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“We are taking this secret to our graves,” Shane hissed through gritted teeth. “I swear –”
He was cut off by a loud bang and bone-chilling shriek. A bright light flashed, illuminating the interior of the massive warehouse that had been redecorated to look like some psycho butcher’s shop, with hopefully fake body parts lying around and vats of a suspicious red liquid that better not be actual fucking blood stacked on top of the tables. It was pure nightmare fuel.
Shane yelped and jumped back, clasping Ilya’s hand in his like a lifeline. No one could ever know how terrified they were of a children’s haunted house.
“To our graves!” Shane repeated in a squeak.
“Might not be a long trip,” Ilya muttered, equally frightened.
From a dark corner of the room, a man in a mask that looked like it was made out of human skin leaped out at them.
“GOT YOU!” Human-Skin-Mask-Man yelled. He was in a leather smock spattered with guts and gore and he whipped out an honest-to-god chainsaw, like a character from whatever that one horror movie was. The one where all those kids got butchered and there was a chainsaw. Fuck, what was it called? Shane could barely think straight. His entire brain was overtaken by terror.
Ilya cocked his fist back like he was about to punch chainsaw guy, who, in the part of Shane’s mind that hadn’t been turned into a quaking puddle of fear, he recognized was just an actor. Shane grabbed his boyfriend’s elbow before Ilya could commit assault and hauled ass out of the cannibal butcher den.
Shane’s brain unhelpfully supplied the name of the movie – Texas Chainsaw Massacre, duh – as the door swung shut behind him, muffling the revving of the very real chainsaw they had just been accosted with. He pulled Ilya along behind him, sprinting out of the building and into some kind of corn maze.
They kept running for about a minute, only pausing to catch their breath when Shane felt like he was going to throw up so hard his vital organs might not stay in his body. He suspected the churning in his stomach was both from fear and from having just run faster than he ever had in his entire life.
It was pitch black outside, and the rows of corn were tall, stretching above even Ilya’s stupidly gargantuan frame. They were lost, and wouldn’t be able to find their way out by sight.
Oh, so you’re going to be annoyingly tall except for when it would actually be useful, Shane thought in a moment of panic and pettiness.
The inside of Shane’s head was totally occupied by a blaring siren of anxiety. All thoughts had vacated the premises. He heard what might have been a witch cackle somewhere in the maze, somewhere not nearly far enough away. He jumped, and Ilya stepped back, tripping over a rock on the ground and landing on his ass. Shane glared down at him.
“Let’s go to a haunted house, Shane,” Shane whispered harshly, imitating Ilya’s Russian accent in a mocking tone. “Is for charity! It will be fun, Shane. It’s not like we’ll get lost in a creepy warehouse and then get out and then get lost again in a corn maze where no one will find our bodies!”
“It is for charity! Everyone likes charity!” Ilya argued sheepishly.
Ilya’s friend Harris had suggested the haunted house actually. Screamville was a local favorite, and if you believed the advertising, the most delightfully fright-filled haunted attraction in Ottawa. Shane certainly wasn’t going to disagree with that, except for the part about it being delightful. Shane was feeling a lot of things right now, and delight wasn’t one of them.
Being from the city, Shane had taken a lot of pains to avoid patronizing Screamville when he was growing up. Weirdly, he had never thought that getting the living shit scared out of him by strangers in dark rooms in an abandoned factory sounded pleasant. It was difficult always being right about literally everything.
But Harris had really sold this place to Ilya – “All the proceeds go to the Ottawa Children’s Hospital. Some of my friends are actors there, it’s the best!” – and Ilya had then bullied Shane into going with a prolonged campaign of teasing and sexual favors.
That morning, Ilya had woken Shane up with a blowjob, which Shane realized now had been a pre-meditated and cunning strategy to get into his good graces. After he’d finished, Ilya had kissed his way up Shane’s stomach and chest, nuzzling into Shane’s neck.
“Want to do something else that will make you scream?” Ilya had asked, nipping at Shane’s ear.
“Give me a few minutes,” Shane had answered, clumsily swiping a hand through Ilya’s hair. It always took him a little while to regain his fine motor skills.
