TWENTY QUESTIONS.
tagging → @thekenyastratford @cohenjames @penn-orville @birdiestratford
location → the dollhouse
notes → it hurts!!
“Oh, this is some real Jigsaw bullshit,” Pete had muttered to himself when the darkness lifted in a fluorescent blaze. The light suddenly flooding the room - more accurately, the cell - he’d been thrown into caused him to raise a hand to shield his eyes, revealing the cuffs on his wrists. He didn’t know what they were for, maybe some sort of lie detector. Or maybe it really was some Jigsaw bullshit and he’d have to chew his arm off to escape. At the very least he was alone so he wouldn’t have to chew anyone else’s arm off. The small mercies of Panic, apparently.
While he didn’t enjoy the close quarters he also knew better than to think he was truly alone. He couldn’t help the way he paced the walls looking for any sort of clue to explain the big red button on the plinth in the middle of the room, but he wasn’t going to let anyone watching from the comfort of their stupid mansions see him sweat. Was he supposed to press it? Or was it like the buried alive challenge, was he supposed to outlast everyone else? He’d never considered himself particularly smart, but he had the advantage of no one really knowing him well enough to be certain that he wasn’t a closeted genius. He’d figure out whatever the sick fucks in charge of the game wanted and he’d make it happen. Since the jump he’d promised himself he would get that money and he’d find his grandma the best care possible, whatever the cost.
Of course, Pete wasn’t as well versed in the legends of game as others who’d been in town longer than he had. His own dignity had been the high price he’d been willing to pay. It was supposed to be on him and him alone. Then Penn’s voice had crackled over the intercom and explained that he wouldn’t be playing this game alone, that someone important to him was there to encourage him.
“No…” the word slipped out of his mouth with such dread he swore he heard it hit the ground at his feet with a thud. Kenya had appeared on a screen at the far wall of the cell, the same strange cuffs on her wrists. They’d done it, the judges had found the one thing that might have a chance at derailing his game plan.
At first he’d laughed in disbelief at the idea of playing 20 Questions. It seemed like such an innocuous thing, a child’s game. Then again, so had being buried alive and that round had shaken him more than he cared to admit. What annoyed him more than anything was that Kenya seemed to be able to hear him but not see him, and he could see her but couldn’t hear her. What he would have given to hear her cussing out the assholes who had dared put their hands on her and drop her unwillingly into the game. Perhaps Penn had been right though, seeing her mouth the word ‘fuck’ a record breaking amount of times was more encouraging than he’d expected.
Even so, nothing was quite as encouraging as the first question he decided to pass on. It was about his grandma, about her health and if he was scared of losing her and being left with nothing. His reaction had been instinctual; no one had earned the right to know a thing about his family so it was an easy pass. There was a split second where he watched Kenya, certain her expression was one that agreed with his choice to stay silent. Then, again, the dread settled itself in the pit of his stomach as he watched her contort in unmistakeable pain. He couldn’t hear it, but god, he felt her cries like he’d been struck clean through the chest.
So that was the point of the game. The judges were blackmailing them for the truth, forcing them to cut themselves open and spill their guts for the vultures of Rosewood or choose to hurt someone they loved. The choices they made would be glaring– what was more important to them, keeping their secrets or the safety of the person on the other side of the screen?
The questions didn’t seem to come with any sense of regularity, to the point that Pete had abandoned standing by the buzzer and begun entertaining himself with a series of workouts. It was one way to gauge time at least, knowing how long it took him to complete one circuit in the rudimentary gym he had set up in his grandma’s garage. He spoke to Kenya too despite not being able to hear her back, initially promising her he would answer every single question to avoid her being shocked again, then just chattering away at anything off the top of his head; from his desire to take her on a date to one of those rooms where you got to break shit for fun, to a promise to actually meet her dad for real. “With all of Rosewood as my witness,” he’d chuckled darkly, middle finger raised as he turned around the room hoping every voyeuristic motherfucker watching felt personally victimised by the gesture.
Nevertheless his promise had been short lived. It turned out that even if he didn’t press the buzzer there was still a risk of being shocked. He’d been too slow to answer a question about how it felt to be friends with someone like Cohen so even if he did eventually mutter through gritted teeth that his friends’ wealth turned his stomach the judges deemed it insufficient and all of a sudden he was doubled over, groaning sickeningly through the shock until it passed and left him breathless and slumped against the wall.
More time passed and more questions were sprinkled intermittently between him slowly losing his mind in stress and boredom for all to see with varying levels of success. Some were difficult to answer, some were simple, but none were even close to comparable to the final round.
How did you come to know Kenya Stratford?
An innocent question in any other setting but it was naive of him to think the judges wouldn’t have known about the bet with Cohen, about the money that had changed hands every time he’d spent time with Kenya all so Cohen could get his moment with Birdie. Now he was stuck between a rock and a hard place with less than ten agonising seconds to decide his fate. He could answer truthfully, because lying would only make him look worse when the judges obviously knew, or he could break his earlier promise and pass. Perhaps he could spin it as not wanting anyone in their business, as a small price to pay for privacy.
That split second thought, finding his hand raised over the buzzer, sickened him to his core. The game had fucked him up so bad he had genuinely considered allowing these monsters to electrocute Kenya to save his own ass and win. His grandma was everything to him but he knew she’d despise him deciding that a shot at the prize money was worth it at the cost of the woman he’d fallen head over heels for. They could find money anywhere, he would stoop to accepting Cohen’s pity payouts if he had to. Kenya, she was incomparable, irreplaceable. She was not a price to pay, she was the only exception. Whatever happened after he opened his mouth, he deserved.
“Everyone knows Mr Stratford’s rule. Cohen paid me to date her so he could get with her sister.”
