Now Cinderella don't you go to sleep. It’s such a bitter form of refuge. Ah don't you know the kingdoms under siege and everybody needs you.

The crash was enough to shake the entire lodge, startling or in some cases waking the contestants. All were quite shocked but none so much as Heidi herself when the front door literally flew off the hinges impacting with her at high speed and knocking her to the ground. The great horned shadow that stood in the doorway laughed maniacally and the chains that were the only form of clothing it wore snaked off of it and wrapped themselves around her like a black iron python. She had a moment of realization as to what was going to happen but only for a moment before being drawn into the gaping mouth of the sack that the demonic shade held open on the floor. “So I said I’d think about it. Do ya wait for an answer? No. Ya go ahead and start without me while my agent’s in talks wit’ yer boss. So here’s the deal. I’ve decided to take the job.”

Darlene sat up straight in bed, a chill shooting down her spine. Kayla was already awake next to her, looking terrified, huddled into a ball. Now, Kayla was a tough little bitch and had taken a lot of punishment over the course of her nineteen years, but she’d internalized most of it and her trauma reaction was freeze. PTSD is a bitch and that dog bites.

Darlene had always been a scrapper though even back in her teen years when she still thought she was a boy. Her mouth had started a lot of fights and while she’d grown up enough to not instigate anymore, she still knew that old familiar rush of adrenaline singing fire through her veins as her body prepared to both do and be done to. **** is like a bicycle. You can fall off of it and it hurts like fuck, but you never really forget how. She quickly glanced around the room, looking for a weapon. Something anything she could use to protect herself and Kayla.

Cassie was 100% momma bear. Yeah, she was a big girl, but she was a big girl who worked in an institutional kitchen for a living, to wit, a large part of her job involved hefting eighty pound sacks of potatoes and hundred and twenty pound beef primals, so when the crash came she reacted with the old fight instinct. She felt responsible for the others and she would protect them if at all possible.

Morgan had no such instinct, but South St. Paul Minnesota is no pussy neighborhood to grow up in so even non-fighters get tough if they make it to adulthood. Morgan, however, had a goal in mind, and survival was essential to achieving that goal. So she would stand behind Cassie, and run when she saw a chance.

Munhall Pennsylvania isn’t exactly inner city. It’s also not quite suburbia (the place where they tear out the trees and name streets after them). What it is is a tiny bit of semi urban wasteland, rust belt chic, a bedroom community for Homestead, where all the Pollacks and Dagos who worked in the mill had their two bedroom duplexes and shotgun shacks, theirs in name but the banks’ on paper. After the mills shut down, the decay that followed that crept in, and these days the population is an even mix of meth heads and senior citizens. So Kathy Jo knew from kicking a bitch’s ass and had in fact done so to Bob’s girlfriend prior to her. She was mos def down to **** a bitch.

Alicia gritted her teeth. She detested ****. But she was Bob’s now, and because of that she knew she would have to fight if it came to it, because the thought of his disappointment was just too much for her to bear.

Robin hid under the bed. That’s all. Nothing more to see here.

The great beast raised its head, irritated. Something had changed in the contract. It roused itself and became one with the shadow flitting from corner to corner to survey what was going on. When it saw the other creature it knew what was happening and determined quickly that the best course of action was going to be to stay hidden and pick off stragglers.

Game recognize game after all.

(Title: “Dustland” by The Killers, feat. Bruce Springsteen)