John McJohn looked at the small crowd of people in the house. Twelve of them, all criminals, all in a single house, all of them to be victims of his twisted mind. John looked for someone to talk to before he killed them.

Unfortunately, John had been the last to arrive to the House, and everyone else had already split off into a few groups. There was the Girls – four of them all standing around and talking about something (boys, probably), the Losers – some dude wearing a dark hood, a man who looked like a wrestler, a stoner and an old man, and the Brothers – two bros just hanging around, one taller than the other with majestic hair and six point five feet of boy band material. Upon closer inspection, they were probably brothers.

The only person who was not paired up with someone was an average looking man tossing a rock up and down. John slipped silently next to him so nobody would notice how alone he was.

"I'm John," John whispered loudly.

"Jeremy." Jeremy extended a hand. "Why are you here?"

John shook Jeremy's extended hand. "I stole a loaf of bread."

"Honestly, John, that doesn't seem like something you would get jailed for."

"I stole a loaf of bread and then beat my family to death with it."

"Oh." Jeremy smirked. "Nice."

John had originally planned for Jeremy to be his first victim, but he was pretty cool. Maybe Jeremy would be the last to die instead.

"What did you do?" John asked, not curious, but hoping to continue the conversation.

"Me? Oh, I stoned a guy to death." Jeremy flashed a smile that could be described as charming, but that would be too gay, and John was not gay.

John was going to make a comment on Jeremy's crime, but an intercom boomed on.

"Hello, Inmates, and welcome to the Easy Way Out!!"

The volume of the speaker was unbearable, and since the noise was coming from the corner, everyone covered their ears and huddled in the middle of the room.

"I am the DungeonMaster, and-" they paused- "whoops, sorry, looks like the volume is a little high, I'll just..." There was shuffling and the pressing of buttons before a muffled voice came from behind the microphone. "George? George! Where's the volume control?"

There was more shuffling and then some clicking.

"So, welcome to the Easy Way Out, yada yada." The intercom was now at a bearable volume. "I have a date in like, an hour and I don't want to be late so let's make this quick."

Everyone looked at the people next to them, nodding and murmuring their agreement to their neighbours.

"So! There are a lot of rules, but most of them aren't important, so I'll just skim them." John shugged. Seemed fair. The only rules he needed to know were the ones about killing.

"Six rooms, you pick who you're with."

Hmm. Jeremy would be a good candidate.

"Two bathrooms, one on either side of the house, and..." There was a pause before the DM coughed. "You don't need to know about that."

Yeah. If the DM thought it was useless, nobody would need to know it.

"The WiFi password is EasyWay123, capital E and W. Everyone has been issued a phone, but you're all young and you can work it out yourselves."

An old man stuck his fist in the air and shouted.

"Yeah, you're young, ninety isn't all that old compared to the eldritch abomination in the..." They coughed again. "The entire thirteen days is televised. Don't worry about embarrassing yourself, nobody watches it anyway."

Maybe if he made himself look good while he was in the house, a TV producer would hire him as an actor... Hmm. Killing people might not be a good idea, then.

Or maybe it would. John would see how everything turned out.

"And, last but not least – no insulting Placeholder Name under any circumstances." They clicked their mouth (or whatever that's called). "Lookin' at you, Linda."

A woman with a short brown pixie cut stuck her middle finger in the air.

The DM laughed. "Toodles!"

The intercom went silent.

This was going to be so easy. John was going to survive and become famous.

Marilyn looked at her room for the next while. Two beds, white sheets, white everything, carpeted floor, and a rectangular window on the door. No window outside, but hey, if she looked outside from up here on the second floor, all she'd see would be a thick grey fog. Otherwise, it was pretty nice. Considering it was for a house full of criminals.

She sat on the bed. It was soft and cushiony. Again, pretty nice for a house of criminals. Whoever designed this house must have had a lot of money.

Marilyn flopped herself onto her bed and looked at the roof.

I should feel bad that I'm here, shouldn't I?

