Good Riddance

It was dark. 

David was awake now, but he couldn’t see anything. He could definitely feel something though: the chair he was sitting in, strong leather straps holding his hands in place, and some sort of mask on his face. Attached to the mask, a metal plate pressed down on his tongue, making it impossible for him to shout for help.

The word “brank” popped into his mind, unhelpfully. 

Thanks, brain, he thought to himself. Any ideas on how to remove it, or why I’m strapped to a chair, or where I am, or what is going on?

“Scold’s bridle" continued his mind, apparently taking part in a fucking pub quiz up there. 

Awesome. Hope you win.

He remembered coming out of the market. He’d put his groceries on the passenger seat of his car and was reaching for his seatbelt when he sensed movement behind him. Craning around to see what it was, he felt a sharp pain in his neck and then darkness.

The darkness persisted, but this was different.

He knew time had passed, but how much, he had no idea. He struggled against the straps holding his wrists in place, but there was no give. Whoever had put him here had been thorough. He went to try again when he heard a mechanical click and then the soft sound of static.

“David Lee,” said a voice that seemed to move around the room. David stiffened, craning his head to see if he could make out anything in the blackness.

The lights clicked on with a loud electric hum, and it took David a second or two to adjust before he could take in the room he was in.

Minimalist didn’t begin to cover it. Everything was white, including the white floor and the white metal chair he was sitting in. He was dressed in a white hospital gown, and the featureless white walls didn’t appear to include a door or any means of escape. 

Hanging in front of him, suspended like prints in a dark room, were photographs of people.

People he knew.

“Do these faces look familiar, David?” asked the voice, which David could now see was emerging from a sleek white speaker affixed to the ceiling. The voice was deep and somehow electronic. A voice changer, maybe? David tried to answer, but could only make muffled sounds due to the metal plate pressing down on his tongue. 

“Oh, I think you’ve done enough talking for the time being, David," continued the voice. 

The photos started to light up individually. The first was of a celebrity couple that David knew well.

“Julia and Wyatt," the voice buzzed. “Their marriage fell apart because of the stories you made up about them on your website. Made plenty of money for you though, didn’t they?"

The second photo lit up, a jolly-looking bear of a man most people would know from his popular cooking show. “Cal Franklin. Your cruel podcast gave him an eating disorder, and you a million-dollar deal with Spotify."

Now the third photo: a smiling young woman.

“She was a contestant on a reality show, and you told her to kill herself because you didn’t like the way she talked to the other contestants. Were you happy when she did?”

David stared. This was bad.

“I want you to repent, David,” the voice said in its cold, metallic rasp. “And I want you to mean it."

There was another loud metallic clunk, and the lights changed. Now, the room was black again, and David could see that, cut into the formerly featureless wall, was a door, its outline illuminated with a white neon glow. Above it, David could make out letters spelling out the word EXIT and above that, a screen displaying the number 0.

“Through this door, David, lies your freedom,” the voice purred. “Somewhere in this room is the key you need to leave. You will have to navigate traps, hazards, and puzzles, each calculated to cause the most excruciating pain imaginable."

David felt his stomach tighten. A large bead of cold sweat ran down his spine.

The voice continued. “This room is also wired to a decibel meter. If you make too much noise, the room will flood with nerve gas, and you will die. If you manage to keep your mouth shut for once in your pathetic life, you might stand a chance of getting out of here alive.”

There was a metallic click, and the latches on either side of David’s face sprang open, and the brank fell away. The leather bands around his wrists loosened, and David frantically pulled his arms free, just in case they changed their mind.

“Good riddance, David,” snarled the voice. “Your first test awaits."

At this, there was another metallic clunk, and a section of the wall lifted up, revealing a large diagram of a human body with the organs highlighted with small red lights. A light indicated where the heart was, and identical lights marked the lungs, the liver, the spleen, and others, for a total of 14. Closer examination revealed that next to each light was an alcove, and each alcove was filled with a resin replica of the organ in question.

Except for one.

David stared with mounting horror at the diagram’s face, which he was starting to realise bore a striking resemblance to his own.

It was the tongue.

David instinctively stepped backwards, trying to put some distance between himself and the grotesque diagram, and his back collided heavily with something. Spinning around, David saw a plinth, from which tumbled a case of surgical tools, which landed on the floor with a crash.

