Come Out and Play

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. It hissed and spit pulling slashes of flame across the shadowed walls, highlighting the misery within.

Thomas held the match a little too long, mesmerized by the dancing prick of light. Even the warning smell of burnt flesh and singed hair was not enough to make him stop. He relished the pain, not daring to let go.

When the splinter of wood had finally burned itself out, Thomas opened his blistered fingers letting it fall. He watched it slowly return to its brethren down on the rotted floorboards beneath his feet. At least they could keep each other company. He hadn't had anyone out here in so long.

Or had his nieces come to visit last month? He'd been losing track of time. Yes, yes, they had. He remembered now. He'd brought them out here to play his favorite game...

"U-u-uncle Tom? Uncle Tom! We don't like this game anymore. We don't want to play," Janie whimpered as she huddled with her sisters under the porch.

"Yeah, Momma's gonna get worried," Molly said a little more firmly, trying to sound strong as the eldest of the three.

Luckily for Thomas, he knew they were having fun, because why wouldn't they? Hide and hunt was the best sort of game. His nieces tried to tell him that was the wrong name, but he knew better. And of course he was always the hunter.

Thomas hummed a little melody under his breath as he snuck through the trees on silent feet looking for signs of unwanted company. Too many people tried to sneak out here looking to interrupt his game–play the hunter instead. It infuriated him.

This was his game. He made up the rules. And he was always the hunter!

Angry just thinking about it, Thomas' control slipped, and he smashed through the brush, stomping over to the cabin's porch giving himself away. But he'd known where the girls had been this whole time even before they called out. He liked the game to last a little longer, so he waited a few moments before cupping his hands around his mouth and calling out to them in his shrill tenor–

"Come out, come out, come out and play.

Your hiding's done but don't dismay.

Please the one who hunts at night,

Your saving grace to end your plight."

Now that he was upon them, he could smell their fear, and it calmed his foul mood like a soothing balm. Thomas could hear their rapid heartbeats, taste their sweating palms. They played the game so well.

He didn't even get mad when no one came out. Instead his mouth stretched into a wide grin. He could tell they wanted to keep playing. He always knew.

But alas, this was only the first part of the game, and Thomas was anxious to move on.

"Come out and play," he sang again, bending to look under the stoop.

There they were...

Thomas' mind snapped back to the here and now as he remembered the rest of that night. When he'd found the girls, they'd emerged with older, different faces and dark brown hair that was all shades of wrong. Tears had streamed down their dirty skin, dripping and accusing.

They'd claimed to be lost hikers, but Thomas knew better. He always did.

And those cheap imposters hadn't known how to play the game at all. They hadn't even tried. But he'd stopped worrying about them, and all the ones that had come before. Their games were forfeit.

The only thing that mattered anymore was that his nieces were gone. He'd hunted and hunted for them, but they'd simply vanished one night in the middle of a game. Thomas had been equally sad and furious ever since. Now he had to settle for these frauds to play his games with until the girls came back to him.

Left with few options, Thomas went to the cabin every evening when the sky tinged with darkness and lit a candle, hoping it would guide them home.

Which is how he found himself standing on the porch with pain in his heart and blisters on his hand with a burning need to hunt. He stood there silently waiting until well into the night before finally making the long hike back to the house at the front of his family's vast acreage. The only dwelling people knew about.

Thomas' mind remained troubled as he made his way along the four-mile trek. Before long the small house came into view, and Thomas huffed in frustration. Another night wasted.

Or maybe not...

Were his eyes playing tricks?

A candle sat flickering in his kitchen window, drawing Thomas forward like a moth to a flame.

Someone had started his game.

Hope rose within him that it might be his nieces. But they were doing it all wrong, he was always the hunter.

As if to prove him right, the tell-tale song he was supposed to sing began to float around him on a breeze, creeping up to tickle his hair and sending a chill down his spine.

"Come out, come out, come out and play.

Your hiding's done but don't dismay.

The sun will rise again this day,

But you won't see it–time to pay."

Frozen in shock, the threatening words didn't quite register. Thomas just stood there blinking slowly, wondering if this was all a dream. His three nieces were here, drifting towards him from the forest's edge, haunting in their beauty.

But the look of joy spreading across his face, slowly morphed into a frown of confusion. Something wasn't quite right.

As they got closer and closer, he could see the violence brewing in their eyes. The hatred on their faces. Their vicious mouths all gnashing teeth and gums chanting over and over again, "Come out and play. Come out and play!" as they charged at him with knives clenched in their fists.

"Let's play, uncle!" They screamed in rage, spittle flying as they circled him. "It'll be fun! So much fun. We know you love to play, play, play!"

"No. No!" Thomas cried out clutching his head in his hands. "These aren't the rules. This isn't the game. Stop! Stop!"

"Oh no, we can't stop until the game is over, remember?" the three taunted, blades flashing in the moonlight.

"All those years we begged you to leave us alone, but you forced us to finish your sick games," Janie spat, jabbing her knife into his thigh and twisting.

Thomas yowled in agony, but the pain only brought him focus. He snapped out his uninjured hand to wrench the knife away from Janie, but Molly plunged her blade into his stomach quick as a flash, roaring, "You killed our mother!"

The gaping wound brought him to his knees.

Megan stepped up next, wielding her weapon with a steady hand as she bent to whisper in his ear, "You took everything good in us and destroyed it. Every time you forced us to hurt ourselves to save our sisters. Every time you forced us to hurt those poor helpless hikers. Every time you forced yourself on us. All those 'games' made us into weapons. We learned how to be silent, take pain, give pain, hide and not be found. And now we are the hunters."

As she rose to stand above him once more, Thomas looked up with watery eyes, heartbreak bleeding from him. He barely even felt the pointed tip of Megan's blade pierce his heart before his world dissolved.

Hours later, flames licked up the sides of the abandoned cabin, consuming the body carelessly dumped inside. As the smell of burnt flesh traveled through the air, three voices were heard weaving an eerie melody–

"Come out, come out, come out and play.

Your hiding's done, but don't dismay.

The game has not been torn asunder,

No longer the hidden, we're now the hunter."