Love Doll Locked-Room Murder Summoning the Storm (3)
"Open the door, you fuckers!"
"You trying to get everyone in here killed?! Fuck your event—open the damn door!"
"Phones are dead, roads are blocked, and you're talking events? Open the lodging now!"
S-man and I grabbed our gear and pushed deeper into the woods, only to find the people who'd supposedly evacuated ahead of us clustered in front of the lodging building, screaming their heads off. Even they couldn't prioritize a once-a-year free love doll pussy over basic survival rights. They were grabbing the flustered staff at the entrance by the collar, looking ready to beat them to death.
"H-ha, but headquarters hasn't given instructions yet. By regulation, opening outside the set time is a clear contract violation..."
"Contract violation? Contract violation?! You want me to violate your fucking life with my fist, you piece of shit?!"
"Open the door while we're asking nicely! Before we lose our shit and turn this place into a wasteland!"
"The boss is inside, right? Get him out here! I'll beat his ass myself!"
"You think we're not people? What the hell do they take customers for...!"
From twenties to fifties, all the protesters were burly guys, leaving the staff guarding the entrance helpless. If I let it go another minute, someone was really gonna get killed, so I stepped in.
"Make way for a sec."
"Who the fu—gurk!"
I silenced the ajusshi loitering up front with a knife-hand strike to the throat, then pried off the hands gripping the staff one by one. Then I hoisted the staff myself and chucked him into the snow-packed courtyard.
I pointed quietly at the man flailing in the snowdrift toward the stunned crowd.
"Let he who is without sin among you cast the first snowball at that man."
"W-we're all victims here!"
"Right. We've been shivering out here for hours."
"Yeah. We're blameless."
"This mess happened 'cause that guy's blocking the lodging!"
"Exactly! Everyone, pelt that fucker with snowballs!"
The enraged mob scooped up snow piled waist-deep on their lower halves and hurled it at the staff. While he was enjoying his bukkake session under the barrage of white clumps from all sides, I used the key I'd slyly lifted from his pocket to unlock the lodging entrance.
"The interior's surprisingly clean. Looks like the staff kept it tidy for the event."
"Makes sense with no regular guests around. But with that chaos outside, why's it so dead quiet in here? Shouldn't there be event organizers or building staff— at least a few people?"
Even excluding the guy getting lynched with snowballs outside, there should be at least ten inside, but it was eerily silent, like a tomb. Maybe the soundproofing was top-notch for a lodging facility, but who the hell would be lounging in their rooms carefree in this situation?
"Checked the campground pamphlet. The lodging has event rec rooms, a communal cafeteria, and about twenty guest rooms. With three such buildings, they probably host big groups seasonally for peak business. And right now's off-season... so likely just the third lodging, pre-booked by the organizers, is open. Explains the emptiness.
Facts: Dormitories 1 and 2, farther out, are temporarily closed until peak season to cut costs and manpower. Maintenance eats more than it earns off-season.
S-man's logic checked out. But I doubted they'd just cram randos and love dolls in here and call it a day. If they ran the same event last year, the organizers weren't that sloppy.
"Let's find the head honcho first and sort the traffic jam. Then round up the folks outside, let 'em crash here till the snow stops."
With shit hitting the fan, tell 'em to forget the dumb love dolls, rest up, and head home when it clears. Then S-man and I could boil ramen, fire up a BBQ, belt out tunes on the karaoke machine in this empty-ass campground. Perfect plan.
The moment I flung open the first-floor communal cafeteria door, I came face-to-face with people seated neatly at a long rectangular table.
"Hmm."
S-man, following behind, let out a groan first, face twisting. No wonder—the vast table, draped in a white cloth, had heads precisely placed in front of each seat. Every person at the table had their neck cleanly severed.
"Looks like we've stumbled into something serious."
S-man gloved up from his pocket and began slowly scanning near the table. I skipped the table and approached the corpse at the head seat.
The guy at the head looked prominent—high-end suit, pricey watch at a glance. The fountain pen tucked in his breast pocket screamed style, but probably luxury too.
Event organizer boss?
Naturally, the other bodies around were connected directly or indirectly. Sure enough, S-man found a staff walkie-talkie and notepad, backing my guess. Not much guesswork anyway—the bodies from this building had to be those 'people' who'd entered ahead of us.
Key was the 'why' and getting tangled unintentionally. Suspicion's the spark of all negativity—the primordial 'culprit.' So many things start with 'if only I hadn't suspected.'
Entry was scheduled for November 30th, 11:30 PM. It's morning now, so at least half a day off-schedule. Someone planned this spectacle for guests entering at that exact time?
Or maybe time didn't matter, just the space itself. If they prepped so meticulously on timing, they'd account for time-based changes too. Like these cafeteria corpses—if we'd stayed out half a day longer and found them late night, the stench would've been brutal. Cold weather helps, but the warm interior plus blood clotting and bodily fluids leaking post-mortem within hours... yet now, just faint blood smell, no corpse rot. Fresh as hell. Like newly slaughtered meat or hot-from-the-oven bread.
They prepped bodies half a day ago with precision, but no contingency for us barging in early? Odd.
"Boss."
"What."
"These bodies are... off."
"Heads sliced clean onto plates? Yeah, no shit they're off."
"Not that. The skeletons, poses, skin tones... don't match."
I rolled up a corpse's sleeve quick. Something slithered down— the arm draped over the chair armrest plopped off with thick bloody sludge.
Mountain, freak blizzard, comms blackout, no escape, stranded, lodging building, murders. Instinct screamed classic whodunit horror cliché: Kwigo Mountain Lodge Locked-Room Massacre.
The staff blocking outsiders was prime suspect. But one adult male couldn't hack up and assemble multiple bodies presumed killed around the same time. Even if anesthetized immobile, impossible realistically. Dismember ten humans, puzzle-piece the chunks randomly, arrange neatly on table, clean every bloodstain and spill? Solo all day might barely manage, but he'd been dealing with guests hours prior.
Above all, that much sin flowing—I'd have seen it.
True locked-room murder then... a grotesque one, hacking and mismatching human parts.
I tsked at the slender woman's arm detached from the man's sleeve. No way we'd eat here now. Blood stench everywhere—even baked sweet potatoes and kimchi, winter delights, were off the menu.
"Round up everyone outside first. Tell 'em shit went down here, stay vigilant till we can descend when weather clears."
"No suspect profiling or interrogations?"
"We ain't Holmes and Watson—why bust our asses deducing? Perspective's wrong from the jump."
Suspicion breeds errors and bullshit assumptions. We'd just called it a 'locked-room murder,' but we'd already endured impossible shit outside. Hitting something 'plausible' right after made us brainfart into thinking it fit. This ain't plausible. Just looks it.
We ditched the detective cosplay and bolted the cafeteria. That weird 'I'll solve this!' sense melted like snow. We'd all been briefly hoodwinked.