7

Rae

October 28th, 2019

I panted, working the toy in and out of me as my back arched and my hips rocked.

My fingers dug into the sheets, my toes curling as the tentacle vibrated and thrusted deep inside of me. “Fuck,” I moaned, the sound of the porn I had put on playing in the background.

I matched the sound of his thrusting with my toy, feeling my own arousal drip over my fingers as I shoved back against the headboard, my skin covered in goosebumps. “Fuck,” I moaned, releasing the sheets to grab my hardened nipple. I squeezed and twisted, the pain shooting straight between my thighs.

I cried out, moving my hips faster, feeling my entire body start to tense—

My phone started ringing.

It was like a switch. Just that instant. My body collapsed into the bed, my eyes opened as the sound of the video cut off, my irritation interrupting my train of thought.

God-fucking-dammit.

Goddammit!

With a frustrated groan, I pulled the toy out and switched it off, glancing over to my phone to find Max’s name flashing across my screen.

I cursed angrily, grabbed it, and threw it across the room.

My skin was covered in sweat, my legs shaking in need, but the mood was gone now. God, I hated my own mind. I felt like it took too much time and effort for me to get there, to get in the right state. I was so stupid not putting my phone on silent before starting this.

I hated him so fucking much, I wanted to scream.

I set my toy to one side and pushed myself to a sit, fixing my clothes and running a hand through my hair. It was fine, it had taken up too much time anyway.

The ringing finally stopped, and I closed my eyes, releasing a breath of relief. I rubbed my hands over my face. God, I needed a good fuck. Isn’t that what the doctors said? If you find yourself irritated and angry all the time seemingly out of nowhere, maybe check how long it’s been since you’ve been railed.

I bet some of them even wrote that on a prescription pad.

What would I say in response to that question though? How long has it been since I’ve actually had sex?

God, I didn’t even want to think about it. It was hard to have sex when I never left the house.

Playing with myself had been fine, but it wasn’t enough anymore.

I just wanted to be fucked.

Did that make me some sort of sex-crazed person? A sex-addict? No, if I was a sex-addict, I would have taken advantage of Captain Bard, but fuck that. I would never go near his genitals in a million years.

But I did crave sex.

Blame it on my mommy and daddy issues. Blame it on my raising, my spotty memory. Blame it on whatever you liked, but I needed to feel wanted. I craved it. I wanted to be fucked so hard I slipped into a coma afterwards.

My thighs clenched together as my eyes fell shut, thinking about it. Thinking about someone pinning me down and shoving their cock into me just because they needed me so badly, they couldn’t help themselves.

That’s really what I wanted.

I wanted someone to crave me so desperately, they followed me home, kicked down the door, and forced me to take it like the good girl I was.

I wanted them to praise me while they did it, choke me, slap me, tie me up and tell me that I could take it all if I just believed hard enough.

My breathing picked up as my hand slid up my stomach and over my breast, squeezing tightly.

I wanted someone to need me so much, they took me wherever and whenever they wanted. I wanted them to need me so much, they couldn’t go even a minute without being inside of me.

A whimper escaped me as my other hand drifted between my legs at the thought of someone wrapping their hand around my throat as their other hand ripped my skirt up, tore my panties to the side, and shoved their cock—

My phone started ringing again, ripping me from my own fantasy.

I snarled, jumped up from the bed, snatched my phone up and put it to my ear. “What the fuck do you want?” I bit.

There was a pause. “Well, I was going to ask if you wanted to get ready for the carnival together,” Viv started evenly, “but now I’m wondering if maybe I just interrupted you in the middle of climaxing.”

I released a guilt-ridden sigh only to stop and straighten. “Are you in my house right now?”

Viv laughed. “No, but I’m glad my investigative skills are still up to snuff. Rae, why didn’t you put your phone on silent before you started? That’s an unspoken rule, you know that.”

I fell into my bed with a groan. “Because I’m a slut for self-destruction,” I moaned.

I covered my face and rolled my eyes. “Let yourself in, I’ll be in the shower.” Even Viv knew the rules, and she was as vanilla as they came. God.

