​I Promise

I remember thinking it’d never end, my heels bruised and sore from the eleven hours spent supporting my slowly withering frame. The stupid smile I’d plastered on my face to create the facsimile that waiting tables in a mildew-scented chain restaurant gave me any feeling other than burning contempt. One barely audible “See you tomorrow” and the mask immediately fell. Hours upon hours of screaming children, complaining parents, and unbearable coworkers melted onto my face like seeing old bricks peeking through a shiny coat of white paint—an easy reminder to any passersby to stay away from “that guy.” But that didn’t seem to apply to him.

“Hey, friend, you look down. Something troublin’ ya?”

A man: receding hairline, five o’clock shadow with a spotty mustache, full baby-blue suit, in the middle of the cold Denver night. He sounded like me just a few hours ago, sitting at his little booth, his mask clearly holding strong. The southern twang in his voice grated my very core.

“We’re in Colorado. What a tool,” I thought to myself, barely patient enough to listen, let alone respond.

“No thanks, dude,” I barked.

“Well, now, now, you really must hate those fucking people, don’t you?”

It caught me totally off guard. Don’t get me wrong—I’m no saint—but that gaudy, cheery, country-boy tone spouting hateful profanity gave me genuine pause. I knew what he was talking about, but still, I asked:

“Hate who?” I stopped and turned around.

“All that hard work you put in, making sure everything is perfect, waiting on them hand and foot everyday, giving them a piece of yourself just so they can trick their own sorry asses into believing anyone actually wants to be there. It’s a shame nobody appreciates it, eh, Ricky?”

“Um, yeah. I’m sorry. Do I know you? How do you know my name?”

Each question demanded a more aggressive demeanor than the last. Whatever kind of magic trick he did to learn my name, I just wished he’d make himself disappear.

“Now, now, isn’t that a little rude? I’m your friend, I promise.”

He’d been smiling through his whole speech, that fake customer-service smile we all know. But this was different. After his “promise,” his face seemed to change, like his joy, his excitement, couldn’t be contained by his normal expression. The corners of his mouth seemed to crack, and little red droplets were visible behind the wrinkles; his cheekbones stretched impossibly, pushing his eyes more and more closed. This time, I saw a different emotion behind his expression: hate. Burning, unyielding, scarring hate that left such an impression on me that I snapped out of my disgust and realized I wasn’t moving. I couldn’t move—only stared further into those grinning features. My brain went wild with instinct. An almost prehistoric fear swept over my entire being. I wanted to run, to scream, to weep—anything. Instead, what now felt like a hot vice grip on my body kept me still, more still than any human should be.

“What the hell are you—”

I thought to myself, then a final flood of dread washed over me as I heard it—not from his mouth, not from behind me, or anywhere else, but from inside my own head.

“I told you, I’m your friend, I promise.”

My vision began to tunnel. My eyes were wide open, but the world itself went dark—except, of course, for him. Then the headache came, heavy, like the most sensitive parts of my brain were being ground against concrete. It was agonizing, and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Thankfully, I eventually lost consciousness. But what awoke me wasn’t pain. It wasn’t that smile. It was the tears of pity landing on my face. Humans aren’t prepared to hear someone else’s voice in their head. We aren’t built for it.

It feels cramped—the ultimate invasion of privacy. That’s what he wants. He wants us uncomfortable, scared, free of any and all comfort, like stray animals. At least, that’s what Rachel told me. None of us knew where he’d taken us, but we all had something in common. He took us here at our lowest points. Rachel was the first: she lived her whole life with her son in Philadelphia and had just lost him to suicide when a nice man came to her door offering to cut her lawn. Donny said it hadn’t even been a week since he’d been expelled from his dream school in California, and Miriam had just divorced her husband of thirty-six years after he cheated on her in Cabo.

“C’mon, kid, get up. Try and get your bearings. You, uh, might be here a while. He took me here first—God, I don’t even know how long ago, really—but it’s been years.”

“Woah, woah, hold up a second! Years?! Who the hell was that? What’d he do to you… to me? This place feels off. Are we still in Colorado?”

