The carpet on the stairs is matted with dried blood, which probably belongs – or belonged – to the people who lived here. It's a strange layout for a building; I can't really picture it ever being anything other than a drug den with imposing men in white suits, carrying blunt objects, wandering here and there. But it was something else: it was a home, and now it's not. It's a grave. I'm just here to make my contribution to the pile.

The first guy I see charges me, hatred igniting his face, and I lay him out with a solid jab. 300 Points! He collapses against the wall, shattering a picture on the way down as he groans and slumps. I grip his bald skull and ram it with all the force I can muster into the wall two times, three times, four times until 900 Points! he leaves a bright, wet stain behind him. I grab his weapon of choice – a small balisong, not much but good enough – and hold it up at shoulder height. I lock the handle closed and, whipping the door open, immediately pick a target. Shotgun, sitting down, no more than ten feet away. I hurl the knife. 480 Points! It sticks out of his neck, a gout of blood flying out from a mangled artery, and he chokes for a moment before collapsing forwards in his seat. There's two others, and I have time to grab his shotgun if I want to. Could be loud, though. Better idea. I grab the gun, a pump-action military model, and grip it by the barrel like a club. Swing. 600 Points! I brain the second guy 1000 Points! soon after on the back swing, and I notice something dislodge from his head on his way down to the floor. I look down. An eyeball gruesomely looks up at me from where it lays a few inches out of its socket, tethered to a demolished pound of grey matter by his optic nerve. I flip the shotgun in my hands, and move on.

Taking a moment to listen, I estimate there's no more than four guys left up here. The smell of their weed and God knows what else is much, much stronger – they've practically hotboxed the whole floor, and if I stay too long I'm pretty sure I'll start seeing things.

More things, you mean.

Whatever.

The eyeball is still looking at you, you know.

I know.

But there's something more of interest in this room before I carry on. The door at the far end leads to the rest of the rooms I'll need to clear out, but there's another, smaller door – a walk-in closet, I think. Blood pools around it. The bodies of the former inhabitants? I jerk the door open.

Someone falls out. Or something, because what's left of this sorry piece of work is hard to call human. His arms are gone – completely, from the shoulders – and the chewed flesh tells me that dogs have had their way with this body at some point. The face is peeled away, not cleanly but definitely not rough either, like a hunter-flayed wolf. A human skull stares at me when I turn the corpse over. Below the ribcage, the abdomen is torn apart, the few organs left that remain hanging in shreds amongst the mutilated muscle tissue and skin.

I hesitate, then try to flinch.

I'm not convinced.

No, me neither.

But the surprises don't stop there. On a shelf in the closet sits the head of an animal. Not decapitated and bloody, but shiny latex. A deer. I fold it up and stuff it in my jacket pocket. I'll need a name for that later.

My chest is thumping, a dull echo of the bass that throbs through the walls in every corner of the house. I suspect if it weren't for the music and the drugs, these jobs would be impossible. But as it is, everyone here's too deafened or high to even know I'm here until they're picking shards of their own skull out of the carpet. Might even risk the shotgun for the rest of them, but... no, better not to get careless. I grab a beer bottle and grip it by the neck. Then I shunt through the door with my shoulder.

Two guys in this room, both stood around with cigarettes hanging out of their mouths. One has a machete slung over his shoulder. Where the fuck did he get a machete? The other's defenceless and fucking terrified. I smash the bottle over his friend 480 Points! and he recoils, losing his grip on the long knife. It clatters on a coffee table as he clutches his newly-glassed face, and I make a wide slash for his neck with the broken end I'm holding. 600 Points! The other guy's found his courage and makes a swing at me; I duck under his fist, grab the machete on the way, and come back up swinging. 1100 Points! The machete goes in at his waist and gets stuck somewhere between his sternum and shoulder. Blood - and fuck knows what else - begins pouring out of him in torrents and he almost breaks in half as he tumbles backwards onto a chair, taking it down with him. My shoes are sticky with gore now, my clothes saturated with it. New stains on top of old. I must be a grim vision to these guys – it's no wonder this one practically crapped his pants when I came in. Two down, two to go.

