All Chapters of I'm in Survival Hell, You're in Party Heaven: Chapter 1 - Chapter 9

"This ribeye is cooked just right. Leave it a minute longer, and it'll be too tough to chew. Gerald, give it a taste."A familiar voice drifted to me. I floated in midair, eyes fixed on the man raising a glass of red wine. It was Dad.He wore casual clothes and was relaxed in a way I had never seen before. The woman beside him, dressed in a silk gown and cutting her steak with quiet grace, was Mom."Not bad at all." Gerald Calcraft, a heavyset man, swallowed his beef and gave a thumbs-up."You two really know how to live it up. This place is gorgeous."I looked down at my transparent hands. Ten minutes ago, those same hands had been soaked in blood.Down in that moldy basement, I had been sawing at my wrist with the sharp edge of a tin can, bit by bit, so they could have one more meal. The pain tore through my whole body.I thought I was doing something brave. I thought I was saving my parents."Speaking of which…" Gerald set down his wine glass and pointed at the lawn beneath

The speakers blared to life, filling the air with growling, snarling, and the scrape of claws against metal, all of it piled on top of each other in a way that made everyone's skin crawl.It was probably some kind of custom sound effect my parents had paid good money to have made. Even out here on the sunlit lawn, it was enough to set anyone's nerves on edge.The guests shifted uneasily in their chairs. A few of the women clapped their hands over their ears."That's incredibly realistic. You've got some serious equipment here, Mr. Sands." The bald man let out a dry laugh, covering up his discomfort.On screen, the image started shaking violently, a simulation of something slamming into the walls. Dad stood over the monitor, brow creasing as he watched. The thin figure curled up in the corner didn't move, not a single flinch."Something's off," Dad muttered, more to himself than anyone, his fingers tapping rapidly across the control panel."The adrenaline should be spiking right n

The silence was absolute. The only sound was the occasional whisper of air through the ventilation ducts, like something hollow breathing in the dark.Dad's hand trembled around the flashlight. The beam swayed back and forth between the bloody words on the wall and my body on the floor, as though it was trying to deny what it was seeing. Whatever he had been about to say caught in his throat and came out as a strange, strangled sound.Mom's wine glass slipped from her fingers and shattered on the concrete. Dark red wine sprayed across her white dress in jagged, blooming stains.She stared at the words on the wall, her face frozen. The composed, untouchable mask she always wore had begun to crack, right down the middle. The calm superiority was gone, replaced by something raw and desperate."This doesn't make sense," she said, over and over.Her voice was scraped dry, like she was chewing on gravel. "The vitals were reading normal. Yesterday… Yesterday, the numbers were still movin

Dad was still fighting it. He straightened his glasses with one hand and tried to fall back on his usual talk about survival of the fittest."Officer, you don't understand."He knocked on the table. The handcuffs rattled, but his tone was still arrogant."Human evolution requires selection. The elimination of the weak is a law of nature. What I've been doing is conducting an important sociological experiment. In academic circles, some degree of loss is considered acceptable.""Shut up!"The young officer slammed his palm down on the table and stood up, pointing a finger right at Dad's face. "This isn't your lecture hall. You're a murderer!"What experiment? That's your own daughter! The law doesn't care about your evolution theory. Murder is murder!"That last shout shattered Dad's entire chain of logic. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. His authority was gone. On the bench of law and morality, all of his grand theories didn't amount to anything.The next day, the stor

The basement door was pushed open. The smell hit them like a wall, thick and suffocating, the same as it had been days before. But the two of them walked right through it, like they couldn't even smell it. They walked in, unsteady on their feet.Everything inside was exactly the way it had been left after the forensic team finished. The blood on the floor had dried and hardened into dark, black patches.Mom walked over to the corner, the one where my body had been found. She bent down and picked up the torn T-shirt I had been wearing when I died, and pulled it over her own head, right over her silk blouse.It was the kind of thing that no designer dress could ever replace. She curled herself into that same corner, wrapped her arms around her knees, and folded into the exact same position I had been in when they found me."This way I can feel her data," she said, and let out a strange, breathless laugh.She pressed her cheek against the freezing concrete wall, rubbing it against th