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The Haunted House (conclusion)

He tried to clear his throat to say something else but the cleanup hitter, Michael, stepped forward from the group and asked, "Got you? If you like, babe…"

"Dude, what the fuck?! It's me, Jason." Possibilities whirled through his head from hallucinogens in the air to somehow hitting his head and passing out.

Through the doorway after the rest of the teammates, stepped Jason's identical twin, who asked, "Someone call me?"

Grinning widely, Michael pointed right at Jason and looked to this new Jason as he said, "Dude, I think this chick is acting like she's you."

As he approached, this new Jason loomed over him. His muscles looked grotesquely large and his height had to be over seven feet tall, like a distorted visage in a funhouse mirror. Heart pounding, Jason felt smaller than he should've. The room swelled on all sides. Looking down, he didn't see any differences.

The new Jason flashed a bit of teeth. They were sharper than normal. His voice shook through Jason as he said, "With boobs like that? Gotta be shitting me."

Even with another, longer check, Jason's chest looked and felt the same as always. He glared at the massive presence of the other him. Taking a breath, he rocked his head and announced as coolly as he could manage, "This isn't real. None of you are real. This is just some crazy gas or something."

Leaning forward suddenly, the other Jason's breath blazed like flame. His teeth came to razor-glinting triangular points. "We'll see how real!" He picked up Jason and thrashed him around in the air as he laughed. No amount of fighting would break his grip. It wasn't so tight that it hurt, nor was it difficult to breathe, but it locked him in place against this Jason's bulging muscles.

With his knee, Jason felt a rigid swelling in the other Jason's groin. Panic finally broke through him. He kneed this hulking figure wherever he could, but its body responded like warm taffy.

Watching in horror, the rest of the team swelled around him. They bulged like they were on steroids. But their bodies didn't stop there. They split into smaller bits like dense hairs. Only the hair was rod-like and with an unsettling texture. Jason's breath caught.

He punched back as the other Jason's body became the same way. Clenching his eyes tight, Jason roared in the darkness.

A wash of sticky heat made him suddenly shiver. The faintest whimper, barely known to him, squeaked out.

And that seemed to appease the outside forces. In his next breath, the pressure was gone, especially from behind. Panting, he slowly opened his eyes. He was somehow now in his bedroom.

His heart still beating on his ears, he felt around for anything amiss and paused on his strangely-smooth cheek and arms. Otherwise, his body was the same.

Leaning against his bed with his polished arm for support, he almost had a moment to take a breath before a raw, sudden burning sensation passed through his palm. He tried to pull his hand away from the bed, but it was stuck there like it was a part of it. He yanked back, leaning away.

"Let go of me! Let go!" His words screeched in a higher tone, but he was focused solely on his hand.

A sound like swarming locusts swirled through the bed. In his throbbing ears, it was like a buzzsaw tracing a phantom path just out of sight. And it was nearing where his hand was trapped. Fighting back a rising scream, Jason yanked his hand with all the force in his muscular body.

With a wet crunch, he flew back from the bed and landed roughly on the floor. Panting, his eyes darted over to check his hand. Inhaling stagnant air, he saw nothing but a raw, pink stump where his hand should've been.

His remaining hand clutched the uneven lump, searching for something, anything. Fragments of small bones crunched with piercing pain. Panting, Jason tried to breathe and rationalize. He knew…he knew….he knew it had to be that none of this was real. He had to tell himself over and over inside his head that it was just something in the air, some sort of gas.

"Fucking hallucination…" He spoke the words first in his head and then aloud. They became his private mantra to ward off this horrible place.

Despite his will, a clawing fear screamed beside this harsh, angry resolution. It screamed that he would never play baseball again. It screamed at all the nightmares of what his life would be like if his hand had been destroyed from the wrist down.

His will answered back that there would be the fucking lawsuit to end all lawsuits. Against the haunted house. Against the fair. Against whoever approved it. And their mothers too!

It didn't matter if this was real or not. He told himself that putting hallucinogens in this place was enough to get their asses carted off to prison for the rest of their days.

He took a cooling balm of relief in that knowledge and determination. He voiced his will, but his voice instead came out as a girlish tone higher than Carrie's. With the hand he had left, Jason cupped his mouth and panted in a high, feminine way.

"I've had enough of this shit! LET ME OUT!" He forced out his frail voice and looked around.