The others looked at me like I was a lost pet. Rachel especially chimed in to quiet me down.

“Look, we’ll explain everything soon. Just know we’re in danger, but you won’t die. He’ll make sure of that. Just follow our lead and listen.”

“He told you he was your friend too, right?” interjected Donny. He was young, barely nineteen, but he looked hardened, like a veteran—they all did.

“Yeah, but nobody’s answered my question: where the hell are we?!”

Rachel chimed in again, redirecting my anger toward her.

“We’re in your mind, and my mind, and his mind, and her mind. It’s how he does it.”

“How he does what?!” I assailed.

“How he torments us. Nobody really knows how. He keeps us trapped in our own brains, with him as the puppet master. We’ve all tried to escape. He just punishes us for it.”

“Do you even hear yourselves? This is nuts! You’re all fucking crazy. We’re not in anyone’s mind. That’s impossible.”

“Don’t you feel it? The distance, the haze? Over everything? It’s like a nightmare, isn’t it?”

It really sunk in then—nothing felt right. Not even the ground. I was standing now, the panic of waking up somewhere unfamiliar, surrounded by three people I’d never met, had blinded me. It felt like I was standing on a lung: rubbery, inconsistent, constantly expanding and retracting with no discernable pattern. With enough distance, everything looked normal: the trees, the eerily empty city skyline. But the second I tried to touch anything—a rock, a stray branch hanging from the “trees” all around us—everything fell apart. Even worse, I realized she was right. Everything was covered in a fog of unsettling nostalgia, like I’d been there sometime, some place, but I couldn’t place where or when—exactly like a nightmare.

I didn’t stay cognizant for long. The brief realization of my situation flung me back into my animalistic panic. I ignored my new “friends’” cries for quiet and calm—I never even heard them. I couldn’t even retreat into the recesses of my mind because I was already there; it’d been warped, distorted. Like every semblance of peace, every good memory or feeling had been ripped out and replaced—replaced by him. In a fit of pained, heavy breaths, I fell, tumbling to my side in abject horror at my new reality. Then it happened: the soft, rubbery ground stuck to me like a mousetrap, then, like a living creature, it began to swallow me into its organic maw.

“Hey, wait, wait! What’s happening to me?!” I cried.

“Oh god, get him out! It’s going to take him!” Rachel screamed at the others.

“Help! Jesus Christ, help me! I can’t move!”

It was then I felt Rachel, Miriam, and Donny’s hands all grab onto my clothes and limbs, trying to wrench me from this hellish slime. But it was no use. I had already sunk halfway, and I could feel one of my arms pierce through to whatever was on the other side. It was wet and cold, like the entire world sat upon a giant lake. I did everything I could to find purchase somewhere hard, but everywhere I touched was just another patch of the same softness.

It didn’t take long for my head to be submerged. One by one, I felt the hands that once held my salvation release their grips on me. As the rest of my body submerged in the water below, I tried to open my eyes. It was painful, but it looked like a pond: green, murky water surrounded me on all sides. I’d hoped being in my own head would mean the ability to breathe would supersede me. I was wrong. The oxygen in my lungs waned as I swam, trying to find some way out. I’d been hugging the fleshy ceiling, trying to find a weak point, when I felt something rough graze my leg.

The fear shot through me like a spear. I screamed—muffled, gurgly, useless. It did, however, succeed in expelling every last bit of oxygen from my lungs. My chest began to hurt as my heart rate rose; my search for salvation went from barely manageable panic to wild hysteria. Running my hands across any unfound surface, swimming wildly, I begged the ceiling to give way and stop the pain. I couldn’t stick around to meet whatever the hell it was that grazed my leg. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t be given that choice.

I thought the rising pain in my chest was the worst I’d ever felt—until I saw the long, thin snout of that large crocodilian monster emerge from the darkness right in front of my face. I had absolutely no way of defending myself. It immediately sunk its teeth into my ribcage. My body was shot down further into the lake. I took in water immediately; the pain in my chest, however, was now overthrown by the sixty blade-like teeth turning my torso to ribbons. I knew I’d die here; at this point, I was just waiting for it.

