5. Chapter 5
The strobe lights are back, and beyond the mirrored room is only more disorienting. A scream ricochets in my ear and I spin on my heel to try and locate it. The hallways no longer make sense, and everything I encounter seems a little too real.
I pick up my pace, crossing into another room and stalling out when I find a group of bodies tangled on a large bed that takes the center of strobing lights. Is everyone just screwing each other here?
I hurry past, not looking for a second entanglement after the mental mind fuck the last one was.
The next room a staffer pivots me toward has me sliding to a halt, blinking in horror at the scene unfolding before me.
A pained bellow pierces the air before it chokes off into a sob from the man strapped on an old operating table, his head tipped back to me as someone saws into his wrist. Seeking comfort I am too shellshocked to give.
“Won’t be touching kiddies no more will you?” The woman doing the sawing cackles and I flinch at the spray of blood that erupts across the tiled floor.
This place is insane.
That can’t be real… can it?
The woman looks up as if she is just realizing that she has an audience, her face twisting in distaste. She’s dressed in a nurses uniform complete with the strange little hat atop her head you’d see on Halloween. This outfit certainly looks like one you’d find on a shelf at Spirit Halloween.
“This room ain’t for you,” she snaps and I couldn’t agree more.
I stumble, pushing forward into the next hall and falling into a group of girls that scream and look to me with eyes rounded in horror. One of them holds a bloodied bandage over her eye that is leaking with realism.
“Is—is that real?” I croak.
She sobs and her friends begin to shove themselves down the hall. Panic spikes and I spin to the sound of a chainsaw starting up behind me.
“No fucking way,” I hiss and stumble back when I find a man rounding the corner toward me and the gaggle of girls falling apart at my back.
“Absolutely-fucking-not,” I hiss and dart to where random shit is piled in a corner, shoved aside by whoever had cleaned this cesspool for whatever this event really is.
I pick up the pipe and heft it in my hand as the girls at my back beat at the iron door that leads to wherever else this labyrinth of hell is supposed to take us.
He hefts his chainsaw higher and the sound screeches right alongside the girls at my back.
“You want some?” I snarl, lifting my pipe higher.
Like hell am I going out hacked to pieces.
He chuckles behind his mask and the click of a lock disengages behind me, the sudden lack of bodies at my back has me moving.
I don’t dare turn my back to the man matching each of his steps to my own.
I stumble through the newly opened door behind me, flipping the chainsaw-wielder off before slamming the door between us.
Breathing a sigh of relief, I turn to face what comes next and find this hall absolutely empty.
“What the…?”
Where had the girls gone?
I blink, the light doesn’t strobe but paints everything a deep red. The white walls. The white tiles beneath my feet. The doors that are closed along it and painted with numbers.
I need to find Imogen and get the hell out of this place.
I don’t dare relinquish the pipe in my hand as I move down the near silent corridor. My breath held as I pause outside one door and lean toward it, frowning when I hear the unfiltered sounds of pleasure coming from inside. A very clear picture of indulgence beginning to paint Pitch.
I could start kicking in doors, but part of me knows Imogen would have kept moving forward.
Would have followed the rules just in case she was searching for me as well.
My heart is in my throat as I carefully pass each door, pipe raised in defense as I take a bend and freeze when I find another staff member in that nondescript black mask.
“I swear to fuck if you send me into a murder den, I will break every rule and come back to personally paint you all over these walls.” I hiss, officially up to my ears with how done I am with this place.
The staffer steps aside and pushes open the door at their back, gesturing me through.
I don’t move.
“I’m not kidding. I can figure out a way to take out these fancy doors you’ve got, and dude with a chainsaw back there is the least of your worries.” I tack on for added measure.
They gesture again and I huff as I slide past them, keeping my pipe leveled at what I’m assuming is a male by the size of his frame.
I step into this hall, and every muscle locks up when I find more of those grotesque dolls—which I’m thinking aren’t really dolls after all, because they all wear masks—staked to the wall.
I spin around, the door slamming behind me before I can make it back to the staffer to make good on my promise.
“Something wrong?” a voice purrs and I pivot back to the man who now stands at the end of the hall. He’s not as tall as the mystery mirror man had been, but he’s got a mask on just the same. This one shaped like a wolf over his face and giving nothing away.
“Listen, I’ve had a really weird night.” I growl and shift my stance at the ready.
“I fucked some dude in a plague mask, saw a woman hacking off a man’s arm, threatened to beat up not only a guy with a chainsaw, but the staff behind me.
And I swear to all that is holy that if you think I’m going up on this wall, you are going to find that I’m not the one who’s going to become butterfly wall art. ” I snap.
His head cocks and he pauses his advance. “You survived Plague?”
I don’t know if it’s a trick question or what he’s getting at, but I’m guessing plague mask equals Plague. Real original.
“Yeah, well he was the least of the scary I’ve witnessed tonight.”
He laughs—actually laughs.
Then to my horror he steps aside, waving for me to pass. I pivot forward, passing his creepy as shit menagerie of bodies and pray none of them reach out as I brush closer to them than the wolf.
“Just like that?” I ask warily as I approach him.
“Just like that,” he chuckles. “If I kill you now, I’ll have a very pissed off doctor on my hands. We don’t play with each other’s toys.”