“If you need help, just let me know,” she replied cheekily.

I laughed. “I just might take you up on that offer.” I bit my lip, my heart picking up at the thought. Viv was beautiful. And I didn’t consider myself gay or even bisexual, but I would admit that I was curious and in desperate need of a good release.

I liked being fingered, and I had never been fingered by a girl. She would know exactly what to do, I was sure of it. It wouldn’t take her long.

But at her laugh, I shook the thoughts away. Fuck, I was too thirsty. “Girl, you need some cock.”

I smiled, my face burning red. What was wrong with me? “Don’t remind me. See you in a bit, help yourself to the fridge.” She was right though.

“Thanks.”

I hung up and tossed my phone to the bed.

The shower I took was long and cold. I needed to drown this out. Maybe I just wasn’t putting myself out there enough.

It wasn’t like I needed a guy. I could take care of myself just fine in every aspect of my life.

Maybe it was me. Maybe I was being too nice. Maybe I was acting too happy. Nobody liked happy all the time, but I couldn’t allow myself to feel anything else or I’d break, so changing that wasn’t an option.

I needed a challenge. A high. I needed some ghost to sneak into my shower right now and rail me with their cold, evil hands.

I shivered and shook my head. “Fuck, Rae, focus.”

Today and tomorrow were going to both be late nights. Which I didn’t entirely mind because I hadn’t gotten a full night’s sleep in as long as I could remember. I had nightmares every night, most of which I couldn’t remember, sometimes images did slip through, but none of them made any sense.

I had learned to live with it, the lack of sleep. It didn’t affect my everyday living, not as much as my libido did, but still, some days were harder than others.

Maybe I should go see someone about that. Was it even natural?

I shook the thoughts away. No. I wanted to put all negative thoughts aside. Tonight was the carnival and tomorrow there was a masquerade. A lot of prominent people in this city would be there, and I had gotten the invitation weeks ago.

I hadn’t truly decided if I wanted to go or not, but I still had mom’s mask from last year’s event. I had never gone before, but with mom now being dead, the invitation defaulted to me.

I wasn’t sure what it was meant for. Catching up with people? Sales? Art? Whatever, but maybe I would go. Maybe I could meet some people who either knew about my mom or someone I could take home.

After a long shower, I got out and Viv and I started getting ready for the carnival.

She dressed up as a slutty, undead puppy, and I dressed up as Harley Quinn.

I had put a lot of time and effort into putting this costume together, which only made my excitement grow. Everything from the collar to the tattoos to the bat, it was all an exact replica, and as I stepped in front of the mirror to inspect my makeup and the clothes that hugged me, I couldn’t help but smile. The only difference between Margot Robbie’s version of Harley and me was the length of my hair.

I laughed and spun around, facing Viv, my pigtails slapping me in the face.

Viv was equally as beautiful.

She had shoulder-length brunette hair and hazel eyes. She had blood dripping from a slash in her neck and on her cheek, and blood dripping down her arms. Her clothes were revealing, covered in dalmatian spots, and her ears were clipped perfectly into her hair. She looked so cute.

She beamed. “You look hot.”

“So do you,” I complimented, practically jumping to go. “Ready?” I wanted to go on the carousel, walk through the house of mirrors, the haunted houses they had set up, but I was most excited for their newest attraction.

It was a giant circus tent they were setting up in the center of the event. They filled it with rooms of terror and gore, and it was proclaimed to be the scariest thing that they had ever had.

I wanted to forget about Max, my frustrations, the bullshit at the precinct. I wanted to be distracted in every possible way, and what better way than to be scared half to death.

Viv parked in a spot half a mile from the entrance. The parking lot was a poorly graveled area filled with sporadic puddles and giant rocks threatening to trip anyone who was already too drunk to pay attention.

We made our way to the front entrance, the eerie music, lights, and smoke drifting across the ground adding to the ambiance of the large carnival.

Viv moved closer to me as people streamed in and out around us, laughter and screaming heard from just beyond the gates.

