I gulped in air, letting it expand in my chest before blowing it out, slowly watching it cloud the window.

Rucker wheezed, teeth clamping together as he leaned back in the chained chair, red fluid leaking from multiple places as the water continued to rise around him, brushing his knees.

Just hold on for a little bit more. Please.

"You still have a lifeline," Jookie said, pulling up the next statement before grinning.

Whoa, okay. I snuck a glance at Jookie who was rocking his normal smiling poker face, giving nothing away. Okay, the statement was basically saying she stabbed her while pregnant, and a baby could survive that type of trauma, so it wasn't an automatic lie.

But why use the word purposely? That word was staring at me like a bullseye. My gut was leaning toward truth, but it's been wrong three times now. But maybe it was right this time, or maybe I was overthinking again?

"I need my lifeline," I said to Jookie.

Jookie leaned his elbows on the table. "I would ask who, but we all already know who you're gonna pick."

Yeah, the only person in the game who's smarter than me. "Khan."

"Of course," Jookie said, rolling his eyes as he tapped the air, and a live stream of Khan showed up.

With his dark hair swept back into a small ponytail in the back of his head like he was ready to get down to business, his dark brown eyes lightened when our eyes connected, making me feel instantly calm, like everything would be okay.

"Khan," I said his name on a breath. "I need your help. I'm losing here, and I can't lose — I can't."

"First off, calm the fuck down," Khan said in a soothing yet commanding tone. His tone made me sit up straighter. "You're overthinking everything," he said, staring at me.

"Yeah, stop thinking," Rucker screamed back, chains jingling.

"These aren't hard," Khan said. "They know you have a habit of overthinking, so they're purposely adding in extra words to trick you."

Well, it was working, a little too well.

"All you have to do is look at the core of the statement and use the previous statements and your personal knowledge of Jookie to figure out the rest of them. If that fails, trust your instincts and use your head like you always do. You did it with Tiran and Layla."

I was trusting my instinct, or I thought I was. The part of me that solved Tiran's and Layla's mysteries was gone. Betinia was gone. I could get her back...— NO. I could and would do this without her. I'd show her that I didn't need her anymore.

"Look at this one for example," Khan said, bringing me out of my thoughts. "They try to trick you up by adding in extra words like 'purposely' which draws your attention to that, and makes you overanalyze the statement, instead of seeing it for what it is. Once you get past that and use the knowledge you learned from the previous statements, you can deduce that it's true."

"Oh, you think you know me, Khan," Jookie said, a hard expression morphing on his face.

Khan's eyes darkened, going from light to dark like a switch. "Yes, I got all of them right so far."

"Oh really?" Jookie glared. "You just figured them out?"

"It wasn't magic," Khan said, locking eyes with him. "From the way you act and your mannerisms, you clearly didn't have the best childhood. You've clearly gone through some type of trauma, so I knew immediately that the third question was true."

"So, you can assume that just from watching me?" Jookie asked, puffing out his cheeks.

"Yes," Khan said. "You immediately shut down when that statement went up, which meant that it resonated with you on some level, inferring that the statement was at best sixty percent true. And since it was true, that confirmed my suspicions about your childhood. Just a guess, but having a father that was called the devil couldn't be that good, right?"

Jookie didn't say anything, but just stared at Khan.

"And I knew the fourth question was true because of the word, 'grandmama.' That's a nickname, which meant you most likely liked her thus wouldn't have murdered her yourself."

"That's all speculation," Jookie said low and gruff.

Khan smiled. "But I was right, just like I'm right about the current one. Since your father's called the devil, he has to be a very dominant, mean man. So, I wouldn't put it passed him to order or manipulate your mother somehow into stabbing herself."

Right after Khan said that, they locked eyes, savage tension dripping through the atmosphere like ice cream in the summer heat. It warmed my skin, the cuts on my thigh throbbing more than before.

"Umm are you guys done yet?" I asked after two minutes of them still staring. They both ignored me. "If you're not gonna kiss, can we hurry this up?" Rucker was fucking bleeding, and he could only lose so much.

Again, they ignored me. Fine then. I pressed the truth button, listening to Khan, and the green alarm went off.

"Khan, you the man," Rucker cried out through heavy pants. "I'm gonna kiss you when I see you." The water coming through the crack in the room increased, slipping in a wee bit faster, adding to the discarded water that was already up to his thighs now.

"If you see him again," Jookie said in a harsh tone as he went to click off the live video of Khan.

"Hey," I cried out.

"Your lifeline is for one question only," Jookie said and smirked at Khan. "Time for your ass to go."

"Trust your instincts and use every part of yourself to think," he said before Jookie clicked him off.

All of me...? No. I wouldn't call her back, but I needed her. She was the intelligent one.

"Next one," Jookie said, tone still crisp.

