365 # 102: Wade B.

Halloween 1993. Perhaps not the day precisely, but the time of year and the state of mind. You and I were going around to all the local haunted houses to see if we could find any that could deliver enough concentrated scare to make us really feel alive. We'd been to a couple of lame ones already that night, but we'd heard good things about another that wasn't far from our neighborhood, so we decided to give it a try.

It was just a house on an otherwise empty lot. Standing in line outside, we could hear strains of Metallica and Megadeth coming from near the entrance. We agreed that this boded well, though what logic we were applying exactly, I couldn't tell you now. People emerged from the other end of the house, some of them laughing, some disturbed, but none complaining. This too seemed to bode well.

You and I went in together. The entrance was fairly standard, utter darkness on all sides until some monster or some such jumped out at us. I don't remember every twist and turn, but I do remember at one point, you and I were chased down a hallway until we ended up in a tiny room from which there appeared to be no exit. The door through which we had entered closed behind us, and no others were apparent. A chainsaw whirred to life, and next thing we know, we're trapped in this room with two dudes waving chainsaws in our faces. After a few seconds of this, an unseen hand pulled a curtain aside to reveal an exit where moments ago there had been a wall. I ran through and found myself in a hallway, but behind me, I could still hear the chainsaws buzzing and you screaming. Like a little girl. "Oh shit," I thought, my imagination kicking into supreme overdrive. "They're really gonna kill him. They must kill somebody for real every night in this fucking place, and tonight it's gonna be Wade!"

I ran back to the room to find that, in fact, you were not being killed. Rather, your pant leg had gotten caught on a piece of chain link fence that was used as part of the wall, and unable to get away from the twin Leatherfaces, you panicked.

Finally, one of the chainsaw bearers set down his weapon, pulled his mask aside, and unattached your pants from the fencing, but not without giving you shit for having freaked out. But fuck that guy and and his stupid judgment passing, Wade, because chainsaws are fucking scary.

Once he had you all detached, he pulled his mask back on. The four of us looked at each other and decided that we'd better get back into the roles we were all supposed to play in this particular setting, they as the scarers and we as the scarees. They revved their chainsaws and we ran.

Happy Halloween.