The Unconventional Guide To Surviving Murder

Characters

Arden Sawyer, Wilbur Myers, Zerah Matar, Poppy Taylor, Oliver Kelly, Alexander Allen, Malachi Cook + More (Minor Characters).

Description

Waking up covered in blood in a trashed log cabin hotel room, Arden Sawyer quickly finds she should be glad that her door is locked. The last thing she remembers is being on a bus en route from jail to state prison. The digital nightstand clock read 19:41 - approximately six hours after she boarded her transport to Julia Tutwiler Prison, Alabama.

She wasn’t in her orange jumpsuit, but the clothes she had been in when she was arrested four months ago. On her person, she has a scrap of paper with its ink waterlogged and barely discernible, a scuffed cellphone with no service no matter how obscure of a stretch she positioned herself into, and a set of three keys she’d never seen before - none of which opened the only door into the room she was trapped in. By 19:58, there was a frantic knocking on her door. Knocking, knocking, knocking; kicking until full-bodied slamming was only punctuated by screamed graphic threats of how they were going to torture her before ending her life subscription.  

Always being a purveyor of self-preservation, Sawyer finds a way to escape the room without having to come face-to-face with whoever the hell had no issue with running head-first into a door to get to her. In spite of the abscond, Sawyer soon finds herself in the once-luxurious getaway lobby with a group of six others in dire conditions much like her own. Skittish and antagonistic, the others explain that they too had no memory of the past six hours - but that was about as much as they had in common. That, of course, aside from another group roaming the lodge in the middle of nowhere who had no issue attacking without discrimination.

The only clues they had to what the game of survival was about was a noticeboard by the reception desk which held a variety of fliers stating mock 'missing' and 'wanted' posters, scattered post-it notes with cryptic puzzles, and a set of eerie rules promising life-threatening consequences if not followed. And then, to make everyone's day worse, a voice resonated over the intercom system.

"One of you will have all of your previous felonies completely wiped from your record along with a cash prize of $5,000,000 if you can complete the tasks set for you around your temporary home. That is, providing there is only one of you left at the end of the countdown." A static crunch ended the announcement and a brief alarm buzz brought everyone's attention to the digital clock at the back of the reception area. It had just begun to count down from seventy two hours.

The Unconventional Guide To Surviving Murder
For there is no living creature as egotistically self-centred as the human being.


Theme Song
Bad Moon Rising - Creedence Clearwater
&
Another Way Out - Hollywood Undead

Type
Short

Genre
Dark Comedy/Satire, Suspense, Mystery, Thriller, Drama, Survival

Characters
Arden Sawyer, Wilbur Myers, Zerah Matar, Poppy Taylor, Oliver Kelly, Alexander Allen, Malachi Cook + More (Minor Characters).

Start Date
30th June 2021

End Date
--/--/--

Warnings
Swearing; Sexual Themes; Substance Abuse; Violence/Murder; Assault/Torture; Character Death.
Mentions of Cults; Past Abuse (Mental/Emotional/Physical/Sexual/Animal); Prejudice/Hostility towards Religious groups; Bigotry/Sexism.

Foreword