Blessed? I wanted to murder who ever came up with this wording. I snuck a glance at Jookie who just grinned at me, lips pinching.

His face wasn't giving anything away, so I went back to Khan's words. He said they added in extra words to confuse me, and that the previous statements might help me.

Taking out the extra words, the statement was basically saying he was happy to be born in a cult. Going off the previous statements, the only thing I learned so far was that he liked his grandmother, his mother tried to kill him, which was probably due to his manipulative father who was called the devil.

From that, his father must've been in charge of a cult, and his mother was a follower, maybe. Khan said Jookie's childhood had to be shitty, so why would he have liked to be born in a cult? He wouldn't.

I hit lie.

The alarm blared again, red lights flashing.

FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. NO. NO. NO. NO.

Rucker let out a piercing screech, and the saws around him inched forward as the one in front of him sailed toward his balls. It stalled a few centimeters away from his junk, the blades spinning, sending water all over him.

He closed his eyes, spitting out gulps of water. "Betinia, he whispered, tone tired.

"I'm so so sorry," I said, placing my forehead on the glass. How was I wrong again? Everything in me felt heavy as a tingling morphed throughout my face, fresh tears pooling my eyes.

"My childhood made me who I am today," Jookie said from behind me. "And I love me, so why would I not feel fucking blessed?"

I turned to him and dug my nails into my thumb, trying to stop myself from gouging out his eyes. "I hate you so much."

Jookie let out a sharp giggle. "Doesn't everyone?" He turned to Rucker and snapped his fingers. "I'd close my eyes if I were you."

A thunderous clap caught the air, as squawking mechanical noises followed, the room rumbling like an earthquake. I stumbled into the window with my shoulder and ate the pain, trying to see what was happening.

Rucker gazed upwards, watching transparent, plastic-looking bubbles float down from the ceiling. They were about the size of his head, and there couldn't have been more than three of them.

"What the hell..." I murmured, looking at the falling bubbles, as the water around Rucker began to simmer, soft tendrils of smoke wafting throughout the cement room.

The window between us started to lightly fog, as the cement room grew in temperature, the liquid around Rucker beginning to boil.

Rucker winced at the scorching steam, trying to move his chained body away from the water, blood still leaking from his arms. As he did that, the plastic bubbles started to slowly expand, feeding off the steam, getting bigger and bigger.

Then they exploded.

Rucker hollered, the popping bubbles sending droplets of liquid all over his body. Upon contact, the fluid sizzled and ate at his skin like a caterpillar on a leaf, deteriorating the wet tissue, leaving behind nothing but tiny flecks of exposed muscles.

I closed my eyes at his screams, punching the glass, creating another crack. "I'm so sorry, Rucker — I'm so sorry," I repeated like a scratched record, tears dribbling down my cheeks, throat dry.

"Betinia, l-look at me," Rucker said after a few minutes.

Opening my eyes, I inhaled and looked up, seeing the full effect of the bubbles. His body was littered with tiny, droplet-size burnt holes, the flesh looking torn and raw.

"I'm o-okay." He tried to give me a smile, but it was shaky. "Really."

No, he wasn't. He wasn't fine. He wasn't okay. I choked back a cry, knowing his suffering was all my fault. Every sob raked my insides, feeling like someone was taking a cheese grater to my intestines. Everything was always my fault.

"One more wrong, and Rucker's gone," Jookie said in a cheerful tone. "Oo that kind of rhymes."

That word echoed throughout my mind like a megaphone in an elevator, consuming every piece of me, ricocheting downward into my throat to my bloodstream, turning my blood a poisonous, sludgy black.

"No," I whispered, chest heaving as that blackness slithered through my veins to my heart, slowly contaminating the vessel, turning that black to a toxic green. "I w-won't lose him too."

Jookie just laughed.

His laugh made the tears in my eyes plummet harder and faster, trickling down my cheeks onto the floor as my entire being spasmed and dropped to the floor. I panted, the noxious green spreading to every crevice, multiplying like a promiscuous virus, altering me.

Stop this now.

Betinia's voice whispered through me like a gentle breeze, trying to save me from entering dangerous waters like she's done so many times before. And it worked. The sickening fluid stopped spreading like a car at a red light, lingering in place, waiting to be pushed over the edge.

Savage nausea attacked my tummy, and I gasped as my hands knotted into the carpet, trying to get a grip on my emotions and body, shuddering in place. I couldn't go through this again. I couldn't lose another important person. I barely had anyone as it is.

"We're on a timed schedule," the annoying robotic voice said over the speakers. "Get up so we can continue the game."

"Come on, my little peach," Jookie said, almost skipping away from me. "Time for you to get the last one wrong, so I can see Rucker die."

The lingering venomous muck cackled inside my veins, drilling my eardrums with vicious giggles as it continued poisoning me, sucking up everything I knew and replacing it with its own DNA.

