“I’m so alone, I’m sick of scrolling past the same lost eyes and sad faces on this damn app, come rescue me and we can go to a haunted house tonight,” Oxy said into the phone which lay next to his head on the pillow.

“You realize how short notice this is? How do you know I’m not already out?”

“If you were already out, you wouldn’t have picked up the damn phone. C’mon, Tazon, let’s do something!  It’s fucking Halloween. I’m sick of spending holidays alone. I got my rent paid for November early for once. We can call it my reward for adulting properly.”

“Adults don’t get rewards for getting shit done, Ox, grow up.”

“Astaghfirullah, how dare you suggest such blasphemy.”

“Ugh, I hate when you do that. How do you expect to be a good atheist if you quote the disparaging lingo of our youth in the name of nostalgia and stale attempts at humor.”

“I’m in my Agnostic Muslim era…”

“That doesn’t make sense. Are you fucking stoned or something?”

“No, I’m lonely and bored, and I’m asking you to come rescue me, if I’m going to get ghosted by anyone I swipe right on, then why not get off my ass and go see some actual ghosts on the one night of the year they appear to us mundanes.”

Tazon sighed. “Fine, I’ll be there in twenty minutes. We’ll go somewhere that will take your mind off of how miserable you sound. It will scare you shitless for a week, so you won’t have time to scroll lost eyes and sad faces on your phone.”

“Promise?”

“Of course, and uh, you may want to wear a diaper in case you get too scared.” Tazon teased with a throaty chuckle.

“That was one time, and Oscar still hasn’t paid me my forty dollars. It was a fucking dare and you said you were too drunk to remember that!”

“I say a lot of things. Twenty minutes. Be down when I honk or I’m leaving you to rot in your bed.”

“Blow me!”

Tazon chuckled and hung up. Ox reached over to pick up his phone and look at the time. With a groan he rolled upright, and scratched his head with both hands to ‘comb’ it out, then swung his long legs over the side and looked around his room. It was dim in a constant state of low light from UV lamps, strings of holiday lights and lava lamps on every surface.

He got up to go to the bathroom. His hand went down to scratch his junk as he walked naked to the bathroom — another low-light room, with a neon open sign that was on the wall above the toilet as the only light in the room.

Peeing then doing a cold rinse in five minutes, he walked around his dimly lit apartment and tugged on clunky combat boots, PVC pants, fishnet tank, then his favorite boa-fleece jacket. Standing next to the mounted vanity mirror, with only two working bulbs on its rim, he heavily applied gloss and put in his contacts. Then, grabbing his thick bottlecap shades and his top hat, he went out to the front room filled with glowing inflatable furniture, and a shag throw rug with a card table covered with battle maps and polyhedral dice.

Tazon pulled up in his 1943 Chrysler. It was a custom buttercream white paint job with a red interior.

“Pulled out Grady just for me?” Oxy said, once he got outside and opened the door and slid into the front seat.

“Don’t flatter yourself. Suzette is in the shop, I’m getting her windows tinted,” Tazon replied as he looked Oxy up and down and gave an approving smirk. “There is no way you are wearing a diaper under those pants.”

“Nope, but I peed and showered, so my bladder is empty and my dick is clean, so just drive and let’s get where we’re going.”

Tazon cackled, “You’re gonna love this,”

“Where are we going?”

“Luther caught wind of this Kinky Escape Room, So I told him I’d meet him and Reckle there. It should be fun.”

“An Escape Room?! Tazon, I wanted to go to a fucking Haunted House!”

“I know you had your heart set on getting ghosted by an actual ghost, but I wanted Luther to get off my ass about going to one of his damn Escape Rooms, so maybe we can hit Totsi’s Haunted House Tour on the North side after this, it shouldn’t even take that long, it’s an Escape Room.”

“I flunked out of college as a geology major, you’re the one with the doctorate in what was it again?”

Tazon glanced at Oxy with a patronizing look as he slowly replied, “Medicine? I’m a Thoracic Surgeon, Ox, are you alright?”

