Jeff Strand - Single White Psychopath Seeks Same

“Half done already,” I noted.

“We bad,” Roger agreed.

On the other side was a “Guess Their Weight” display. About nine or ten hugely obese fake corpses were lying in a giant pile. Next to them was a small booth with a four-digit readout in red numbers, currently 0000. A metal joystick apparently let you raise or lower your guess.

“Where in the world does he buy all these corpses?” Roger asked. “These things aren’t cheap, you know. I’ve priced them around Halloween.”

I turned the joystick to the right, increasing the number on the display. Ten corpses at, what, four hundred pounds each? Of course, they didn’t necessarily weigh as much as a real body, but I had to start somewhere. When the display read 4000 I pressed the button on the joystick.

And got an electric shock so severe I fell to the ground, gasping for breath.

After Roger helped me up, I saw that the display now showed an arrow pointing up. “Your turn,” I told Roger. “Guess higher.”

Roger took off his shirt, wrung it out, and wrapped it around the joystick. I nodded with approval. “Oh, sure, everybody knows electricity and water are a delightful combination.”

He glared at me and put his shirt back on. “Fine, whatever.” He increased the display until it read 5000, then pressed the button.

After his yelp, he ended up on the ground as well. The display now showed a down arrow.

“So what, we just do this until we’re baked?” he demanded.

“We could wait for Charlotte.”

“Wait for Charlotte to what?” she asked, scaring the absolute living shit out of us.

“Hey, in the mood for a nice refreshing electric shock?” I asked, when I could breathe again.

“I’m always in the mood for a nice refreshing electric shock,” she replied.

We explained the setup to her, and she set the display to 4500. She pressed the button, and a third golden key dropped into the slot.

“I’m pretty sure that’s not fair,” Roger observed, flexing his aching hand.

At the end of the path was a large, gold plated door. There were four locks, one on top of the other, but we only had three keys.

We went back down the path, but as far as we could tell we’d hit all the available games. The carnival probably wasn’t finished yet. The shooting gallery skeleton tried to kill us again, but we were expecting it and ducked well before the bullets came our way.

“So…” said Roger. “What next?”

“If we could get those overweight corpses rolling, we could probably break the door down with them,” I said.

“Did anybody check to see if the door was actually locked?” asked Charlotte.

“Of course the door is locked.”

“Uh-huh. I take night classes…well, I did a year ago when I had a life…and I’ve seen groups of twenty-five people standing outside of an unlocked classroom door because they all just assumed that the first person was standing there because it was locked.”

“That’s a fascinating insight into human psychology,” Roger said. “I vote we test it out.”

We returned to the gold-plated door. It was locked.

I inserted the three keys into their proper locks and tested the door again, but it still wouldn’t open.

“So what do we do?” I asked. “It could be hidden somewhere around here, or it could just be missing altogether. Maybe when he adds the Bumper Car Bloodbath it’ll have the fourth key.”

“Maybe the clown knows,” said Roger.

“Maybe you should…” I trailed off as I thought of something. “Maybe you’re right! Remember what the clown said?” I asked, hurrying back down the path.

“He said ‘die’ a few times,” Roger recalled.

“He also said to find them, to sniff them out.” We stopped, ducked under the skeleton’s fire, and stood in front of the clown. Its red nose popped right off. Inside was the fourth golden key.

“You are the coolest human being on the face of the earth,” said Roger.

It fit the fourth lock, and we moved into the next area.

It contained only a small passageway, low enough that we’d have to crawl through it. Another fake corpse was standing over the entrance, so we’d have to crawl between its legs. I never wanted to see another artificial cadaver for the rest of my life.

Dripping red letters proclaimed “Welcome To The Fun-Filled Maze Of Amusement And Splatter!”

“I’ll go first,” I said in a moment of bravery that passed as quickly as it had come. I got down on my hands and knees and crawled into the tunnel. Roger followed, and Charlotte followed him.

I crawled for about ten feet, and then emerged into a very small room that allowed me to stand. The walls were a combination of heavily tinted Plexiglas and mirrors, and there were three possible exits. Colorful lights flashed from the ceiling, giving the place an atmosphere like a disco. I guessed that when the place was finished, Daniel would add the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever in the background.

We took the exit to the left. It twisted and turned a couple of times, and then broke off into two more possible paths.

I scraped an “X” on one of the mirrors with the machete. “So we’ll know where we’ve been,” I explained.

We followed the path to the left again. Through some of the plexiglass walls, I could see other parts of the maze, but there was no way to tell at this point how large it was.

There was a knock.

Daniel stood next to us, separated only by the clear wall. He pointed at me, and then ran his index finger over his throat, letting us know that it was curtains time.

THERE WAS a loud rumble behind us. Daniel winked at me, then moved out of sight.

That was okay. I knew I was going to have to face him again, and better here than in an open space where he could mow us down with his machine gun, not that I noticed him carrying it. Much better to be trapped in a confusing maze.

At the next intersection, I scratched another “X” on the mirror and we took the path to the right. After about twenty feet and six turns, it dead-ended. We heard more rumbling.

“See if you can kick through the mirror,” I suggested to Roger.

He kicked the mirror several times, and though the glass cracked it was clear that we weren’t going to be able to break through. So we went back the way we came, returning to the intersection.

The “X” was gone.

“Did I miss something?” I wondered aloud. “I marked it, right?”

“You marked it,” said Charlotte. “I know what that sound is. The maze is moving.”

Okay, that was most definitely not cool, but again, I had to look on the bright side. Daniel and the others would be just as disoriented as we were. Maybe.

We continued to weave through the maze. At one point I could see Stan, enthusiastically smoking a cigarette about three panels of Plexiglas away. Seconds after that I saw Josie, limping.

Our next path twisted for approximately fifty feet without any new options. After rounding a completely mirrored corner we came face-to-face with a human-sized stone gargoyle. It was an imp-like creature with unnecessarily large fangs and clawed hands raised high over its head. As per the Daniel Rankin touch, it was also wearing headphones. There was just barely enough room to squeeze past it.

Three separate foot-long blades burst out, one from the gargoyle’s head, one from the chest, and one from the leg, all in a vertical line, blocking the path. A second later, the blades snapped back and another set of similar blades burst forth, these about five inches to the left of the first set. As these retracted, yet another set popped out, followed by the original set, and so on in that delightful sequence.

Beyond the gargoyle, separated by a panel, I saw Mortimer, with dried blood under his nose. He noticed us and shouted. “They’re by the southeast gargoyle!”