Well. She felt bad that she was in the house, but she didn't feel at all bad for the crime that had landed her in here in the first place. Setting your classroom and several classmates on fire by accident? It wasn't that much of a big deal. She hadn't meant for her pet to set everything on fire. The abomination had felt like the class deserved it, and who was she to question the verdict of an eldritch being?

Marilyn picked up her phone and typed in the WiFi password. There were a few things pre-installed on the phone, most notably a weather app and a social network of some sort. She opened it to find an account had already been made for her and she was already connected to all the other inmates.

There was some sort of chat feed, where someone had already posted something. It was a picture, which was loading very slowly.

Someone else walked into her room, probably her roommate-

"Did you know I'm a vegan?"

Linda.

Linda was the only person who hadn't chosen to be here. Linda had been arrested for insulting the health value of a certain food chain's burger, which would have been fine if she hadn't insulted Placeholder Name.

Viewing Placeholder Name in any manner other than 'extremely positive' leads to arrest and/or painful accidental death.

Sometimes both.

"Mmhmm," Marilyn agreed, not really wanting to talk to her. She didn't really want to be murdered for talking to her roommate, which unfortunately was a thing that could happen. Maybe she'd try later, when the cameras weren't focused on Linda. The cameras that were supposed to be secret and inconspicuous, but were the exact opposite.

She tapped on the greyed-out photo, waiting for it to show. Jeez, mobile interfaces were terrible. After a while, it loaded. It was a selfie one of the other inmates had taken – Ashlee, according to the username – with her mysterious hooded roommate in the background.

It looked like Linda had also found the selfie, because she threw her phone down on the bed. "Ashlee has already posted a selfie?" She groaned. "I'd rather jump into lava than spend the entire thirteen days with her."

Hours later, everyone had settled in a bit. All of the inmates had come to the common room to sit around. Was it all of them? It seemed unlikely.

No, someone was missing.

"Where's John?" Ashlee screeched. Everyone looked around. He wasn't in the common room.

An ear-piercing shriek came from the bathroom. Marilyn ran upstairs. If this was what she thought it was-

She opened the bathroom door to see it was exactly what she thought. It was not the most horrifying thing she had ever seen, but it came pretty close.

Kidding. She could talk to eldritch abominations, this was low-level horror compared to the things she'd seen.

John was lying on the floor, with-

[ GRAPHIC DESCRIPTION REDACTED. IMAGINE A DEAD GUY, BUT HE IS VERY DEAD. SOME MISSING LIMBS AND STUFF. SOME HOLES WHERE THEY SHOULDN'T BE. MAYBE A COUPLE OF DRIPPY BITS. IT'S ALL UP TO YOU HERE, HONESTLY.]

Yep, he was pretty dead.

Behind John's body was a shelled being, with dozens of long, writhing tentacles that emanated a pink aura. Its shell was a glossy white, reflecting the colour of its tentacles to the rest of the bathroom and bathing everything in a soft pink glow.

Marilyn closed the door behind her so nobody else could come in. If they did, they would all suffer a similar fate.

The creature behind John was an eldritch abomination, though it was a younger one. It couldn't do much this damage unless it wanted to, which it obviously did because John was looking pretty mangled.

He had probably pissed it off. He seemed like the kind of guy who would do that. Oh, haha, look, a tentacle monster, I'm gonna throw a shampoo bottle at it.

...wait. Was that actually what had happened? She was joking before but now that she looked, there was a plastic shampoo bottle half melted into the tiles next to John.

The abomination noticed Marilyn and pulled John's body closer to its shell. It wrapped its tentacles around John's head and started stroking him in what Marilyn could have sworn was a protective manner.

She stepped back slowly and opened the door. She slipped out the door in a way that obscured the other inmates' view of the bathroom so they couldn't see the abomination or John.

Seven of eleven remaining inmates stood outside waiting for a report on John.

"Well-" she sighed, then shrugged- "I hope nobody was friends with John."