“No. Probably not, just drive,”

Luther was standing outside with Reckle and dressed as the fattest vampire the world has ever seen, next to the thin, pale, Reckle dressed in all black with a balaclava-hooded mask on his head, and glasses that were shaped like tiny skulls. He had striped arm warmers on and boots that were so tattered and in need of polish that it made Oxy wince just looking at them.

“What are you two supposed to be?” Oxy greeted them once Tazon parked the car and they approached the two of them.

“I am Dracula of course, who else would I be?” Luther said with dramatic airs and a swoop of his arms showing off his cape that he probably paid way too much for.

“I’m a coffin,” Reckle said dryly.

Tazon chuckled. “How do you make a low effort at everything and still look so flawless, Reckle?”

“It’s a gift only the Elect are born with,” Reckle replied in a deadpan toneless voice and then looked over to Luther, “Are we ready or are we waiting for more?”

“Joffara and Maggie flaked out on me. It's just us. Let’s go!”

The building didn’t make sense. But that was the point. It was a warehouse building, but it had a revolving door like it was some high end business office, or an entrance to a mall. It didn’t make sense. But all four of them went through that door without questioning it.

The tile floor of the establishment echoed as the four of them walked inside. There was an empty, abandoned receptionist counter. Tazon looked up at the balconied floors — like an old mall, left and abandoned by time, each of the pillars and columns that made up the interior were veined with vines crawling up and down the crumbling brick.

“Don’t we have to pay or something? There’s supposed to be a docent or something to time us or give us tickets or something, right?”

“I thought so. I never been to one of these before,” Luther replied.

“What?! You’ve been on my ass for months telling me how great they are, and how I should go with you next time. Were you lying to me?”

“No, I read the reviews, and I didn’t want to go alone!” Luther said in a pouty voice. He looked over at Tazon. “Don’t be mad, This will be fun. C’mon let’s ring the--”

The phone rang before Luther could finish his sentence. The phone rang three more times before it went quiet again. The four of them all exchanged a look with each other.

“Remind me how you found out about this particular escape room, Luther?”

“Claw-Cunt Claire posted this QR code Coupon in a group chat—”

“Yallah, okay, okay, don’t say another word, I’ve heard enough. You’ve clearly been scammed, you hopeless himbo. We should just leave now and go to that Haunted Tour on the north sid—” Oxy turned around and then paused. “What happened to the door?”

The other three turned around and indeed the revolving door was no longer there. Instead, it was just another wall like all the others. But hanging on it was a drapery with a portrait of a naked woman showing off her very, very, very pierced pussy: the metallic hooks speared the rim of her vulva like claws, or teeth made of metal. She was holding it open, flashing the bright pink, red of her raw, well-used pussy. There were streaks of blood down her thigh, and used tampons dangling from her nipple piercings like tassels. She had a wide-eyed expression that was somewhere between admonishment and madness.

In her mouth was a knife, and there was a planchette tattoo around her navel with the words ‘do you remember your safe word?’ written in ominous bold lettering in an arc right above it with three question marks.

“Claire is a twisted bitch…” Oxy hissed as he took three steps back.

“So what do we do?”

“Well, we try to figure out how to escape with the clues in the room,” Luther said.

“How is this disturbing drapery of the Dominatrix of Downtown Nowhere, Nebraska going to give us a clue of how to get out?” Reckle asked.

“Well, what’s your safeword?” Tazon asked, studying the art for any other clues it may have.

“Rutabaga, what’s yours?”

“Affidavit. You?”

“Gumshoe,” Oxy replied.

“Mine is Potato," Luther said.

As soon as he said that, the phone started to ring again.

“We should answer it,” Luther said.

“I’m not gonna answer it, you answer it,” Oxy said.

“For fucks sake, I’ll answer the damn thing, you fucking cowards,” Tazon said and went over to the empty receptionist desk and picked up the phone. “Ahoy?” he answered.

On the other end of the line was the sound of counting, and Tazon did his best to commit the numbers to memory as they looped over and over, to try to discern a pattern.

“Well, who is it?” Luther demanded.

Tazon held up a hand for him to be quiet. “It’s a loop of numbers, in French.”

“What are the numbers?”