I let her latch onto my arm as we stepped through the lit-up archway, instantly met with three large men dressed in masks, holding weapons.

One held a chainsaw, one held a machete, and the third held a simple hunting knife.

I jumped out of pure instinct as the one with the chainsaw revved his machine. Viv screamed, clinging to me so tightly my fingers started tingling.

My heart was already picking up, the adrenaline growing, rushing through me, warmth spreading through my body. There it was, that inkling of a high. I wanted more.

My hand tightened around the base of my bat, which was slung over my shoulders, as the three men began to close in on us, their weapons pointed at the ground, their heads twisting one way and then the other.

It was common knowledge that the scare actors targeted prettier and younger people. They didn’t go after men often because men didn’t scream like women did, but beautiful girls like Viv and I?

Part of me wondered if they did it just to have something to jerk off to later.

One of the three, a man with a skull mask and the hunting knife, neared me. He towered above me, his dark blue eyes almost familiar. His mask looked war torn. The eyes of it shattered out, splotchy black paint surrounding his own eyes. He was wearing some sort of black uniform. Lots of pockets, leather belt, leather jacket, boots. All black.

My heart picked up as he stopped in front of me, lifting that knife.

I felt my breath catch, my body frozen in place as that knife neared me. Closer and closer it inched to my face, our eyes locked. I couldn’t look away. Why did those eyes look so familiar?

He lifted the tip of his knife to my temple, my heart picking up as he gently traced it down my face, over my jaw, down my neck, and finally stopped just above my pulse.

I swallowed, my thighs flexing, lips parting, as he pressed against my skin ever so slightly.

I felt another person step up behind me, another sharp knife, the machete, sliding up my back, the male’s heat pressing against my back. He reached up and flicked my hair away.

The blue eyes flicked to the man behind me, breaking our stare, and that’s when I realized that Viv had been tugging on me, calling my name, for the last several seconds.

“Rae,” Viv breathed out, pulling me away from them.

I glanced her way before turning back to him, his two friends exchanging a look as he stepped up to the guy with the machete. “What?” I asked, looking the male over.

“They can’t touch us,” I explained to her as he made the machete guy take a step back.

“Fuck off, guy,” he ordered, breaking character.

I immediately frowned.

“He made you bleed,” she said, touching the spot on my neck his knife had just been.

The male with the hunting knife just stared at him. His presence cold and dominating. He kept in character, not saying a single word as he gripped that hunting knife in his hand.

The machete guy scoffed and shook his head, joining chainsaw guy quickly. “Fucking prick.”

Viv took my hand just as the hunting knife guy turned back towards me, his dark blue eyes shining. “Come on,” she insisted, pulling me away from them. “You wanted to do everything, so we need to go.”

I searched his eyes.

“Rae,” she pushed, tugging on my hand again.

I watched him, my heart beating against my ribs at the way he stared at me.

“Rae,” Viv said, pulling me away. “Come on.”

This time I rolled my eyes and let her pull me away. I didn’t understand what her deal was. We were safe. Just as safe here as we were anywhere else.

I suppose I should give her some grace. She had decided to come just because I kept pushing and pushing. I needed to let her act the way she needed in order to feel safe, so if dragging me away from this actor made her feel safe, then so be it.

She was the only friend I had in this life. I couldn’t remember much of my childhood. It was just a blur of private schools and expensive shopping trips, and while most would roll their eyes at my dislike for how I grew up, it made me uncomfortable thinking about it.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like my childhood, I just couldn’t remember a lot of it. There were big gaps in my memory I couldn’t quite pull up. Years I had just forgotten, and while it was normal for some to forget their childhoods, mine was more than that.

I couldn’t remember anything. I never told anyone that. Not Viv or Donna. Especially not Max. I never had the real opportunity to speak to my mom about it and therapists were an absolute no in my life. Mom and Donna didn’t believe in them.

I thought about telling Viv once, but I was sure she would make some joke about it being the brain rot I watched on television.

