Two men dressed in black, packing guns under their jackets. Without a word, he steered me towards the haunted house.
Ryker
I swung us into the mouth of the attraction—a cartoon vampire, fangs and all painted over the door frame. Inside, teenagers lurked by the plywood ticket booth, sucking on glowsticks like candy.
“It’s a shortcut,” I told her, loud enough that the men in black would hear if they followed. That was the lie. The truth was, I didn’t want them trailing us, and the haunted house was the perfect spot to hide bodies if things went bad. I bought two tickets from a stone-faced girl in a cape and hatched my plan as we marched into the fluorescent red terror.
Inside, a fog machine huffed out a chemical mist that caught in your throat. Bed sheet ghosts hung from the ceiling, and a speaker played the sound of witches cackling on a loop. It should’ve been a joke, but I remembered somewhere outside that two men wanted us dead. Every shadow was now a possible hiding spot, every screech a warning.
She walked close behind, her breathing shallow, her ponytail fishtailing with every lurch and shriek. The labyrinth was a plywood rat maze, with tight turns and dead ends, the floor spongy under our feet. In a room with strobed lighting, I turned, pressed her into a corner, and whispered, “Stay right here. If I’m not back in two minutes, take the exit down this hall. Got it?” I didn’t wait for her nod. I pressed my lips to hers in a brutal kiss and left her trembling in the flickering strobe light, her lips parted, her eyes wide. She was terrified. I wanted to stay with her, but I couldn’t.
I wound my way back through the maze and found a devil mask propped on a dummy. Paint was peeling from its face, and its horns were lopsided. I put it on. It was gross and smelled like sweat and sugar, but it would do.
Using the fog as cover, I caught the two men just as they entered, heads together, guns still tucked but hands ready. “They went in here,” one said, his voice thick with a French accent. I counted steps, waited, and then peeled off to the left. I couldsmell their cologne, sharp and cheap, meant to mask their body odor, but all it did was make me want to gag.
I let them pass, then crept up behind. In this hellish half-dark, I would have the element of surprise. I gripped the pipe I’d yanked from a Frankenstein setup and closed the distance.
The first guy didn’t even see me. The second managed to turn when he heard the sickening crack of his friend’s skull. His partner's blood mingled with a look of shock on his face as he went down hard after I took his knees out, and then I stabbed him in the sternum with the pipe. His chest rattled with the sound of a death gurgle, and then he too lay silent. I pulled both bodies behind a curtain and hurried back through the maze, my heart beating like a fucking drum.
I found her gone. The white corridor was empty except for a rubber zombie swinging on a wire. My stomach dropped, never expecting her to leave.
I ran. I crashed through the final set and out into the parking lot just in time to see her dart behind a dumpster. She looked like she was having a panic attack, hugging herself like she wanted to disappear into her skin.
I nearly called her name. But the adrenaline, the darkness, it made me pause. I felt… something else. The raw edge of the night, the raw edge of her fear—how alive she was, how close she’d come.
I stalked her, slow, making sure my footsteps were audible, making sure she would hear me coming. She pressed her back to the dumpster, and when I turned the corner, she yelped, ready to fight or run.
I trapped her with my arms and pressed my mouth to hers through the mask, hungry. I heard her gasp and felt her rapid, frantic heartbeat against my chest. She recognized me—I could tell from how her hands found my shirt and clung there, desperate, angry, scared. She kissed me back, harder than I’d ever known her to, biting the edge of the mask, dragging it up so our mouths met skin to skin.
She hit me once, open-palmed, then pulled me closer. Kissing me, biting me, tearing at my clothes, at her own, until she was up against the cold metal and I was inside her. There was nothing gentle, nothing sweet, just the raw, wild relief that we were still alive. We made a mess of each other, breathing ragged, the mask falling off my face, her laughter and tears running together.
After, we held each other on the asphalt while the world spun in cheap, colored lights all around us. She buried her face in my chest and trembled. I pressed my lips to her hair and said nothing, because I knew what mattered now was not what we said, but that we’d outrun the darkness, one more time.
∞∞∞
The second we stepped over the threshold of the motel room, I grabbed a duffle bag and started stuffing our belongings into it.
“What the hell is going on?” Royal asked from where he lay on the bed, a sleeping Mabel by his side. “You look like you just murdered someone, man.”
I spat out a bitter laugh and zipped the bag. “That’s because I did. They found us, two of them. They are lying dead out in thehaunted house,” I said, tossing some canned goods into a plastic shopping bag. “We’ve got to roll before they’re found.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. How?” Royal asked, scooting off the bed.
“I have no fucking idea,” I said, my hands trembling, but I only let them shake when Royal wasn’t looking. “We’re leaving. Now.” I glanced over to where she was cuddling her cat, talking in hushed tones to her with tears streaming down her face.
Royal’s eyes cut to her, then back to me. “She okay?”
“She’ll be fine.” I didn’t say more. Nothing was stable under our feet anymore, and we all felt it. I looked at my brother and said, “A word outside.”
I closed the door behind us. “I need you to do something. Mabel can’t come with us. I need you to take her to Lily’s friend's house in Vancouver. Her name is Sarah. Can you do that for me?”
He nodded. “Of course. Does she know that I’m coming?”
“Yeah. Lily called her from the fairgrounds on a pay phone. Did you get the camping gear like I asked?”
Royal looked at me like I’d grown a second head. “Yeah. Whole aisle, even lanterns.” He shrugged. “In the back of the car, I boosted. A little Prius.”
Of all the cars he grabbed, he had to take a Prius. “Hybrid, I hope?”