Near him and yet through the walls at the same time, the voice of the masked man called out. At first, it had a womanly presence…but then it turned deep and harsh. "Oh? Had enough?...Are you scared? You do remember what to say…right?"

Jason cussed the voice out and fumed, "I'm through playing any fucked up games! Your ass is getting sued!"

The voice drifted. It was calm and clear. "No game. No drugs, Jason. It's real."

Part of the bed slashed at his other arm like a tendril. His instinct was to put his arm up to steady himself. The slash went further and it hurt. It burned like his whole arm was on fire. He staggered and the sheets seized the rest of him.

Before he could find the voice to scream, he was lying flat on the bed. His legs were sinking into the cloth, melting into the pattern of the fabric. Clenching his eyes closed, he knew there wasn't much left of him.

"Jason. Do you need anything?"

Through eyes bleary with tears of exertion, Jason beheld his mother, Laurie, standing over him in her usual clothes. She brushed her hair over her ears with a wide smile and asked, "Did you have a scary dream?"

Panting and watching his mother's face for some transformation from her sweet visage to some untold terror, Jason realized he couldn't move. He broke his gaze on her face and stretched his head around.

With a deep thunder of terror, he realized the strange loss of his limbs was complete. He was helpless, completely helpless against anything. More than that, he felt like ice cream on a frying pan. Beyond the sickly sweat, he felt like his whole body was becoming a gooey lump.

He fidgeted but, leaning close, his mother touched her finger to his lips and said a soft, "Shhh…" Her smile remained as she added, "Don't worry…it's not a dream…and it's only begun." Her fingers split open with razor teeth.

Unable to do anything as the teeth gnawed his putty-like lips closed, Jason gave a girlish whimper and watched his mother break into fleshy, gnarled pieces. Slug-like creatures with masked faces and empty eyes slithered forth and encircled his body.

He could feel them everywhere, sliding inside and all over him. They pressed and pulled and tore. An old memory of a leech on his arm as a child burned inside of him and he cried out in high, muffled tones and, this time, his tears ran with unmitigated terror. They cloaked the details as they swarmed all over his claylike, pained body. But the throbbing nerves of his skin felt like a single, raw wound.

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They curled and circled like the blades of a mixer. Jason didn't blackout. He wished he could. Any denial was melting with him.

The creatures snapped him up from the bed and deposited him onto the carpet. Slowly, the pain wicked away to a dull throbbing. This mercy made Jason even more fearful because he knew it could only be a temporary respite.

But the creatures receded and left him standing on strange and uneasy feet. His eyes suddenly froze open like they were paralyzed. He could move, though stiffly. First, Jason looked down. As soon as he could process what he was seeing, the screams, still high, came.

His entire body was nude, bright pink, and female. Looking and moving as much as his altered joints would allow him, he saw what had happened. Breasts rivaling even Carrie's decent figure stretched out from him like the chest of a bubble-gum Barbie doll. His arms and hands were narrow and feminine, just like his legs. His hips and behind jutted out to the point of being grotesque. And, down in his groin, a simple vertical slice was the only sign that his gender was different from an actual doll's.

Glancing up from his whimpering examination, Jason looked to the mirror on the opposite wall. Seeing his reflected visage did nothing but heighten his fear. His face, though slim and feminine, was also twisted into a frozen scream. He looked at his pink, sculpted clay eyes, wide with horror.

As he sobbed through that open mouth, the slim, bone-white face of the masked man appeared on the edge of the mirror without the rest of his body. His round, jutting black gaze peered at Jason as he began to tremble.

After a moment of pause, the mask announced, in its more feminine tone, "You have proven you are not a sissy girl…haven't you? Farewell."

Part of the wall slipped down to reveal a black door with the white, glowing word of "EXIT" across the top.

Eyeing the door with as much fear as all the horrible things he'd encountered, Jason asked, unable to move his mouth or tongue all that much, "Will ah beh retored?"

The mask's answer, in its male tone, was, "No. As you are is forever….unless…"

"Anyhing…PREZE!"

This time, the mask loomed in the mirror and said, "You prove you are a sissy girl…and call for help at just a few silly little horrors of a silly haunted house…"

Jason's walls broke down. The room darkened. Eyes and charcoal claws reached out in all directions with dark whispers and cackles.

He sobbed through his twisted mouth and every bit of darkness seemed to loom around him. Fear raged and he made no effort to hold it back like he usually did. Deep down he knew he was as afraid as anyone. He was so scared, especially at the darkness, afraid of pain, afraid of being helpless, afraid of all these things in here. It overwhelmed him like a mounting tide.

