The Hangry games; part eleven

The clones are abroad but it is time for a winner to emerge of these so called Hangry Games. SufoenO must be unmasked, some of us have our suspicions only one ghost will guess truth of who they are.

                There is an island not too far away from the British Isles where supernatural things are still possible, where the magic of the old world and ancient religions still holds sway.

                It is a disputed territory, being close to both heaven and hell’s powerful gravities. Well, I suppose it would be more accurate to say that it is close in a spiritual sense. Metaphysical thermodynamics is not a subject many people have studied so it’s kind of hard to explain.

                This island had been a no man’s land for many centuries but the denizens of heaven and hell had noticed that someone had visited with a piece of technology powerful enough to slay dragons. They both wanted that ship. Not since the ancient corner shop of Eitri, Brok and Buri had had a half-price sale on god-slaying spears had they seen such an excellent opportunity.

                Angels armed to the teeth with spears and swords were fighting with fifteen enormous dragons. Dragons are particularly dangerous because they can interact with both the natural and the supernatural world. Five of the dragons had the pink fleshy skin of a lizard that has just shed its skin, nine had scales in various brilliant colours.

                The largest one of all was armoured in magma, the rock fluid only because of the furnace of her terrible heart. The angels were not doing well against her. A badass looking angel went running at the enormous hell-beast with a thrice blessed javelin but the dragon dealt with her with one casual flick of her claw.

                Three more angels attacked from behind in unison and the monster grunted as she turned to face them. As she turned around her incredibly large tail hit the submarine that they were all fighting over. It merely dented the incredible machine, those within were safe for the moment.

*

                “Safe is a relative term.” Bob the saltwater ghost was saying to his friends both living and dead.

                They were a very strange collection of friends indeed.

                There was an Irish lass Niamh named with dark brown hair that she was currently chewing. There was a tall Irish lad wearing glasses whose name was Seamus. There was a small Asian toddler trying to lick the walls of the sub. Weirdly there were six identical Asian women in various states of injury.

                These were all clones of a ghost that had been brought back to life named Tan, and no one was quite sure if they were evil or if they were even the real Tan.

                Then there were the ghosts. Amelia and Anna were sirens but luckily the enchantment they had accidently cast on all the men had been broken by the last dragon everyone had met. There was Alicia the poltergeist, Oscar the badger-geist and Angphu the ghost of a friendly Asian chap. Tan-the-Man Dave and Robert were also ghosts without powers (Robert had shown himself capable of taming a live dragon but I don’t think that was because he was a ghost. He had always been good with animals.)

                Also, there was the shade of a friendly American in glasses with manly facial hair and an air of general pleasantness about him.

                “We need to see what’s going on out there.” Tan-the-Man said. “Do you think there are cameras we can use from the control room we were just in?”

                “I think you’ll find it’s called a bridge,” Dave put in, keeping the tone light and jovial. “I assume that all the doppelgangers want to keep this ceasefire going until we’ve managed to retreat from this battlefield beach?”

                “That seems like a good idea.” One of the Tan’s had a broken leg from when Alicia had injured her. She was sat on the floor with her back to the wall. “Man, sitting down is the tits.”

                “Screw the ceasefire.” Shouted a particularly angry looking Tan. “There can be only one!”

                She shot the broken-legged Tan in the face and for a brief moment it looked like another ghost had joined the team, but then the image vanished and everyone was left wondering if they had imagined it.

                “Stop fighting!” Alicia yelled angrily. All of a sudden, the clones were all pinned to the floor by the power of the poltergeist.

                “Now would be a good time to leave,” Seamus said as he got down on the floor to crawl back through the tunnel that had brought them to this small room at the back of the ship.

                Niamh followed and little Nabila was able to walk behind her.

                “Wait for me.” One of the copies of Tan gasped. As far as they could tell she was the Tan that had followed them before. She seemed mostly trustworthy so no one objected as she crawled after them back towards the bridge.

                As they all reached the bridge gunfire could be heart from the room they had just vacated.

                “Stop blowing holes in my ship!” Bob shouted angrily.

