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Two beautifully dressed elves look down at their prey.
The pair floats there, so close that they can taste the frustration, nerves, and annoyance radiating from the three human men standing below them, their distress as noticeable as bonfire smoke in a wide-open field.
They make an odd trio. A stringy black man, mid 50’s, with fantasy coke-bottle goggles perched upon his greying hair wrings his bony hands together fretfully, grimacing up at the display in front of them. America’s Beef Punchley; Two-hundred-and-seventy pounds of tattooed muscle in a sleeveless tee and a messy auburn mullet stands with his hands on his hips. Lastly, the third figure is short and almost mannequin-like, yet he bears pale flesh that proves him a man; peeking out of eggplant suit jacket sleeves and from underneath a hardlight mask. They all stare up at a segmented, upright wheel, twelve feet tall and blinking in bright colors in front of them.
The largest man approaches the wheel, hovering lettered knuckles over a sign that says “SPIN HERE”. His eyes comb over the strange symbols on each pie-slice and he frowns when he sees a wedge with a skull, followed by a wedge adorned with weaponry. His eyes dart around the dark corners of the room, searching the murky, nebulous ceiling for their eccentric elven hosts who disappeared when they stepped through the last door.
“So wait. If it’s the ‘Wheel of Sacrifice’… this isn’t actually some sort of weird cult or something, right?”
Beef squints into the nothingness above.
“Cause I know you said we’d have to give things up, but I was hoping you meant like…my high school crush’s name. Or eating poutine. Not like…you know…” he gestures vaguely.
“Killin’ stuff n’ things.”
One clammy, meaty hand hovers over the edge of the wheel, retracting in hesitation and closing into a tight fist. Beef steps back from the contraption, glancing at his partners for guidance. Emerich chews his thumbnail.
“Yeah…Like, we thought it would be more like Lent?” His voice creeps up at the end in question.
The largest man raises an eyebrow at him and two very clear “what the hell are you saying?!” looks are shared between them.
Montrose shrugs, palms upturned.
”If my compatriot doesn’t want to go, I’ll go—”
“Well, well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. You each will have two turns this round,” The female elf starts.
“And whom, what, when, or where you choose to sacrifice? Well, that depends on you!”
He can’t see her, but Beef swears he can hear her sharp grin.
Emerich whips his head around in a desperate attempt to locate the speaker, so much so that his goggles fall down his forehead, amplifying his worried eyes in a bug-like way.
“Whom?”
The three cons share a look.
The man’s voice cuts in hastily.
“Now, Lydia and I explained the rules when you all arrived— please, Mr. Punchley. Spin the wheel for us, hmm?”
The engineer lurches forward, arm outstretched to grab onto Beef’s shoulder in panic. He pushes the goggles back up into his hair with a sweaty hand.
“Wait-wait-wait-wait, I’m not so sure about this, Beef…” His worried brown eyes meet soft blue as his crew member faces him slightly.
“D-did you see the skull? What if they’re gonna sacrifice us in here?” he whispers, hoping that the disembodied voices wouldn’t be able to hear.
Two hands clap down, one on Beef’s shoulder and one on Emerich’s. Montrose pulls them into an awkward huddle.
“This is a well-advertised event, gentlemen. Flyers, commercials, spam calls! Don’t you think they’d be sued to hell by now if people were just dying all willy-nilly in their establishment?”
“Well…we didn’t sign any waivers, which should’ve been red flag number one-“
“Well, to be fair, they did say we can’t leave until we finish the challenges,” The red-head points out. “…And we agreed.”
Montrose hums. “Yes, yes. We are now contractually obligated.”
On their side of reality, the two elves bristle.
“Any day now…” The man drawls, the sound of his gorgeous voice echoing about the chamber.
“Be right with you!” The oldest man calls, sticking a stubborn finger into the air and calling out to the nothingness above.
“And like, the whole ‘your prize is your heart’s desire’ thing? Red flag number two! Can’t we just—“
Montrose frowns.
“I’ve researched this quite a bit. Two or three times, even. The success rate is pretty high— folks win all the time!”
He squeezes his friend’s shoulder.
“Pull that level, mon ami,” he grins.
“Let’s get rich.”
Though he sighs deeply, Beef follows through.
The wheel spins, dazzlingly bright and loud; so loud, clacking each time the stopper hits a new panel. Fast at first, spinning so quickly that the boys can’t see what the icons are anymore, but then slower, slower, until they become identifiable again.
Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick. It rushes past the skull and each man takes his own sigh of relief.
Tick. It passes the eye.
Tick. It passes the backpack.
Tick.
All eyes trail down the white pointer to a symbol of a brain.
“Shiiiit,” Emerich whispers, tugging at the roots of his hair.
“It’s so over. They’re going to take his brain…”
Montrose shoots him a slightly pixelated glare and the engineer stands a little straighter.
“Ah! What an interesting choice for you, Lyndon!” The lady elf, Lydia, purrs almost musically.
“Don’t you think, Edward?”
Beef’s eyes narrow and his lips pull into a face of distaste, though he stares straight ahead at the board. In a pixelated font, the word “Brain” appears on each wall, recapping what outcome has been chosen.
The elven man hums gleefully.
“Why yes, indeed.”
A spotlight hits Beef and he flinches at the sudden assault on his retinas.
“Just tell me what I have to do,” the strongman grunts irritably.
“We’ll go easy on you for round one.”