“In English please, I flunked out of French already. I don't need to feel like a bigger failure in life right now,” Oxy grumbled.

“6 2 1 7 4 0 1 2 2 1 8 1 4.”

“Is that anyone’s birthday?” Luther asked with a slight chortle.

No one else laughed.

Reckle frowned pensively. “It’s the Marquis de Sade.”

“Who?” Oxy asked.

“The Marquis de Sade, the father of Sadism, born June second, 1740 and died December second 1814.”

“How do you know that?” Oxy asked, confused how he put a string of numbers into sense like that and feeling horrendously out of the loop on what was going on. He almost wished he hadn't called Tazon in the first place. Then he could still be in the comforting low light and dim darkness of his bedroom.

“I’m a sadist. I’ve done my homework,” Reckle admitted easily. And as soon as he did that, music started playing, circus carnival music. And a figure came out from the back of the warehouse, doing a jaunty dance like a vaudeville dance.

“Who is that?” Tazon asked, squinting as the figure got closer. “It looks like some sort of clown?”

“Oh no… not clowns,” Luther whispered.

“Are you afraid of clowns, Luther?” Tazon asked, with a teasing, patronizing smirk on his face.

“I wouldn’t say I'm scared of clowns but…”

“You’re a clown fucker!” Oxy sang teasingly.

The phone rang again. And all four of them jumped. The lights started to flicker and dim slowly and Oxy felt his heart race. With each flicker of the lights, the clown marionette danced jerkily closer and closer.

“Are we just supposed to stand here and wait for it to catch up to us?”

“Where do we run to then?”

The phone kept ringing.

“Answer it, Tazon!”

Tazon scoffed but acquiesced. As soon as he picked up the phone, the lights went out and the sound of a generator started to hum very loudly.

“What’s going on?”

“The floor is moving.”

“What’s going on?”

“Relax, it’s all part of the experience.”

“Yeah, Luther, this was your idea. Why are you freaking out?”

“I’m not freaking out.”

“Then who said that?”

“I don’t know, I can't see anything. Your voices all sound the same to me.”

“That’s touching, Reckle… way to make us feel special.”

“It’s nothing personal, I just can't tell the difference between people’s voices; they all sound the same to me.. It’s probably some neurological condition or something.”

“It is called phonagnosia,” Tazon said.

“How do you know that??” 

“Does everyone forget that I went to medical school??”

Thunk!

The floor stopped moving as if parked.

There was only the sound of everyone breathing in the dark.  

“Tazon, did the phone say anything?”

Silence.

“Tazon!”

“How are we going to escape if we can’t see where anything is?” Luther pouted.

“Aww, are you afraid of the dark, Luther?” Oxy teased.

“Why do you tease me so much about … I don’t know, everything?"

“Why do you make teasing you so easy?”

“What if I teased you about something back, Oxy, what about that?”

“Try it. My shitty parents have been bad mouthing me my whole life. What’s one more person saying shit about me?  Do you want to say it to my face or behind my back? I’m good with either. I’m versatile like that so take your pick, Dracula.”

There was silence, and then the sound of sniffling. “Oh great, you made him cry, way to go, Oxy.”

“He was going to cry eventually. He was wound up and primed for tears since before we got here, I’m willing to bet.”

“I’m not crying,” Luther muttered. “Tazon? Did you hear anything on the phone?”

The sniffling increased, and then there was the sound of liquid hitting the hard, cold floor and the scent of fresh urine hit the air. 

“Oh, someone’s peeing their pants,” Luther said.

“It’s not me,” Reckle said. 

“It’s Tazon,” Oxy said knowingly.

“How can you tell?”

“My eyes. I’m light-sensitive, so I wear these goggles whenever I go out. I added night vision to them three weeks ago with my last paycheck before I got fired. He’s over there, standing in the corner, just… going.”

“You can see him peeing his pants?”

“That’s what I just said, isn’t it?”

“Tazon, why didn’t you just pull it out and go on the floor? You didn’t have to wet your pants. It’s dark right now anyway, no one would have seen anything. Well, Oxy would have but… you two used to fuck anyway, right?” Reckle asked. 

