Exceptional Do not play this game. The Three Kings Game by Brooke MacKenzie      Horror Writing Contest Contest Winner

Do not play this game. This is the disclaimer at the top of every Internet article written about the Three Kings Game. Just before they list step-by-step instructions and rules, they make sure to tell the reader to NEVER, EVER, EVER play this game. It's too dangerous. Unfortunately, the money was too good. "Hey, Beth, are you ready to work?" That's what my editor at The Muse Magazine always said when he had an article for me to write. Since becoming a freelance writer three years ago, I had been published in dozens of places. Of all of them, The Muse was my favorite. It explored the quirkier side of pop culture, often capitalizing on humanity's sense of morbid curiosity. We can't seem to help ourselves. The last article I wrote for them was about cremation jewelry: Turn your loved ones into diamonds and wear them forever. It went viral and briefly kicked off a trend. The idea made me sick to my stomach, but I loved the brief moment of Internet fame (and the paycheck) that had accompanied it. "At your service, Joe. What do you have for me?" "Someone sent in a YouTube video of a girl playing what is known as the Three Kings Game. Ever heard of it?" "Can't say I have." "Ok. Well, the basic premise is that, by following the steps of a ritual involving two chairs and a mirror at 3:33 a.m., you can summon evil spirits." "Ok...is that it?" "Yeah." "So, that begs the question: Why would anyone want to do something like that?" Joe chuckled. He was used to my questions. "Why does anyone do any of this stuff? Because they're curious. Because they want inarguable proof that the spirit realm exists. Because they haven't gotten laid in awhile." "Real nice, Joe." "Anyway, a girl made a YouTube video of herself playing the game. In the mirrors that she has set up, you can see some dark figures, and then you hear her scream before falling to the floor. And then you see a dark figure pass in front of the camera, as if it has come out of the mirror. If you listen carefully, you can hear...a strange noise." "A strange noise?" "Yeah...it can best be described as, uh, a giggle. Honestly, it's pretty freaky sounding. Then you hear her friend call her name, run into the room, and throw a bucket of water on her. The girl on the floor doesn't move, and the friend is looking around frantically. Then she looks into the camera and says, 'she's here, she's here. If you're watching this, it's too late for us.' And then the video goes dark." "So, what happened to them?" "Well, that's the thing. Everyone thinks it's just a run-of-the-mill, staged video designed for social media attention, but I happen to know that both of those girls are in the hospital. They're completely catatonic. Neither one has spoken since that night." "How did they post the video?" "Good question. No one knows. But one of their friends found them right after she watched the video. Luckily they had left the door unlocked. They were both unconscious, and the friend called 911." "Can you verify that this report of their condition is accurate?" I couldn't help but proudly flip my hair over my shoulder. I loved acting like a hardnosed journalist, even if it was for a puff piece. "Yes, actually." "By whom?" Joe exhaled audibly. I knew it wasn't going to be the head of neurology. "I spoke to an orderly who works at the hospital. He was able to confirm that the story was true." "Was he cleaning their bed pans?" I chuckled. Joe ignored me. "Alright, so would you like me to investigate this story? Do a little digging and find out more about the girls and what really happened that night?" "No." Once again, he exhaled audibly. I knew a big ask was coming. "I want you to play The Three Kings Game." *** When we hung up twenty minutes later, he had convinced me to write the story, and I had convinced him to pay me an extra fifty cents per word. If I played my cards right, and added the occasional unnecessary adjective, I would be able to make a big dent in this month's rent. I threw my comforter off, sending my phone and laptop sailing. I had taken this call in bed, just like I had taken all of my calls for the past few weeks. And meals. I would have taken my showers there too if I could. But then again, I couldn't remember the last time I had taken a shower. The nice thing about being a freelance writer is that showering and wearing pants are optional. I opened the door from my bedroom--which only fit a bed and a side table--to the rest of the apartment and noticed the difference in temperature and smell. I hadn't left my bedroom all morning, and the rest of my Manhattan one bedroom shoebox suddenly seemed enormous. I was also acutely aware that my bedroom had the distinct odor of feet. The bedroom door opened into a short, narrow hallway just across from my apartment