But it wasn’t that, I knew that for certain. It was something else. I often wondered if maybe I had been in a car accident or perhaps I had fallen down the stairs at my mom’s house at some point. I had gotten a concussion. Maybe it had been the drugs I had experimented with. Whatever it was, the memories I had of my life seemed scattered and sometimes incoherent if I tried to think too hard about it.

Sometimes it worried me, it scared the shit out of me honestly, but people were always preaching online about living in the present moment, so that’s what I tried to focus on.

If I lived in the present, focused on who I was now, there was no need to remember who I had been before, right?

It was a poor rationalization, but it was working for me. Besides, Donna and mom were both gone, so unless I found one of my old doctors, which I hadn’t been able to locate yet, there was no way for me to confirm any kind of accident.

Besides, I had Viv, so if I truly wanted to know about something that happened in my past, I would just ask her. We had been friends for years, after all. Which was another reason why I wasn’t so worried. If something terrible had happened to me, an accident of some sort, she would have known, I was sure of it. She would have told me.

We walked across the grounds, taking our time until we finally reached the carousel line.

It took 20 minutes to finally get on the ride. Every horse was undead. Dripping in fake blood, bone shards sticking out of them, some had their heads sawed off, others were decaying and covered in moss.

While most avoided the stickiest ones, I embraced the gore, finding the only untouched one on the entire ride.

It was covered in fake blood, the head hanging on by tendons, one of the legs snapped at an odd angle.

“Rae,” Viv warned as I grabbed the blood covered pole, running my hand up and down it, the blood pooling around my fingers.

My eyes lifted to hers, finding her face twisted in disgust.

I rolled my eyes. “It’s fake, Viv.”

“You’re going to be sticky the rest of the night.”

“I’m going to look like I just got into a fight with Mista J,” I beamed and swung my leg over, feeling the cold liquid slide against my fishnets, my skin.

I shivered, gripping onto the pole in one hand, my bat in the other, as my ass slid into place. Fuck, I shouldn’t have loved this as much as I did. It was so wrong.

Viv watched me for several seconds before taking a seat on the horse beside me. It was radioactive and glowed brightly.

That look on her face never changed, even as the ride finally started, the music eerie and broken, playing from a cracked record over an old 50’s radio. I wouldn’t let her ruin my fun.

I closed my eyes and leaned back on the horse, hanging onto the pole tightly as I lifted my legs up around the top of the neck where the horse had been decapitated. I released a Harley laugh, holding my bat out as the carousel picked up speed. It was a Halloween ride, it wasn’t going to be slow and at the same pace, this one moved. The horses moved quickly up and down the poles before slowing down and jerking up again. It spun fast and then slow, jerking forward only to start spinning backwards.

I screamed and laughed as the butterflies exploded in my stomach, my ass slipping and sliding across the blood, covering me in sticky residue, my muscles straining as they clenched, trying to hold on.

I slid back down, sliding up to the pole and looking over to Viv who had laughter in her eyes as well. She had fun. She always had fun, sometimes it just took her a little bit to get into the swing of things, but this was fun.

I laughed and turned to the crowds, taking in everyone around us. The people waiting impatiently for their turns or taking pictures of their kids, those further away mingling, laughing, being chased by the actors. God, I loved this time of year. I loved the effort people put into their costumes. I loved watching people get so scared they couldn’t help but run.

I gasped when the ride jerked to a slower speed again, and my thighs tightened around the bodice of the horse just as my eyes found that actor from earlier.

The one with the knife.

My smile slowly fell as I watched him stand there. Watching us.

We went around again, and there he was, in the exact same spot, just…just watching.

“Hey,” I called over the music, my heart thundering. “Hey, Viv, did you see that guy?” I asked, looking over.

She gave me a look. “We’re surrounded by people.”

I rolled my eyes. “The actor from earlier, he’s standing…” but when I turned back, the carousel coming back around, he was gone.

A chill ran down my spine as I searched the crowds, looking for that masked man, finding him nowhere.

The carousel finally stopped, and I slid from the horse, almost falling to my knees with the amount of blood that now dripped down my legs and the way my legs shook. I hadn’t realized how hard I had been clenching my thighs and hands around that horse to stay on. I held no regrets, but this blood would be a bitch to clean off.