                “Your ship?” Tan-the-Man raised his eyebrow inquisitively at the odd statement Bob had made.

                “Yeah, I’ve decided I’m going to steal it.” Bob explained.

                “Is steal the right word?” Dave wondered aloud. “Doesn’t one commandeer a ship?”

                The sub shook again as another dragon tail caught it, interrupting what could have been a fascinating conversation about semantics. The American ghost pointed at three monitors that showed what was happening outside.

                Quite a lot of maimed angels were scattered around the sand and pebbles. Most of the dragons appeared to be slain, except a vicious looking yellow one and the titanic monster that was armoured in magma. A small unit of hardened angels were still fighting the good fight.

                “We are so screwed.” Said a ghost named Angphu. It was particularly scary to hear him say so as he was one of the most optimistic and cheerful members of the group of friends.

                “Hey, maybe we’ll get lucky.” Amelia, another ghost, sounded doubtful. “Maybe they’ll all kill each other?”

                “Doesn’t matter.” Bob the saltwater Geist shrugged. “If another dragon climbs on the sub and buckles the walls again we’re all done. I’d be amazed if we are still watertight.”

                Seamus stood by the PC that appeared to have the power of command over the submarine.

 RECOMMENDED RESPONSE: RETREAT. WOULD YOU LIKE TO RETREAT? Y/N

“So, shall I press this button here?” He asked the assembled ghosts and people.

“Hold on,” Anna held up her hand to stop him. “When you retreat the submarine everyone who is a ghost is going to get left behind, aren’t they?”

“Why?” Niamh asked in dismay.

“Remember what that Father Christmas monster said?” Anna explained. “The only reason all of us are still here is because we’re on this island. Most of us can’t cross running water and Bob is only here because the submarine is in the saltwater.”

“Yeah.” Robert understood what they were saying. “Don’t worry about us though. You guys should save yourselves.”

“But what about you?” Tan asked in horror. She was thinking they’d all get eaten by the dragons outside. Robert just bravely shrugged his shoulders.

“Maybe we’ll get lucky.” He said. “Maybe the angels will beat the monsters.”

A scream could be heard in the background as yet another soldier of heaven got their legs bitten off by a dragon.

Seamus pressed the Y button on the console, commanding the computer to retreat.

PASSWORD REQUIRED ­_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

“Oh dear.” Seamus stared at the screen, horrified.

“How are we going to get the password?” Niamh looked scared. “It’s eleven digits long, it could be anything!”

“I’ve got an idea.” Dave said. “type in ‘earth is flat’.”

Seamus tried this. The screen flashed.

INCORRECT PASSWORD. TWO PASSWORD ATTEMPTS REMAINING.

“You wasted one of our password attempts on a joke?” Tan asked accusingly.

“In my defence, I didn’t know we only had three attempts.” Dave looked suitably ashamed of himself. No doubt another argument and more accusations might have broken out but a whirring sound interrupted them.

“What’s that?” Robert’s spirit looked around

A drone with a basket attached to it flew into the room. It was only a small drone, the kind you might use to take long distance selfies if you enjoy a bit of narcissism.

“We forgot about SufoenO.” Niamh whispered, taking the small basket and reading the note attached.

“Should anyone wish to resign and save the life of their friends,

They must eat the berries for then the journey ends.

Only when one is left alive and breathing in the world

Shall the ceasefire happen and the peace flag be unfurled.”

“It’s poison berries.” Niamh realised. “Like in the Hungry Games”

“SufoenO is trying to force an ending like in the story. Some kind of child more interested in stories than real life.” Bob was peering at the berries. “Damn it, does anyone else think these games were rigged from the start?”

“Does that mean it wasn’t my fault you got knocked off that cliff?” Alicia asked hopefully.

“No Alicia, that was definitely you.”

Alicia sighed unhappily.

“I think I should keep hold of these.” Niamh made to put the berries in her pocket but Seamus grabbed her hand.

“You’re not taking those berries so you can eat them and save my life by dying and making me the winner, are you?”

