Can’t save them all

Date: 5/13/2019

Im in the house of a serial killer. He’s completely insane, along with the fact that he’s homophobic, transphobic, and a white supremacist. He’s having a dinner for us, and the only way to survive is to follow all his rules. We know that we can escape through his locked staircase in the back room, but it needs at least 11 different keys, and we only have eight. Even if we escaped, we would only go further up into the building we’re in, and there’s no guarantee the people up there arent trying to kill us too. Im sitting beside ashton and britney, and six other people i dont know, having dinner with the killer. He keeps walking back and forth, and he’s talking to us through the puppet he’s holding. The main rule we have to follow while we eat is to be quiet. Ashton looks up at me after he eats a bite of the cake he’s been given, and he sticks his tongue out to show me he found another key. I find one under the table, and i see meghan peeking around the wall to show me the 11th key. All we have to do now is distract the killer enough to escape through the locked staircase. I hate that i have to say this, but i whisper to him that i think i just saw a black man in a hoodie walking outside his house. The killer gets upset and goes to check, and while he does, the rest of us run for our fucking lives toward the staircase, and im the last one to put in my key, but im worried i wont be able to put it in in time. I open the stairs and we run up as fast as we can. When we make it to the next floor, we’re in a hotel full of people who work for the killer. We’re on an unfinished floor, but we can see a restaurant below us that we think we can hide in. Meghan leads us all to a fire pole that we take down to the restaurant. Once there, ashton asks, “what do we do now?” I look around at the waiters and see them all in aprons and party hats with the restaurant name on them. I grab us all hats and say “we’re going to blend in.” After we have the uniforms on, i realize that this isn’t technically a restaurant. We’re serving at a dinner party for the “president” of this place, who is deciding who is to be hung in front of everyone. I look to my right and see britney sitting on a bench with several other people, all of them crying. A noose hangs in front of them, and im afraid, but if i try to stop it, ill just be killed too. Im leaning against a table, looking like im just on break, and an employee walks up to me and leans too. “Do you like working here?” He asks. “Not really. I just want to be a writer. Its stupid, but thats my dream,” i tell him. “I dont think its stupid,” he tells me. He looks down at his phone, and his lockscreen is a picture of him, his wife, and his two daughters. “I saw a movie the other day,” he says. “The main character was looking for happiness the whole time, and he finally had his amazing moment during this firework show, all the lights flickering and exploding. He was at peace. It was beautiful.” He looks at me. “I never got that moment. Not really.” He smiles at me sadly before he starts to walk away, and i call out, “hey, wait.” He turns back to me. “Someday you’ll get your flickering lights too,” i tell him, smiling. He smiles back, genuinely this time, before i see him head over to where people are being executed. I watch him start to pray right before two people shove his head through the noose, and i start crying so hard that i wake myself up.