Chapter 8

The fog machine coughed its last, thick, pearlescent breath into the damp evening air, dissolving into nothingness as the crew began to dismantle the artificial nightmare we had spent three days constructing. My boots were stuck in the mud, a perfect metaphor for the feeling still trapped in my chest, heavy and suffocating. We had just survived the maze. We had just survived the performance. But the real terror, the delicious, paralyzing kind, had only just begun. The stage lights, those harsh, unforgiving halogens that had blinded us for hours, clicked off one by one, plunging the set into a twilight gloom. The actors, still in their sweat-soaked costumes, began to peel off their masks, shedding their roles like snakes shedding skin. I was no longer just the terrified victim in the white dress; I was baby girl again, the woman who had let a man twice her age look at her with such hungry, possessive adoration that I thought my skin might tear. He was standing near the edge of the set, leaning against the wooden prop wall that had served as the backdrop for my screams. He wasn’t wearing his full costume anymore, just the black vest and