Suddenly, the thing that latched onto my body was wrenched upward, like it’d been caught by a fishing line. It floated up fast, ruining my peaceful death and sending more shockwaves of pain through my body. Then I heard it: the wet squelching like a punch through mud. And I was out. I felt the cold air surrounding me as I lay in a patch of fake grass. Coughing up green sludge and water, I realized I could no longer feel the thing’s jaws latched onto me. Instead, I only saw it—about twenty feet from me, writhing in pain on the ground.

I looked down at where it had me in its jaws. Lifting my shirt, I saw every little serrated wound across my stomach and back begin to close uncomfortably fast. Something healed me just before death. I was almost thankful—until I saw it. Just above my field of vision, a pair of spotless blue loafers walked toward me, stopping right in front of my face.

“Wow, that was really somethin’, kid. You shoulda seen the look on your face. I mean, seriously.”

Chuckling at himself, he put his hand on my shoulder and said,

“It’s funny how much the human mind can take. I mean, little Rachel’s been with me for thirteen of your years, and she doesn’t even know it. I still tell her she’s only been here a year or two.”

“What the fuck—cough—is wrong with you?”

“Now, little Ricky, that’s not any way to treat someone who just saved your life, is it?”

“You should’ve let me die.”

“Oh, now you’ll get over it. I mean, I’m not even the one that made that nasty thing over there. That was all that little brain of yours.”

“cough… fuck… you.”

“You’ll wise up soon, kid. I promise.”

Once again he flashed that unsettling smile. This time, though, it was like his face was used to it—unwavering, shifting like water. As I looked into his hateful, grinning eyes, my body yet again fell under his paralysis. This time I was out of energy to fight it. I welcomed unconsciousness with open arms and woke up, assumedly hours later, surrounded by his other victims once more.

“I’m so sorry, dear.” Miriam said, tending to me as I woke up.

“Don’t speak, son. You’ll talk yourself into a panic again. Just try to wake up.”

My body felt weak. My physical wounds were gone, but I still shook like a stray animal stuck in the rain. It felt like somebody had thrown my internal organs into a blender and tossed them back inside me. I groaned my way over to a log to lean against.

“How?”

“How what, dear?”

“How the hell am I alive?”

Everybody looked at me with an upsetting pity, like I was the next in line for some horrible necessity.

“Well, to put it simply… you aren’t actually here. Like we said, this isn’t the real world, so that pokes me isn’t your real body—just what your brain thinks it looks like and feels like. All of your pain is what your brain thinks it should be feeling, so when it doesn’t know, it fills in the blanks—usually with the worst pain you’ve ever felt.”

“Oh god, so… nobody even knows we’re gone, do they?”

“Nope. We’re stuck here, stuck in the moment in time we first saw that fucker.”

I didn’t think the situation could get more bleak, but this place was full of surprises so far. I hung my head in defeat. I’d just suffered the worst pain imaginable and came out of it in the exact same situation.

“Isn’t there anything we can do?”

Donny spat back, “We’ve all tried, so many times. Nothing works. He controls all of this, putting us through hell over and over and over again just for his own sick fucking pleasure.”

“So, what? You just take the torture for all eternity? That’s the answer? To hope that it only takes, what, a hundred years to go completely insane?! A thousand?! I mean, Jesus, you’re just going to give up? Like this is some acceptable reality you can just get used to?”

“What do you not understand about this, huh? Look around! Do you see an exit? You talked to him too? What? You wanna try punching him? Maybe asking him nicely to let us go? I know you’re new here, but you’re dumber than I thought.”

“Maybe we cou—”

“NO! We can’t. Whatever it was you were gonna say, we can’t. I promise we’ve tried it. If you think you’re some sorry excuse for our ‘savior,’ you’re wrong. It’s over. Your life, our life, everything else outside this hellscape is gone.”

“No…—”

“The sooner you accept it, the better.”

“I SAID NO!”