door. The hallway led to my living room, a corner of which was taken up with what could technically be called a kitchen. It was what was known in New York City real estate as an "efficiency kitchen," which meant that the refrigerator was dorm-room sized, and the stove was essentially a glorified hot plate. I grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and saw the half-drunk bottle of chardonnay that had been last night's companion. "Well, it's after 12..." I uncorked it and took several hearty swallows, which I chased with a handful of popcorn. There, I thought. That should tide me over long enough to do some preliminary research. I changed into a fresh set of sweats--cringing a little as I pulled on my Yale sweatshirt, as I didn't feel worthy of it at that moment--and crawled back into bed. I pulled my laptop over the comforter and propped myself up on pillows. I Googled The Three Kings Game, chose one of the many posts about it, and after scrolling past multiple warnings about the game's dangers, I found the instructions: 1. Place a chair in the middle of a quiet, empty room, facing north. Place two more chairs opposite that chair, facing it. The first chair is the throne. The other two are the Queen and Fool chairs. 2. Place two large mirrors on the Queen and Fool chairs, and angle them so that they are both facing the throne and each other. The throne should be reflected in both mirrors. 3. Place a bucket of water and a mug in front of the throne. This is one fail-safe. 4. Place a fan behind the throne and turn it on. This is another fail-safe. 5. Go to your bedroom, put an unlit candle by the bed, set your alarm for 3:30am, and hold a power object--something from your childhood, such as a stuffed animal. This is a third fail-safe, and it will guide you back to your true self if something goes wrong. 6. When the alarm goes off at 3:30am, you have three minutes exactly to grab the candle and be seated, with the power object, in the throne. You must be seated by 3:33, or else you cannot proceed with the game. You also must make sure that the fan is still on. If everything is in order, light the candle. Look straight ahead into the darkness--no matter what, do not look at the mirrors. You are the King. You will not know which chair is for the Queen and which is for the Fool. You will be summoning entities from what is called the Shadowside. And, from their perspective, you will either be their Queen or their Fool--hence the name Three Kings. They will make their presence known to you by manifesting in the mirrors or speaking. At 4:34 a.m.--not a minute sooner--you can blow out the candle and the game will end. Well. This all seemed simple enough. There was, however, a list of disclaimers longer than the one I read when Joe sent me on an extreme spelunking expedition: -If your alarm doesn't go off at 3:30, if you are not seated by 3:33, or the fan is turned off, abort the mission. Leave your apartment and do not return until after 6:00 a.m. -If anything should happen to your body during the ritual, the fan will blow out the candle and the ritual will end, bringing you back to safety. -You should have a loved one on standby in another room who can call your phone at 4:34 a.m. If you do not answer, she should call your name. If you still do not answer, she should enter the room and, without touching you, throw the bucket of water on you. The post didn't say what would happen if all of those safety measures were to fail. I did a quick mental scan: I had an alarm, a power object, chairs, candle, and a fan. What I didn't have were mirrors or someone who would be willing to come over at 4:34 a.m. Since separating from my husband and moving to my divorcee palace uptown, I had been avoiding both mirrors and human contact beyond what was required for basic survival or paying my bills. I didn't want to see my failures--and dramatic weight gain--reflected back at me. And I couldn't bear to hear the twinge of pity in everyone's voice over the phone. It was all so terribly cliche. He had run off with his secretary (or, well, she preferred the term "executive assistant"). I couldn't decide what was more unbearable: my heartbreak or how utterly unoriginal the cause of it was. If I was going to be dumped and shattered, the least he could have done was run off to Africa to save babies or decide to take a vow a silence and become a monk. Anything but his secretary. I ordered mirrors from Amazon and sent the invoice to Joe. One problem was solved. However, I still didn't know who would rescue me at 4:34 a.m., and the sad reality of my loneliness could only be assuaged by taking a half hour nap. When I awoke, I had a flash of inspiration. I picked up my phone and called Rosie. Rosie and I had worked together in the New York offices of a shamelessly trashy British tabloid before she decided she was above this line of work and moved