4. Tess
TESS
The clowns didn’t answer my question. But the blood dripping off of their weapons told me everything I needed to know.
They’re fucking psychopaths.
Shock might have frozen me in place, but the subtle scuff of a boot against cobblestone sent a jolt of fear down my spine. They were trying to surround me.
Fuck that shit.
I’d survived too much to go down without a fight. Sucking in air, I forced my gaze past the killer clowns. Everything was dark. But the dark could be my friend. The winding aisles, the busted up stalls — I just needed to hide long enough to find the exit.
Before they could close in on me, I scrambled to my feet.
“Easy—” the one with the playing card mask purred. But I didn’t give her a chance to finish. Taking advantage of her ease, I charged the narrow gap between her and the alley wall, digging an elbow into her ribcage.
“Fuck!” She wheezed.
A handaxe clattered to the ground. The freak in the Pollock mask ditched her weapon, grabbing desperately for my arm, but I was gone, footsteps echoing off the alley walls as I sprinted away into the night.
I willed my legs to move as fast as possible. I didn’t dare look back. But I didn’t need to — these freaks were fast. Metal scraping stone, the heft of a hoisted mallet, and heavy bootprints were quick behind me, closing the distance quickly.
These psychos hadn’t come to play — they were here to hunt.
And somehow, I’d become prey.
As I ran down the path that brought me here, I nearly tripped over the mangled, bloody bodies of the men who’d chased me here. “Fuck.”
The would-be rapists were little more than bloody discard. Pools of blood and guts stained the stone path, a reminder of the spectacular violence my newest stalkers were looking to dispatch.
Keep running. Keep fucking running.
But as my feet pounded against stone, carrying me farther and farther from the nightmare, a voice rasped out. “T…Te…”
Over my shoulder, Wife Beater lay prone on the floor, fingers twitching in my direction.
Before I could even consider if he deserved salvation, a rough hand was in his hair. The stitch-masked clown opened his neck up toward the sky, releasing his final, gurgling breath with the edge of her machete. Her eyes never left me, even as his head slammed uselessly to the ground.
It was all the reminder I needed of the stakes here.
I need cover.
Banking a hard left, I ducked between two prop cars, hoping my new tagalongs weren’t as agile as they were strong.
But the freaks chasing me were nothing like the fools who’d chased me in here. They were efficient, brutal, and smart. And clearly, they knew this park like the back of their hands.
While I zipped around lampposts and cartoonish film reel statues, they followed me like shadows. The one with the machete hopped the prop cars like they were nothing, occasionally sinking her blade through the metal for purchase.
I ducked into a splintered old food stand. If I could just slip from view for a second, I might be able to find a way out of here. But every hiding spot I found was quickly demolished by the spades-masked hunter’s mallet.
Meanwhile, the splatter-masked one leapt atop the roof of a rickety game booth, leaping from structure to shaky structure with the agility of a wildcat.
Keeping an aerial view of me as she ran along the rooftops, she whistled down to the others: some sort of signal that told them exactly where they could find me next.
I knew the gate wasn’t far. But if I didn’t get there in the next few seconds, I wasn’t making it at all.
Giving up on hiding, I made a full out sprint down the path, pumping my arms and sucking in red hot air, praying for the first time in years that I would make it out of here alive.
But no god answered my prayers.
A calloused hand knotted in my hair, ripping me back against a muscular chest. “Calm the fuck down.”
“Fuck you,” I seethed, swinging my elbows back wildly, hoping for another break.
The press of a bloody machete against my throat was her only answer. Her friends stepped in front of me, their broad shouldered bodies blocking off my view of the exit.
“Just fucking do it, then,” I spat, still wriggling against her grip.
“Do what?” the ax-wielding maniac tilted her head.
“Fucking kill me. Get it over with.”
“We don’t want to kill you,” she shook her head, and the mirth in her voice sent a shiver down my spine.
“Let me fucking go!” I bellowed, letting my body weight drop as I kicked back wildly against Stitches’ shins.
“Cut it out,” she growled, hoisting me up by my scalp.
I hadn’t realized until this moment that there were outcomes worse than death here.
I won’t do it. I’ll make them kill me.
Hot tears streamed down my face as I thrashed in her grip. “No, end it, end it now. I don’t want to—”
“Ma’am, you need to calm down.” The playing card clown raised her hands placatingly, mallet abandoned.
But I couldn’t hear here through the pounding in my ears. “Kill me, just fucking kill me!”
I thrashed, pressing my neck harder against the machete’s blade, forcing the clown to lower the weapon.
“Stick her.” Stitches barked.
The splatter-mask obliged, pulling a syringe from a zippered pouch around her chest, pulling a dose of poison from an amber bottle.
“You need to cool off,” Spades tried again, but as the death I’d begged for approached, my survival instincts took over.
“FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK—!”
My thrashing was useless against the powerful grip of my masked captors. Stitches and Spades held me in place, presenting my arm to Splatter as she slipped the needle easily beneath my skin.
Ice burned through my veins as the liquid disappeared into my body, eating away at all my fight. The world began to spin. My limbs went heavy as Stitches hoisted me over her shoulder, letting my head thud against her back with each step.
And as they dragged me away to their hidden lair, darkness closed in, bringing with it the first peace I’d ever known.