Seventeen #2
The dark corridor was going on for what felt like forever.
The sound of the impatient people chattering while waiting in line had ceased and the faint light from outside was completely gone.
The only thing to be heard was the sound of our footsteps.
If we squinted our eyes hard enough we could see the outline of the person next to us. That was how dark it was.
We finally entered the first room. It was a nursery that seemed to have been left untouched for many years.
It was dark, the only source of light was a tiny lamp on the nightstand.
The crib was broken and rusted, the paint on the walls were chipped, and there was an eerie nursery rhyme playing faintly in the background.
There was no baby in the crib, I checked.
It was just a baby's room. Who could be afraid of that?
Apparently the people I was with could. They were walking extremely slow because they were afraid of something jumping out at them.
Everyone was hyper-aware of their surroundings.
Even Justin, which was funny because just a couple of minutes ago he was hellbent on trying to prove that he wouldn't be more scared than I would be.
"C'mon guys, let's get to the next room," I said impatiently. There was no point in lingering in an empty room.
I walked to the doorway, everyone else still lacking behind me.
I walked through it without a second thought and it led to another small, dark hallway.
I took the lead and made my way down it, but I stumbled backward when a figure appeared from the shadows.
After the initial shock wore off, I realized that it was simply a child.
The child ran up as close to me as she possibly could without touching me before she ran back into the darkness.
I wouldn’t lie and say that I didn't jump a little from the sudden appearance of the tiny child with blood smeared all over her face, but it wasn’t bad at all.
That was how the rest of the haunted house went. We walked through an ancient tomb, a pirate ship, a forest, and many more places that were supposed to be eerie and I still wasn't scared. But even though I wasn’t scared, I was having fun.
Halfway through we unintentionally grouped into pairs.
Ricky and Kailey, Bella and Paxton, and Javier and me.
I hadn't noticed it at first, but when I felt someone's arm brush against mine I started to pay more attention. It was Javi’s arm that kept touching mine and that was because of how close together we were as we walked. He noticed this as well and tried to keep his distance, but he wasn’t doing a great job at it.
In one of the rooms there was a statue. It was a short green statue, but it looked old and dirty.
It reminded me of a goblin. Javier inspected it with fascination.
Quickly, he found out that the statue was not actually a statue when it jumped toward him.
My body jolted when I heard him scream. I had never seen him scared before.
He was so scared that his arms suddenly wrapped around me. Granted, I was the closest person to him and he needed someone to grab onto, but still. He hugged me .
I froze when his arms squeezed me tightly, I was too stunned to do anything else.
After he realized what he was doing, he let go of me and took a step back.
He looked at me with anticipation, probably because he was expecting me to lash out at him.
I didn't though, I was too busy trying to stop the heat rising on my cheeks.
After thirty minutes of cheap scare tactics, we finally reached the end of the haunted mansion. Once we got through the exit I continued to walk forward, but everyone else had a different idea. They stopped to chat at the exit door. I sighed as I turned around to face them.
"That was so cool!" Paxton roared. "When the dead girl was hanging from the ceiling, I was fucking horrified!"
"I think the best part was when the guy fell through the floor!" Bella said, reminiscing on the scene happily.
I listened to the conversation without adding anything of my own. I was just happy that we didn't see any clowns. Clowns were such an overused character in everything Halloween related. Besides, they gave me the creeps.
My attention was brought back to the group when the conversation had suddenly ended. They were all looking at me oddly and it concerned me.
"What?" I asked hastily. That was when I realized that they weren't just staring at me, they were also looking at something behind me.
Me being the idiot that I was, I turned around in an instant.
I should have kept my back toward it because then I wouldn’t have had to deal with it.
Standing before me was a freakishly tall clown holding a running chainsaw.
In other words, a giant fucking clown was two feet away, hovering over me holding a real chainsaw that could cut me into tiny pieces.
All rational thoughts went out the window.
Fight or flight? I chose flight. My feet started moving before my brain could process the action.
I ran away from the murderous clown all the way to the front of the haunted house back to where the two-hour long line was.
It chased me the entire way and I knew this not because I was looking, but because I could hear the sound of the chainsaw keeping up with me.
I heard somebody's voice calling for me, but the only thing on my mind was how I was about to turn into shredded cheese if I stopped running.
I was running in circles and it was still following me. My feet didn’t stop until I ran into something— no, someone. It was a someone because a something wouldn't have wrapped its arms around me as it stumbled back from the impact of me crashing into it full force.
I held onto the someone for a few more seconds, feeling surprisingly comforted and warm in their embrace.
I felt safe, a feeling I didn't have the pleasure of experiencing often.
Their clothes smelled nice too, it was a scent that I had been smelling more and more often.
It was a clean smell, vanilla, natural—hold on.
I pushed myself off of him and refused to make any sort of eye contact with anyone. "Is the clown still behind me?"
"Not anymore," Javier’s deep voice rang in my ears as my embarrassment rose.
I nodded as a wave of relief washed over me.
Stupidly, I glanced at the people around me and much to my demise, everyone was watching with amusement.
By everyone I meant the guests in line and the staff members.
I knew this wasn't the first time an actor had chased a guest in an attempt to scare them because we had seen it multiple times while we waited in line.
However, I had never seen the clown before, and I wasn't aware that they were allowed to have real chainsaws.
That was the only reason that I was as scared as I was.
Other people were laughing so I forced myself to laugh too. It was better to laugh with them so that I wouldn't feel like they were laughing at me. I don’t think that my laugh was convincing, though. It sounded forced because it was.
"Who's the one that was running scared?" Justin asked arrogantly.
Great, now I had to hear Justin run his mouth. It was bad enough constantly losing to Javi, but now I was losing to Justin too? The universe had a grudge against me.
I had no response to Justin, so I instead started walking toward the parking lot not bothering to make sure my friends followed.
They did, but they were trailing behind because of how quickly I was walking.
I wanted to get as far away from the haunted mansion as fast as I possibly could. Ricky jogged to catch up with me.
"Dude." Ricky slung his arm around my shoulder. "Are you gonna explain that?"
"Explain what?" I grumbled.
He gave me a knowing look, but when I still had the 'what are you even talking about' look on my face, he explained. "You invited Javier to be with us, and you and him were never more than an inch apart all night.”
"You're crazy."
"You know he has a girlfriend, right?" my best friend asked cautiously.
“Quit being so loud,” I scolded in a whisper. “Of course I know that. I’m not trying to do anything bad here.”
Ricky nodded. “I know, I know. It’s just…you’ve been acting differently with him.”
“Nope,” I said, popping the ‘p.’ “I have not been.”
Ricky let out a sigh as he put his arm by his side again. He looked over his shoulder with a slight smirk. “Okay, we’ll talk about it later then.”
“Nope,” I repeated.
“Whatever, man. We’ll see what happens at Poppy's party tomorrow night. Let’s hope you don’t do something stupid because I’m not looking forward to cleaning up the mess.”
When had I ever done anything stupid at a party?