The stitches came down the driveway in a slow single-file march. In his head Isaac pictured all the surgeons watching via the multiple cameras, smugly pleased as their creations performed a preemptive victory parade.

The lead one reminded him of the Indian god Vishnu, as it had a human body with an additional set of arms sown along its ribs. All four hands clutched axes or curved blades. It was dressed in the theatrical garb of a Spartan warrior, complete with helm and cape.

Behind the Spartan-stitch came a more classic design, clearly influenced by the slasher movie genre. A hulking figure clad in a grey jumpsuit and a World War I era gas mask. It carried a rusted pickaxe. Isaac wondered if the surgeon responsible was too cheap to buy a new weapon or just enjoyed the esthetic.

Third, came the deadest looking of the bunch. A wiry creation, it had haphazard, almost sloppy stitch work, completely on horrid display as it was nude. The pieces on this one didn’t quite match. One leg extended slightly longer than the other so that it had a limping gait, and it tilted to one side as if its spine had been fused improperly. It was sexless, its crotch crisscrossed with scars, giving it the appearance of a corpse-hued mannequin. Replacing its hands were spear tips, long and double-edged, which jutted from its forearms.

The fourth had to be Hutchins’ work as it was the only mongrel of the bunch—a human body with the head of a wolf. From the top of the wolf head, a set of antlers ascended. It carried an axe and wore, Isaac noted with a grim chuckle, a T-shirt with a picture of a pint of Marshmallow Abyss. No such thing as bad advertising.

That smile faded when the fifth stitch came down the ramp, the trailer shifting up as the massive weight was removed. It lumbered along the driveway, knuckles to the ground, and the closer it came the more details Isaac could make out and the deeper his heart sank.

It had the full body of a silverback gorilla. Dragging from it were four long, pinkish-red tentacles, two hanging from its back, two extending from below its arms. Squid or octopus, Isaac didn’t know, but they were thick with hooked suction pads. Most upsetting were the changes to its head. Just above its eyes, the giant skull had been cleaved. In its place had been grafted slices of human heads, stacked like pancakes, for a total of eight eyes, one set looking to each point of the compass. There’d be no sneaking up on this monstrosity.

The beasts lined up in a row in front of the lodge for the contestants to drink in each horror. For the first time since he had arrived the entire group fell silent.

“Damn,” Wayne finally said. “Those are some impressive special effects.”

Vince scoffed, albeit rather weakly. “They can do anything with CGI nowadays.”

“CGI? They’re standing right in front of us,” Wayne countered.

“So? CGI can make costumes,” Vince retorted harshly as if his answer proved so astutely definitive that the matter was settled. Isaac could only shake his head.

“Why are they just standing there?” Kendra asked.

“They’re waiting to see what we do,” Isaac said.

“What should we do?” Bianca asked.

“Head inside. Lock all doors. Barricade everything,” Isaac said.

This suggestion seemed to go over well with everyone but Vince. Isaac’s eyes popped in surprise when the amateur fighter stripped off his shirt and began throwing air jabs and rolling his shoulders.

“You can’t be serious,” Isaac said.

“Abso-fucking-lutely. The cameras are rolling. When this airs millions of people will see me kicking ass. Even if I don’t win the prize money, I’ll be a viral sensation. It’s all about marketing. Besides, these are just dressed-up actors. I’m sure they don’t have any fight training and are probably not allowed to actually injure us anyway. It’d be a liability issue.”

Isaac felt inclined to do something, to try and talk Vince out of this rash decision. But what could he really say? These were ordinary people thrust into extraordinary circumstances. Logically there could be no reason for them to believe these were really monsters. Isaac knew most, if not all of them, were going to die anyway. The less time he spent trying to convince them the danger was real the better.

So, with no inflection or enthusiasm, he said, “No Vince. Don’t do it. Stop. No. Please. Don’t.” Then he stepped out of the way and let the fighter bound energetically down the steps.

