Rising on sore legs, I cross the room to my laptop I had left on the coffee table earlier. It’s still charging, the screen black from being asleep.
In seconds, I’m able to find the PDF documents I saved for this job. The contract loads on my screen, professionally stamped with Mr. Taylor’s company logo.
I double-click and begin scrolling, my eyes narrowing.
The first three pages are typical, full of standard details like dates, responsibilities, and clauses about property care and available amenities.
I keep scrolling, skimming over the paragraphs and bullet points I’ve previously read. Then I reach page seventeen andcome to a stop when I notice a section titled Immersive Entertainment Terms.
My stomach twists into tiny, tight knots. I squint at the printed words, brows pushing together as it dawns on me I hadn’t read this part of the contract before.
Like the section on inclement weather, I’d skipped over it. But now that my eyes pass over the thick wall of text, I realize how terribly wrong I was…
Employee agrees to engage in immersive seasonal experience as designed by client or client proxy, including but not limited to: sensory exploration, primal pursuit, and psychological torment.
“What in the hell…?” I mutter, scrolling further. “Sensory exploration? Primal pursuit? Psychologicalwhat?”
Employee acknowledges that all activities fall within the scope of a controlled simulation and consents to nonverbal role play at client discretion.
As I keep scrolling, the stipulations get wilder and wilder. Things like:
Employee waives right to claim distress or breach in the event of emotional manipulation, sensory disorientation, or controlled contact designed to enhance experiential realism.
And:
Employee consents to engage in primal sexual games that may include but are not limited to chasing, biting, marking, scratching, choking, penetration vaginally, anally, and orally, and other aspects of primal play.
I stop breathing, eyes widening at the words. I never consented to that!
When I signed the contract Mr. Taylor sent me, I wasn’t signing onto engage in any kind of sex games much less primal play or whatever it’s called.
Finally, I hit the bottom page of the contract, where inches above my signature are the following words in all caps:
BY SIGNING THIS AGREEMENT, YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT YOU ARE AWILLINGPLAYER.
“But I didn’t know!” I cry out to no one. My jaw hangs open as an anguished cry tears from my throat. I’m so horrified, I’m on the brink of tears or laughter.
It’s that unexpected. Thatcrazy.
So Mr. Taylor—and possibly the others—have believed from the start that I consented to this game. That, or they counted on me not reading the contract thoroughly enough.
…does it even matter at this point?
For the next hour and a half, I’m so shocked, I’m sick to my stomach. Words and phrases from the contract keep turning over in my head, terms like “primal sexual games” and “sensory disorientation.”
Psychological torment.
At least I know I wasn’t crazy after all. This entire experience was designed to make me feel as though I were.
Every flicker of the lights. Every creak in the floorboards when I swore no one else was here. The way the sheriff gaslit me when I called for help and the driver didn’t bother answering my call. The cars that are dead and the trail I took through the woods that somehow led me back in circles. The man dressed like a rippling, muscular Santa Claus with the disturbing mask and giant antlers.
He hunted me because I had offered myself up as prey.
With another full twenty-four hours to go, he probably isn’t finished with me yet.
I slam shut the laptop, working through the game-changing discovery I’ve made.
They knew exactly what they were doing when they chose me. They assumed I was easy prey that would be their helpless little toy to play with.
