CH 120

I wandered the dark hallway. I was frightened. Nobody was chasing after me, but I continued to run away. I was looking for the exit—the exit to this mansion.

There were many doors in this mansion. However, I couldn’t go into any of them. There were scary contraptions in the rooms. The people who went into the rooms all met terrible deaths.

The people who locked me in here said as they smiled, “The hints to the exits are hidden in the rooms, so search well.” Despite their fear, the adults entered the rooms, but they were never able to come out.

A guillotine fell once the door was opened, the floors opened without warning, columns toppled down, arrows shot out from nowhere, and flamethrowers activated without warning… One adult died by getting confined in a room and gassed to death. This was a murder mansion.

People watched, entertained by those deaths. They watched people die through their observation windows.

Lost in the mansion, I roamed the hallways. I was hungry, but there was nothing to eat. I was tired, but there was nowhere I could rest in peace. The house full of dead bodies always had a repulsive stench, and it was teeming with rats that nibbled away at the corpses. There were people whose ears were gnawed away by the rats after sleeping in the hallway. We couldn’t even sleep. I merely wept and wept, hidden under a table in the hallway.

I heard screams. Male or female—it was impossible to tell the age or gender of those screams. I blocked my ears as I shuddered. I was scared. ‘I’m scared, I’m scared.’ No matter how hard I cried, there were no adults to come and save me.

My mother sold me for money. She said that I was scary because I saw weird things and said incomprehensible things. She cursed at me, saying that I was possessed by spirits. I had no family other than her. There was nobody who hoped I would escape and nobody to go back to even if I escaped.

I wanted to live. I didn’t want to die. I was hungry. I was sleepy. I wanted to live. I didn’t want to die.

I was lonely. I was scared. ‘Save me, I’m lonely, I’m hungry.’

I heard yet another scream. I quaked as I curled up even more.

All the adults were dead.

They all died while trying to find the exit, fighting amongst themselves, or laughing maniacally to themselves. Some sought death themselves. The dead adults became blackened lumps and sank deep down to the basement. They beckoned to me, who was still alive, to hurry up and join them. I couldn’t go down to the basement because I was so scared.

I was so hungry that I caught and ate a rat that came to eat away at the corpses. A few rats bit me back and escaped, but a few wobbled weakly before they got caught. The rats that I caught were all ill. I ate them only to throw them back up.

‘I’m so hungry, I’m hungry, I don’t want to die.’

I had several scars which weren’t from roaming the house. They were incurred by the adults with whom I was trapped. The adults were also starved, so they tried to eat me, the youngest. I ran away from them all.

I wandered the hallway by myself, avoiding all the adults. I couldn’t go into the rooms. Scary things lived in those rooms.

Then, I heard a door opening.