Ilya had laughed and said, “No, pervert. The haunted house. Let’s go.”
Shane had been about to respond with an emphatic “no” when Ilya had added, “Is okay if you are too afraid. What is the saying, you are a scary cat?”
“It’s scaredy-cat,” Shane corrected. “And no way. You wouldn’t make it through the first five minutes without screaming.”
“You’ll definitely scream more than me,” Ilya said, oh-so-sure of himself. And that was a challenge from his shithead boyfriend Shane couldn’t ignore.
“You’re on.”
And now they were standing in the heart of the world’s most terrifying corn maze because Ilya was an idiot who was also really good at giving head. Shane scowled down at him.
“I’m going to kill you,” Shane informed him. They had been wandering through this nightmarish hellscape for close to an hour and had both screamed so much Shane could feel his vocal cords going raw.
A blood-curdling wail ripped through the air. Shane and Ilya both started.
“Get in line,” Ilya said, trying and failing to school some of his usual nonchalance back into his voice.
“I told you it was scary! You never listen! We could have just donated money to the children’s hospital and not been traumatized by –” Shane’s rant was interrupted off by a large man in a ripped-up plaid shirt and a werewolf mask barreling through the stalks of corn, charging right at them with fangs and claws bared.
“HRRRRRRWRRRWRRR!!!!”
Ilya shouted a litany of swear words in Russian. He popped up and threw Shane over his shoulder like a rag doll.
It took Shane a minute to regain his wits enough to resume being mad at Ilya.
“Put me down, asshole,” Shane smacked at Ilya’s back until he slowed down and returned him to the ground.
Ilya was twitchy, looking back over his shoulder to make sure the werewolf hadn’t followed them.
“Well.” Shane tried not to let the sight of a visibly nervous Ilya Rozanov freak him out too much. So much for his unflappable boyfriend being a pillar of strength at the horror attraction that was marketed as Fun for the whole family. Also, what type of batshit insane family would willingly come here?
“How the fuck was I supposed to know it would be like this?” Ilya, back to being annoying, put his hands on his hips.
“Because I told you!” Shane mirrored his posture.
“Sorry for wanting to try something new! I wanted to enjoy the local culture!”
“Ilya!”
“Fine,” Ilya grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest like a toddler being put in time out. “I was wrong about the haunted house.”
“Good,” Shane said, grinning smugly. He had almost completely forgotten his all-consuming terror.
“But – ” Ilya began to say.
“No,” Shane said. “No ‘buts.’ Just stand there and be wrong.”
At that moment, a horde of zombies stumble-ran into the little clearing where he and Ilya had paused. They were groaning and covered in stage make-up that made it seem like they had just wandered out of a morgue somewhere. One of them was wearing some type of special-effects wig so that his skull looked like it had been sawed in half and his brain was oozing out.
“Fuck!” Ilya and Shane spat out in unison and took off in the other direction, ducking off the path and barreling directly through the corn. Shane felt dry husks crunch under his feet as he bolted. He held Ilya’s hand in a death grip, his knuckles turning white and his palm sweating.
Finally, they reached the edge of the corn maze. The stalks thinned out and they found themselves outside a decrepit barn. The wind was howling, and a door somewhere was grinding on rusty hinges. Someone started screeching maniacally inside. A chill went down Shane’s spine.
In a voice that sounded like death itself: “Welcome, boys. I’ve been waiting for you.”
Shane turned to Ilya.
“You know, I was wondering where nightmares came from,” he said. “Glad to know they’re made in a barn in Ottawa.”
Ilya squared his shoulders like he was trying to salvage any dignity he still had left after almost pissing himself earlier.
“This must be the end. There is a sign.” Ilya pointed to a partially hidden exit sign on the other side of the barn.
Shane suddenly remembered what this was. The finale was Twisty the Clown. There was some whole stupid backstory he recalled his high school classmates talking about: Twisty was both a deranged clown and a serial killer who kept escaping from an asylum, so really the worst possible combination of things. Shane fucking hated clowns.