back to her native London. She would be the perfect person to call, because she was nothing if not punctual and reliable. And, at 4:34 a.m. New York time, it would be 9:34 a.m. London time. She would just be settling into her work day. The phone did that strange double ring thing that it does whenever you call another country. "Hello?" "Hey, Rosie. It's Beth Carpenter." "Oh, Beth. You've been on my mind. I'm so sorry about Andy. How are you getting on?" I cringed. Her voice was practically oozing with pity. "I'm taking him to the cleaners--don't you worry." She laughed the way you do when you're both affectionately amused but also slightly embarrassed for someone. "Listen, I need a favor. I'm working on a story, and I know this may sound weird, but can you call my cell phone on Wednesday morning at exactly 9:34 your time?" "Ok...do I need to tell you anything in particular when I call? I know that you get up to some strange things over there at The Muse. They're not trying to test your fear of small spaces again, are they?" "No. Ha. Nothing like that. Just make sure I answer. And if I don't, can you call my boss? Just ask him to come over and check on me." "Um...are you sure you're all right, Beth?" "Yes, of course." "Are you...thinking of harming yourself? That balding prick isn't worth it!" "Come on, Rosie. No. My boss asked me to do an assignment, and it needs to be submitted by exactly 4:34am on Wednesday morning. That's all. You're just holding me accountable." "Alright then. If you're sure..." It took another ten minutes to convince Rosie that I didn't need to be placed on suicide watch. She finally agreed to call me, which meant that I had my safety net in place. She wouldn't be able to throw a bucket of water on me, but I was fairly confident that it wouldn't be necessary. I hadn't told Joe this, but like many things I tried to do in life, I failed pretty spectacularly at creepy games like this. I had tried the Ouija Board at countless sleepovers, only to have the planchette stay stock still. I had always been the one person no one could lift during Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board, and even my best friend who claimed to have conjured Bloody Mary numerous times was unsuccessful when I was in the room. It wasn't that I was a non-believer--I was open to the possibility that ghosts were real. It's just that something about me seemed to repel the spirit world. On Tuesday the mirrors arrived, and I got to work shoving my cheap Ikea furniture against the wall. He had kept all the good stuff, plus I had no interest in the couch where he and the secretary had consummated their relationship. I also re-read the game instructions several times so that I wouldn't miss a step. The actual setup for the ritual--I had decided to refer to it as a ritual as opposed to a game, since it seemed to be a bit more serious than Uno on a Friday night--should, according to the directions, happen no sooner than 11pm, which meant that I had four hours to binge watch The Great British Baking Show. I was still a sucker for all things British. At 11pm sharp, I set up the chairs, mirror, and fan. I decided to skip the bucket of water, since there was no one to throw it on me. When I stepped back to examine the scene, I saw something that terrified me to my core: my own reflection. My sweats were tight on me, giving the weight I had gained nowhere to hide. My waist-length blond hair--always my best feature--was riddled with split ends and my roots were damp with grease. I had somehow managed to maintain porcelain skin throughout my life -- my face had remained pimple-free in my teen years, and was wrinkle-free now -- but the face looking back at me was puffy and pale. My blue eyes seemed dull. Ugh. I couldn't believe I let my heartbreak have this much power over me. After turning on the fan and turning off the lights in the living room, I crawled back into bed, set the alarm for 3:30am, and grabbed my power object--the teddy bear named Fritz that I got for my seventh birthday. I chuckled at the fact that he was supposed to bring me back to myself in the midst of darkness and evil. Hopefully it would prove to be that simple. 