The sound! The second the tools clattered to the floor, the screen above the door lit up, and the zero began climbing, cycling through numbers until it settled on the number 25. David suddenly felt very strongly that he should avoid letting the number reach 100 at any cost.

He looked back at the bright white floor where the surgical tools lay in disarray, sparkling horribly in the harsh fluorescent light.

He knew what he had to do, but could he? Picking up a pair of surgical scissors from the floor, David let out an involuntary sob. The counter over the door ticked up by three.

David placed the open blades of the scissors on either side of his tongue. Forcing the handles together, they bit into the meat, and for a second, there was no pain. Then it came roaring into his mouth, accompanied by a torrent of blood and an involuntary muffled roar that David tried his best to stifle.

He failed.

This time, the counter shot up by fifty-three. David was now at 78, and his tongue, still gushing blood, remained half-attached and incandescent with agony. Stifling his guttural sobs, David willed himself to put the scissors back in his mouth and positioned them back against his tongue, which was reflexively thrashing around like a harpooned sea creature.

A buzzing laugh started to spill from the room’s hidden speakers. “Tick tock, David,” said the voice, dripping with satisfaction. “And remember-”

The voice was cut short by the sound of a door on the other side of the room unlocking.

David spun around in the direction of the door to see it slowly swing open, revealing a middle aged man wearing grey overalls, pushing a mop bucket on wheels. 

David, blood pouring from his mouth, glittering red-stained scissors in his hand, stared at him in disbelief.

The janitor did the same in return.

#

The figure in the featureless metal mask couldn’t believe it. He had specifically told the building’s management that they didn’t need janitorial services. It had been confirmed in writing! What was the point of all those emails? 

Months of setup, ruined.

He paced the floor of his office, fuming, his heels clacking on the hardwood floor as he went. It was getting harder and harder to find the space to get the trap rooms set up - all the good warehouses had been bought up by property developers, and the rent on the ones that were available were extortionate and came with a bunch of unnecessary extras he didn’t need and actively didn’t want. Extras like a concierge or a gym

Or the fact that the units get cleaned every day by a dedicated janitorial team.

He sighed and crossed another building off the large city map that took up most of one of the office walls. 

Obviously David had freaked out, and the janitor had freaked out, and the gas had gone off, and they ran outside panicking. Then the police had been called, and they’d found all the traps and nerve gas tanks and the electrified vintage fairground carousel he was saving for the end, so he wasn’t going to get any of that stuff back. Who knows how much money that was down the drain. 

He’d used an alias, of course, and the money was untraceable, but now he was back to square one.

The Good Riddance killer used to be feared. He had built elaborate death traps that captured the public's imagination. He had killed those they truly felt deserved it. And he had never been caught.

Yes, people had died in his traps, but only because they weren’t willing to change. And if his victims weren’t willing to change, well. Good riddance. That was his whole thing.

But lately, things just kept going wrong.

Anyone can just stab someone, or shoot someone, or run them down with their car. What the Good Riddance killer did was art. However, his designs, while ingenious, required a lot of space, and over the last five years, anything in the city with that kind of square footage had become prime real estate.

This brought with it a whole host of other problems.

Money wasn’t an issue - you don’t get into the elaborate death trap business if you’re keeping an eye on the pennies - but it was getting harder and harder to find good warehouse space that didn’t have a bunch of planning restrictions or share a wall with a bouldering centre or a coffee roasters. 

His eyes returned to the map on the wall. He circled an old match factory by the river and made a call.

Nothing was going to stand in his way.

#

The floor was cold.

That was the first thing Maria realised. The second was that she wasn’t at home in bed anymore. 

Her head throbbed.

She didn’t recognise the dimly lit room she was in, although the exposed beams and brickwork her panicky eyes landed on told her she was probably in a warehouse.

That thought was interrupted by a sound. A distorted, mechanical cackling. Across the room, a jack-in-the-box had sprung open, drawing her attention to a table on which lay some objects. Maria couldn’t make them out from where she was, but as she got to her feet to get a closer look, a voice boomed from hidden speakers all around her.

“Maria Reyes," said the voice. “Someone who has never had to sacrifice anything in their life.”

Maria spun around, trying to locate the source of the voice. It continued.

“Inherited the family business without having to work for it, and then fired half the staff just so you could be profitable enough to justify your exorbitant bonus.” 