The Gorilla-stitch moved forward to face him, and initially, the conflict went surprisingly well. Isaac had to hand it to Vince. He was quite the fighter. He ducked, dodged, jabbed, punched, all fluid and smooth. The Gorilla just stood there and absorbed hit after hit. Of course, any admiration was quashed by the amateur’s relish of violence. As far as Vince knew he was beating the ever-living shit out of an innocent actor in a mask.

Vince kept happily jabbing away, even throwing in a couple of fancy foot shuffles for the small audience. While showing off, he didn’t see the squid tentacle slither along the grass. When it wrapped around his calf and the jagged hooks dug in, he stopped fighting and screamed in surprised pain. His howls cut off abruptly when the stitch, tired of being a punching bag, slammed its monstrous fists on either side of his head.

“Oh damn,” Wayne said. Each of them gasped or swore or put a hand to their mouths.

Another tentacle wrapped Vince’s waist, held him upright for a second double-sided punch that cracked his skull, bringing blood from his eyes, nose, and ears. A third reduced his head to something more like a deflated ball, facial features indistinguishable now. After a fourth he had little more than a popped balloon of flesh extending from his neck.

“Holy shit,” Peyton said. “Those are some crazy special effects...right?”

“That looked so real,” Angie said. “So, he’s out of the running for the money?”

The Gorilla-stitch whipped the tentacle and tossed the body towards the porch. It landed close enough to spatter them with blood and the contestants jumped back as one, cursing or screaming.

Only Isaac didn’t move. He looked from the blood on the steps, to the body, to the stitches, to the cameras, his eyes narrowing a bit with each transfer. Maybe he should have anticipated it, but he hadn’t really expected such a level of brutality.

The Gorilla-stitch roared, a silverback challenge in the jungle, its bloody fists pounding its chest, its stacked eyes blinking. The tentacles waved spasmodically. Behind it, the other stitches stirred to life and strode with purpose towards the house.

“We should go inside,” Isaac ordered needlessly to the group already shoving each other through the door.

***

The first kill brought applause from the crowd and a steady stream of sycophantic congratulations to Dr. Menclewski. The response from the other surgeons was more muted and professional—just raised glasses, except for Hutchins who scowled and looked for an empty seat away from the masses.

“Not enjoying the show Mr. Hutchins?” asked a stick-thin old woman who had wedged herself between two much younger men.

“Huh? Oh, sorry Ambassador. I didn’t think you knew who I was.” He shook the proffered hand. “It’s fine. The contest is off to its usual start I guess.”

“No need to play politics with me. I appreciate honesty beyond all else. If I wanted smoke blown up my ass, I’d hire a demon to do it.”

Hutchins snorted. The woman was charming, and he had drunk enough to actually speak his thoughts aloud. “I just thought Isaac would do better. He just stood on the porch and let Menclewski’s stitch kill that guy. Honestly, I hoped he’d win the whole thing. Embarrass the whole bunch of egotistical snobs.” He waved a hand at the group of surgeons.

The Ambassador waved off her male bookends. “Scoot gentlemen. I’m too old to handle both of you anyway.” After they departed, she leaned in and lowered her voice. “I agree. I’d love to see Isaac take your compadres down a peg and I think that’s exactly why Arrangement sent him. Give him some time. These contestants are just normal folk. He had to sacrifice one to get the others to believe. It’s just one pawn so far. We have all night to go.” She winked and sat back in her chair.

***

Inside the lodge, the group’s survival instincts had taken hold and they hurried to and fro, securing locks and jamming furniture against doors. But it was harried and uncoordinated and Isaac finally resorted to yelling to get their attention.

From his Everbag, he produced a handful of cocktail napkins and handed them out. On each was a sketched rune that he had prepared during dinner. “These are simple protective markings. Draw this design on every door and every window. It’ll hopefully keep them from getting in. At least for a little bit.”

“Better than this would?” Peyton asked as he huffed and puffed a recliner towards the front door.

“Yes. These things can be superhumanly strong. They’ll bust right through these barricades.” Everyone still looked skeptical. Outside, the porch steps creaked under the weight of something. “Trust me or we’re all going to die.” Peyton shook his head and went back to lugging furniture.

