Bri
Oh shit, he hated zombies, he hated Halloween—when he said he refused to celebrate it I thought he’d been kidding but no… he was literally the grinch of Halloween, one time I bought candy corn and he screamed. SCREAMED because it reminded him of childhood trauma, apparently there was a candy corn pit he got stuck, he claims he had to eat his way out—I’m sure it was a fabrication but still.
He wasn’t a fan.
He had a terrifyingly traumatic story for every October 31st.
Trapped in a candy corn pit was nothing close to the year after when he was forced to play Capitan Hook in the Halloween play and his hook got caught on the rope, sending him backward from the ship into the crowd while his pants fell down. He’d been wearing loose boxers with cats on them.
A gift from his grandma, he claims it was laundry day, I still think he had an affinity for calicos.
Ace jumped next to me, nearly knocking me careening into a cement wall. “Sorry, I thought I saw another zombie.”
“They’re everywhere, but the stage makeup has them blending in really well with the walls.”
Each wall down the giant hallway was a different color, Pink, Green, Blue, and next to each wall was a gloriously dressed Zombie walking and stumbling against said wall with the same color of paint dripping down the front of their faces, and down their chin onto the ground like blood, except when it hit the ground it turned red.
“N-neat trick.” Ace clapped twice, on the third attempt he missed his hands altogether.
I grabbed them. “Stop, you’re embarrassing yourself, not to mention me.”
“They’re not real.” He scoffed in fake bravado as we kept walking down the hall to the room at the end that said.
“Office Hell.”
I tilted my head. “Kind of makes you wonder if they based this off of Dustin’s life, right?”
Ace snorted. “His life is Hell, he’s related to Max, I’m sure the office is what some would call Heaven, the only place he has his own small little corner office and a sad little coffee machine with bright buttons.”
“He’s a sucker for those coffee machines.”
“Do not get him started on going past the thirteenth floor.”
I winced. “Yeah, he almost broke out the company cheer.”
“They change it every year.” Ace sighed like he’d already given up on life but at least he wasn’t freaking out and screaming despite the fact that a very terrifying looking zombie in a ripped black suit, a red tie, and dangling black glasses stood in front of the door growling at us.
His hair was bright green and part of his face looked like it was missing, he snatched his teeth in our direction making even me jump backward. “I don’t like this one.”
“I don’t like any of them.” Ace pointed out, “But this one has… talents, you know the creepiest part about zombies? Why are they scarier than vampires?”
I squeezed my eyes shut and grabbed Ace’s elbow. “No, but I’m pretty sure you’re about to tell me.”
He pulled me close as we neared the door and the creepy office zombie. I could feel his heat through his shirt. He’d always been warm, not too warm, comforting, solid, strong. I shuddered.
Ace moved away, then gripped my hand and tugged me close. “Zombies have flat teeth, that means they have to gnaw and rip into things until their teeth can cut it, so the torture would be prolonged. Vampires, at least, have fangs, so they just rip into things and get it over with, much like a shark. Imagine what’s more terrifying, a hippo or a shark?”
I smacked him on the back of the head. “You know how I feel about hippos, so why would you compare zombies to them and scare me even more?”
“FLAT TEETH!” Ace just had to say again and open his mouth as if I needed proof that humans turned zombies did, in fact have flat teeth.
I shoved him, then pulled him back again. “Whatever, let’s just get past the creepy office zombie and solve whatever puzzles in that room and escape.”
“Done.”
“Rooooooom?” Office zombie cackled. “Enter at your own riskkkkkkkkk.”
I don’t know why, but I gave him a slight head nod while Ace held out his free hand like he was about to shake it, then took it away and cursed at himself. We both sidestepped the zombie when he whispered beneath his breath. “Beware the purple stapler.”
The door creaked open the minute he said it and we were instantly blanketed in utter darkness until the door closed, then all we had were black lights that made me feel like I was about to go clubbing on the wrong side of town without any alcohol to numb the trauma of getting glue on my heels and having to wait in line for two hours just to pee.
Ace whistled. “At least we don’t have any zombies in here?”
“You do realize we’re locked in this room, right?”
“Ah, memories… remember when you locked me in the closet until I—“
“--Seriously? You’re still mad I locked you in the closet for ten minutes?”
“It was twenty!” Ace stabbed a finger in my direction. “And you don’t just lock your boyfriend in a closet because he keeps trying to see what you’re about to put on underneath your dress, it’s not my fault I saw the bags and knew you had lingerie, I just wanted a sneak peek.”