Make it terrible. Make them bleed.

I will.

I go back for the shotgun. Picking it off the grimy, bloody carpet, I wipe the handle off with my sleeve, and chamber a shell. Chu-chk!

I hear a door go and my head jerks. Nothing in sight, so it must be in the adjoining room. Bathroom? Haven't seen one yet, so it must be. That'll make things easier. I give it a few seconds before slamming my foot into the door and levelling my shotgun at a guy who's flicking through a dirty magazine. The music, I can tell, is coming from here; I can't hear a thing, and neither can he. He sees me rather than hears, and there's a split second of complete shock and disbelief registered on his face before he throws the magazine down and goes for a rifle. But he doesn't make it. I aim for the elbow.

300 Points!

I can't hear him wailing, but I can see it on his face. His arm blows apart like a firework, his forearm and hand dissolved into paste on the sofa. He clutches his arm in agony and shock, staring at the mangled stump and screaming, no noise beyond the bass-heavy music making it to my ears. I leave him there for now and make my way to the bathroom door, slamming it open with a jab of my elbow and rushing in. The guy's facing away from me, both hands in front of him and a shotgun similar to my own propped against the toilet he's pissing in. I push the barrel of the shotgun into the back of his neck, leave it long enough for him to know what's about to happen, and pull the trigger. 700 Points! A headless corpse is thrown forwards onto the toilet, bending grotesquely like a ragdoll onto the contours of the seat and basin. His blood, sprayed in a wide circle on the cracked wall tiles ahead of me, begins running down to the floor, where it pools.

I took a risk leaving the other guy with one working arm and an AK-47, but as I guessed he seems too overcome by pain to do anything with it. I drop my own gun and sink to my knees, straddling his chest and cracking my knuckles. Smack. Smack. Smack. Smack. Crack. 1000 Points! The wet thudding of my fists on his cheeks and eyes and mouth and skull is muted by the music, but I can hear it in my head.

Stage Clear!

GO TO CAR.

I'm not ready. I need to calm down. I need to-

GO TO CAR.

Just shut the fuck up, Richard! I need-

GO TO CAR.

I get up, and shake my hands off. Droplets of blood are shrugged off like rain off an umbrella. I breathe in. Out. In, longer. Out, fast.

GO TO C-

I take the mask off. Turning it in my hands, it feels hard to believe something so innocuous could be so... what? Terrifying? Sinister? Deadly, even? All those things, and more besides. The rooster's flaccid latex face is coated entirely in patches and flecks of blood, rivulets running down to the neckline. There's some blood that's made it through the mask and into my eyes – in the frenzy, I couldn't even tell, but now it's irritating and impossible to ignore. I rub with my knuckles until it feels better.

Fuck.

Fucking hell, this is fucked. What have I done. What the fuck have I fucking done. Fuck.

His face, shit, his face isn't a face, it's a fucking Picasso. And his arm, oh my fucking God.

I can't bear to glance into the bathroom, but I can't help it either. There's so much fucking blood, how could they have so much blood? Trees. Why are there trees? These weren't here before. Cicadas. In the city? No. This is wrong. Russian barked over loudspeakers. AK-47's in the jungle. Fuck, there's so much blood. Bodies heaped in the drained pool, none of them even bagged, swimming in their own fucking blood. We throw more on. More bodies. More blood. Always more, always more.

I can't take it, I can't stop-

I have to-

Shaking hands. Mask over head. Pull it down. Breathe.

GO TO CAR.

I compose myself. My heart rate slows, my breathing returns from my mouth to my nose.

GO TO CAR.

Is that good enough, Richard? Is that enough?

GO TO CAR.

Please let it be enough.

GO TO CAR.

I go to the car.