All Your Twisted Secrets

by Diana Urban

But strike a match in a room doused with lighter fluid, and you’re bound to get burned.

Welcome to dinner, and again, congratulations on being selected. Now you must do the selecting. Within the hour, you must choose someone in this room to die. If you don’t, everyone dies.’”

I’d seen death before. I shuddered to think of that instant the soul leaves a body. That instant when a person becomes nothing more than an empty shell, a decaying carcass.

When you depend on luck, something’s bound to go wrong.

“I dunno. Maybe Becky thought I’d be the one psycho enough to kill one of you.”

“That’s not what I mean, and you know it. Killing him won’t bury your secret . . . because I know it, too.”

Uuuuhh

I’d wanted to go to last Friday’s meeting, but Sasha told me it started at four when it really started at three, so I’d missed it. She was so busy lately, she couldn’t keep her schedule straight.

Amiga date cuenta te esta mintiendo!!!

“And it’s not just about tonight, in this room. You constantly hurt people to make sure you come out on top.”

Nobody’s future is worth more than anyone else’s. Nobody’s life is worth more.”

God knew I’d made plenty of mistakes myself. But I refused to be defined by my mistakes,

It wasn’t our mistakes that defined us, but how we learned to overcome them.

“I’m just tired. I’m tired of trying to make everyone happy, and doing the exact wrong thing. I’m tired of doing the best I can, and it’s never good enough. I’m tired of being manipulated. I’m tired of failing so miserably. I’m. Just. Tired.”

The thing about being trapped in a room with five other people, a bomb, and a syringe of lethal poison is that at some point, shit’s going down.

But at least now he seemed to understand. Everything could end in the blink of an eye. Life offered no guarantees.

you only have this one life. You don’t get a redo. This is it, kid. And you’re the only one who can decide how you want to live it.”

“You’d only have to apologize if you tried to be anything but yourself.

“‘Congratulations on getting through the last hour. Now you all know who you really are.’”

I could steer the conversation in the room so that ultimately, everyone would turn against Sasha. Everyone would choose her to die. It’d be the perfect way to teach her a lesson, to get her to understand how she treated everyone around her—and to prove I was nothing like her.

A lot could happen in an hour when you think you’re facing death.