He points to my wrist and I’m not stupid enough to take my eyes off of him as I ease around him. I’d dealt with enough of my mother’s coked out boyfriends to know that placing your back on a predator is never a smart move, neither is taking your eyes off one.
“Thank you for coming to Pitch, it was a pleasure having you.” He sneers and the door at my back clicks open. I stumble out of it and stiffen when I hear the absolute chaos at my back. Spinning, I raise my pipe as if expecting more horror and freeze when I find it’s just a party.
I’m outside, the strobe lights now blinding the sprawling back lawn behind the asylum where people are partying. I stumble back and look to the other doors people are filing out of that seem to be guarded by more staff members.
It’s a strange mixture of reactions that funnel out into the final party area. Some are riding a high I don’t quite understand and are dancing to the music that booms through the open night air, others are scattered about like me.
I blink in confusion when I see one guy stumble past holding a bloodied bandage to his forehead, and another wails where she covers—is she missing her whole fucking arm?
I push through the throng of wounded or blissed out people. Worry building in my chest as I search for Imogen. Someone races past me screaming, my eyes widening in terror at the scorched marks down his face. I don’t have time to ogle the horror though, so I keep moving.
When I don’t find Imogen in the bodies around me I shove back for another exit door. Because there is only one person I’d march back into hell for, and if she’s still in there, I’ll gladly go back in and drag her ass out. I make to shove past the masked staff there and am abruptly shoved back.
“My friend is in there,” I snarl and jut my finger toward the door at their back. “You will let me pass or I’m kicking everyone—”
One of the staff catches my wrist holding the pipe and I scoff when they wrench it over, exposing the charm at my wrist.
“You survived Plague and you want to go back in?” They hiss back. Survived him? He fucked me. He didn’t pin me to a wall like the wolf-guy. I’d say I got off light. Why is everyone so surprised I’m not dead right now?
“You know the rules, only forward.”
Fuck this guy.
I send my free fist directly into his windpipe and am rewarded with one right back to my ribs. Only the one I get packs a lot more muscle behind it. I curse as I’m knocked sideways and another grabs me, a fist wrenching my hair back as I’m forced down to my knees in a shocking twist.
“You can wait for your friend or you leave. You read the rules.” This one hisses and I reach up, my nails biting into flesh where I can at his wrist.
“Oh, I’ll take those rules and break them right off in your too tight—”
“Sadie!”
I wrench sideways to the call of my name, Imogen shoving through the crowd to get to me. Relief punches through me as I’m released, scrambling forward to get to my friend. We collide like a pair of meteorites and I’m immediately checking her over as chaos reigns around us.
“Oh my God,” I gasp and pat her down for injury.
“I’m fine,” she gushes and yanks me back to her. We cling tight before our eyes turn to those around us. None of it has any rhyme or reason. There is pain, joy, open lust, and excitement in any given direction.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” I choke out and she nods.
Her fingers thread through my own and I take a small mental note that her heels are gone as we begin weaving through the crowd.
We reach the back and fall into the line that is eagerly pushing out.
Both of us shifting nervously and glancing over our shoulders like someone will come to drag us back in case we haven’t suffered enough for their liking.
When it is our turn to leave, we are given our phones from the lock boxes and stopped with a raised hand just like the pair that had come before us.
“As a reminder you signed NDA’s and the waiver. You may not speak about what happens here and if you go to the police you will not be helped. We have covered all of our bases. You will not like the consequences of reporting us.”
I sort of already figured that much out. Especially when there isn’t a face or name we could point to here for blame.
“We get it,” Imogen bites and he steps aside. We don’t bother looking back, and we sure as fuck don’t stop to smell the flowers when Imogen’s little Volkswagen peels from the parking lot three minutes later.
Imogen and I sit in silence outside of Burger King of all fucking places. Both of us staring up at the sign that blinks its open status.
“Are you hungry?” she whispers.
“I could eat,” I mumble.
“Are we going to talk about it?”
“Are you hurt?” I ask by way of reply, my eyes sliding to her. Because I can guess quite a bit of nonconsensual shit goes on in there. I can’t imagine someone willingly losing a hand or having their body staked to a wall by a psychopath in a wolf mask.
“No, are you?” she challenges, knowing the weight of the question.
“Nope,” I croak.
How do I tell her I let some guy rail me into oblivion while she might have been nearly tortured?
“Good. So… we agree we are never going back.” She states heavily.
“One charm is good enough for me.”
She snorts then slaps her hand over her mouth. I bite back on my own smile, because it’s awful. It’s awful humor and neither of us have any control over it, because it beats the hell out of crying.
Laughter breaks between us, combined with the ugly tears that we had tried to avoid with our dark humor. Tears that mess makeup that is already a wreck on the both of us. She points to my tear streaked mascara and we fall into a dizzying reaction that has no reason to it.
“I joined an orgy!” She practically screeches and I fall to pieces.
“I fucked a guy named Plague in a mirrored room,” I gasp. “That’s not even the strangest part—he was wearing a plague doctor’s mask!”
We fall into another fit of pained laughter until there is nothing left.
Until all there is, is silence as we stare at each other in shock.
“Burger?” She croaks.
“Yep.”