I lunged at Donny, catapulting off the log I was perched on toward him with seething rage. Donny was much bigger than me, but it’s amazing how much rage and momentum helps in a fight. He seemed to jerk back when he saw me running. But that wouldn’t matter. I threw everything I had at Donny, and it worked. My shoulder ran through his chest, knocking him to the ground. I let out everything onto him: all of my despair, pain, hopelessness—it was all carved into him through my fists. I punched him over and over again without remorse. At that moment, he was the reason for all of this.

But he wasn’t really. We both knew it. As I looked into his eyes, I saw they held the same emotions I had. Although he’d flung his at me through words, I used my hands. He didn’t look afraid; however, past his now-bruised cheeks and jaw, I saw something that crushed me. I wanted to give myself power, to mask the helplessness of my new reality. Instead of fear, I saw pity in his eyes—like when you see an old man struggle to lift himself off his rocking chair, knowing he didn’t do anything to end up that way, and that you aren’t immune to that fate either.

Finally, I stopped. Donny had fallen unconscious, but I’d soon realize that was for the best.

“Now, now, boys, no fighting, though… You got quite the arm on you, Ricky.”

The voice felt like a gunshot. The most immediate realization came to me as I stumbled back and saw Rachel and Miriam had already run away. Donny lay unconscious at my feet, but suddenly none of that mattered anymore. I wished I could’ve run too, but I had tired myself out; I was still panting like a dog when he started.

“Looks like you should’ve made some better friends. It’s okay, I’ll have them over here soon enough, back together, like one big happy family.”

Just then, he stood still, like he was saying a silent prayer, and in an instant, he lifted his arms from either side. They extended to impossible lengths, stretching endlessly through the forest, searching—reminding me that his blue suit and suede shoes were nothing but a sick costume of a man. Rachel and Miriam, who had run away, were dragged back into the dimly lit opening that held the source of their torture all this time. Uselessly clawing at the fake ground below them, they screamed before he locked them in place at his feet.

“You know, you all left poor little Ricky here to fend for himself. I figure you two oughta learn some manners.”

Miriam was the one I noticed first—she was scared, crying hysterically, praying to a god that could not hear her. And Rachel looked crazed, swinging, scratching, biting—anything to try and break free from her prison. She caught his attention first; he brought her closer to his face with ease.

“You always were fun. Why do you think I held onto you for so long, huh?”

“Suck a dick, you little prepubescent mustache-wearing shit.”

Rachel spat on his right cheek with a satisfied grin, knowing he’d punish her either way. Something he did next gave me a momentary pause, though. As he wiped the spit from his face, just for a fleeting moment, behind his fist, I saw a small section of a bruise. Damage. Pain. I had a fleeting thought at that moment, a puzzling thought. In all that scuffle, when did anybody hit him in the face?

“laughs hysterically Wow, really got me with that one. I wonder if there’s anything I can do to repay the favor? How does… a thousand years of dismemberment sound? Yeah, I like that. Got a ring to it.”

Just then, the consequences of her actions dawned on all of us. His gaze on her sharpened, and her burning, hateful expression went blank. His smile only grew wider once more, however, while the eyes that once held Rachel’s soul—her hope, her life—had been drained. It was probably only a couple seconds, but it felt like hours. When it ended, though, the light returned to Rachel’s eyes—only different, crazed. She cried out repeatedly.

As he dropped her, she fell to the floor and crumpled into a tight ball. I looked on in horror as I realized she was clawing at her own limbs. She looked like she was trying to pull them off, tearing skin from her arms and kicking her legs over and over again. He was still standing over her, a gleeful look plastered on his face, but I didn’t care. I wanted to run, to leave everything behind—but Rachel was strong. Whatever he’d done to her couldn’t be it for her, could it? She tried for me, so I had to try for her.

I scrambled over to her, tried to get her to listen to me, shaking her, yelling that it was over, pleading, begging her to remember—but she couldn’t. That man, that thing, had reduced her to nothing more than an animal. As she looked at me with her ever-fearful eyes, I was driven to tears. She was strong—stronger than all of us—but he’d taken everything else from her, and now he’d taken her sanity. A thousand years, a thousand goddamned years, was what it took to beat Rachel. Here I was, on the verge of losing it after just a day or two. Miriam had run again, and I couldn’t blame her. All I could do was hold Rachel in my arms as she thrashed to get away.