3:30am. I tucked Fritz under my arm, gathered the lighter and candle I had left on the nightstand, and used the glow of my phone to light my way to the living room. I managed to shut my bedroom door, light the candle, and be seated by 3:32am. The fan had stayed on. Perfect. I could proceed. On the wall across from me was a vintage poster I had gotten from a big box store in an effort to make my place more homey. It was a harlequin drinking some kind of Italian spirit. I stared at it, not allowing my eyes to drift to either mirror (as instructed by the rules), though they wanted to. The harlequin seemed to move and shift the longer I stared as my eyes played tricks in the candlelight. Hisssss. Clank. The steam in the radiator grew restless, causing me to jump. My hearing seemed to take on an almost animal-like keenness--I could hear all of the tiny sounds around me, even the ones that were usually drowned out by the sounds of traffic ten stories below. A scrape here, a scurry there. I made a mental note to call my super about mice. I was trying to focus on the noises not because I was waiting for something to appear from another dimension, but because I found silence unbearable. Silence is absence. It is my dad's empty closet after he left. I sat inside of it for an entire day, my six-year-old-self trying to summon him back. It is the moment at my mother's funeral after the last note of her favorite hymn ended. It is the sound of an upper east side apartment that I wished hadn't been so big once my marriage was no longer taking up space inside of it. It is the phone that rang for weeks with sympathetic calls after my separation, and then, when the rings went unanswered, became mute. My apartment seemed alive with sounds, and I could hear the ceaseless motion of the city outside. But there were no strange voices, and nothing was flashing in my peripheral vision. No one was appearing in the mirrors. I was completely alone. The phone rang at 4:34am, right on the dot. "Hi, Rosie." "Not swinging from the rafters, are you?" "No. Ha. I promise you, I'm fine." "Ok. Ring me when it's a more reasonable hour where you are. And get some sleep." "I will. Thanks." I blew out the candle, shut off the fan, and turned on the lights. Nothing had happened, which was exactly what I had anticipated. "Well, Fritz, let's go to bed. I'll figure out what to tell Joe in the morning." I tucked him under my arm and walked to my bedroom door. It was open. That was strange. I was certain I had closed it. *** My ringtone woke me up. I picked up my phone. It was 1pm. No doubt it was Joe checking in about the story and making sure I hadn't been dragged to another dimension by a malevolent spirit. I cleared my throat and did my best impression of someone who hadn't just woken up. "Hello?!" Static. "Hello? Joe?" More static. And then a giggle. A voice hissed in my ear: Chess piece, card deck, stolen tart Shards of glass will fall apart. Mirror, mirror Thrones of three, Look behind you, Who is she? More giggling. More static. And then nothing. Joe was quite the practical joker, but this little prank call was not his finest work. I clicked on recent calls, but the only information it provided was No Caller ID. Great. I clicked on Joe's number. "Hello?" "The answer is the Queen of Hearts. That one was pretty obvious." "Beth? Is that you? What are you talking about?" "Nice try. The riddle that you or someone you put up to asked me to answer." "Uh...." He was silent, which was unusual for him. "Honestly, I have no idea what you are talking about. Listen, are you ok?" I rolled my eyes. He wasn't going to let me have this one. "Yes. I'm fine." "Listen, I'm glad you called. I've been dying to hear how the game went. Did you summon any spirits?" "It was uneventful. Unfortunately, the Shadowside didn't take much of an interest in me." Again, that audible exhale. It was quite the trademark. "That's disappointing. Ok, plan b: why don't you see if you can contact someone who did have a strange experience. People chat about these things in forums all the time. Get a few quotes and then write it up." "No problem, boss." "Great." "And that riddle was way too easy." Brief pause. Again, Joe rarely paused. "I still have no idea what you are talking about. Are you sure you're ok?" I knew he didn't really want the true answer to that question. I was starting to believe that he hadn't been the one calling me. If it had been him, he wouldn't be able to resist taking credit. "I'm fine." "Ok," he said uncertainly. "Get to work, and we will touch base later." I pulled the covers over my head. If that call didn't come from Joe, who had called me? No one other than him knew I was playing the Three Kings Game or would have any idea about the mirrors or thrones of three. What was happening? Maybe I had been half asleep when I answered the phone and had dreamt the whole thing. I decided not to check my call log, in the event that it would refute that theory. I pulled the covers over my head and felt a panicked tightening in my chest. It was two feelings together: fight-or-flight meets a leaden feeling of dread. It was a unfamiliar, and physically uncomfortable, and I vowed to stay under the covers until the feelings passed. But then I heard the sound of glass breaking in the next room. I flung the covers off and quickly scanned the bedroom for something I could use as a weapon. My hardcover copy of Infinite Jest was the closest thing I could reach. Getting hit on the head with that tome could surely do some damage. I opened the bedroom door slowly, expecting to see a masked