Single White Psychopath Seeks Same

Chapter 22

“LET’S LOOK at the bright side,” said Roger. “At least the rattlesnakes can’t get at us.”

We continued walking, the leaves crunching under our feet. Then a dart shot out of one of the holes in the wall, visible because of the unpleasant fact that its tip was on fire. The dart sailed across the tunnel, moving at a downward trajectory-it hadn’t been shot with much force. It hit the ground and the leaves underneath began to burn. We stepped over it and moved on.

Hey, I’d survived the other dart room with its cannon fire, I figured I could handle some flaming darts.

The sprinkler activated above us. It was a powerful one, shutting off after a couple of seconds but managing to do a fantastic job of soaking us in that time.

Unfortunately, the liquid we were soaked with wasn’t water, it was gasoline.

My nostrils burned and my various wounds (especially that damn shoulder) took on a searing new agony. Charlotte ’s sharp cry made it clear that the gasoline didn’t feel much better on her cut-up arm.

Now flaming darts seemed a bit more problematic.

One of them shot out in front of us. Fortunately, this situation had a fairly obvious plan of action to follow. Run like hell.

Roger and I seemed to understand this in unison, and took off down the tunnel. Darts continued to fly at us with every other step, but they weren’t firing quickly, and by running at top speed (or as fast as I could go in bare feet) we were able to avoid them. After a nice hundred-meter dash we reached the door at the end of the tunnel.

Unfortunately, Charlotte had elected for a slow and steady dart avoidance tactic, and we’d left a good dozen or so fires burning in her path.

A dart came so close to her that for a split second I had a hallucination of her bursting into flames.

“Just run!” Roger shouted.

Now the darts were firing more frequently. And faster.

Hot ashes from the burning leaves were swirling up into the air. How could we have been so stupid as to leave her behind? How could she have been so stupid as not to follow us?

And then I noticed a small control panel in the corner. I couldn’t be sure it was for the darts, but there wasn’t time to debate. I slammed the tip of the machete into it, sending out a flurry of sparks and half-expecting to be electrocuted.

The darts stopped firing. I remained unelectrocuted, though the gasoline fumes were making me sick and a little lightheaded.

Charlotte still stood there, soaked with gasoline in a burning hallway. There was no way she could avoid all of those ashes, so she hurried back the way we came. She leapt over the area where the sprinkler had drenched us, and I waited for it to go off, touching one of the flames and engulfing Charlotte in an inferno.

The sprinkler went off.

It touched one of the flames.

And Charlotte vanished into a huge inferno.

Roger and I stood there, absolutely stunned.

The ball of fire disappeared as quickly as it had come. And we saw Charlotte pressed tightly against the closed entrance, looking utterly freaked but miraculously devoid of sizzling flesh.

“Fuck both of you!” she shouted.

This appeared to be a fair statement, so we didn’t argue. Charlotte got down on her hands and knees and began shoving away the leaf cover, creating a gap that would let the fires burn themselves out before they reached her.

“What next?” I called out.

“I’m not going anywhere for a few minutes,” Charlotte replied. “You guys might as well go on ahead.”

“You think that’s a good idea?” I asked.

“Obviously I have no clue what’s a good idea in this place. But if the two of you want to check out the next room, that’s sure fine by me. I’ll just hang out here.”

I looked at Roger and he shrugged. “All right,” I called out to Charlotte. “Follow as soon as it’s safe.”

My immediate concern was that another sliding door might seal her off, but that didn’t seem likely since there was a regular door at the end of this tunnel rather than another open entrance.

I opened it. More darkness beyond. Wonderful.

“Enjoy yourselves!” Charlotte said, waving.

With the machete out of front of me, I walked into the next room. Another sprinkler went off, drenching us again. But this time it was ordinary water. Kind of refreshing, actually.

“How considerate,” Roger remarked. “I guess they’re not such bad chaps after all.”

“Yeah, I guess it wouldn’t be much fun if their victims passed out from gas fumes before the really nasty stuff could happen.”

While it would have been nice to take some water back to Charlotte, we certainly had some explosive residue left on us and the risk of running back down the tunnel was too great. So we opened the door and walked into the next room.

As we entered, some lights came on. Bright, colorful lights. Carnival music began to play. The room was huge, and the first thing we saw was a large, multi-colored banner: “Welcome to Deathworld!”

“All the effort he must’ve put into this place, and the guy can’t come up with anything better than Deathworld,” Roger muttered. “What a sad state of affairs.”

Two wooden poles held up the Deathworld banner. Each pole had an artificial corpse tied to it, the arms stretched out like scarecrows, the throats slit and the eye sockets hollow. There was a small yellow Post-It note attached to one of them.

