The Hut and the Base
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What happened?

I only called Orland. But Orland called Jordan, Jordan called Sherman, and Sherman called Osmond. People who do not know each other gathered for a different goal, and they all fell into the gaps in between.

Osmond came without a purpose and died first. Jordan took the chance to corner Sherman into a room, in which she was locked until Jordan killed him. We took the life of the murderer, and the only thing left to do was to wait until the rescue team arrived. However, Orland and I had a purpose. Orland called Jordan out to sweep the snow from the roof. The snow soon melted down in the form of crimson rain.

Orland stood on the corner of the roof with the corpse.

If you step on snow just the right way, nobody can hear you walking.

Orland turned back at me to apologize for the last time.

I didn’t take it.


Osmond’s silhouette appeared on the porch. It looked at me and said I looked somewhat familiar, but I ignored it. It complained that Sherman plotted to kill him and run away with the money he borrowed. It said it would chase her down after reading the ledger as soon as it got free. I tried not to give it attention.

Bloodstains resembling Sherman appeared on the mattress. It said it accomplished half of its goal but failed the rest. It looked less frustrated than the other one as it told it forgot someone who lost a fortune because of her. I didn’t reply. There was nothing to listen to from someone who made two enemies.

Snow didn’t pile up where Jordan laid on the roof. The cavity coldly loathed at Jordan, happy at her death. I asked it if it knew who I was. After a brief silence, the cavity told me I didn’t need to kill her. I didn’t listen to him after that. I didn’t want to listen to evaluations of a traitor.

A snowman piled up on top of where Orland was buried. Orland said that Jordan approached him only for his wealth, and after he bought her pricey stuff, she vanished. His following words were filled with regrets and apologies for me. I did not reply, but I stayed there a little longer. His sentence always finished with the snowman’s head falling.

It got less snowy the past few days. The faint radio broadcast told that the weather would get better in several days, meaning that the rescue team will arrive soon. While I wondered what to tell them - four dead, or four missing - I heard the snowman’s head fall.

Here’s the situation; there was a shadow on the porch, bloodstains in the room, a cavity on the roof, and a snowman whose head falls off. It got erased once, but it always appeared again. Corpses always indicated it was there, and I would be their perpetrator.

The snowman’s head that piled up without my notice fell again.

“Till the very last.”

Those were the words Orland whispered to me as he hugged me. I wasn’t expecting to use the phrase in a situation like this. How many of Orland’s head would have rolled before he eventually pursuaded me?

There were plenty of ropes in the hut, including one for me.

As breathing became more challenging, the shadow and the bloodstain and the cavity and the snowman approached me and stuck onto me as their weight dragged me down. My neck did not break that easily. I just hung there, not knowing when I will fall. I felt nothing but Orland’s coldness.


As I bled, the smoke from multiple guns and bloodstains diffused in the water. My blood kept on leaking, painting its surroundings with hues of red. The bleeding did not stop as I laid silently in the bathtub, wondering when the bleeding will stop. I felt a familiar scent: Illai’s cigarette.

It was a pity that the only weapons I could lay my hands upon were knives and guns.

I remember what Illai said as she coughed out blood. I was the one who had to do it, as the last person standing and as the person holding the final truth, bleeding endlessly.

“This murder must end in suicide.”

The image of Illai coughing blood flashed in my mind again.

Here’s the situation: people killed each other and got killed, the corpses lying in the hallway leaked shadows, and the ones fallen inside toilets or shower rooms spilt endless streams of blood. Illai and I, who were unwilling to kill anyone, requested sealing the site by doing nothing more than stating SCP-444-KO was involved. An O5 had to intervene to get that approved. And I was responsible for its finale.

I couldn’t hear about other sites. The radio that was supposed to entertain me only played the same voices and programs. God, please replace that DJ. I wanted to ask the smoke stuck on my body underwater, but more blood gushed out.

Illai, who was stabbed to death, appeared as a skeleton and blended into the water. I’m glad it ended like this right now, Illai said. I disagreed, so I did not reply. She asked me to change the radio channel. I told her I couldn’t move, and she understood.

Everyone went on to talk about themselves. A wisp of smoke who was shot expressed his guilt to a friend he neglected and anger towards another friend who attempted to flee without returning his money. I did not say anything, as he was the one who killed Illai.

Another one, who was killed with her head crushed against a mirror and turned into a mirror piece, deplored her numerous debts and asked me if she was right to kill her colleague who acted like a loan shark. I replied nothing to that question too stupid to come out from a researcher’s mouth.

Another one who was impaled to death after crashing on a tree came to me as a twig. He said he didn’t know who he was or why he died. He told me that he’s a good guy who generously gave loans to other people. I asked who he killed, but he remained silent. After a long while, he said that he might have been too drunk to remember. That was all of him.


I listened to Illai.

Her bloody hands trembled in desperation.

The momentary ecstasy of murder was a gap too wide for even a child to miss.

I committed the last murder with my own hands.

It most likely had started from an alcoholic’s frustrated slandering blames. A scuffle started in the lounge that had the macabre sense of causing occasional casualties. A little push was enough for all the bits of emotions everybody was holding against each other to burst out. The last survivors went mad and held on to anyone they could see outside the room and pulled them into the lounge, frantically laughing and crying.

Were there people the outsiders cared for? As the last survivor of the free-for-all fight fell, the murder frenzy escaped the lounge. Someone killed someone else mid-day, somebody got assassinated at night, and the following day the assassin was executed. Employee staff perished off, and we were blocked from external communication. Smoke, blood and the puke that came from the chaos confused our senses. Wouldn’t the five be happy, seeing it grow from a small hut to a giant base?

And so it is.

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