Daybreak

''“The valiant never taste of death but once. It seems to me most strange that men should fear; seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.”''

—William Shakespeare in Julius Caesar.

1
I stood in the hallway whose lights flickered intermittently. Two feet ahead of me came the corner turn, and before I could proceed further, a person who I never knew or saw in my life had stumbled across the room, like a ragdoll. His face was splattered with a crimson liquid, and his limbs were restless. Even after he had lost all energy and slumped against the part of the wall close to the corner, they persisted to move without any fruitful effect. He was panting, hyperventilating, and looked extremely frightened. Never had I ever seen such a desperate person like this in my life.

Then another person stepped forth into my view, front facing the man slumped against the wall. The person wore a long black cloak and a black hood that veiled a part of the face. From the lips and rosy cheeks, I ruled it out to be a girl. As she took another step, closer, the man weakly screamed louder and louder, until at one point he broke down. That was so because this was the game of Murder Mystery, the most treacherous minigame on the server where you must trust absolutely no one.

Now the girl stood right in front of her soon-to-be-victim. She assembled the iron sword in her hand, and seized the person by the hair. She was the Murderer. The one who had killed all the other Innocents in this match. She brought the sword back, and then, with maximum force, thrust it through the man’s neck. Then she pulled it out and did it again, again, and again, as if she was really enjoying it all. At last the corpse fell forward on the floor with a wide wound on its neck, from which blood oozed out in heavy amounts, and soon a small puddle of this liquid formed on the floor.

Then there was a temporary silence. The girl stared at her victim, her eyes not lookin at anything but it. I too stared at the gruesome scene, at the body which was lying on the floor and continued to do so for several moments.

He wasn’t respawning.

He... was supposed to respawn in the lobby... but... that wasn’t happening.

A chill went down my spine as the girl suddenly glanced at me — and smiled.

2
[The clock is ticking...]