“I had to. The lady on the phone…ah… that feels so much better. I really had to go.” Tazon sighed, “The woman on the phone said that I had to act out my deepest and darkest fantasy. It’s the only way to escape the escape room, to confess your kinky sins. Don’t you get it? Reckle admitted he’s a sadist, and the room started changing, going forward.”

“So your kinky fantasy is to pee yourself?” Luther asked, confused.

“Yes. It’s called omorashi, from the Japanese subculture… I’ve been into it since I did my study-abroad-internship in Kyoto, as part of my residency. I met this girl, Hiroko, there, and she introduced me to a lot of various kinky things.  I told myself at the time that it was important to know as a doctor, because there are so many stories of people doing something kinky that ends up with them having to go to the ER over it. But the more she showed me about this world, the more I realized I was really fucking turned on by this one particular thing and I… I have been in various online relationships that involve an element of bathroom control, and now it is hard to be in a relationship with anyone without that element, so for me, it is more than just a kink. It is a fetish. I need it to get aroused—without it, I can’t even get hard the same way.”

“Wow, Tazon, I had no idea,” Oxy said.

“No one does. I kept it to myself. It’s not exactly a common kink. Most people find it unappealing and it is listed as a limit more than anything.”

“So you’re really into this, then?” Oxy said, having moved closer to Tazon. “Cos I’m the only one that can see you in the dark, and you’re tenting your pants.”

“You should let him suck you off…” Luther said. 

“The only reason I’d do that is if your secret kink is that you’re a voyeur, Luther,” Tazon said.

“Well…”

“Please just confess your kinky sins so we can get out of here. I’m fucking starving,” Reckle said. 

“What happened to the clown?” Tazon asked after a moment.

“Was it even really here? It could have been a holographic projection or something,” Oxy replied.

“Did you not see it? It was shambling toward—” The rest of what he was going to say was replaced by a scream and the sound of him being dragged away. Bright lights filled the room again. And everyone was there but Oxy.

“Damn, Tazon you really did just fucking piss yourself to get that boner, didn’t you?” Reckle commented, and walked closer. “Can I suck it?”

“We haven’t time. Where’s Oxy?”

“Let me suck it, and Luther can watch,” Reckle said, then turned to look at Luther with a sharp gaze that made the other man whimper a squeak noise.

“Watching only, no stroke-alongs. You suffer in silence for me like a good little pincushion. Do you consent?”

“Yes, Master, I consent.”

“Good Piglet, on your knees so you can get a good view...”

Luther oinked as he obeyed the command.

Tazon swallowed to wet his throat. “We really should try to find Oxy.”

“C’mon, Tazon, you really want that beautiful boner to go to waste?”

Reckle reached down and rubbed the head of him through his thick, damp slacks. Tazon’s head rolled in his eyes a bit, and he felt his body go tense with need and aching for release. 

“It’s been a while since you wet yourself for someone else, hasn’t it? I can suck you through the fabric if you want. Mm? Taste what kind of day you’ve had by how strong your piss is. I want you to cum, and cum hard … but I need your consent, Tazon, or I will … just stop.”

Reckle pulled his hand away. Tazon whimpered pleadingly, “I consent, please don’t stop, I need it…”

“Need what?”

“I need you to suck my dick through my slacks, I need you to taste my day through my piss-soaked pants, please. I consent. I consent!”

“Say it, Luther.”

“I’m a shameful voyeur piglet.”

The tile floor sloped downward like a slide, going down. “Let’s see where it goes, hm?” Reckle said, tipping his skull glasses down to wink at Tazon’s pleading face, as a sadistic smirk stretched at his thin lips. 

“You can stay hard for me a little while longer, can’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

Reckle grabbed Tazon by his boner and led him along like a lost puppy, as Luther crawled down the slide first on his hands and knees. 

___

Down below, Oxy was stripped of everything that gave him protection against the light and was bound to a St. Andrew’s cross on display. He kept his eyes closed and his breathing was more controlled in almost hyperventilation.

“Do you hear that? It sounds like—"

“Breathing,” Reckle said, and then took a sharp inhale. “And fear.”

