Page 172 of Stay Scared

The mirror maze gives me Ash’s mask back in pieces.

A face waits at the end of every reflected corridor while another moves beside me where no passage exists. The old mask has no glowing lines, leaving the eye openings dark enough that each version looks hollow. Above the entrance, Rook’s camera turns. Its red indicator stays fixed on me. The public broadcast is still live.

I keep walking. Ash’s old leather drags against my cheek with every turn of my head. Heat gathers behind the sealed mouth, and my breathing comes back louder than it should.

A speaker clicks somewhere above the mirrored ceiling.

“You kept his face.”

Rook’s natural voice reaches me from the left, then again from somewhere behind me.

I keep moving. “You broke the other one.”

“He looked better without it.”

The camera follows.

I turn the first corner. A mirror ahead changes. Cade appears in the memory house with one hand around my wrist, the stolen photograph crushed between our bodies. The footage cuts before my fingers hit his chest, then it starts again.

Rook waits for me to defend him.

I don’t.

“He did that,” I say.

The speaker crackles. “That is your answer?”

“What were you hoping for?”

Another screen wakes beside the first. Owen’s archive covers the glass. Photographs taken from across Halden Coffee mix with images from inside my apartment until the source becomes impossible to separate.

Rook’s voice moves overhead. “You saw all of that and still let him touch you.”

I keep moving. “That bothered you.”

The next mirror fills with Ash in the red room. His black mask glows while the recording tells me Crimson Night recognizes no safe words. The private stop never appears. Neither does Ash taking off the mask. Rook lets the clip hang there.

Three men made ugly enough to fit one story.

I reach up and pull Ash’s old mask from my face. Cool air hits my skin. The maze throws me back at myself from every direction: bruised shoulder, sweat-damp hair, Ash’s black mask hanging from my hand.

The camera above me tilts.

Rook says, “You keep choosing men who hurt you.”

I look toward the lens. “That seems to bother you too.”

He gives me nothing.

I walk on.

A narrow display embedded beside the next mirror carries the public comments. They move too fast to read completely, but fragments surface.

WHY IS SHE STILL THERE

THE EX GRABBED HER

THE CAMERA GUY IS INSANE