“Oh Jesus Christ, boy, calm down. I was done with her anyways. She was a toy, and I outgrew her. You know how it is…”

It took absolutely everything I had to stay focused on Rachel. The voices in my head wrestled for control:

“It’s what he wants. Don’t do it.” “You knocked out Donny for less.” “He’ll do it to you too.” “Maybe it’s what you deserve.”

In the end, I knew nothing would change if I attacked him. I’d just end up like her. I had to stay alive for now. I saw him bleed, I had to figure out what it meant, but I knew if I attacked him now, he’d just toss me aside too. And the knowledge I had, as little as it was, would go to waste. The next thing I saw was Rachel. She scrambled away from me and him into the woods. Her screams, however, would never leave my mind, no matter how far away they got.

“Not even gonna chase her? Man, maybe I shouldn’t have tossed her out. You aren’t any fun.”

And with that, he was gone. When Donny awoke, it was just the two of us. I immediately apologized for what I’d done. I assumed he wouldn’t forgive me, but he did.

“No, I—I deserved it. I should be thanking you. Seeing that fucking thing turns my blood cold. Where are Rachel and Miriam? I saw them run away before I blacked out.”

It dawned on me he had no idea what had happened to Rachel.

“Donny, I’m so sorry. I don’t know about Miriam, but Rachel…”

“Oh god… Is she—?”

“She’s gone, Donny.”

“No… FUCK.”

Donny began to yell, hands swinging wildly.

“FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!”

After he exhausted his anger, he fell to the ground, laying his head in his hands.

“I think… I think I need some rest,” Donny said.

“Yeah, good idea,” I replied.

Laying down on the ground next to Donny, I thought I could hear him stifle a cry. I knew because I was doing the same thing. But all the same, time moved on. There was no such thing as sleep here, and all unconsciousness was plagued by terrifying imagery. All the same, however, when we got up, Miriam had returned—tired, weary, and jumpy, just like always. Unfortunately, the days progressed as normal, cherishing the small moments of “peace” we had. Just like the rest had said, the torture never ceased. He never failed to find new ways to torment the remaining three of us. He’d affect our memory, make us think we’d escaped, just to enter a doorway in our new family home and walk back out here. Turn the ground we walked on into razor blades. Oxygenate the blood in our veins so we popped from the inside out—day after day, week after week. It’d probably been six months. But I bided my time. I tried to find something else. The image of that bruise was burned into my mind; I replayed that night every single day. That sliver of hope was probably the one thing that kept me going.

“Hey, are you still with me, Rick?” Donny snapped his fingers in front of my face.

“Oh—yeah, yeah, don’t worry.”

“Okay, good. It’s your turn.”

“Oh, right, yeah.”

We’d actually developed a system to play chess out of an old chessboard we found and different types of rocks and sticks. It was my idea, but Donny never questioned why.

“Queen back to D5, dead center.”

“Bishop to E6, blocking queen.”

“Hmm… Queen to C6.”

“Other Bishop to D7, staying on the queen.”

“Shit, uh… Queen back to D5.”

“Pawn to C4, now your bishop is locked in.”

Donny studies the board.

“Motherfucker, bishops gone, isn’t it?”

“Mhm.”

“Tell me this, Ricky. How the hell did you drop out of college the first year but at the same time you’re some… chess guru?”

“To be fair, you hadn’t played until I taught you, right? It’s not about IQ or whatever, though—just how much you can think ahead. Like look, you threw your queen out to try and get an easy hit on my pawn, but I had another pawn lined up to trap your open bishop, and later, take your queen.”

I held up his queen piece in his face, a sharp, palm-sized shard of rock I found while exploring one day.

“Yeah, I get it. All I really know is I lost, and you won. Plus, that’s what IQ is, you smug dick.”

“Laughs Hah, maybe. Either way though, just keep practicing. You’ll beat me.”