STOP THIS NOW. I HAVE A BAD FEELING. DON'T GO THERE. WE CAN'T DEAL WITH THIS.

After the incident ten years ago, I could only remember certain bits — just the bodies and the gore. Just pictures really, nothing else. My therapist said I blocked it out to cope, but it wasn't completely forgotten.

It was like I had a bunch of puzzle pieces, a few missing, and I couldn't put them together. But now, a few of them had bonded, snapping perfectly together, bringing me down a dangerous road that my brain wanted me to forget. Until now.

Vivid images began to dance across my eyes, playing back a memory from ten years ago. I just got off the late bus, running to my door like any other day. I went up to the white wooden door, hand pausing on the knob.

YOU'RE GOING TOO DEEP. I FEEL IT. IF YOU OPEN THAT DOOR, WE CAN'T COME BACK FROM THIS.

Opening the door, I wiped my feet on the mat, carrying a Wonka Bar in my hand. "I'm hom—" I paused, looking around the foyer.

The furniture was tousled everywhere, the chairs on their sides. Pools of red dotted the gray wooden floors, along with broken vases and knickknacks.

My eyes went big, and I started to run next door to the neighbors like my parents told me to do in an emergency, but I saw Asher lying flat in the corner.

"Always protect your little brother, okay?" Mama's voice went through my head. "Especially when we're not around."

"Ashie?" I ran toward him and slipped in some blood, going down hard on my elbows. Red covered me like a blanket as glass stabbed my arms and knees. Everything hurt, but I kept crawling toward him.

"Ashie?" My hands touched his wet shirt. His body was warm like he was sleeping. "Wake up." I continued shaking him, but he stayed still, limp. "S-stop playing. We need to go. Something's wrong..."

He still wouldn't move, so I grabbed his shoulders and picked him up and that's when I saw the giant blood puddle underneath him, more leaking from his head. "Ash..." A sharp pain went down the middle of my skull, and I cried out.

I shuddered and looked at him. His light brown eyes held no light at all, as my vision blurred, wetness falling from my eyes. I hugged his limp body to me, rocking back and forth, sobbing. "Y-you're gonna b-be okay, Ashi-ie. I b-brought you your f-favorite c-candy cause I was s-sorry for not b-being home in t-time to w-watch S-spongebob w-with you. I h-h-had ch-ch—ess c-club-b."

He never answered me.

Closing my eyes, I held his sticky body in my arms, smelling pennies, feeling liquid and thick chunks cover me, but I didn't care. I just wanted him to wake up. To smile at me. To giggle at me. To tell on me for being late. "P-please, w-wake up. A-answer me."

He never did.

"C-come on, we n-need to get to the p-phone." I pulled down my dirty dress and half-carried and dragged him to the living room, and I dropped him when I saw my father and the rest of my siblings, all covered in blood and not moving like Ashie.

"Daddy!" I ran to the stairs, shaking his limp, bloody body. He never answered me either. "P-please, d-addy. T-talk t-to me."

That silence made something break inside me, leaving a hole that flooded with darkness and toxicity, consuming me. That foreign feeling overwhelmed me, and I fell to my knees, tumbling down the steps onto my back.

Everything hurt as I closed my eyes, the world spinning like I was on a merry-go-round as that noxious blackness continued tunneling through me, stealing my breathe.

I coughed, feeling like my lungs wouldn't work. My body began to heave, and I vomited in my mouth, choking until I turned on my side and spit it out.

I shivered on the floor in my family's blood, going numb as that venomous darkness took over every part of me, pulling me away from reality, cocooning me in a place of warmth where I couldn't sense anything.

It felt nice. Safe.

But another part of me was wrenched back to the surface, watching the ceiling fan spin above me through dark, hazy eyes while the other part of me was safely put away. Protected from everything.

The other part of me spoke as they got to their feet in the bloody room, their voice reaching me inside the layers of my safe haven.

NO. STOP THIS.

Betinia's voice shattered the blocked memory, stopping me from experiencing more.

I remember now. I remember We buried her back at the hospital together, along with her memory to seal her away for good.

I remembered too. Not the memories of that bloody day, but her and what could do. I remembered waking up somedays without a memory of the last few days. I remembered waking up with blood caked to my face and hands. I remembered the days I created Betinia and how painful it was because some venomous presence fought me every step of the way, and then both of us buried that toxicity and locked it up together. And when we woke up the next morning, neither of us remembered anything. Until now.

You can't let her out, Tini. We never remember anything when she takes over. She'll get us killed for sure.

After so many years, I felt her. I could feel her clawing at her prison, wanting out, craving chaos.

♟♙♟

Hey guys! The next update will be out on March 8th. My grandpa's in the hospital with pneumonia and he's ninety-four 😣

Hope you guys enjoyed this chapter! :)