I grinned over at him. “And I just wanted the torture to last a bit longer.”
“Shit.” He hung his head back and sighed, staring up at the ceiling, how was a person’s throat even pretty? “I was tortured the first minute I touched you, still under the same intoxicating spell.”
My head shot up, eyes locking on his. “What was that?”
“Puzzles. I hate them.” He seemed to mean something else, right? Was he talking about the room or me? “I hate what I can’t figure out, interest only lasts so long until frustration kicks in, anger, then finally, a broken heart, I think a little resentment tends to sneak in too, but what would I know? I don’t do puzzles.”
Was I a puzzle to him?
“Yes;” he answered without me even asking it out loud. “You’re the biggest puzzle of all time, one I still can’t solve, though part of me doesn’t want to. If I find solutions or answers to my questions, does that mean you simply leave? Do I? The risk and reward, they don’t balance out, do they? Because when doing a puzzle, you need two participants. You need the puzzle itself and you need the person willing to solve it—but what happens when it can’t be solved? The person gives up and the puzzle still has questions with no answers. Depressing, to say the very least.”
I was too stunned to speak. Why were my eyes filling up with tears? And why did he seem so sad that I still had questions, why did he allude to wanting to have answers even though he had none?
“So…” Ace rubbed his hands together while I opened my mouth to ask him what he really meant. “The purple stapler, let’s find that first. He said beware, so I’m assuming there’s a clue somewhere by it, don’t pick it up, just search around it.”
I cleared my throat and walked away from him in search of the stapler. A messy desk was in the corner, a broken coffee maker on top of it with tons of files that said urgent and then, next to that, a broken pencil. Hmmm. I kept walking along the side of the room when I saw a Chinese takeout menu, it had several items circled on it along with the price and total at the bottom.
“Nineteen eighty-seven.” I said it out loud and something clicked inside the desk as it opened.
“Whoa!” Ace rushed over. “Okay, so you said the clue out loud. That means we have to talk through the clues to find out how to escape, nineteen eighty-seven.” He frowned. “I mean, I could be wrong, but I think that’s when Max’s grandpa founded his third hotel in New York.”
“Manhattan?” I asked out loud.
Another lock sounded as the desk opened again, revealing a purple stapler and a picture of Max and his family. A beautiful elderly lady was circled in the photo with the number 2.
I sighed. “I really should have read up on his family before taking this job.”
“Yes.” Ace said in a bored tone. “Because all employees should know the history of the crazy one who hired them right down to his birthday and preference on cake, it’s carrot by the way, don’t ask.”
“Carrot cake? Really? Out of all the cakes?”
“Bro’s a legend for a reason.” He looked over my shoulder, put a hand on my hip, and leaned even further to look at the stapler. “They said beware.”
I couldn’t think.
All I had was Ace’s giant palm on my hip and a stapler that may or may not kill us staring up at me.
“Two.” Ace repeated, his breath on my neck. Was he doing this on purpose? I shivered and tried to focus. “And her face is circled, and we have a purple stapler. I’ve got nothing.”
“Two.” My voice was a hoarse whisper. “Was she second in charge? Maybe they have names on the back of the photo? Most old photos do.”
“Good idea.” He grabbed the frame and opened it, then turned over the old picture and sure enough, at number two was her name: Edith H. Emory the Second.
Ace handed me the picture, our fingers grazed, he paused, his eyes darted to my mouth before looking back at the wall. “A stapler. Well, if I was just going off the stapler, there was this rumor.”
“Rumor?”
“Yeah, like a story people tell when you get hired on to explain just how insane the family actually is.”
“Like people need an explanation. It’s evident on the daily, but continue… I’m intrigued now.” I yawned, afraid to check to the timer on the wall, we would probably lose but at least I’d get a good story and alone time with him.
Why did it matter?
And why was I suddenly wanting to be closer to him? I wanted him to laugh, to be the same man he was before I broke him. He always used to laugh easily, wasn’t cynical, and never cared what people thought.
This version of Ace was restrained.
Angry.
Bossy.
Cocky.
Resentful.
I sighed and shook all the thoughts away. This wasn’t about us, it was about my student loans and about getting out of this escape room with him unscathed.
I needed to seriously stop traveling down memory lane every single time he touched me or seemed like he wanted to talk about the past.
The past belonged exactly where it was—it was too pailful to bring up and I was too much of a chicken to admit that I was at fault for so many of the things that went wrong during that time.