“Oh, I’ll beat you one day, I promise.”

“Alright, good to know. I’ll be waiting.”

“Are you boys done playing yet? I need someone to help me collect more fuel for the flame.”

I gave Donny a pleading look.

“Hey, don’t look at me. I did it last time. Plus, like you said, I need to stay and practice more.”

“Whatever. Yeah! I’ll be over in a sec, Miriam.”

I got up from the tree stump I sat on and wiped the moss off my pants. Luckily, my entire reality being fake meant if you stopped paying attention enough, things started to act more normally around you. It was focusing on it that messed everything up. Walking over to Miriam, I knew it was almost time. Over the past few months, we’d been collecting—not objects, but information. Like knowing we could change the state of the world around us just by focusing and unfocusing at certain times. Or knowing we could take objects into our illusions by stuffing a rock into our pockets in the moment before transportation. We just had to hide these discoveries as best we could.

The most valuable piece of information, however, came from Miriam and the Man himself. About two and a half months prior, he’d taken her once more. This time, though, we had an objective. In the midst of her limbs being stretched like a rubber toy, the man came upon her and accidentally revealed something pivotal: whatever he is now, he used to be human. In response to this, I told her about my suspicions—the mysterious bruise on the man’s face—and I told her I’d find out what it meant. And this time, I wasn’t coming to her empty-handed.

“So… you think we can beat him with this?”

“I’m not sure. We have to be careful; it has to be perfect. But I think it’s the best shot we’ve got. His illusions are his domain. He’s god there. But here… here’s different. Still powerful, sure, but if we’re going to get to him, it has to be either right before or right after he sends us somewhere.”

“We’ll be stronger before. Who knows what he could do to us there? We might end up… like—”

“I know. Every time there’s a risk of that. That’s why we can’t make him angry. We have to catch him off guard.”

As I stooped to the ground to collect more firewood, something darted through the woods a couple feet in front of me. Something big. It startled me, but it was also why I thought my plan could work. Walking back to camp, I saw, behind my stack of firewood, Donny studying the chessboard.

“If you wanna lose one more time, I’ll play you again,” I joked.

“No, just… thinking,” Donny puzzled.

“Donny, less thinking, more drinking.” I tossed him the bottle of pinot I found in a fake grocery store just past the border.

“Does this stuff actually work here?”

“If you believe it does.”

Donny took a hearty swig and coughed, lamenting:

“God, it tastes awful. Just like real wine.”

We all shared a laugh as I silently slipped the sharp queen rock from the chessboard into my front pocket.

My timing couldn’t have been better, as just then a fourth laugh joined our choir.

“Laughs I mean seriously, look at you all. Such a big happy family makes me want to shed a tear, really.”

It didn’t matter how much planning I did, that voice still sent shivers down my spine. My feet planted in the now-too-soft dirt below me, I steadied myself as best I could and turned around. I looked around for confirmation and saw Miriam staring right at me, while Donny was transfixed on our guest. I gave her the smallest nod I could. This was it.

Before I could decide anything, though, his visage appeared right in front of me. I looked down as quickly as I could before his eyes met mine, but when I looked back up to make eye contact, that’s when I was sure. By that time, however, he’d already got me entranced, and Miriam was in a chokehold from fifteen feet away.

“But I’m sorry little Donny, mommy and daddy here need to go away for a while. Don’t worry, you’ll be with them soon enough though.”

We both knew at this point there was no chance we’d get to him before he could get to us. The only solution, then, was after. I was used to the feeling of my reality changing, but this time felt different. Like less of a torture and more like a trial. The first strap I noticed was on my forehead, then all four of my limbs, and finally my waist.

As I looked around, I assessed my surroundings and noticed I was attached to some type of spinning wheel. Around me was what looked to be a carnival tent, with the words “Nosey’s Funhouse” obnoxiously hand-painted on the wall directly in front of me. Although none of that mattered once the clown appeared—“Nosey” I guessed. Something I probably should have expected, but jarring nonetheless. In his hand, he held a large, maced baseball bat.