“No.” Niamh used her best poker face to conceal the fact that this was exactly what she was intending.

“This doesn’t help us get the eleven-character password.” Amelia pointed out.

 “Well if you want the password, why don’t you ask the captain of the ship?” The American pointed out. “They look like the kind of person who would cave under torture.”

“You’ve seen the captain?” Bob was surprised.

“Oh yeah. I probably should have mentioned this earlier, shouldn’t I?”

“What does he look like?” Oscar asked.

“Oh sure,” Amelia said. “Act like the captain is a man. Talk about assuming someone’s gender.”

Naturally everyone was keen to get a description from the only person who had actually seen the individual responsible for the so-called Hangry Games. However, they were unable to have a proper discussion as one of the dopplegangers crawled into the bridge.

“I’ll kill you!” She had found a road-flair from somewhere and lit it. It was clearly intended to be used as a weapon as she lunged at the Tan that had been with the group.

“Time to start running again.” Bob suggested.

The attacker reached her target and the two were suddenly locked in a fight over the flaming stick. As they struggled, they spun around. Soon it was impossible to tell which was the one the spectators thought was good and which one was potentially evil.

The truth of the matter is that all of the copies of Tan were not clones. What had happened when the reanimation machine was activated with enough juice to bring back thirteen souls was unique and slightly weird. The machine had made a baker’s dozen bodies but there was still only one soul in the machine.

                That one soul had been shared between all the copies of Tan, each getting a separate part of her personality. All her road rage, angry swearing and general grumpiness had landed in the clone that brought a flair to what could easily have been a gunfight.

                Seamus was already making his way out of the door, very keen to find the password they needed.

                “Where’s the captain’s quarters?” He asked the American.

                “Are we really going to leave those two?” Niamh looked at the two copies of Tan who were still locked in mortal combat.

                “It’s okay we’ll come back for them.” Seamus promised. “Nabila, come with us. Stay away from Mummy, she’s a bit murderous right now.”

                “No point in going that way.” The American pointed out. “The captain’s quarters are through there.” He pointed at down the corridor that led to the teleporting conveyor belt. “I should warn you though, there’s some kind of electricity in the air that kills you. It’s how I died.”

                The fight between Tan and Tan came to a thrilling conclusion as one of them grabbed the flair triumphantly.

                “Aha!” She grinned with the weapon pointed at her mirror image. “I’ve got the weapon, I win b***h.” She pronounced the last word with two syllables so that it sounded more like bee-arch.

                “You think so?” Countered the other. She held up one of the black spherical bombs.

                “Where on earth, did she pull that from?” Oscar asked in confusion.

                The flair-wielder hesitated so the one with the bomb spoke.

                “I think I’ve worked it out. Every time one of us dies I get more memories in my head. That means when there’s only one of us left then all my mind will be in one place. So, we just need to make one more of us die.”

                The bomb was being held by the Tan that received all the common sense when they were reanimated. Unfortunately, this meant that the other one was sadly lacking in that useful attribute. This might explain what she did next.

                “You liar!” She tried to burn Tan’s wrist to make her drop the bomb but of course the flames of the flair simply lit the base of the fuse.

                The resulting explosion took out the lights and was deafening in the small enclosed space. Luckily Nabila’s shield was faster than the speed of sound and she was enveloped in an opaque sphere that protected her tiny eyes and iddy biddy ears.

                When the lights came back on Niamh and Nabila where the only ones still alive.

                “D****t.” Tan only had one ghost, all her memories and her soul were stored in the same place again. “I’d only just come back to life!”

                “Huh.” Seamus looked around. “Being a ghost is weird. I wonder if I’ve got any super power?”

                Niamh shed a wee tear.

                “I think I just won the Hangry games.”

                “Look on the bright side.” Bob pointed out. “At least Seamus and Tan came back here. None of their timeline is unaccounted for.”

                Bob gave Dave and Anna a meaningful look.

                “Never mind this, we’ve got to get to the captain.” Amelia urged. “Why don’t we ghosts go?”