I pulled it off and read it out loud to Roger: “ Replace with the real thing.”

“I don’t think it’s fair to make us beta test this place,” said Roger. “We should file a complaint and ask to be let go.”

“Hey, if we see them around, it’s worth a shot.”

We walked under the banner and into the main part of the carnival. It consisted of one sawdust path, with exhibits on each side of it. In the center of the path stood a life-sized plastic clown with oversized shoes, a purple and pink wig, and a big red nose. The clown was holding a wooden sign that said “Press My Nose!”

“I don’t want to press its nose,” said Roger.

“I think we probably should press its nose,” I remarked. “It’s all part of the game. Otherwise, we won’t be able to get out.”

“Make you a deal,” said Roger. “You press the nose and I’ll tell you what a good job you did.”

There wasn’t time to argue. I pressed the nose.

“Good job,” said Roger, patting me on the back.

The clown’s eyes lit up, and it let out a loud giggle as its head began to turn back and forth. “Hi there, kids!” said the clown in an incredibly annoying, high-pitched voice. “Welcome to Deathworld! I’m sure you’ll have lots of fun if you follow a few simple rules. Rule number one: Don’t litter! If you lose an arm or a leg or a head, pick it up and take it with you…leave Deathworld as beautiful as you found it!”

“I hate clowns,” said Roger.

“Rule number two: No outside food or drink! You don’t want to pass up our brain burgers, esophagus dogs, or blood shakes, now in type A negative! Rule number three: Watch your step, because at any moment you could…” The clown’s head began to spin around three hundred and sixty degrees, and its voice transformed into a low demonic roar. “…DIE DIE DIE DIIIIIE!”

It laughed hysterically for about ten seconds, and then its head stopped spinning and its voice returned to normal. “If you ever want to leave, you’ll have to get the four keys! Win them! Find them! Sniff ‘em out! Have fun! Bleed well!”

The light in the clown’s eyes went out and it stopped moving. I almost chopped its head off with the machete, but gratuitous destruction just seemed wrong. We started down the sawdust path.

To the left, a mechanical skeleton fired at a shooting gallery consisting of mechanical puppies and kittens. If I saw a Post-It on that one, I was going to be seriously outraged.

Suddenly the skeleton swiveled 180 degrees and fired with machine-gun rapidity as Roger and I ducked out of the way. After a moment, the skeleton swiveled back around and resumed shooting at the gallery.

On the other side, there was another artificial-I think-corpse resting in the seat above a dunking booth. A sign read “ Dunk The Stiff And Win A Key! ” But it wasn’t really a dunking booth…rather than water, the aquarium under the corpse was filled with spikes.

I assumed that corpse would be replaced with the real thing, too. And then I had a horrible thought. What if the actual keys weren’t part of the exhibits yet?

Well, not worth worrying about until I found out for sure. Boards covered with needles to discourage cheating surrounded the area ten feet around the target. I picked up a baseball-sized squishy eyeball from the bucket next to the sign, leaving two more inside. “You want to try or should I?” I asked.

“You go first,” said Roger.

I took aim, and then threw the eyeball as hard as I could. It splattered against the aquarium, missing the target by a good three feet.

Roger picked up the second eyeball, spent a ridiculously long moment planning out the perfect angle at which to throw, and then hurled it. It hit almost exactly where mine had.

“Stop distracting me,” said Roger, taking the last one.

He threw the eyeball…and almost hit the target, but not quite. Appalling fake eyeball goo slid down the wooden display.

“Are we allowed to cheat?” asked Roger.

“I don’t see why not.”

He picked up the bucket and threw it, striking the target. The corpse fell onto the spikes and practically exploded into an outrageously disgusting display of reds and yellows that made me think it had been filled with water balloons.

There was a sound like a cash register opening, and then a small golden key dropped into a slot where the bucket had been.

“Wasn’t so hard,” Roger said.

We walked past a slow-moving carousel with a black canopy. Mechanical children were on the fire-breathing horses, their bodies shriveled and covered with cobwebs, and their echoing laughter sounding through a pair of speakers.

Next up was a Test-Your-Strength game. At the top of the pole rested a severed head. Maybe fake. A strong enough hit upon the plate would send a dagger sailing upward into the head’s mouth. On the pole, the mallet hits were ranked as Goner, Dead Meat, Cooked Goose, Shit Out Of Luck, and Potential Survivor (But Probably Not).

“Time to cheat again,” I said. Roger nodded, and on the count of three we both jumped into the air as high as we could and came down upon the metal plate with both feet, sending the dagger all the way to the top and ringing a bell. Another golden key dropped into a slot down by the plate.

“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.