Saw: Million Dollar Ordeal
Note: I do not own the rights to the motion picture Saw, it's characters, or anything else related to the film. All rights belong to the original creators. In layman's terms, this is homage to my favorite movie, and I have no intention of anything malicious.
Chris woke up sweating. His back was sore and stiff, and he was naked, coated with some sort of slimy mixture. The entire room was dark, and it felt as if he was lying on some sort of board.
"Ugh," He muttered, "Where the hell am I…?" He noticed something lying on his chest. He picked it up, felt the texture of it, and decided it was a flashlight. He felt for the switch, found it, and flicked it upwards, activating the light.
"Jesus Christ…" He said, sitting up. He was laying on top of sports bleachers, folded completely together. The rest of the room appeared to be an abandoned gymnasium, but was completely bare aside for lumps of something in the corner furthest from him. He turned the flashlight around him, and saw something dangling from the safety fence of the bleachers. Crawling now, not wanting to fall of the bleachers, he found his way over to the object. It appeared to be a cassette player, with "Play Me" written on it. Bewildered, he felt around the cassette player, found the play button, and pressed it.
"Hello Chris," Greeted a dark, raspy voice emitting from the speaker of the cassette player, "I don't believe there's a person in the country that doesn't know of you. You own one of the most successful conglomerates in America, giving the likes of Bill Gates and Donald Trump a constant run for their money. All the while, you don't let pride get in the way, treating your fellow man equal to you with courtesy; from janitors to middle-class men. You're life is a heartwarming tale of success and the ideal model for children and adults. However, you have developed a rather sadistic hobby. In your spare time, you enjoy capturing stray animals and killing them in your basement. I believe you also fried one in your oven. Is this your way of relieving stress, or do you just enjoy taking the life of another being? I'd like to put your butchering skills to the test. The room you're in now is locked, and I assure you the only way out is through the door. The key to the door is in the stomach of one of three sleeping rabid dogs, which haven't been fed in a week, in the room with you. You have ten minutes, starting from when you flip the light switch, waking the dogs, to retrieve the key before the entire room is filled with a poisonous gas. If you're ever curious of how much time you have left, a digital clock will start counting down to zero once you've flipped on the lights. And by the way, the substance on your body is a special mixture of meat and dog food; you'll smell rather tasty to the mutts. Look around you Chris, there are weapons hidden among you, but at the same time, you're outnumbered. Now, you are in the position of the animals you've killed. Will you fall to the jaws of these ferocious beasts, or succeed as you've done so many times before? Let the game begin."
"What the fuck!" Chris whispered into the darkness, careful not to wake the dogs, "Is it money you want? I have plenty! How much? A million? Ten million? Hell, a hundred million! Just let me out of here!"
The silence was his only answer.
"Please," Chris begged on his knees, crying, "I'll do anything, never harm a soul again! I'll even throw in the pin number to my Swiss Back Account! Please!"
As was before, the silence of the darkness was his only answer.
Chris lay in the darkness sobbing, as he came to the slow and painful realization that he was going to play this madman's game.
He reached for the light switch, trembling.
"God help me… I'm really going to have to do this." He realized.
No, this was not a game of Monopoly, or a game of Mario Bros. where the reset button was your savior, this was a live-or-die game.
The light shot out from the fluorescents, blinding him temporarily, and waking the dogs. Smelling the mixture on his skin, they rushed to him, jumping and barking and trying to reach him, but the bleachers were too high up, and they couldn't climb them.
"Shit!" Chris cried angrily, as he noticed the rest of his surroundings. The floor of the gymnasium was covered in broken glass, there was a tall stand used for fixing ceiling problems, and there was no way down from the bleachers without being in range of the dogs, who would chomp on his viscously. He was boxed in.
"There are weapons hidden around you," He remembered the voice from the tape saying, and began to inspect his surroundings carefully. There was something – a bucket maybe? – Wedged in between a section of the bleachers. He crawled over to it, and the dogs followed closely from below, barking and howling for the meal above. The bucket was indeed a bucket, but not just any bucket – a chicken leg bucket from some sort of restaurant, with only one leg, moldy and probably as old as the dogs.
"Thanks for the table scraps you son of a bitch," Chris said flatly, "Some weapon."
Well actually, he began to realize, it was a weapon. These dogs were hungry, and would probably eat anything placed before them, including this week-old chicken leg (not to mention Chris himself). Which is just the distraction he needed to get out of this "corner."
He dangled the chicken leg above the dogs, and watched them drool. For safe measure, he smeared all of the mixture on his body as possible onto the chicken leg, and then, adrenaline rushing, threw it across the room as far as he could. The dogs took the bait, and rushed after it, fighting over the leg, while Chris got down from the bleachers. Thinking fast, he picked up some glass shards and placed them in between his fingers, making a makeshift set of brass knuckles. Then he grabbed the biggest shard of glass he could find, and placed it in his left hand. The dogs still fighting over the meat, he ran over to the tall stand, cringing as the glass embedded into his feet.
No sooner then he reached the stand, he heard the shrill sound of barking coming towards him. Chris whirled around fast, grabbing the pole of the stand with a free hand, and pushed as hard as he could. The stand toppled, landing on an unfortunate mutt. The remaining two rushed towards Chris, unfazed. He raised his right fist, and as the dog on the left jumped towards him, he punched it squarely in the nose, knocking it back. The other dog successfully jumped on top of him, and Chris readied the big shard, placing it in the dog's jaws as they closed on his face. The dog howled in pain, blood gushing from its head, and fell down, presumably dead. As Chris took a sigh of relief, he looked up in time to see the last dog, whom he had punched in the nose, lunge at him. He was pinned down, and the dog took a bite at his chest, gnawing at it. Chris screamed in pain, as the sound of that tape cassette voice came back to haunt him. "Now, you are in the position of all the animals you've killed." Determined to live, Chris grabbed the dog and tried to pry it off, then managed to get his leg in front of it, and kicking it away. Chris grabbed two handfuls of glass, oblivious at the pain, and threw them at the dog. One of the shards landed in its eye, and the dog howled in pain as Chris and done only moments before. Seeing an opening, he grabbed a large shard beside him and slit the dog' throat with it, killing it quickly in a fountain of blood.
Chris bellowed loudly, in both pain and triumph. And then he glanced at the clock. He had five minutes left. No, he couldn't possibly dig though the innards of three stomachs - especially with how wounded his hands were - in five minutes. The odds were against him, but he might be able to – if the stomach he sliced open had the key in it. He couldn't slice two, nor three in five minutes, just one. Just one.
Throwing human emotion and compassion to the wind, he grabbed a shard of glass, and picked his freshest kill to cut open. Hopefully, this one had the key. If it didn't, he was doomed. Chris prayed for this dog to be the right one, and began to make the initial cut.