                Most of the ghosts agreed to cross over to the other side of the conveyor belt. Seamus insisted on staying with Niamh for which she was extremely grateful.

                The ghosts Tan, Tan-the-Man, Anna, David, Amelia, Robert, Angphu, Oscar Bob and Alicia followed their guide across the conveyor belt. 

                The door they needed was clearly labelled. It also had this sign on it.

                NO GHOST MAY ENTER HERE WITHOUT THE PASSWORD.

                Below this was another keypad with eleven empty spaces on the screen again.

                “Oh crap.” Amelia sighed. “We can’t enter where we’re not welcome, can we?”

                “Not sure,” Dave said thoughtfully “I think the rules might be slightly different for a poltergeist. Whoever heard of a poltergeist that was welcome?”

                Bob was staring at the conveyor belt where the melted remains of a bicycle were still looping round and round. Everyone who had seen the bike had immediately thought of Greg, Bob’s brother who was meant to be cycling to afternoon tea.

                Bob looked at the ghost who was a stranger to them all, then he looked back at the bike.

                Alicia put a comforting hand on Bob’s shoulder.

                “Sorry about Greg, Bob.” She said consolingly. “Still though, his spirit must be around somewhere, right?”

                Bob was still frowning thoughtfully when he went to the keyboard tried to put in a password with his intangible fingers.

                “Hey Oscar,” He turned to his friend. “You know there’re badgers on the other side of this wall, right?”

                Oscar looked both allured and afraid. If he found badgers he would pass on to the afterlife.

                “You couldn’t type this password in for me, could you?” Bob then reeled off an eleven-digit password made entirely of numbers. Oscar did so and the door clicked open.

                “Whoa,” Anna said in surprise. “How did you know the password? Are you SufoenO?”

                “No.” Bob looked incredibly grumpy and slightly embarrassed. “But I have a pretty good idea who is.”

                “Shall we linger here on the doorstep to build tension?” Dave suggested enthusiastically.

                Oscar pushed the door open to see if there were indeed badgers in the room.

                The room was as snug as a submarine room could possibly be. There was a small desk with a pair of keyboards on it. The backwall was filled with monitors giving visuals on various locations, some of which were recognisable to the group. In an armchair was the mastermind of the entire affair, the villain who had come up with this incredibly complicated plan to pitch friend against friend in a whirligig of madness.

                He was sound asleep, his blonde beard squashed against the edge of the armchair and his mouth hanging open vacantly.

                “Greg?” Everyone spoke simultaneously.

                This startled the sleeping man with the yellow hair into wakefulness.

                “Eh? What’s… I’m sorry what’s going on right now?” Bob’s brother Greg looked tussled and disorientated.

                “D****t,” Dave said. “You know you really had me believing I was the villain of the piece.”

                Greg shrugged.

                “Come on, Dave,” Greg was still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “You know I needed a red herring, right?”

                “Red herring?” Dave looked really annoyed now. “So, you can break the fourth wall too then, can you?”

                “Yeah.” Greg said. “They can’t though, we probably look a bit mental to them right now.”

                The other ghosts were indeed looking at the four walls of the of the room as if one of those walls might soon become broken.

                “You were the voice in the dance off.” Anna realised. “I thought whoever did the bake-off recordings seemed like they didn’t really watch the show…”

                “Are you SufoenO then?” Alicia asked. The furniture in Greg’s cabin was rattling with her ominous anger.

                “Oh no.” Greg performed the cool female voice of the Satnav. “I only voiced SufoenO. SufoenO is a computer programme written by this ship’s software. I just gave it a few parameters to help me set up the Hangry Games.”

                “You decided to set up a series of games where we all hunt and kill each other?” Bob asked incredulously.

                “To be honest I wasn’t really expecting anyone to kill anyone else. That’s why I came up with the dance off and bake off.”

                “Those were so much fun.” Anna commented.

                “Oh good,” Greg wilfully ignored the sarcasm in her voice. “Did you enjoy the Spongebob trivia pursuit? The diplomacy board game with the exploding chairs?”

                “What?”