“You can smell fear? What are you? A shark?”

“Not at all. Just a trained hunter with active predatory instincts to track prey of any type. All prey emanates fear. This prey … is human. It’s probably Oxy.”

“Do you think he’s got a fear kink?”

“Let’s just keep walking until we find him.”

Tazon squeaked as he felt a squeezing grip on his erection. Reckle tugged on him and walked faster. Luther’s heavy breathing added to the ambience as they descended into the basement of the escape room. 

“It’s so dark down here,” Luther commented. 

“If Oxy is down here, it makes sense,” Tazon said in a strained voice.

“Is he really as light sensitive as he claims to be?”

“Why would he lie about that?”

There was no opportunity to reply as Reckle, leading the way down, stepped on some sort of pressure click device and low lights started to show around the room, UV Lights, specifically black lights with words scrawled all over like graffiti. They were degrading terms, cruel words, insults and slurs. 

“Whoa…” Luther gasped, as he looked around.

Down on the ground were what looked like drag marks, and Reckle followed them, ignoring the words all over the walls as light on the walls to guide him. Tazon looked around and something inside his heart broke a little, “This is Oxy’s world. This is how he feels on the inside,” he realized. 

“How can he not see how beautiful he is, and how he’s not any of these mean things on the wall?”

“It must be hard to see your own light if you associate light with pain because of being photophobic and light sensitive.”

“It kind of speaks to the other realm of Halloween. That witchy voodoo stuff, you know?”

“Witchcraft and Voodoo are two different things, Luther,” Tazon corrected with a roll of his eyes.

“You get what I mean though, right? Fighting your inner shadow, the dark side of you. I read that the Ancient Celts believe that this is the real New Year’s Eve, and that we dress up to proclaim who we want to be next year, and it is like being planted as a seed. But then pop culture and Hollywood skewed it all up to be something profitable and the original message got lost in consumerism and materialism.”

“You can say that about most holidays now.”

“Maybe so. But I think you’re right. This is Oxy. Where is he?” Reckle asked. He let go of Tazon’s softening erection and turned around in a circle. “Oxy!” he bellowed out only to hear his echo in reply.

“Do we follow the light or seek out the dark where he may be hiding to protect his eyes?” Luther asked. 

Tazon wandered over to something he could see in the shadows. He bent down to pick it up.

“Oxy’s glasses,” he said, turning around to show everyone. 

“Put them on. We might get a clue on which way to turn to find Oxy.” 

Tazon gently held up the glasses over his eyes without putting them on.

“What do you see?”

“The words. They’ve changed.”

“What do they say now?”

“Take a look for yourself.” 

Tazon handed the glasses over to Reckle who looked through them and then he handed them to Luther. 

“It only says one word. Unlovable.”

There was a tense silence for a moment. Reckle frowned. “Oxy!!” he called out again. Then ran down one hallway only to re-emerge in another. Then he ran down another hallway to cycle back again to the center room where the other two stood staring around.  

“Oxy has a degradation kink? A praise kink? I’m not sure what else this could be or mean,” Luther said, scratching his head. 

“Oxy believes he is unlovable,” Tazon said.

And the room thrust into darkness again with only one light up ahead like a tractor beam over where they hoped they could find Oxy. As a group they all made their way in the direction only to find a display case with Oxy naked and bound to a St. Andrew’s cross — like some sort of exhibit in a museum or a zoo. His eyes were closed tight and he was breathing hard and there was tear-streaked makeup on his cheeks. 

“Oxy!” Tazon stepped forward, expecting there to be glass blocking his way but there was nothing so he continued forward until he reached Oxy and gently touched his arm. Oxy flinched and whimpered the word “Please...”

“It’s just us, Oxy, Tazon, Reckle and Luther. It’s just your friends.”

“Where are my clothes?”

“I don’t know. I don’t see them around anywhere, do any of you see Oxy’s clothing?” he asked.

Reckle and Luther started looking around for a moment. 

“Wherever they are, they aren’t here,” Reckle finally announced. He went over to help Tazon get Oxy untied from the St. Andrew’s cross. 