“No fucking way,” he breathed as Ilya tugged him forward and into the barn.
The inside was 50 percent carnival, 50 percent insane asylum, 100 percent hell on earth. At first, Twisty was writhing inside a cell, tied to an exam table and struggling against restraints. A moment later the dim bulb hanging from the ceiling went out and everything was silent except for loud sound effects of clanking and shrieking.
The lightbulb flickered back on, this time glowing red, and Twisty was right in front of them, free from the cell. They must have used a body double because there was no human way he could have run that fast. The clown waved a bloody carving knife in the air, lunging at them. Shane squealed and launched himself into Ilya’s arms.
And this was the fucking moment Ilya chose to be rational.
“It’s a clown,” he observed neutrally. Totally unbothered. As if he were watching a fucking nature documentary.
Shane tightened his grip around Ilya’s neck and tried not to hyperventilate. Ilya started laughing. They were about to get chopped into pieces by an insane clown, and Ilya was laughing.
“Relax, Hollander,” Ilya said, dissolving into high-pitched giggles. “You did not say there would be clowns here. Who is afraid of clowns?”
Me, Shane thought desperately. Anyone who doesn’t want to be murdered in a barn and/or insane asylum.
Twisty, whose face was painted into a garish sneer that Shane would have no trouble seeing every time he closed his eyes for the rest of forever, frowned.
“Clowns are scary,” Twisty said defensively. Shane, from the vantage point of his boyfriend’s arms, realized Twisty was maybe a full foot shorter than Ilya. Twisty was also a she.
Twisty crossed her arms, still holding the carving knife. “Twisty is easily the scariest thing here.”
Ilya’s whole upper body was shaking with laughter. He put Shane down to avoid dropping him. “Is a fucking clown,” he choked out, doubling over in giggles. “How can you be terrified of this, Hollander?”
“Fuck you, Ilya,” Shane said, pushing his shoulder. “Clowns are scary. Literally everyone thinks that.”
“Exactly!” Twisty stood next to Shane, very clearly taking his side. Shane made eye contact with her, then flinched when he realized she was wearing contacts that turned her eyes blood red.
Twisty’s body double – a tall, thin guy – cut in from behind the bars of the cell. The voice was the same deep one that had called to them outside, but it was normal now. “Last week we scared some guy so bad he passed out from fear! He hit his head and everything! We had to have a medic come look at him.”
All three of them ganged up on Ilya, who was now wiping tears out of his eyes.
“Okay, okay, clowns are very scary,” Ilya said in a condescending voice, raising his hands in a placating gesture. “I am so scared.”
Twisty #2 glanced between Ilya and Shane. “This guy your boyfriend?”
Shane narrowed his eyes. “Not for much longer.”
“So I can carve him up?” Twisty #2 flipped the knife in his hand and brandished it at Ilya.
“You can certainly try,” Ilya said, and then winked at the homicidal, knife-wielding clown. Fucking winked at him.
“He looks like a screamer,” Twisty #1 chimed in.
“We already talked about this today,” Ilya complained. “Shane is the screamer.”
“Am not!” Shane said indignantly.
Twisty #2 looked Shane up and down appreciatively. “I might consider not cutting him into bits if you give me your number,” he said.
“Aren’t you working?” Shane asked.
“Yeah, but you’re the one who’s working it. If you get what I'm saying.”
Ilya snorted in annoyance. Shane, now even more uncomfortable than when he had first entered the murderous clown lair, took a step away from Twisty #2 and toward Ilya, who had stopped laughing and slid a possessive arm around Shane’s waist.
“No thanks. I’m already dating a clown,” Shane said.
“Ouch,” Ilya said.
And with that, Shane turned and yanked his boyfriend out of the barn.
As they jogged to the parking lot – definitely not out of fear – Shane made a promise to himself that he would never, ever say yes to any other dumb thing Ilya asked for after a morning blowjob.
Fuck this, he thought.
Shane knew there was no way the promise would last more than a week, and was pleasantly surprised when he made it a whole five days before agreeing to couple’s laser tag.
At least there weren’t any clowns.