Something heavy slammed into the front door. Once. Twice. The frame buckled. Isaac swore and ran to it, snatching up a bowl of cocktail sauce from the dinner table. The rune was indeed simplistic, designed for quick protection when murder loomed, and several swipes with a cocktail-sauced finger finished it in seconds. The banging stopped.

“It worked?” Kendra. “With shrimp sauce?”

“It did,” Isaac said. “The material is irrelevant. Grab anything. Pens, paint, condiments, makeup. Just get the design right.”

Bianca became the first to break ranks. She snatched up a bottle of steak sauce and teamed with Kendra to finger-paint the runes on the front windows. Just as they finished the Mongrel-stitch appeared on the other side of the glass and the girls fell back, shrieking. But the stitch only stood there, peering in, its monstrous face framed by the steak-sauce rune.

This proved enough to sway the rest, and everyone pitched in, scrambling around the house, using anything they could to make the rune on every conceivable entry. Isaac hurried around after them and he was pleasantly surprised that he had to make no corrections. Until he got to the kitchen.

“Oh, what the hell?” he shouted.

The side door on the kitchen was a splattered mess of red goop. Angie had a bottle of ketchup aimed, attempting to recreate Isaac’s rune via sputtering spray. “What? You said we could use condiments.” She went back to it, the bottle making farting noises.

“No. No. No.” He snatched the bottle from her. “It has to be precise.” He telekinetically pulled a dishrag from the sink to his hand and began to feverishly wipe the mess. There had to be a clean surface to start over, but halfway through the corrected version something hammered into the door. The wood split down the middle, right through the center of the rune, breaking the lines. “Aw dammit.” An instant later the point of a rusty pickaxe chopped through. “Run,” he told Angie and he followed her back into the dining room as the Gasmask-stitch burst through the door. “Everyone down to the rec room. Make the seals in there. We’ve lost this floor.”

***

Like the mob in the Roman Coliseum, the viewing crowd crowed for more blood. Vince’s death barely whetted their appetite and they howled and raised glasses when the gas-masked brute burst through the kitchen door. With the castle breached, it was all over except for the slaughter. The wonderful slaughter.

Dr. Stevens, the proud creator of Gasmask, watched with a gleam in her eye and a flush in her cheeks, as her creation followed the group down the steps to the recreation room. Like the other surgeons, this was the moment she had long waited for. Something the magician orchestrated had stalled her competition on the front porch and now her stitch had the jump on the prey. She could wipe out the whole lot of them before the others even found their way into the house.

Then her damn stitch stopped cold at the lower-level door. It didn’t even try to break through. The interior was on the main screen now and she could see that the contestants and magician had drawn something on the other side. A circular marking just like the ones that blocked her competition earlier.

Hutchins’s Mongrel and Dr. Tate’s Spartan had circled the lodge and passed the pool to the glass wall of the rec room. Dr. Steven’s heart dropped as her moment of glory frustratingly flushed away. Then her peers’ stitches came to a standstill as well, and she saw the same circular design painted on the glass.

On the main screen the crowd watched the contestants mill anxiously, and safely, around the recreation room. Many of the attendees, there only to appease their voyeuristic bloodlust, had limited understanding of the magical world. Murmurs of confusion passed through their ranks. They were so accustomed to seeing the stitches bulldoze their way through blood and bone that the sudden pause in action jarred them. Their disappointment only grew when the Arrangement magician calmly poured himself a drink at the bar.

“Runes of protection. Clever,” Dr. Tate said as he surveyed the crowd. “Not the most entertaining twist though. These people like a faster pace to their bloodshed.”

“How long will the runes work?” Dr. Stevens asked.

“Hard to tell,” Dr. Tate replied. “Our creations don’t have the willpower to push through or the intellect to work around them.”

“So, they could literally relax in there until the sun comes up?” Dr. Landis asked.

Dr. Menclewski waved them to hush. “This was anticipated. It’s the first move any magician would make.”

“So, what are you going to do?” Dr. Stevens asked. The sight of her gaskmasked killer separated from its prey by a few inches of cheap wood proved infuriating.

“For now, we’re going to let them get comfortable. Safe. Confident. This is only the end of act one.”