intruder looking around disappointedly at the meager offerings of my apartment. Instead, the room was empty. The air felt too still. Something wasn't right. One of the mirrors had toppled off of its chair and was lying face down on the floor. I righted it again, but cracks criss-crossed it like lines on a subway map, leaving my reflection distorted. I couldn't help but reach out and touch it, tracing my finger along the veins of breakage. It's strange that mirrors have complete control over how we see ourselves. Sometimes my reflection feels more real than I do. "Ouch!" I cut my finger on an errant splinter of glass, and a small drop of blood trickled down the mirror. I watched it for a moment before something else caught my attention. There was someone standing behind me. I saw her reflection for an instant before whirling around. No one was there. When I turned back to the mirror, the reflection was gone. It happened too quickly for me to be sure what exactly I had seen, and the image of the woman had been refracted by the shattered mirror. But I was sure of two things: she was wearing red, and her face had been a shock of white. I decided to throw out both mirrors, put away the fan, and move the chairs back where they belonged. I figured that this would be enough to get rid of the woman in red. But just in case, I retreated to my bedroom and locked the door. "Stay calm," I told myself. "You followed the rules and nothing appeared during the game. All of this is in your imagination." The glow of my laptop was strangely comforting, as if I had a friend in the room. I began my fishing expedition for The Muse story by visiting forums. Many people shared that they had gone into trances during the game and had to utilize the back-up person and bucket of water. Others had seen shadows and heard noises, like growling, singing, and an unsettling giggle. Reading about the giggle put a huge ball of fear into my stomach. It was acidic, almost like indigestion. I had also heard a giggle, and it had been menacing. But why hadn't I heard it during the game? And, more importantly, how could I make sure I never heard it again? I opened up a Google Doc and began typing. After an hour, the clacking of the keyboard was joined by another, quieter sound. It was barely perceptible, but I stopped typing and listened. It was a faint scratching sound, and at first I thought it was the mice. But then I realized that the scratches weren't random. They seemed to have shape and substance. It took a few moments for my brain to place the sound. It was writing. Someone was writing on my bedroom door. It sounded like something was being scrawled with a quill, moving with an effort not required by a ballpoint pen. With one final pronounced scratch, the writing stopped. I pulled Fritz--my power object--to my chest. The fear was like a hand on the back of my head, and it stroked its fingers down to my lower back, spreading goosebumps along the way. I knew I needed to go and see what was on the other side of that door, but I really didn't want to. I thought about calling my super and asking him to enter the apartment and check for me, but I would feel silly if it turned out to be nothing. I didn't need yet another person looking at me with pitying eyes. I slid my laptop off of me, tucked Fritz under one arm and Infinite Jest under the other, and clambered over my bed to the door. I held my breath and put my hand on the knob for just a moment, gathering my courage, before turning it. The door opened into the bedroom. It was covered in erratic, manic script. The ink dripped down the door the way my blood had dripped down the mirror. She shows your true face And tells no lie On the Ides The King must die A wave of dizziness hit me. I ran out of my apartment and into the hallway. I started to run toward the elevator when I realized I had nowhere to go. I couldn't run to a friend's apartment looking like this. What would I tell them? That I was being terrorized by spirits? I couldn't go to a coffee shop either; I didn't even have shoes on nor had I grabbed my purse. I couldn't knock on a neighbor's door, as I was friendly with none of them, not being the kind to small talk in the elevator--none of them even knew my name. I sat on the ground. I was alone. And there was something terrible in my apartment. Fritz and the book were still under my arms, and I moved Fritz to face me and looked into his button eyes. He had been the most consistent male presence in my life, and that thought turned my stomach. I thought briefly about my ex and his secretary lounging around on our expensive furniture in our expensive apartment. My apartment wasn't much to look at (or smell), but it was mine. It was something in the world that I earned through my hard work. It belonged to me. "No." I said to Fritz. "This is our apartment. I was already chased out of the last one. I'm