I figured out pretty quickly what I was in for, but you can’t ever adequately prepare for the moment a spiked bat crushes your ribcage. The first swing was, unfortunately, the weakest. Like Nosey was still getting used to a new toy. Through the pain receptors in my torso being lit on fire, I could see Nosey laughing heartily at my suffering, like he’d just gotten me with a handshake buzzer.

Next might have been the worst. He exaggeratedly aimed back with one leg up and brought down the bat on my crotch. Of all the things I’ve gone through in my time here, Clown bat to the balls was not on my bingo card. Either way, the pain shot through me like electric shocks. Then, one by one, as I spun—not only throwing up from the motion sickness, but also enduring the crushing pain that came with each swing—left arm, left leg, left arm again, right arm, right leg, torso again.

It had become unbearable long ago, but the simple fact that I had to bear it offered me no comfort, no chance to die from blood loss, shock, or blunt force trauma—just the pain that those things all came with. My body felt empty, cold, evidently because when you’re beaten to a pulp, you tend to lose a lot of blood. The only respite was that the more blood I lost in a limb, the more numb it became. Still, however, numb or not, the carnival tent was bathed in my blood and filled with my pained, gurgled screams.

This did not please Nosey, however. He looked sad that I wasn’t having as much fun as he was. His next course of action, however, seemed to calm him. I saw him aim the bat patiently as I spun—one spin, two, three—and finally, just as my head bounded the crest of the wheel, he swung his new toy hard at my face. My jaw and teeth shattered first. Before what I assumed was the pop of my right eyeball, it seemed the mace actually got away from him, spinning with me as it was stuck in my face. On the next spin, however, I felt it all over again as he grabbed the handle and wrenched it out of the gaping wound that was my face.

I tried to scream but couldn’t anymore. I couldn’t scream, I couldn’t fathom the amount of pain I was in. I couldn’t even breathe as I realized I was choking—on something sharp. My own teeth had shot back into my esophagus and started blocking my airway, cutting my throat on the way down. The only thing I managed to get up were a few spurts of mucusy, slightly toothy blood.

Just then, I felt my straps disappear as my mangled excuse for a body fell to the concrete floor of the carnival house, sticking in a pool of my own blood. My leg went through first. I recognized the feeling of sinking I now felt throughout my body. I was finally falling back into my domain—my chance was here. And as I lay there flattened, I felt my right leg heal itself and hang into what I assumed was just above where I’d been taken. Then my crotch, then my other leg, torso, arms, one by one I felt normal again, until finally my head was pulled through to salvation.

I saw something directly under me: the piece of garbage in a light blue suit, waiting smugly for me to drop. Before the ceiling let go of my forehead, however, I managed to rifle through my pockets and pull out the queen I’d stashed earlier. Something I hoped I wouldn’t see caught my eye. It was Miriam. She lay on the ground, totally unresponsive, covered in blood. Whatever he did to that poor woman was too much for her to take, and he didn’t even care to keep her alive this time.

I was alone in this now. But I was right above him. I had to try. The sticky ceiling finally let me go, and as I lifted the sharp rock above my head, I knew I’d break something on the fall—but I knew I could also use that momentum to create a more powerful swing. It only took a second to happen, and I wasn’t able to aim in any way, shape, or form. But as I fell, right before my legs shattered on the impact, I tightened my hands’ grip on the sharp queen and let it plunge directly into the top of the man’s head. Miraculously, the jagged shard lodged itself deep into his skull.

I landed on the ground with a sickening crack. I knew my ankles were broken; I’d felt it enough at this point to know. Looking up from my spot on the ground, however, afforded me a sight that I’d been waiting to see for the past six months. If I’d been a moment later, that wouldn’t have even scratched him—but his timer hadn’t run out yet. His body was still vulnerable. Either way, I knew it wouldn’t kill him for good. I just had to get rid of his main body.

Right after, I watched the light drain from those sickening eyes. I heard a yell and turned around to what I knew I’d see: Donny, charging for me with red-hot anger filling his movements. Like a switch had flipped.

“YOU SON OF A BITCH!”

