"Sweetheart, are you sure you're safe at that school?""Ma-"
"I mean I know it's a school and all, there must be security of some sort, but are you really going to be safe?"
"Ma, I'm su-"
"Because Jack forbid anything happen to my baby, what with that maniac on the loose!"
"Maniac?" It was the first full word Taika's mother had allowed her to get in edgewise.
"Of course! Haven't you heard? The Game master escaped from prison! Honestly, Tai, you would think you'd pay more attention to the news..."
"Ma, I've never even heard of this guy. What'd he do?" Her mother had sparked her curiousity now, and that wasn't going to be appeased easily.
"Oh no, I'm not going to tell you anything, I really don't want to talk about it, sweetheart, it was just an awful time and now that he's escaped I would really rather you came home. You can apply to Amityville again next year."
Yeah, no. That wasn't going to happen. "Ma, I'm not leaving school. I really like it here. I've made a couple friends and I really don't think I need to come home. There's plenty of security here," she said though she was not quite sure of this. But it made sense, if there was danger that the school would be prepared for it. "I'm sure no one will let this Game Master guy back on school grounds, I mean seriously. If he's as bad as you let on, then his face is going to be plastered everywhere. Who's gonna let him walk around?"
Her mother sighed that heavy sigh that meant she knew Taika wasn't going to see her version of reason. "Alright, just promise me you'll be careful, okay? I'd really hate to have to come down there and bust heads because my darling daughter has gotten hurt!"
Taika smiled and shook her head. Her mother wasn't the violent sort, but she was very protective of her offspring. "Yes, mama, I will be extremely careful. Besides, if anyone comes at me that I don't know, I'll hit them with my broom." That made her mother laugh.
"You and that broom," she chuckled. "Okay, okay, I'll try to stop worrying so much, as long as you keep that promise to be careful."
After their goodbyes, Taika hung up her skellyphone and rubbed her ear. Jeez her mom talked a lot...
Anyway, now that she was curious, she really wanted to look up this Game Master guy....
She typed his name into Gruegle and mostly found the newer stuff talking about his escape. Apparently the place he'd been locked up in was supposed to be inescapable or something close, anyway. Interesting, but not what she was looking for. The impression she got from the forum discussions was that this was a really creepy kid. Like scary creepy.
Confinement, torture....somehow related to games? What in Halloween did this kid do to those students? No one seemed to really want to talk about it, which sort of made researching it hard. A little deeper digging turned up a few old videos. No wonder she didn't remember hearing about this guy, it was ten years ago. She'd been 6 years old at that point. She had vague memories of her mom watching her more closely, but things went back to normal after a while and it just hadn't made that big of an impression on her young mind.
She clicked on one of the videos from the trial. They'd kept him in shackles...that was weird, wasn't it? She thought most prisoners were allowed freedom of movement at least during their trials. Maybe this guy really was super dangerous. He didn't seem to be paying attention to what was going on, which struck her as strange since the whole trial was about putting him in jail. That huge grin of his...it really gave Taika the creeps.
When that clip was done, she clicked the next which seemed to be from the same day. Freeman was in the witness box and the prosecutor was asking him questions. To which Freeman gave answers that weren't necessarily creepy on their own, but the way he said them, and that grin.
And then that laugh. Oh, Jack, she was probably going to have nightmares from that laugh and she hadn't even heard it in real life. She could only imagine hearing it for real and suddenly she definitely never wanted to experience that. Ever. She now understood why no one wanted to talk about what he did to them. Who would want to relive that?
She clicked over to the next clip which was mostly students talking about Freeman. Something was obviously always off about him...
She figured one more clip wouldn't hurt and clicked the next link. This one was from BooTube, and it seemed to be first hand... She jumped at the first scream, eyes wide as she watched. There was so much blood.. What did this guy do to people?? Suddenly the camera's dropped and the video ends. Taika tried to calm her breathing as she peeked at the comments. So this could have been the Game Master's last game. Or it could have been something someone staged to get attention. Awesome.
She sat back then and stared at her computer. Part of her wanted to keep researching, that part of her that was morbidly curious. But the other part said she should just leave it alone, let it go. She didn't need to know what had happened, what that guy had actually done.
But she wanted to know. The guy had thoroughly creeped her out, but she really, really wanted to know what had happened. What had made this guy go so nuts? Or had he always been that way? Why did they call him the Game Master? What kind of "games" did he play, and why? Seriously, what made people go crazy like this?
Without another thought, she searched for more and hoped she wouldn't regret this...