Luther stood back holding himself looking a little sad. “Oxy, do you really believe you’re unlovable because of all the mean things people have said to you over the years?’”

“What?” Oxy asked, confused. “What are you talking about?”

The three of them explained about the words in the light, and finding his glasses, and Oxy went through several very well-contained emotions. “This escape room is about getting us to admit our secrets, our kinks like some sort of shadow work of Samhain? Is that what you're telling me?”

“It’s only a guess. But the evidence does seem to support that statement when you think about it.”

“What the hell kind of reverse Hell House is this?” Oxy scoffed. 

“I’m surprised you know about Hell Houses. Weren’t you brought up, Muslim?”

“I had Christian friends that dragged me to a few of them. It was better than dressing up as a Vampire and going to strangers’ houses for candy. So I went so I didn’t have to stay home alone and listen to my parents … be my parents.”

“But you aren’t unlovable, you know that right?”

“On some level, I guess, but it gets … hard being alone and no one’s partner. I start to wonder if all the shitty things people say about me and people like me are true and I should just go back to living a lie so I’m not alone.”

“We are all here tonight because we chose you, Oxy,” Reckle said.

“What do you mean?”

“He means that, when you called me asking to hang out tonight, I called them, and we all decided to just do a thing together and the plan was to go grab some pancakes at the 24-hour Breakfast Hut after everything and well, I am not sure any of us expected how this escape room would turn out but it kind of went in the direction we needed it to go.”

“What’s going on, guys?”

“Tazon, just say it or I will pull on your dick til you squeak it out,” Reckle playfully teased.

“I’m in love with you, Ox.”

“What?”

“I’m in love with you. You’re my best friend and I’ve been by your side through everything and I get uncomfortable at the thought of you sitting alone thinking about anyone else and not me.”

“What?”

“I have had a crush on you since forever,” Luther added. 

“Wait, so all three of you are choosing now to confess your undying love and loyalty to some half-blind, chubby, trans guy in the middle of some wannabe Hell House, Escape Room on Halloween?”

“No, Ox, we’re confessing our love and loyalty to YOU. It is a vulnerable thing to admit or confess. My greatest fear is being vulnerable and then being rejected for that vulnerability,” Reckle said. 

And the room made a click sound that was almost inaudible to the range of human hearing.

“My greatest fear is what if I’m unlovable because of how I look too. I understand your body image issues, maybe not the exact same as yours, but I am petrified that all people will see when they look at me is some fat pervert guy who is too shy for his own good,” Luther confessed.

Click.

“My greatest fear is losing you, Ox,” Tazon whispered.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” Oxy said, “I must be dreaming. Someone pinch me. This can’t be really happening.”

Reckle went forward to pinch Oxy on the belly. 

“Ow! You fucking sadist!”

“That’s right and don’t you forget it,” Reckle said with a slight smirk.

“What if we made a pact, right here and now to always be together for each other?”

“What do you mean? Like some sort of polyamory pact or a platonic promise ring situation or what are we talking about here?” 

“A Faustian Pact!” Luther suggested with a chortle of amusement.

“Luther, be serious. You’re not really Dracula or a devil, we all know that.”

“But it’s Halloween.”

“He may be on to something.”

“What do you mean he’s on to something, Tazon?”

“We are four men wanting to commit our lives to each other in love and loyalty. Platonic or … otherwise, most religious communities would say such a union is Devilish and sinful and wrong. Even in this Supposed Hell House, it recalled our kinks and our sexual desires to be sins. The image of Claw-Cunt-Claire, with her admonishing satirical stare, as she flaunted her own nudity and agency, her menses and defiled her body in a kind of reclamation of it as a giant boudoir poster welcoming strangers into this escape room. That’s how she knew all those things about us; we’ve all spent time in her dungeon. She knows not just our hidden fantasies but our psychological traumas that may have spilled out of us like our fluids during a scene with her.”

“So the pact would be ours to define, even if the rest of the world would call it Devilish? To say that our kind of lifestyle is wrong and sinful.”

“Exactly.” 

