HORNMANJI: Part 3
As we all remember we left our couples trapped in the house but also trapped on the board, unable to move. What gives, man? Well all the answers are here now in the next scintillating chapter of our latest sprawling saga.
WOULD ALL THE PLAYERS PLEASE STAND UP.
The Dice remained stationary, locked in place by some unknown force. All of us sought answers in each other's expressions but found none. I wondered if I should ask the central orb for advice when the two white cubes flung themselves across the board and landed on a two and a three.
"Okay. It's a five...but whose turn is it?" Elias asked the group. Over the course of the night I'd sometimes found his questions to be annoying and tiresome but right now he was asking the right questions, I was just about to venture an answer when I was interrupted.
"Look!" Wendy yelled, pointing at the board. On spaces twelve, eleven, nine and eight further pieces were now visible.
"Were they always there?" I asked, feeling dumb for not noticing.
"No. They weren't," Amy observed.
"Why are there four more pieces?" Emma asked, moving away from the board. I wondered what was causing her trepidation then I noticed why? The centre orb that provided clues for our ordeals was now swirling its misty innards, shining fiercely, getting brighter by the second.
"I'll close it up," Elias suggested, moving forward, before an almighty BHWANG ominously sounded. We all stood about wondering what to do when an enormous wave of energy radiated out from the orb sending all of us tumbling backwards, over furniture and onto the floor.
"What on God's green was that?" Elias asked.
"What the...who the fuck are you?" a voice sounded, an unfamiliar voice, a stranger's voice. I sat upright, rigid as an iron rod to see a tall, black stranger, stood behind my couch, minus his shirt but down to his jeans.
"Who are...where on earth are we?" a woman asked behind one of our comfy chairs. She looked Mediterranean with long wavy brown hair and was down to her underwear, a matching peach set which almost merged into her skin colour.
"What is going on?" I asked as I stood up, looking at the new faces in the room. We all stared at each other taking in the newcomers. There were ten of us in the front room now, five couples. We needed to know who the new people were so I decided to be the de facto leader of our group.
"We were playing "HORNMANJI", the game for adventurous couples, in our house when you suddenly appeared," I advised the new folks. The four of them took in their surroundings slightly perplexed at the decor before the black guy spoke up.
"I'm Titus. This is my girlfriend Tia," Titus stated. Tia waved at us as we waved back her way, the six of us naked in front of these partially dressed newbies who looked ten to fifteen years younger than us. We looked the way of the last couple who were standing together.
"Oh, I'm Marla, this is Matty," the Mediterranean looking lady replied. In the corner of my eye I caught Emma place her hand to her mouth in realisation. "WE were playing HORNMANJI also, but this was in our house. I have no idea how we got here".
"You're not characters in the game then?" Elias asked, as Emma twitched nervously in my peripheral vision.
"No, we're all players too," Marls responded, clearly showing she was the more dominant person in that relationship.
"Art, can I speak to you for a moment, please?" Emma asked, indicating we needed to leave the room.
"Sure".
The two of us left the room, not before I spied Emma jiggling as she promptly made her way out of there and into the hallway with me looking for crocs as we entered there, just to be sure we were not interrupted.
"What's up?"
"Oh my God, they're the ones! The ones from the drug tent!" Emma whispered as loudly, yet as quietly as possible.
"Holy shit," I breathed, as I thought back. There were definitely more people in my fantasy than just the six of us. Were these four individuals the missing folks? It would certainly explain a lot. "Well don't mention it just yet. Let's see what else they say first, okay?"
"Okay," Emma nodded before we both headed back into the front room to see some people had grown comfy enough to grab a seat and take the weight off.
"So do we know what happened?" I asked as Emma and I re-entered the front room, catching up on what we may have missed.
"Marla was just saying the dog knocked over the board after the first round of turns and the board shut back into its box," Amy explained. I looked at the four friends and they just nodded morosely.
"Then we've started the game after that and it's included us as new players on the same game," Will concluded. Everyone nodded unenthusiastically.
"So presumably...it's our turn next," Matty ventured. That sick feeling returned to my stomach and I could tell I wasn't the only one. The board seemed to have an ominous glow about it, as though it was some kind of Ouija board, but we all knew that Matty was correct. He may not have said a lot but when he did it was correct.
"Me then," Titus spoke, before trying to pick up the dice which remained stubbornly in place.