Welcome to the Game

"Who are you?" Frank asked.
"I'm the Banker, Franklin," burbled the distorted voice. I recognised it as the one which had spoken to me earlier when we were still cuffed to the walls in the first room.
"It's Frank," he growled.
"Franklin," the voice of the self-confessed Banker asserted with smug superiority. "You did well in the last room."
Frank said nothing.
"I confess I had hoped one of you would try wading through the alkali but I suppose I am glad you didn't."
"Who are you?" Frank asked again.
.
There was a click as an overhead projector came on and began casting images onto the wall. Photographs of us as children, in school, at university, in the park, at weddings. I recognised myself in some of them and Ray's hair was hard to miss once he'd reached fifteen or so. Tattoos gradually began appearing on another man which marked him out as Frank and Mikey's serious expression never changed.
It was thoroughly freaky knowing that somebody had been stalking me since I was small and from the expressions on the others' faces they were as creeped out as I was.
"What the hell, dude?" Ray said when the projector shut off.
"As you can see, I've been taking an interest in my players. I know your strengths and weaknesses, your characters. You were specifically chosen to play this game and the game was set up specifically for you."
"Haha," I intoned dully. "Yeah, it's such a fun game."
"Don't be such a killjoy, Gerard. I'm going to see how far you can get through the board. I already know which one of you will crack first."
.
"What board?" Ray asked. "What are you talking about? We're stuck in here, the only door leads back to your wacky paddling pool."
"Such little faith, Raymond. Try the door."
"We did, you locked it."
"Try the door again, Raymond." The voice sounded amused.
Ray huffed, clearly not liking being ordered around, and tried the door handle. It pushed down and he pulled the door open.
.
On the other side was a dark room - grimy, saturated with the stench of old cigarettes and something coppery which hung in the air and made it hard to breathe. We squinted and in the dim light from the few hanging bulbs we saw the outlines of shelves and dust covered equipment. It looked like a garage or a workshop.
"But, that was the pool room a moment ago," Ray protested. "How did it change?"
The voice chuckled digitally. "Maybe I'll tell you, but for now listen up because I'll give you a clue for this one. I think you're going to like it. When you find the surprise, the object you need will be in the throat."
There was a hiss of static and the voice stopped.
"What on Earth does that mean?" Mikey asked. "'When you find the surprise, the object will be in the throat.' What surprise?"
"I'm guessing we have to find it," I said, stepping into the room.
.
The light from the door behind me illuminated dust motes drifting lazily around. The air scraping down my throat was thick with it and it was cooler in here than it had been in any of the other rooms, like we were in a basement.
"Just stick together," Mikey said, gently scrubbing dried blood from his filtrum. We didn't need telling twice.
We moved deeper into the room, our footsteps muffled by the layer of grot on the floor. I could hear Frank's heavy breathing by my side as we crept onwards and had to keep checking that he wasn't about to have a panic attack.
.
My foot splashed down in something sticky. I lifted it up and in the light from a dying bulb overhead I saw deep red spattered over my sock.
"Uh, guys?" I quavered, waving my foot around aimlessly.
"Is that blood?" Frank asked. Ray crouched down, his face set into a grimace, and dipped a finger into the puddle of red.
"Yes," he said, standing up and wiping his hand on his trouser leg. I took a deep breath of the tangy air and gagged on it. Frank slapped me on the back and gave me a look of sympathy.
"Let's just get out of here," I muttered.
.
Thud, slap. Thud, slap. Thud, slap. My footsteps reminded me that there was a pile of blood behind us and we didn't know where it had come from. We didn't have to wonder for long though. There was a set of shelves blocking off the rest of the room so we cleared the old pots of paint off one of the shelves and wriggled through.
On the other side was a small space with bare walls, one locked metal door and one dead body.
.
"Oh God," Mikey said, covering his mouth with his hands. The stench was awful and tears sprang to our eyes. Only Ray didn't back away but he looked at the body with something close to pity in his expression.
"Surprise," he croaked.
"This is the surprise?" Mikey said, dumbfounded.
Ray stepped closer to the body and crouched down. "Female, maybe around sixty, been dead longer than thirty six hours but the body was kept on ice."
"What the hell, dude? You a cop or something?"
"An army medic, actually," he said, not taking his eyes off the rotting body. "Hey, the Banker said there would be something in the throat. You think he meant her throat?"
We all went several shades paler and he could see the answer written in our resigned expressions.
He sighed and, muttering an apology, he stuck his hand into the woman's mouth.
"Urgh," he groaned, his eyes screwed up tightly. "Oh, there's something in here."
He withdrew his hand and opened it up to reveal a key. He wiped his hand off on the woman's jacket and turned to the door.
"I expect this will get a lot more horrible very quickly," he said, inserting the key into the lock and turning it.

Notes

Okay, so maybe I can't count three days. Sorry for the massive gap guys, I hope you're still reading this. Don't worry about the dots between paragraphs - I write into a word processor then copy and paste so I have to add them in to keep the paragraphs seperate.

Ghost xx