Beef is rooted to the spot. His spine tingles as he senses the host and hostess close, somehow, as if they’re breathing down his neck.
“We’ll pick a memory from your past. If you agree to sacrifice it, you’ll forget it ever happened, and we can all move on. Easy, right?”
The blue-eyed man huffs out a surprised, indignant, almost-laugh.
“You want a memory? How about that one time I walked in on Emerich smooching on a robot—“
The man in the engineer’s coveralls throws his hands up, face flushing a warm red.
“Scott is not a robot, he’s hardlight!” He rakes his hands down his burning face, groaning, before pointing an accusing finger in Beef’s direction.
“And hey! I thought we agreed to never talk about that!”
The elves smile at each other knowingly from their side of the looking glass. Puffs of black, smoky magic swirl in the air. The masked man scratches his head, cocking it to the side as if processing this new and terrible information.
“Woof. Glad I missed that one. My condolences, Meat Patty,” he nods the way of the man in the spotlight solemnly.
A feminine giggle slices through the thick layer of uncomfortability.
“Thank you for sharing, Mr. Punchley, but we have something different in mind.”
Beef raises an eyebrow.
“Oh yeah?”
“How about the memory of your arm wrestling career?”
Beef scoffs.
“You couldn’t rip that from me even if you tried. Pick something else.” He speaks roughly and his posture remains imposing, but there’s a slight waver in his tone.
A delicious waver, the elves think.
Lydia smiles predatorily, reaching out a finger into the air to toy with some of the glittering black smog emitting from below.
“He’s right, Ed, it’s only round one.” Her tone is patronizing. It drips with an unsettling quality.
“How about the memory of your final championship before retirement? Before you went off to Steeplechase. Hm?” The disembodied voices start to grate on Beef’s ears. He grits his teeth, jaw popping with the force.
“Fine. Take it.”
A green check mark appears on the wall behind the wheel. Interesting.
Montrose scratches his chin, his real chin beneath the mask. How do they know so much about their participants? He grinds his molars together. They couldn’t have anything on him, right? He’d worked so hard to become untraceable, unknowable. Will he allow himself to become unraveled by a game of chance just for some cash?
The spotlight swivels, finding Emerich now. Beef ignores the chittering and one-sided bantering of the currently-invisible Wonderland twins as he stalks back to stand with Montrose. Beef gives the older man a slight push towards the wheel and Emerich stumbles towards the machine. Timidly, he spins it. It ticks moderately, nowhere near the velocity at which Beef sent it flying, blinking and flashing until it starts to lose momentum. It hits the last few pegs painfully slow.
Tick. Brain.
Tick. Clock.
Tiiiii— it almost stubbornly stays on the clock, but teeters over at the last second, landing on-
Tick. Crossed swords.
The engineer gulps.
“Swords.”
The walls light up with the chosen word.
“You must sacrifice a weapon,” One of the elves (they kind of run together when you can’t see them, Emerich thinks) says breezily.
Emerich cries out.
“Oh come on! I only have the one!” He unpockets a cylindrical metal shape, one that Montrose and Beef know that in an instant can expand and electrify to become “The Lightning Hook”, a shocking instrument beloved by their peer. He cradles it sadly in the crook of his arm.
“Would you rather give up…your projector?” A sly voice rings out in the strange liminal room.
“Not a weapon,” Montrose adds from the sidelines helpfully. Beef sucks in a breath through his teeth. This is going to be tougher than he thought. Damn Montrose for dragging them into this.
Emerich covers his wrist-contraption with his other hand, dropping the lightning hook to the floor.
“Nope! Okay! I’ll find another hook…it’s fine…” he makes a noise of unfettered frustration.
“Fine!”
The weapon on the floor retracts, then disappears entirely. Another check mark appears on the opposite wall.
The spotlight begins to track Montrose now. He walks stiffly to the wheel and spins it without hesitation.
“Come onnnnn, baby,” he mutters, placing his hands on the structural base of the wheel and staring up impatiently.
It spins with vigor, two, three times around, then starts to fade.
It clicks slowly once, passing a Question Mark.
The final tick lands:
Hand.
Montrose hums deeply, dissatisfied, glancing at his hands.
“Hand!” Lydia confirms from the ether. She makes a noise that is uncharacteristically unsure. “Quick sidebar on this one, is that okay?”
Montrose raises a hardlight eyebrow. And a real eyebrow, underneath the mask, of course.
“Please, take your time,” he says, gesturing to nothing in particular.
He eyes the wall, now filling up with check marks. It looks like there’s place for four more. He gestures to the empty spaces on the wall, trying to convey the message to Emerich, who squints, nodding. Beef nods once.
The trio sits in confused silence until they hear the elven man make a noise of agreement.
“Yeah. So, we just let another contestant, like, an hour ago sacrifice a single finger cause it was round one, so, it’s only fair you get the same rule. What’s it going to be?”
Montrose releases a sigh that he had been subconsciously holding in since Beef’s turn. No secrets unveiled this round, thank fuck. He rolls back his shoulders and grins.
“Dealer’s choice.”
The ring finger on his dominant hand disappears. A check mark joins the others on the wall. He stares at the place his digit had been just seconds ago, quizzically. Damn. This place is no joke. He wiggles his remaining fingers on the way back to the group.
The next round goes quicker.
Another finger, a weakened haymaker, ten years, and three check marks later, a door to the north opens.
“Onward! Welcome to Trust or Forsake!”