not getting chased out of this one, too." I grabbed the spare key from the top of the doorframe and let myself back in. I dropped Fritz and my book by the door and raised my fists into a fighting stance. I waited. The giggling came from everywhere at once. I peed my sweats a little before pulling myself together. "Giggles and riddles," I yelled at the air. "You must be the Fool." The giggling stopped. I thought about what I had seen in the mirror. Dressed in red. That was the Queen. Which meant I was the King. I looked at the riddle on the door again. "On the Ides, the King must die," I read to myself. I remembered from my tenth grade Shakespeare class that the Ides refers to either the 13th or 15th, depending upon how many days were in a particular month. It was November, which has 30 days, which meant that the Ides would be on the 13th. I took a breath. Today was the 11th. I had time to figure all this out. The sun was beginning to think about setting, and usually I loved how the light looked in my apartment at that time of day. This time, however, it carried with it a sense of foreboding, that just behind it, something was waiting. It would be dark soon. I flipped on all of the lights and lit every single candle I could find, hoping to flood my apartment with brightness. But the mingling aromas--for most of the candles were scented--made the air cloying, and the amassed candlelight seemed almost fragile, as if it was not strong enough to absorb the encroaching darkness. I picked up Fritz from where I had left him on the floor, and sat in a chair, holding him on my lap. I waited. For what, I wasn't sure. When it was finally night, the sky outside my window was viscous and thick, like molasses had been poured over my apartment building. The familiar traffic sounds were muffled, and even the searing electricity of the city's lights couldn't make their way into the room. Everything was eerily dark and still. I felt the small hairs on my body perk up, like someone had held a staticky balloon just above them. When glass breaks, it makes a sharp crystalline sound that is almost musical. It was not a sound I was expecting to hear. One by one, the windows began to shatter into small spiderwebs as if they were being punched repeatedly. First the window over the kitchen sink, followed by one window in the living room, and then the other. From where I sat, I could also hear the windows in the bedroom breaking. With each punch, my entire body ached, like my own bones were taking the blows. "Shards of glass will fall apart...holy shit." I found myself whispering. And then--all at once--darkness. The lights and candles had been suddenly extinguished, and the air seemed thin and scarce. I felt like I was in a coffin. My nerves were sizzling in panic and my heart lurched in my chest, propelling me into action. I still clutched Fritz as I ran to my apartment door, as all of my earlier arguments for holding my ground had evaporated. Somehow I knew I wouldn't be able to open it, even before trying the knob. I dropped Fritz and pulled at the door with both hands, but it wouldn't open. I turned around and ran into my bedroom, where I wrestled with the unwashed tangle of sheets until they finally regurgitated my phone and laptop. The phone, in spite of having been fully charged, was dead. Upon opening the laptop, its faithful glow greeted me. I clicked on my e-mail, and my hands were shaking so uncontrollably I could barely type my message to Joe: The game is real. There's something in my apartment. It won't let me out. I'm scared. I need you to come over. And then, because I knew he wouldn't believe me: I swear on my dead mother's grave that I am telling the truth. I hit send and my eyes darted to the top of the screen. No. It couldn't be. The date read November 13th. How was that possible? I felt dizzy. I pulled up Google and then one website after another. November 13th, over and over again. "No, no, no, no....." On the Ides, the King must die. I pulled up my e-mail again. This time I e-mailed my entire contact list with a single word: HELP. I turned my laptop around so that the screen was facing away from me in an attempt to light the room. My breath was coming so hard and fast that I had to open my mouth and fill the room with gasps. It was a wet sound, as if the room was turning to liquid and drowning was inevitable. I needed to try the door to the outside again. I needed to get my neighbor's attention. I needed to escape. But my primal instincts had kicked in--the ones that operate just below the surface, electric and almost imperceptible, and they kept me frozen in place. Like a deer in the forest, alert and impossibly still. Someone was in the other room. The prewar wooden floors that I didn't have the energy to drape with rugs amplified sound. On the rare occasions that I had worn high heels on my way out, my head would throb