Welcome to this week’s installment of many micro stories, ranging in length from 100 words to 500 words.
With each story we hope to deliver a little whimsy into the lives of our readers.
THE LYNNEWOOD GAME
A haunted mansion with 110 rooms, twelve contestants, and $1 million. Stay inside the longest, and you win. Food and drink are provided. No violence allowed. Any contestant can withdraw at any time.
Welcome to The Lynnewood Game.
It was touted as the scariest TV show in the world. Thousands applied. Twelve received blood-red invitations in the mail and booked it to Lynnewood Hall in Pennsylvania. Filming wrapped in two months. The entire first season was set to drop on Halloween.
While millions of kids were out Trick-or-Treating, horror enthusiasts binge-watched the show. During the first episode, all twelve contestants were introduced. Alliances were formed, boundaries set, rivalries planted. All twelve made it through the first week. By the middle of episode 2, none of the contestants had any reason to leave. No spooky noises, no flashing lights, no midnight apparitions.
That’s when the first disappearance occurred. Dorothy Maher, 72, a retired mortician from St. Louis. Everybody was baffled. Did she withdraw and leave her husband, Russell, in the lurch? Did she get lost? A day-long search by the other contestants yielded nothing… except another disappearance. Winnie Wyn, 27, a collegiate from the West Coast.
Panic set in. Some contestants tried to withdraw but found the front doors locked from the outside. Barring another disappearance, nobody could leave. The remaining ten slept together inside the kitchen that night and took guard shifts.
At the start of episode 4, there was another disappearance. Not of a contestant, but of the food supply. Yet another mansion-wide search came up empty. Blame spread. Near the end of the episode, a brawl broke out in the dining room. Amazingly, nobody from the show intervened despite the fact that the rules seemed to have disappeared, too.
By this point, two opposing factions emerged and occupied separate parts of the mansion: Feast and Famine (F&F), and the Blood Soakers. Some of the contestants forged weapons. In addition to the threat of disappearing, anybody caught wandering into enemy territory risked capture and torture. Each side suspected the other of stealing the food supply. A large-scale conflict seemed imminent.
Towards the end of the season, after weeks without sustenance, the cannibalism started. Russell was an easy choice after expiring of a heart attack in episode 7. The others proved less willing. Half of the contestants remained.
On the show’s final episode, a fire started in the grand ball room and quickly spread to the rest of the mansion. Members of F&F had to cross into enemy territory to escape the inferno and were massacred by the Blood Soakers. After repeated attempts to control the fire, the final two contestants committed suicide in the entrance hall.
Investigations into Irreality, the now-defunct entertainment company that produced the show, have turned up nothing. The police have also been unable to identify the whereabouts of any of the twelve contestants.
James graduated from Loyola University Chicago with degrees in business and music. He recently quit his job as a data analyst to write full-time. He enjoys reading and writing, piano, jiu jitsu, snuggling with his wife, and his self-appointed role as president of the Evgeny Kissin fan club. Several of his short stories have been picked up by publishers such as Gypsum Sound Tales, Hellbound Books, and Black Hare Press. You can find him on Instagram under the handle @james.fritz.writing.
If you enjoyed this story you can find it and more in the Hawthorn & Ash 2023 anthology.
Iron Faerie Publishing 