He tackled me to the ground.

“DO YOU REALIZE WHAT YOU’VE DONE?”

Donny was a large man. I got the drop on him before, but this time it was reversed. With Miriam out for the count, it was me and him. At least that’s what he thought.

“THAT WAS MY BODY! MINE! I GAVE YOU THE PRIVILEGE OF KEEPING YOU ALIVE! I MADE ALL THIS FOR YOU, UNGRATEFUL SWINE! BUT NOW, NOW YOU’RE FUCKING DEAD!”

His hands clamped down on my throat, crushing it easily. Slowly choking the air from my lungs, I knew I didn’t have long—but still, as long as I could wait just a little longer…

“CAT GOT YOUR TONGUE, MOTHERFUCKER?” he screamed.

Willing my lungs, throat, and vocal cords to work just one more time, I was able to choke out the words:

“P-…pawn to… wheeze C… four.”

Just past the anger in his eyes, I saw confusion, then realization flooded his expression—but it was too late. Before he knew it, Rachel bounded out of the bushes with a thousand-year score to settle. Every move I’d made the past six months, she’d stalked me, coming to the same conclusions I did. Something inside her was still there—her will. She always was the strongest of us.

She was on him in a second, tackling him off me and onto the ground about five feet away. Letting my lungs fill with air once more, I saw her ferociously wailing on the man—clawing, kicking, punching, biting, screaming—like a chimpanzee with a lust for blood. The man’s screams flooded the forest, and with every slash, the reality around us began to crumble. The man barely managed to wrestle the manic Rachel off of him, using Donny’s size to his advantage. He pinned her limbs to the ground, dripping blood from his face onto hers as he said:

“YOU, AGAIN! I KILLED YOU FOR A THOUSAND YEARS, AND I’LL DO IT FOR GOOD THIS TIME!”

He had no available limbs, so the man began to use his head—headbutting Rachel repeatedly in a wild scramble to gain the upper hand. It was working. I had to move. I was lucky only my ankles were broken. I dragged my legs behind me, crawling to the fight. In his haze, he hadn’t noticed me for a second. It gave me the perfect chance. I knew I couldn’t beat him one-on-one, but I could push him into the lion’s mouth.

I lunged forward and grabbed both of his wrists and pulled hard. His balance was thrown off, and he fell forward onto Rachel face-first. With her hands freed and her resolve hardened, she lunged forward as he fell and latched onto his throat with her teeth. With one hard, wrenching pull, she ripped his throat from his neck. I didn’t see his face, but she did, and she smiled—a sickening, wide smile, like the one he’d trapped all of us with.

As he gurgled his final, hateful breaths, spitting blood onto his own creation, the world we’d been trapped in crumbled to the ground. Trees fell in the hundreds. Dirt rose and disintegrated in seconds. Rocks were reduced to dust and lost to the wind. The night moon disappeared altogether. The ground began to flow wildly, like a river sat just beneath us. I wondered how it would feel. If it would be like when I came in, it hurt all the same—but it was a pain I welcomed.

The wooziness, the tunnel vision, and that sweet headache. I was finally pulled into unconsciousness.

“Hello sir, just fill out this form and we’ll see you as soon as possible.”

“No, no, I’m here to visit someone.”

“Oh, alright. Name and room number?”

“Um, Hopkins? Room 214?”

“Oh? Hopkins? She hasn’t gotten a visitor in… well, years? Are you family?”

“Yeah, I’m her… cousin.”

“Well, alright. Just know she’s been unresponsive for, well, a long time. I’m sorry, but I wouldn’t expect much love.”

“That’s alright, thank you.”

The confirmation was enough. She was here. After so long—damn near every hospital in Philadelphia turned me down—but this was it. The sound of my shoes against the hospital floor was deafening. I worked my way through the halls: 210, 211, 212, 213, and as I reached 214, my heart was beating out of my chest. I pushed through everything—the fear, the doubt, the memories. And finally, I pushed through the door.

Looking around, the room contained one bed—one occupant. Older than I remember, but unmistakable, and she was awake.

“Is that you, Rick?”