“You okay?”

“Um…” I searched the crowds as we headed off the ride. “Yeah,” I decided when I didn’t see him again. “The scares getting to me, I guess,” I shrugged. “Come on, House of Mirrors next.”

By the time we finished up the last haunted house, Viv’s voice was all but gone, and both of us were trembling and on edge.

The blood on me had dried to a sticky, red residue, and my right hand throbbed from how tightly Viv was hanging on. I was surprised I hadn’t been thrown out yet due to my instinctual reaction of swinging my bat as the scares got worse. Either they were being lazy, or they just didn’t care about weapons this year. Either way, it was a bad choice being as how my bat had nails in the end of it. Irresponsible, really, but fuck it, you won’t find me complaining.

We were both exhausted, and I didn’t think I would stop shaking for a few days, but not only was I the happiest I had been in a long time, I was soaked too, and I wasn’t ready to give this night up.

Besides, we had one last thing to do before we left. One last memory to make and lock in my memory bank for later on when I was home alone.

“I’m ready to go home,” Viv chattered hoarsely.

“Nope, one last thing, you promised.” It was reaching midnight, so we didn’t have much time to get through the tent, but we should have enough before the park officially closed down, we just needed to be quick.

Viv groaned. “Seriously? We’ve done everything.”

“Not everything,” I smiled. “Not the main event. One last haunt and we can get home. Take a much needed shower, okay?” I batted my eyes at her, and after a few seconds, she laughed.

Viv rolled her eyes. “You have blood everywhere.”

I beamed. “That’s a consignment, let’s go—”

“Rae!”

I glanced back at my name and felt my good mood sour at the sight of Max. “Seriously?”

His eyes locked onto mine, anger clear in them. “Rae,” he shouted.

I glared, worked my jaw, and turned away from him. “Come on,” I said, tightening my hand around Viv’s and pulling her through the crowd.

“What’s wrong?”

“My half-brother,” I answered, seeing the entrance to the tent come into view. “We’ll lose him in here.”

“What the Hell? Why is he here?”

Because she was right. He was a creep. He wanted to control my life for some ungodly reason, and I couldn’t fucking stand it. I threw our tickets at the Ghoul standing at the entrance and pulled her inside, the ambiance quickly shifting from lights and music to near darkness and moans of the dead.

I had to slow as the lights from outside quickly disappeared, the sounds from the people fading away.

“Holy shit,” Viv whispered, inching closer to me. “H-how did they do that?”

The floor became slimy, gooey, as my eyes widened, letting in what little light they had in this place. A dim glow coming from somewhere, I just couldn’t decipher where. “I don’t know,” I answered truthfully, my already strained muscles whining as I tried to keep balance.

This was creepy. I had to admit, I was actually, properly scared now, but not for the reasons Viv was. This place was creepy, but so was Max being here. So was that actor who I had seen several times since the carousel, standing in the shadows, always watching me. I was on edge, and this place wasn’t making it easier. My muscles tensed, the trembling slowing, my breathing growing weaker as I tried to listen to anything around me as well as forcing myself not to slip and fall. All I could hear were the moans.

I found myself clinging to her just as tightly as she clung to me, my bat gripped at my side. It was fine, they couldn’t actually hurt us. We were safe here. They wouldn’t risk a lawsuit.

But my mom had disappeared, hadn’t she? Not a trace of her to be found. What if the actor following me was that man? The person who had made her disappear.

He could do the same thing to Viv and I and the police would just give up looking for us in eight months, just like they had my mom.

The thought had my skin filling with goosebumps. I had never thought about people just disappearing like that before my mom had. Not in the real sense. I mean, I watched a lot of True Crime, a lot of news, I knew it happened, I just…I just never considered it as something that would happen to me. Which, I suppose, is what everyone says, but that didn’t make it any less true. Nobody thinks it would ever happen to them, to their family, to their friends.

But it did. No body to bury, no evidence to document, no proof of a murder even happening besides that pool of blood. Just a record of her past and names that had come up more than a few times.

