Lone Wolf

Chapter 6

The crowd roared, counting along with each individual pencil that King sharpened before forcing them one at a time into Sarah's mouth which started to rip and bleed at the corners.

"That's forty-seven!" Max exclaimed as the sharpener began buzzing the tip of number forty-eight, "A fitting eliminator for a school teacher." He looked up to the limp corpse of Natalya as it hung over Sarah. "It's definitely a lot more hitting than hers, but when the people speak, they get what they want!"

Max continued working the crowd as King completed his task of shoving fifty sharpened pencils into Sarah's mouth. She tried screaming as blood began to spill into her throat. Her tears were growing as strong as the cheers from the live audience.

"Care to do the honors?" King asked as he held a large mallet across the table.

Max smiled and nodded, taking the mallet, slumping it over his shoulder before looking directly into a camera. His smile was ear-to-ear as his face was broadcast onto the overhead screen. "Can I get a drumroll, please?!"

The sound system began blaring a snare roll as the audience started clapping on the tops of their legs along with the beat. Max took in a deep breath before holding up a gloved three fingers. He counted down.

3...2...1...

He dropped the hammer down with a heavy swing, the end busting against the bundle of pencils, most snapping in two as the pierced through Sarah's throat. She began to spasm as blood began splattering across both Max's purple attire and King's white apron. Two camera men began circling her body until all movement stopped, at which point Max looked out to the audience which was giving him a standing ovation, "Join us next week for episode three of Redemption Isle, and see if our castaways can determine the lone wolf, or if one more will be sent through the eliminator!"

Max dropped the mallet next to the freshly deceased body before taking King's hand for a quick bow. The curtain dropped as stage hands filed onto the stage to clean up the mess from the week's elimination.

"Excellent work tonight, King!" Max said, patting his much larger companion on the back as they both headed to their respective dressing rooms.

"Thanks," the big man growled with a hearty smile, "You want to go get some drinks in a bit?"

Max shook his head as he headed further down the hall to go get cleaned up, "Probably not tonight. I have some business to attend to."

King disappeared behind the door that had been marked with his name.

Max walked into his dressing room, still wiping wet blood from his face when a blonde woman with shoulder-length hair in a pantsuit sat up from his makeup chair. "That went well," she said with a grin as she showed him her phone, "You're trending at number one again."

Max's smile turned into a sad grin, "I don't want me to be trending, Reagan. I want the show to be trending."

"The show's at number three, if it makes you feel any better." Reagan Holloway had been on Max's production team since the beginning of his first reality show, Killer Instinct, which was a commercial failure. He never considered himself a romantic type, nor was he particularly sexual in nature, but Reagan was the closest thing to a girlfriend that he had ever had, and to him, it was still just platonic.

"What's at number two?" He asked as he grabbed a makeup wipe off of his counter and began scrubbing off his blood-stained face powder.

"Cats," she sighed.

Max glared into the mirror before slamming his hand onto the counter, "What's the deal with the Goddamn cats!? Maybe we should stop trying to make a difference in the world and just start slaughtering cats for shits and giggles."