Page 7 of The Taskmaster
Cherry Man nodded.
“Here’s the deal. If you can complete my task in the given timeframe, my friend here in the yellow suit will set you free. Fail, and you die.” The mask on the video tilted again. “See? That’s fair, isn’t it?”
Cherry Man was breathing heavily, snorting as he glared at the screen.
“But first, the rules. Your task is to eat all the cherries in the paper bag. But you’re only allowed to put one cherry into your mouth at a time. No cramming that shit in like you did with me. That’d be cheating, and you need to be challenged,Kevin. Every cherry must be consumed, and my friend beside you will check your mouth, before we decide if you’re allowed to go free.”
Cherry Man’s chest rose and fell briskly as he took it all in.
“I would tell you not to scream for help, but that’s a pointless rule, seeing as no one would hear you anyway, so I’ll add this... If you bite anything, other than the cherries, we will slice your fucking face off and mail it back to your family as a surprise. You have one chance here,Kevin. One shot at freedom. Are you gonna take it?”
It sounded like a pretty simple task, considering some of the tasks I’d been set in the past. But he hadn’t reached the punchline yet.
“Do you see that clock on the wall there?” The video asked, and a set of green numbers lit up on the wall opposite as I pressed the activation on the remote, ready for his countdown. “You’ll have two minutes to eat them all. Your task will begin when the timer starts counting down. Good luck,Kevin.”
The screen went black, and I threw the white paper bag filled with cherries onto his lap. Cherry Man glanced up at me, his eyes pleading, and I lifted the knife, making his eyes bulge as he reared his head back to escape my blade. I reached for the gag in his mouth and sliced through the material. He gasped as the gag fell away, clamouring for breath like he’d been held under water. But then he watched me lift the remote, and the seconds began to count down.
“No. NO!” he screamed. “This is fucking bullshit. How the hell am I supposed to eat these if I can’t even fucking get to them?” He cried, howling and yanking on his restraints, trying to bend forward to get to the bag, to eat the cherries without touching them. But he wasn’t going to be eating any fucking cherries today. This wasn’t a task he could win.
“I didn’t do anything!” he shouted. “You’ve got the wrong guy. That wasn’t me.”
It was him. I didn’t make mistakes, and I’d spent the last few years watching him, lying in wait, making sure that when the time came, he wouldn’t escape.
As the timer counted down, he became more frantic, screaming for help, snarling and spitting as blood soaked his wrists. He angled his feet to try and raise his legs, bending his knees as best he could, but he couldn’t get close to the bag.
The timer hit one minute, and I moved forward and picked up the bag, lifting it closer to his face so he could snaffle it like a fucking pig at a trough. But as he started to bite down, I viciously pushed the bag into his face, suffocating him.
When he was close to passing out, I pulled the bag away and threw it to the floor. His face was covered in red, sickly-sweet cherry juice. I couldn’t fucking stand the sight of it or him, and in that moment, I was thankful for my mask because I knew the smell would make me want to fucking vomit.
“You’re a fucking dead man,” he snarled, aware his time was coming to an end, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. “I’ll find you, and I’ll fucking kill you.”
Hollow words.
They held no meaning.
He wasn’t going to hunt anything or anyone ever again. He was the hunted now, and I’d caught him. He wasn’t going to escape.
The timer counted down; three, two, one, and then a buzzer sounded as it hit zero. The TV screen lit up with my masked face and my mechanical voice cackled.
“Time up.”
Laughter echoed around us.
It was time up, in more ways than one.
I turned the TV off and put the remote control back on the table. Then I picked up a clear plastic bag.
“No.” Cherry Man shook his head, desperation oozing from every pore as he shuddered and jerked in the chair. “No, no, no. This is bullshit. Fucking bullshit. You’ve got the wrong guy.”
I strode over to the chair and positioned myself behind it.
“Wait, wait,” he begged. “I need to say something. It’s important.”
I don’t know why, but I gave him a moment.
And then he laughed. The fucker laughed and said, “I couldn’t give a fuck what you do to me, but they’ll find you. And when they do, it’ll make what I did look like fucking child’s play.”
He wasn’t sorry, and I wasn’t interested in hearing any more. Whoevertheywere who’d come for me, I was ready for them, and I’d had enough of his whining. His sins had caught up with him, and it was time to pay the price. The world would be a better place without him.