The same thing could happen to us. And while Viv had a loving family, who would look for me? I had no family, Viv was my only friend, and Max? Fuck, maybe they would convict him after looking through my phone records.

I closed my eyes and shook my head. Focus. This was just a game. A game. Max was a creep, but he was also a pussy. He didn’t have the balls to come into this place, I was sure of it. And that actor? He couldn’t touch me. If he did, I could have the park shut down. Unless he was some sort of psychopath, there was no way he would risk that.

“You really need to go to the police,” Viv whispered, our steps agonizingly slow as we tried to concentrate on not falling.

“For them to do what?” I whispered back. “They haven’t done anything about my mom’s murder, why would they help me with this?”

“Because there’s proof of a crime,” she said, looking over, her foot slipping a bit, pulling a cry from her lips before she steadied herself. “You have the harassing phone calls and messages, and I’m sure they’d get footage from this place to prove he showed up here too.”

I scoffed. “You overestimate the cops in this city. They don’t care.”

“Max is going to kill you, Rae. This is getting serious.”

“I won’t let him kill me,” I replied, feeling her eyes on me as she stopped.

I paused and looked back, the light just enough to see her beautiful eyes. “What?”

Her brows were furrowed as she searched my eyes. “You can’t fight him.”

I shrugged. “I can sure try. He’s only a little bit taller than me, far scrawnier. One good kick to the balls and I’ll put him on his knees.”

She pressed her lips together. “You should go to the police tomorrow.”

I rolled my eyes and tugged her gently to keep going. “I’ll think about it. Come on, we don’t have time to lolly-gag.”

She released a terrified squeak of a laugh. “Seriously?”

I smiled and shrugged. “Seemed an appropriate time to use it.”

We turned the soft corner and the dark hall opened up into a small laboratory, dim fluorescent lights flickering around us, showing me exactly what we had been walking through.

More fake blood.

These shoes were absolutely ruined. Dammit, I kind of liked them.

“What the fuck?” Viv whimpered as my steps slowed.

There was a patient strapped down to a table in the middle of the room. She was screaming, cut open, her guts hanging out of her stomach while someone in a leather hocky mask and a leather apron stood above her.

There were bodies in one corner, discarded, all of them cut open, blood dripping from the table, intestines covering the floor.

“Rae, that looks real,” she whispered.

I clenched my jaw, studying the scene as much as I could. She was right. I had seen plenty of horror movies on the sliding scale of ‘clearly fake’ to ‘this was definitely a filmed murder’ and this looked horrifically real. Even the stench. Decaying flesh, copper.

“Just keep going,” I pushed her, even though my fear level was through the roof. This wasn’t real, it couldn’t be. Yes, I had seen movies where murderers snuck into haunted carnivals to show off because who would believe it was an actual psychopath?

But that was a movie. That shit didn’t happen in real life. This couldn’t be real.

It wasn’t.

I led her to the hall on the other side of the room, keeping my eyes on the scientist until I couldn’t anymore.

We rushed a few steps in and slowed again, the slimy gooey floor shifting to something more easily walkable.

“I don’t want to be here anymore,” Viv whispered.

“We can leave as soon as we make it through, I promise, but there’s no turning back now, we have to go.”

“So you can avoid that creep?” she spit at me, her voice shaking in terror. “God, you need to call the police, Rae. Just because he’s your brother, doesn’t give him the right to be an absolute dick about it.”

“Because it’s against the rules,” I frowned, looking down at her. “Once you enter a place, the only way out is through. And…I have.” My eyes found the hall again. “That’s why I can’t go to them, because I already have. They don’t listen to me anymore, so you need to just drop it.”

Viv looked over at that. “What? What does that mean?”

“Doesn’t matter.” I pulled her into the next room, grateful it had come up. I didn’t want to talk about what the police were doing. God, fuck them.

In this room, there were four people in cages. One of them was rattling the bars, one was dead, one was rocking back and forth and the last was just standing there, staring.

Each of them were in a different state of decay, begging to be put out of their misery, begging for someone to end it.