with the sharp staccato sound of each step as it stabbed the wood and reverberated in the high ceilings. And it was that very sound I heard, echoing through the brittle surfaces of my apartment, taking measured steps. Coming closer. Clack. Clack. Clack. I stayed frozen. Clack. Clack. Clack. The sound was coming down the small piece of hallway between the apartment door and bedroom door. There was something else. A glow. A wavering, unreliable aura that made its way through the dark apartment. Candlelight. The kind of light that I had previously found comforting in its particular shape, color, and warmth. Candlelight meant safety during power outages, intimacy during dinners, and commitment during a wedding. But now the brightness morphed into darkness. The sound of footsteps grew louder. The candlelight grew brighter. My nervous system and skeletal system and muscles turned to cement. I was hardened in fear. When the sound and light finally filled the doorway, my breath stopped altogether, and my bedroom became a vacuum -- void of air and life and safety. The woman in the red dress was holding the candle I had lit during the Three Kings Game. Her dress was the color of that particular kind of blood that pours from deep within the body--the almost black shade of mortal peril. Her face was a chalky white, and it cracked and flaked like a dry desert bed. Like something long dead. Her lips were painted in the shape of a red heart, slightly smudged and smeared as if it had been bleeding. She was exactly what my brain would have conjured if I had tasked it with imagining the most terrifying version of the Queen of Hearts. It didn't occur to me just then that perhaps that's exactly what she was. She began speaking to me, and her words and breath made the candle flame in her hands flicker erratically. I couldn't register what she was saying--her words flowed over and through me as fear melted my brain, and it sloshed helplessly inside of my skull. As she spoke, complete terror started to bubble and boil and scald the inside of my body. By the time she walked from the doorway to the side of my bed I was a frozen shape, sculpted by fear, and when I reached into what was left of my survival instincts to produce a scream, nothing was there. I had been completely hollowed out. All traces of my humanness had been melted by the feelings she had caused me to feel. One final, rational thought flashed in my brain: there was a reason why the ritual called for the physical presence of another person. When people were together in the same place, the spirits could still scare them -- like they had the weak-minded YouTubers, almost to death -- but they could not harm them. Not really. I had done the ritual alone. In my solitude, the queen had found a way in. That realization lingered for a moment before leaving behind a slimy trail of hopelessness. And then, there was nothing in my head or body. I could hear banging at my apartment door, and the buzzer rang repeatedly. The noise was distorted, as if it was traveling underwater, but I could tell it was Joe's voice. "Beth! Beth! Open the door!" The woman's eyes were like dark sapphires in the candlelight, flashing wildly and with a sinister gleam. I couldn't pull myself from them. I couldn't think or move. I was an empty vessel. No. She had made me into her vessel. "Beth! Answer the door or I'm calling the cops! Beth!" In one breath she extinguished the candle and, somehow, my laptop. Everything was dark, but I could still feel her standing over me. As she bent over me, I could smell her acrid breath, like roses that had been left to rot in the vase a little too long, and she covered me like a blanket, seeping into my skin. And then, her arms became my arms. Her face became my face. And her rage became my rage. "Beth! I'm not leaving. I just called the cops. Open the door!" I needed to get back inside the mirror. "Beth!" Everything outside of the mirror was sharp and jarring. I needed to get back to where everything was smooth and dreamlike. Where pain and anger thrived instead of destroyed. Where there are no sharp edges or boundaries, and where the world is reflected back in its flawed reality. There is no hiding from a reflection, after all. The Fool had helped me sniff out loneliness and find a vulnerable King. The King must die. I had conquered The King. I opened the apartment door. The last thing Joe would see was that my porcelain skin had been replaced by a ghastly, cracked face, and my lips were in the shape of a bleeding heart. They would find Joe's body in the bathroom, his throat sliced by shards of glass from a broken mirror. But as for me....they'll never find me. I will slip through mirrors, both liberated and imprisoned by them. That is, at least, until someone decides to play the game. Horror Writing Contest Contest Winner

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