Maria’s jaw clenched. The voice wasn’t wrong.

“I wonder just how much you’re willing to sacrifice, Maria,” the voice continued in its distorted rumble. “How much you’re willing to sacrifice when it truly matters.”

Maria felt a wave of panic rise in her as she looked more closely at the table. Arranged neatly on a red silk tablecloth were a selection of bottles filled with colourful liquids and a gas canister hooked up to a breathing mask, next to which sat an ornate key, encased in a sturdy-looking glass bell jar. 

“On the table across the room, you will find-”

Maria had stood at this point and was starting to make her way across the room when she noticed the fire exit. Someone had made an attempt to cover it with a blanket, but in this low light, the big green EXIT light over the door was still clearly visible through the fabric.

"Back to the table, please, Maria," said the voice, in a tone a little more panicky than it perhaps intended.

Cautiously, in case it was another trap, Maria pulled away the blanket and then pushed on the bar that ran across the middle of the door. It swung open onto a riverfront path.

The patrons of a nearby microbrewery waved at her.

#

The Good Riddance killer was livid.

This time the city council had gotten involved, requiring planning permission for the works he’d wanted to do. The killer had told them he was building an escape room, which everyone on the email chain seemed excited about, but the council had also demanded that all the fire escapes had to be clearly marked and that regular inspections would take place to make sure everything was up to code.

Yet another one had gotten away. This wasn’t working. 

He picked up the property section of the paper and was about to throw it into the trash can when something caught his eye. An article about an old lumber mill down by the river that had been condemned and a fight by a local conservation group to save it from developers. 

It looked easy enough to break into, and with no realtors, or estate agents, or planning committees to deal with he could set everything up in peace without being disturbed or made to preserve the original period flooring.

Plus, it sounded like the whole thing would be mired in red tape for the foreseeable future. No one would bother him.

It was perfect.

#

The killer straightened up and cast a critical eye at the structure he had just finished screwing together. It was a large roulette wheel that would automatically spin once every five minutes, marked with the names of various dangerous animals and insects. Whichever creature the roulette wheel landed on would be released into the room, and the victim would have to survive against increasingly difficult odds for thirty harrowing minutes in order to learn a valuable lesson about...

He consulted his notes.

"Respecting the environment."

Ok, not his best work, but the general concept was sound.

He gave the wheel an experimental spin. It clacked its way through several revolutions before settling on the wedge marked “WOLVES”. Across the room, a large cage sprang open. There was nothing inside, currently, but the killer nodded approvingly.

He drew a slim remote from his pocket and pressed the button in the middle. Steel bolts shot across the room’s exits, and a thirty-minute timer lit up over the door. The killer gave the bolts an experimental kick. Solid as a rock. No one was getting through those.

Timers and locks were an old standby, but the classics were the classics for a reason. No sense changing what doesn’t need to be changed.

Picking up his clipboard, he placed a check next to the roulette entry, and the time-release door locks entry. 

The locks would be a while, so he moved on to the next item. Windows.

He looked across to the large, grated windows of the lumber mill. Those would need covering up somehow.

He walked over, and then, running a sleeve across the wired glass to clear off the thick layer of grime that covered it, looked through the window to see just how much of the outside world his victims would be able to see.

He froze.

#

Today was a good day for property developer Aaron DeVries. After two long years of legal battles with those dumbass conservationists, he’d finally gotten the okay from the courts to go ahead and demolish the hideous old lumber mill.

They’d got as far as setting the demolition charges before they’d been slapped with an injunction from the conservation group who wanted to turn it into a museum, and when that petition had failed, affordable housing.

Not on Aaron’s watch. Soon, all this would be home to a sleek new co-working space that would net him a small fortune.

He swiped through some of the mockups on his phone as he waited. Trim, attractive people mingled in the spacious plaza, looked down upon benevolently by concept art creative types who were enjoying drinks in the roof garden. Happy people huddled around food trucks like zebras at a watering hole.

It was perfect.

Aaron looked up from his phone. The countdown had started. Switching to camera mode, he started recording. He wanted this captured for posterity. As the countdown reached one, Aaron thought he saw movement at one of the windows, but frankly, if one of those activists was still inside, that was their lookout. Nothing was going to stand in his way.

He smiled.

The mill exploded.

"Good riddance", he thought.