Skin sloughing off, falling to the cage floor, blood-soaked cages, rags barely hanging on to their decrepit bodies. The smell in this one was just as horrific. How did they do that? Make it smell as if someone had actually died? And how are none of the actors not gagging?

One of the cage doors opened.

We froze.

The male stumbled out, moaning, begging for us to help.

Viv started screaming so loudly, I had to cover my ears. She took off down the hall a second later.

I watched after her, my irritation growing. “Fuck.” I turned back to the actor who had stopped and was now watching me. “Thanks for that,” I bit before heading after her.

She was on edge, I understood that. I was on edge. I was wound so tight that I felt like I was about to explode but running usually only made things worse. You hit mirrors, you tripped and fell, you ran into actors, props, whatever. It was a dumb thing to do.

However much restraint it took, walking was the best option unless the person following you was running too, then you had to run and be smart.

Outthink them.

I didn’t have any sort of delusions that I would survive a horror movie, but I knew what to do. It wasn’t just about that though, it was about being able to keep a rational head while being hunted like prey. That’s where things went wrong.

Maybe that’s why I got such a thrill watching horror movies. What I could remember of my life had always been so sheltered. So…boring. I know it was crass of me to complain about having everything and being well-off, but fuck. I wanted adventure, excitement. A thrill. The kind of high that I got being terrified, I needed that.

I had even looked at a motorcycle two days ago. I had no idea how to ride it, but the idea of it? Fuck, it made me shiver.

The longer I walked, the more my exhaustion and nerves convinced me that maybe I was in a horror movie. Moaning and shuffling, the smell, the lights. Each room kept getting worse.

A graveyard covered in dead bodies, a hospital with screaming patients, a burned down orphanage with actual kids covered in burns that looked so real, I fought the urge to scream for help as they cried out for parents that would never come.

My heart hadn’t slowed since leaving that last haunted house, and my nerves were shot. I was jumping at every sound, and after an hour of going through this tent, my emotions were drained. All but anger.

I had never been this exhausted.

Fuck Viv for just leaving like that. Did she even get out?

Fuck Max for being such an asshole. Why was he even here? Because I left my phone in the car and wasn’t answering his messages? How did he guess I’d be here tonight of all nights?

My anger grew with each and every little sound that made me jump.

I was shocked Max hadn’t caught up with me at this point, it wasn’t like I was running, and I knew he was. Not only was he a pussy, but he was probably irritated that he hadn’t found me yet.

I glanced down at the bat, the nails sparkling at the end. The fact that they allowed me to keep it was still shocking, but I was glad now. The next person who touched me was getting this to their face. Fuck the lawsuit. I hoped Max fucking grabbed me. I hoped he wasn’t quick enough to dodge my swing.

I balanced it on my shoulder, flexing my left hand, the stickiness getting to me. My inner thighs would be raw tomorrow. With the fishnets and the sticky blood, I was surprised I hadn’t started feeling the pain of them rubbing together by now.

Maybe the irritation and exhaustion were hiding that too.

Fuck! Where was the exit?

I walked into yet another room and slowed when I found it completely empty.

It was an abandoned torture chamber. Blood splattered on the walls, all over the ground, chains hanging from the ceiling, shackles on the walls, bones in one corner.

Some of the chains were still moving, telling me that they must have just left, but I strained my hearing and found nothing.

No moaning or groaning. Not even heavy breathing.

My heart picked up and I looked back the way I had come. Was the park closing? If Viv wasn’t waiting for me at the end of this, I was going to kill her.

But if the park was closing, then maybe Viv and I had been the last ones they had allowed through, which meant Max might not be behind me.

Maybe he gave up and went home.

My shoulders fell an inch at the thought, and I walked over to one of the moving chains. They had to have just left if this was still moving.

I touched it softly, running my fingers over the cool metal, a shiver running down my spine. What would it be like to be chained to the wall, unable to get away? Left to the captors will.

I chewed on my lip and took a step back, my thighs clenching together, a slight pain shooting up them. There it was, the soreness I had been expecting.

I was frustrated, annoyed, exhausted, and in pain. It was time to get home.