                “I’ll admit I dozed off before bake off. Did you guys ever discover the secret Nando’s?”

                “There was a Nando’s?” Angphu was now the one to look betrayed. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell us about the Nando’s.”

                “I left clues all over the bones of that wing roulette I left you.” Greg said cheerfully. “Probably best you didn’t go, I mixed some Ebola in with the piri piri sauce.”

                “Why?” Bob asked incredulously “Why did you choose to gather us here and kill us all?”

                “Guys, relax.” Greg smiled reassuringly. “I picked this place because souls get trapped here. I’ve got a reanimation device you see. What you don’t realise is that this place is magic. There’s actually a temple of Satan the Evil one here. I had to block the internet on your phones so that that place didn’t lure you in. It’s got a five-star rating you know.”

                “You idiot,” Bob replied. “The temple did lure us in! There’s satellite navigation on our geist-phones.”

                “What!?” Greg looked genuinely horrified “But you can’t go there! It’s Satan’s doorstep. Step foot in that place and alarm bells will be ringing from glorious Paradise to the depths of darkest Tartarus.”

                “How have you been napping through all this?” Tan found the ridiculousness of this annoying. “Look outside, you dumbass.”

                Greg twisted in his chair to view the monitors.

                “Holy crap, that’s a magma dragon.” Greg leapt in to action quick as a stripper who has accidently set their trouser on fire. He tapped some buttons on the keyboard (hastily shutting down a few windows before they could do further damage to his already ruined reputation) and switched off the teleporter.

                He stood nervously by the door watching some small red lights turn green one by one.

                “We need to get you folks reanimated.” Greg said, he walked into the teleporter and crossed over to the other side, walking slightly uphill inside the beached sub.

                “We can’t though.” Alicia cried out in despair. “We already used all the liquid that came with the reanimation thingy.”

                Greg stopped and stared at her.

                “You did what?” Surprise and panic were written on the face with the tussled beard.

                “We used the red bottle of liquid up.” Alicia answered. “There’s none left to use.”

                “But there was enough in there to bring you all back.” Greg was aghast. “How come you’re all dead? We can’t retreat and leave you guys here. I don’t know if you know this but dragons live in both the world of the spiritual and the physical. They eat ghosts!”

                “Yeah, we new that. Robert fed one of them Father Christmas.”

                Greg temporarily looked bewildered but decided to move on.

                 “I don’t understand, if you used the machine how come you’re all dead? There’s nothing in here that’s programmed to kill you. It’s not like you guys would kill each other.”

                “Actually, Alicia killed Bob.” Angphu pointed out.

                “By accident.” Alicia protested.

                “Also, Tan killed Oscar.” Anna chimed in “She killed herself too. Thirteen times.”

                “I kind feel like I killed Robert when I persuaded him going to the temple of Satan was a good idea.” Angphu confessed.

                “Wow. I never thought any of my friends would actually kill each other.” Greg looked like someone who had learned an interesting new piece of trivia.

                “You’re acting awfully calm about this.” Tan said. “Given that you’ve basically killed us all.”

                “What? Nah. I reckon I’ve got a back up bottle around here somewhere.” He tugged his beard thoughtfully as they walked back into the bridge.

                “Greg?” Niamh looked at him in surprise as he walked back through the door. “It’s good to see you buddy.”

                “Don’t call him buddy.” Bob said. “He really doesn’t deserve it.”

                “I thought you were dead?” Niamh coughed as she tried to puzzle it out. “We saw your bike in the teleporter.”

                “I think that belonged to our new friend here.” Bob but his arm around the American’s shoulders. “He works for Uber Eats. Isn’t that right?”

                “Why are you touching me?” The man smiled the nervous smile of someone who is being caressed by a psychopath.

                “I dunno.” Bob said. “I just feel like you and I could be best friends, you know?”

                “If your talking about the kind of best friendship where one of us moves to another continent to escape the other then sign me up.” Bob’s new best pal chuckled.

                “So, what are you doing here Greg?” Niamh still didn’t understand.

                “Do you remember how SufoenO was the name of an escape room that I had recommended to me by a friend?” Dave said.