Fear does that to a person, it chokes you and then convinces you the only way you’ll be able to breathe again is to believe the lie it tells you, at first it’s incredible because you can inhale, exhale, until you realize it’s been poison all along and nothing was ever solved, no, the fear just dug you deeper into the darkness and laughed while you smiled over the lie of being rescued.
Yeah, I knew fear well.
“This is bullshit.” Ace groaned. “We need a hint, something, anything.”
A knock sounded at the door and then a piece of paper slide underneath the ASME door.
Ace walked over and grabbed it and brought it back to me, we read it together.
“Do the Macarana—correctly—and we’ll give you a hint.”
“Double shit!” Ace groaned. “I did that when I was like seven, I barely remember it.”
“I know it.” I shouted, he stumbled back. “What?”
“You yelled it like an inch from my face!”
“Sorry! I got excited.”
“Clearly.”
“Okay, so we start like this, hands down, then up, then across the body, then behind the head, hips, oh, oh, oh, oh! Then your ass and you do like this little hip circle and go to the right!”
Ace stared me down, his expression unreadable. “Will you also be humming during this demonstration?”
“No. You will.”
“I don’t speak Spanish.”
I snorted. “You barely speak English, color me shocked. Now just hum! Like dun dun dun dun dun dun Macarena, dun dun dun—“ I stopped when he started laughing behind his hand. “What?”
“I thought you said Dung.”
“Are you five?”
“I think even five-year-olds have graduated to shit by that point.”
I lifted my hand to smack him, then faced the door. “Come on, we have to go fast, we need that clue!”
Ace let out a sigh. “Fine. Dung, dung, dung, dung,” He really was said dung not dun.
We made it shakily through the chorus and, thank God, received another note underneath the door.
I snatched it and ran over to Ace.
“Beware the stapler, number two used several…”
Ace frowned. “Doesn’t everyone use several staples?”
I thought about it. “I think I use one, unless I’m pissed, then I double it and then get pissed it’s a double, then pull them out, then do one again, is that five?”
“Four.”
I waved him off. “Okay, so I think we need to grab the stapler, it said beware, not that we couldn’t grab it.”
Ace looked at the clock above the door. We had five minutes left. Running his hands through his thick dark hair, he sighed out a. “Okay.”
I moved in front of him and reached for the purple stapler, it didn’t budge right away. Ace moved behind me and helped me jerk it off the table, with a thud we fell backward stapler in hand when a sudden crack sounded in the ceiling above us and a giant replica of the woman in the photo dropped down with rage in her eyes, she was also holding a stapler and blood dripped from her mouth.
“SON OF A BITCH!” Ace shouted. “Run!”
“THE DOOR’S LOCKED!” I yelled back, scrambling to my feet.
“Staple!” He grabbed the stapler from my hands and held it out in front of us and started stapling the air. “Be gone witch!”
“What the hell are you doing?”
“She used multiple staples!” He yelled. “I’m stapling her to death! What does it look like I’m doing?”
“Going crazy!”
I hid behind him as he finally pulled open the stapler and pressed it against her chest, she jerked back and flew into the ceiling while the door unlocked behind us.
We both scrambled out and ran down the hall, more zombies tried to pass us while Ace waved the stapler around in front of me.
What happened next really couldn’t be planned, not by a long shot, just as he reached the exit he slipped and fell backwards, the stapler went flying toward my face.
Next thing I knew, I heard a crunch, felt a bit of blood, and was staring up at Max, Dustin, Ace, and some random EMT who was holding out three fingers. “How many?”
I tried to widen my eyes and only got out. “Three staples.”
Max’s reaction. “Oh thank God, she’s fine most of my employees count with staples and paperclips, it’s healthy company culture.”
“She has a concussion,” the EMT said while my head pounded.
“…accident!” Ace said.
“Accident my ass, you must always know where to point the stapler! Do you know why she’s part of the escape room? Because nobody escaped the room when she had a psychotic break and ended up stapling her bosses hand to a few documents, she painted it purple, nobody messed with her again, and every time someone stapled, people broke out in hives, people had to take mental health days, it’s why we don’t allow colored paperclips, the triggers are too raw.”
Someone cursed.
I couldn’t tell if it was Ace or Dustin or Max or my head making up things. I tried too it up.
“No, no,” Ace pulled me against his strong chest. “If she has a concussion, someone needs to check on her.”
There was silence.
Two seconds of it? Maybe three?
Max’s voice sounded next. “Why yes, someone really should.”
My eyes fluttered closed after that, it was peaceful, wonderful, until something slapped me across the face.
I jerked awake in Ace’s lap, he grinned down at me. “Sorry, thought you were dead.”