“Tortellini.”
He laughed. “OK, now you’re just making me hungry.”
Wren gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Good luck. I’ll see you on the other side…hopefully.” She threw in a spooky ghost noise for good measure,OoooOOooo.
“I think I’ll be OK.” He smirked.
He walked through a cloud of smoke hanging in the entryway and found himself in a dimly lit hallway, all black lights and bloody streaks on the walls. He now, finally, allowed his bravado to fall away. And he promptly, and quietly, freaked the absolute fuck out.
“Fuckfuckfuck,” he whispered to no one. He was scared shitless. No, what was worse than that? He was petrified. Could barely move. His legs were frozen in place. This was an actual, literal nightmare. He was a man who feared rejection, failure, and the slightest intuition that someone might be mad at him. Being hunted by a machete-wielding psychopath was more than his heart could possibly handle.
The worst part was, there was something he hadn’t told Wren: He had stacked the deck in his favor in order to end up here. He had chosen this. He had cheated.
The thing with Wren was that she wasn’t a reasonable person. So when he went through her jar in secret after she’dfallen asleep the other night, he knew he would have no way out if he picked Get My Nose Pierced, Run a Red Light in Broad Daylight, Hold a Live Tarantula, or any of the extremely dangerous and expensive ones: Swim with Sharks, Go Cave Diving, Get My Pilot’s License.
There was a way to push himself out of his comfort zone and grow as a person and nurture his sense of adventure and spontaneity without dying, altering his appearance, or giving himself PTSD for life. (The tarantula, in particular, was a hard no.)
So he took a few—just a piddly few—slips out of the jar. He hid them deep inside his GRE study book, a brand-new addition to the house, which he had recently and quite conveniently placed on his nightstand.
Going through a haunted houseat the timedidn’t sound so bad, in comparison to some of the others, so he decided that one could stay. He realized only now what a colossal mistake that had been. He hadn’t expected it to be quite so haunted.
He tried hyperventilating, drawing quick, shallow breaths and rapidly blowing them out. It didn’t help. Then he tried slowing his breathing down, taking in a big, slow lungful of air, holding it, then gently releasing it. OK, better. His legs released, though they were still stiff and wobbly. He took just one step forward. OK. Progress.
That’s when a grimy hand shot through rusty bars in the wall—a doorway, as if to a prison cell—with frightening suddenness. Arthur dodged the hand, then peered into the cell and found a cackling, half-strait-jacketed patient grinning at him.
“Hey, pal,” Arthur offered. “If you could tell me the fastest way out of here, that’d be super awesome.”
He was not going to use the safe word. He’d die of a heartattack in here before doing that, and there was a good chance he might just do that. He’d never live it down with Wren if he ran out of here like a chicken. He was supposed to be New Arthur. Not afraid of anything at all. Living in the moment. New Arthur should be having a grand old time hanging out in a blood-soaked hallway with scratchy, old-timey music playing over crackly speakers.
The actor in the cell beckoned Arthur to come closer with a curled finger.
“I’m good. I can actually hear you perfectly from here. Any tips or secret shortcuts you can share?”
Maybe there was some way to appeal to the actor’s humanity to get him to break character. Any advice on how to avoid the jump scares and take the fastest possible route to the exit would be greatly appreciated.
Anothercome hitherfrom the mental patient. Arthur took a hesitant step toward the bars, and that’s when the actor lunged at them, grabbing them with both hands and cackling in Arthur’s face. He took a quick step backward and nearly fell over.
“My fault. That’s my fault,” Arthur said after regaining his breath and soul, both of which had briefly exited his body. “Should have definitely seen that coming.”
He continued down the hallway. There were more cells like the first one, hands jabbing out at him, shrieking laughter emanating as he slinked along. For now, he ignored them as best he could. At the end of the hall was a cell slightly different from the others. Darker. The lights barely reaching. And it was fully barred, like a jail, with a figure standing inside.
Arthur was shaking. Scared out of his goddamn mind. Intuitively, he knew he was in no real danger. The actors were all teens and aspiring thespians from the nearest small town,not demented serial killers. But his body was fully immersed in the experience, screaming at him to run. He tried to steady his hands and voice as he approached. What was he even doing here? How did he get from wanting to take more chances in his life to signing his physical rights away to some carnival freaks? He just wanted this to be over, for Christ’s sake.
“Hello,” a little girl’s voice echoed out from the cage.
“Goddamn it,” Arthur said.
The figure, the girl, stepped into the light. She was dressed in a sepia-tone dress, with makeup to match, looking like she had just been plucked from Pilgrim times. The woman wore her hair in pigtails and skipped closer to the bars.
“Will you please play with me?”
“Hi, whoever you really are, I want to talk to the human being. Is that OK? Can we have a conversation?”
The woman, playing the role of psychotic little girl, stared at him blankly. Then she began to cry.
“Why won’t you play with me?”
“No, shh.” Arthur tried soothing her. “Don’t cry. Listen, I just…I have to get out of here. Do I just keep going this way?” He pointed down the hallway, which curved to the right. “Is there a drooling clown or something waiting to jump out at me over there? Just tell me.”