                “I vaguely remember that, yes.” Niamh nodded.

                “Well, Greg was that friend.” Dave explained. “He’s the one that set up SufoenO.”

                “Oh. Why didn’t you tell us he was the one that told you about SufoenO?” Niamh asked.

                “Well apparently I was playing the part of red herring so I had to act all suspicious and stuff.” Dave said grumpily.

                “Never mind that.” Greg put in. “We need you to get the spare bottle of resurrection juice so we can corporealize everyone and get the ship moving, before grandmother dragon out there gets bored of chowing down on angels and drags us back to her masters in hell.”

                “Wait a minute, you organised the games?” Niamh clarified.

                “Yeah but you’re still happy to see me, right?” Greg asked.

                “Sure.” She put her hand in her pocket. “Would you like some berries?”

                “Cheers pal.” Greg happily swallowed a handful of the fruit that everyone presumed was poisoned. “Hang on, are these the ones that the drones were supposed to hand out when there were only two players left?”

                “Yes.” Niamh smiled at him. “See how you like it!”

                “Well they are stuffed full of enough sedative to knock out a carthorse.” Greg looked concerned. “I should probably tell you where the juice is before I pass out.”

                “Is it really called juice?” Angphu asked.

                “It’s actually sold as resurrection spunk but I prefer not to call it that. I left it on a top shelf in the-”

                Greg keeled over in a dead faint.

                “Hmm.” Seamus looked down at Greg with his limbs splayed awkwardly all over the place. “Maybe you should have saved the revenge until after he told us were the liquid is?”

                “Oops.”

                “He said top shelf.” Tan-the-Man mused. “It’s got to be on this side of the sub otherwise he wouldn’t have come over.”

                “We’ve been in all the rooms this side, haven’t we?” Tan joined in the deducing. “So, we must have seen the shelves.”

                “This way!” Bob lead the group back through to where they had found the Lazarus machine.

                Sure enough, there was the shelf with all the bouncy black bombs and the machine guns. Right at the top was that crimson elixir that would bring everyone back to life.

                “Just climb up and get it.” Angphu advised Niamh.

                Niamh looked terrified at the very idea but everyone shouted encouragement at her, trying to get her to make the climb. She really didn’t like the concept but as she turned to Seamus’s warm encouraging smile to tell him that she realised there was another way.

                She picked up one of the bombs from the floor.

                “What are you doing with that?” Amelia asked nervously.

                She threw the bomb up at the bottle. A couple of people freaked out but they had forgotten that Niamh had mad skills with a basketball. It bounced off of the wall behind and came at the bottle which she then reached out and caught with both hands.

                Everyone went wild with admiration, whooping and cheering.

                “Shut up!” Niamh had fully taken charge now. “Get in the resurrection machine!”

                They all dashed in as she operated the levers and knobs required to open the door. The sub shuddered and a screeching of metal could be heard from, as if a giant monster born of hell were raking its claws against the metal walls surrounding them.

                This was unfortunately not a simile; it was the reality they faced.

                The bright lights of the machine lit up the room as Niamh struggled to keep her footing. Bombs fell from shelves and started bouncing everywhere as the whole machine was shaken violently.

                From the machine all the friends emerged, hale and hearty once more.

                A mad dash back to the bridge ensued. No one could quite remember afterwards who finger it was who hit the Y button to issue the retreat command. There is no doubt though that that was the fingering that saved them all.

                Much to everyone’s surprise Greg’s ship rose out of the water like a spaceship and soared into the sunset. The magma dragon sent a jet of white-hot flame but the ship’s automated defence programme dodged to one side with incredible ease.

                Alive and well within that machine the comrades stared at one another as if they could not believe that they were still alive.

                “This thing flies?” Amelia voiced the thought everyone was thinking.

                “I think it could take us anywhere in the entire universe.” Tan-the-Man was staring at the controls spotting phrases like “geostationary orbit” for the first time.

                Everyone imagined long lists of infinite opportunities but it was Angphu who spoke first.

“Nando’s, anyone?”