and stood unsteadily.
"In case you change your mind."
With that, he wobbled out of the pub, leaving behind the business card that had started this nightmare.
--
"Hey, you've reached Tim. I guess I'm busy or maybe I just don't like you. Leave a message and find out which."
BEEP.
"Hi Tim, it's me. Again. I need to talk to you about something. Call me back, okay?"
I jammed my phone into my handbag and entered the restaurant. I was late, as usual, for a second date that had an eighty percent chance of ending in another unsatisfying fuck. There was nothing wrong with Jack. Or was it John? It could have been Pete, come to think of it. On paper they were all nice guys. Just my type. They just weren't...well. You know.
So I nodded aimlessly and pretended to listen to Jack/John/Pete's tedious anecdote about corporate finance, but I was really thinking about the business card in my pocket.
It was sometime around Jack/John/Pete's informative presentation on barefoot running that I recognised the pregnant woman eating alone on the table in the corner.
"Excuse me a moment," I smiled, cutting off the history of the Tarahumara runners as I stood up.
--
"Is this some kind of a prank?"
The pregnant woman was baffled. "Excuse me?"
"Three of you in one day. It's not even subtle."
"I really have no idea what..."
"You're Stevie's mom."
Her eyes bugged wide open as she looked for an escape route. I slid in the booth beside her, closing off her exit.
"From the games."
She gulped and nodded slowly.
"What happened to you?"
We both looked at her bulging stomach.
"I...they..." Stevie's mom lowered her voice to an urgent whisper, "it was all true. Everything they said. It all happened."
--
Eight months earlier...
The goons pushed gurneys down a dark corridor. On the gurneys were contestants. Drugged to high heaven.
The corridor forked and the goons pushed the gurneys alternately left and right. The comatose women all took the left fork into a sterile laboratory.
Dry ice spilled out onto the ceramic floor as a goon opened a huge freezer unit. Inside were stacks and stacks of vials. Each one labelled with a name. The goon reached for one labelled 'Stevie.'
--
"They took samples from our teammates when we entered, when they were unconscious. Then, after we lost the buzz wire game, they did it."
I wouldn't have believed a word if not for her swollen belly.
"I'm having Stevie's baby."
