#plzz help

Until I Reach the Light

It's impossible.

That’s what I was told by the dejected, old man sitting in the corner of the cell. At least, that’s all he ever said. The rest of us can only assume that he’s referring to escape.

We still tried though. We had to. Some of us missed our family, others just wanted fresh air. Either way, we all knew that we didn’t want to rot away in this cell. Of course, we had to plan our escape. Necessary information was slowly gained through painfully long interrogations with the old man.

This is everything we managed to get him to reveal:

We have to fight each other to the death.

This wasn’t a problem. I simply woke up in this room with my new roommates. We couldn’t figure out our similarities and even though we tried to be civil with each other, we never became friends so there was never a sense of loyalty. I was sure I was not the strongest, smartest or luckiest, but there weren’t any rules so I was sure there were ways to work through my weaknesses.

2. We have to fight the solitary guard at the door of this prison and it’s impossible to win against him in one on one combat.

Our collective thought was there’s only one? What kind of monster- But we were desperate so we convinced ourselves that the old man had probably gone mad and that the prowess of this guard was probably overestimated. After all, there was more than one of us in this cell. We believed we could beat him.

3. Only one of us is getting out.

We repressed this information. We didn’t think it was important. More importantly, we thought it didn’t make sense. There was definitely another way.

Once we couldn’t get anymore information from the old man, we headed out. It was comically easy. Some higher entity simply knew we were ready and a wall opened.

The new room which appeared to us looked more like a grave than an arena. Roughly 10m long and wide, it was completely empty safe the writing on the wall: “The door opens when the ground is covered in blood.”

“Let’s not fight”. A voice came from the left of me. We all turned to face them. “Let’s just … cut ourselves with some small wounds and try to cover the ground. Blood’s liquid, there’s a lot of us, we can do it”. So we got to work.

…

It was not enough, far from enough. When the realization hit us in our light-headed state, a voice appeared in the back of our mind. Fight it said and it kept getting louder and louder and louder- then one of us punched another and it all broke down into chaos. Hands flew, blood spilled and the chanting kept getting louder and louder until it was not just in our mind anymore. At some point, the words morphed into kill, kill, kill, kill and we could not help but obey. Blood was everywhere, it covered the groundーwait, it covered the ground. The realization rung cold and clear as the chanting suddenly stopped and the surviving few backed away from the pile of bodies.

There were three of us. One was so weak, they tripped over another body, fell to the ground and an echoing crack was heard.

Now there was two. Another wall opened behind me and natural light streamed down from a hole at the top. There was no guard in sight. We both walked closer and we peered up at the sole source of natural light. It was about 3 metres up and it became clear what the old man meant by only one person getting out. One person had to use the other to get out, leaving the one at the bottom trapped in the dungeon. Of course, maybe the person that made it out can find civilization, or rope, and free the trapped person, assuming-

I didn’t get an opportunity to finish my thoughts. Instead, the person beside me lunged at my throat and I got tackled to the ground.

“Stop, stop-” I tried to halt their assault so we could discuss the logistics of both of us leaving but they clamped a hand over my mouth and pressed down on my throat. I’m not going to die, not like this I decided before a surge of adrenaline raced through me and I kicked them off. As they rolled off me, I noticed just how much they were bleeding. They fell on their back, eyes glazed over and never got up.

…

I tried to pile up the corpses so I could climb up to get out but there weren’t enough bodies to form a high enough hill. All I could do was sit at the base and ponder at what could have been my escape.

Thoughts ran through me at the speed of light. Where’s the guard? Technically, if more than two of us made it into the last room, wouldn’t more than 1 person be able to escape? What’s the point of making us fight?Who put us through all this?

At the same speed, answers flooded in. If more than one of us made it into the last room, we would’ve came to the same conclusion that one person wouldn’t have made it out. We would’ve fought to not be that person except that every person who died fighting would be one less person who can stand at the bottom. There would’ve been only one left anyways.

As for the guard, at first I thought that it must have found us so weak and impulsive that it let us duel it out amongst ourselves instead of getting involved. I realized a moment later that maybe the guard wasn’t a physical thing at all. Maybe the one thing that was guarding us from making it out was just human impulsiveness . We would’ve fought until there was no more chance of survival instead of letting at least one person see their family again. Maybe, they could’ve even saved the other eventually. At the very least, they could’ve told the other family their farewells. If there was just one of us left, well, there would’ve been no impulse to act upon, but there would’ve been no chance of escaping.

As I stared at the top corpse, the one of the second last survivor, I concluded that I would’ve been the bottom person if they just allowed me to speak. Alas, they didn’t give me that chance and I might not have felt as merciful at that particular moment. Plus, all these what-ifs and would-haves are futile now.

And the mastermind behind all this? Well, was it important? Wasn’t the bigger problem that we didn’t realize that it was us, the prisoners, verses that mastermind and not us against each other?

The old man’s corpse was at the bottom of the pile; I don’t know when he died. His words ring in my ears: It’s impossible. Was escaping actually impossible or was this just his conclusion from past experience? Was he the one survivor from the last time?