Following his highest scream, he yelled, "HELP ME! PLEASE HELP ME! HELP ME!"

The darkness drank in the terror and then tossed what was left. Jason tumbled through a tunnel on its side and fell till he hit mossy grass.

He still faintly whimpered, "Help me…" until his words gave way to incoherent cries.

Looming over him, he could hear Carrie say, "Oh my God…Are you alright?"

Using all his strength, Jason staggered to his feet, ignoring the strange feedback his body gave him as he moved, and hugged Carrie tightly. He sobbed over and over against her, his pride drained. Somehow, between the sobs, he managed, "Oh…Carrie…oh God…"

Her hands lingered around Jason's unfamiliar shape as she asked, "How do you know my name?"

Jason's tear and sweat ravaged face bent to look at her with panic. Carrie winced, paused to think what to say, then her eyes widened. There was something about the girl who had burst out a side door of the haunted house near where she was standing, waiting for Jason to return.

It took another moment, but she soon clasped her mouth shut in a shadow of the same sense of panic. The drenched clothes, the eyes quivering, even something about the changed voice. It didn't make sense and yet she knew, as though some sinister, orchestrating hand was drawing out all the clues for her one by one.

Her mind rebelled. This girl, who was about her height with hair just like Jason's, could not possibly be her boyfriend. The girl's muscles looked as weak as hers. The girl's form jutted femininely while Jason's was broad and straight. Her breasts mashed against Carrie's as she clung to her, sobbing over and over with her words failing.

Despite that rebellion, Carrie reached a hand to the girl's cheek and brushed at a lock of her sweat-tangled hair. Even from the light touch, the girl seemed meekly terrified. She hid her face in Carrie's top and cried over and over. Carrie held her close and looked out at the haunted house in front of them.

The podium had been vacated. Carrie couldn't recall when, but the masked man went inside soon after Jason had. Nothing much had happened until the girl burst out.

As she watched, a section of the podium rotated open like a door. The sound startled the girl, who quickly squeaked out her fear and bolted behind Carrie's body. She clung to Carrie like a shield, her eyes barely peeking out from behind her.

The area of the podium exposed a white panel bearing the words, "Know you had a terrifying time. But the terror has only begun…" A second later, the revealed panel slammed closed and the lights all over the haunted house switched off, leaving the entire area dark and spookier.

The girl burst into a spasm of screams, each action even scarier to her than the last. Carrie felt a shiver over what she'd seen and clutched the girl's hands, which made her jump in surprise.

Touching her face reassuringly didn't help much either. The contact just startled her. Carrie guided her away from the haunted house. Each fearful footstep was like leading the girl over a creaking rope bridge about to break.

Some people paused and gazed at the two of them with concern and confusion. Carefully, Carrie told her she just wanted to check her pockets. Still, at the back of her mind, she tried to hold onto some hope that this wasn't really Jason and he would be returning to her soon.

Pulling the wallet out of the girl's pants pocket was more like pulling an organ from her body. She screamed bloody murder. Once Carrie had the wallet, the girl latched around her and sobbed again.

As best she could, Carrie sifted through the wallet. It was the same one Jason always carried. It even had a few of their carnival tickets still tucked in the side. She pulled out what was near the top, Jason's driver's license and a photo from their first date.

As she held them, a dark presence seemed to pass over. This time, the girl screamed. The name was scratched by an unseen hand and rewritten as "Marcie". The picture beside the name seemed to melt like a badly-developed photo till the girl's fear-twisted image was trapped inside.

The photo of their first date underwent a similar change. It melted, though it wasn't even warm to Carrie's touch. Her fingers trembled as she held it and watched "Marcie" appear not beside her, but clinging as tightly to her as she was now. The Carrie in the picture changed as well. The fear she felt right then seemed mirrored in the photo. And that wasn't all.

Like a quick over-exposure, the strange masked man appeared behind Carrie's right shoulder in the image. His latex glove looked more like a claw reaching out, blurry and stretched. His black eyes were unnaturally sharp. They loomed like worm-eaten holes.

Carrie glanced quickly over her right shoulder, dragging the screaming "Marcie" with her. She found nothing but the darkened exterior of the haunted house. Its blackness hung like those eyes, flattened and unmoving beside the dried-blood words, "Unforgettable Terror!"