“I don’t think it's wrong and sinful to like kinky things.”

“None of us do, Luther, that's the point.”

“The Fellowship of the Kink.”

“The Faustian Polyteers?”

“There were four if you include D’artangan.”

“The Faustian Polyamorist Club.”

“Whatever we call it, can we just find my clothes? It's getting cold in here.”

Luther took off his cape and went to drape it over Oxy’s shoulders. “With me at your back, you will always be warm,” he said. 

Reckle took off his balaclava and draped it over Oxy’s head. “On those days you feel old pain threatening to overshadow you — I’ll be there, Sadist-in-Arms to fight your pain along with you.” 

Tazon handed Oxy his own glasses back. “I’ll be support. Every party needs a healer, and I’ve got a medical degree. I’m a trained thoracic surgeon, which makes me uniquely qualified in matters like this one where the heart and breath are most at risk for being injured.”

Oxy put on his goggle-glasses and as soon as he did, he saw where one of the bricks was marked with his name. He went over to it and opened it like a drawer. Out of it he took out his pants and shirt and shoes. He nodded. “Should we find a way to seal this new pact and bond of ours?” he asked.

“What way did you have in mind?”

“Blood? Cum? Some sort of … fluid bond maybe?”

Tazon glanced at Reckle. “You did promise me a blow job.”

“And I was granted permission to watch. But I can do the blow job to Oxy?”

Oxy’s jaw dropped. “I haven’t had my dick sucked properly in a long time ... or ever. That last person who tried, well, they ate me like it was a pussy and I couldn’t get off. But having my gender affirmed and getting sucked off might be … it might get me off.”

“I’m good at sucking, ask Reckle,” Luther said. 

“He’s very good,” Reckle praised. He looked at Oxy. “What do you say?”

“I’m a little afraid that this will all be a dream and you all will regret doing this, regret getting close to me but in the name of Halloween and facing fears and manifesting new things for the new year? I say, hell yeah.”

Click. The lights harmonized to a happy medium of low light and house lights. 

“Hell yeah!” the other three chorused after him. The next thing was Luther dropping to his knees again and crawling over to the still pants-less Oxy. “May I begin?”

Oxy smirked and moved closer, he pulled his slit up and spread it apart with his fingers. “Suck hard, suck strong.”

The clit-dick was shiny with pre-cum and Luther licked at it before inhaling the nub between his lips and suckling on it like a nipple until Oxy got more aroused from the content and grew harder and bigger in Luther’s mouth that he could start a steady suck.  

Reckle watched for a long moment before going down to his knees before Tazon and rubbing the damp groin of his pants, Tazon sucked in a breath and barely broke his gaze at Oxy to see that Reckle was massaging his groin to suck him through the fabric like he’d mentioned earlier. 

Luther was really going to town on sucking Oxy. Oxy was starting to shake and flailed a hand out to brace against the wall so he didn’t fall over. Luther lifted one of Oxy’s legs to rest on his shoulder and give him a better angle. His hand went under to stroke and play with the labia as if they were a dangling ballsac and Oxy was undone. He was shuddering through an orgasm with praises to a god he wasn’t sure he believed in on his lips. “Alhamdulillah,” he breathed and gasped over and over and over as he came and creamed more and more into Luther’s hungry mouth.

Tazon, watching, came from watching Oxy come apart like that. He made a short bark sound as he came and bucked his hips into Reckle’s mouth, before sighing through his aftershocks, looking down at Reckle.  

“Now we are one.”

“We are one.” Tazon nodded.

“All for one, and one for all?” Luther offered with a chortle, And this time Oxy laughed. It was a buoyant sound of jubilation that slowly infused with an emotional catharsis that led to tears.   

The other three all rose to crowd around him in a hug. “This is the best Halloween ever. I’m not sure I want to leave this room.”

“Well we kind of have to. It is an escape room.”

“But it is only the room we are escaping from, not each other.”

“Promise? I’ve been so alone I can’t do that again,”

“You’ll never be alone again, Habibi,” Tazon said. 

“I should get dressed now. Pancakes at the Breakfast Hut sound really good right now,” Oxy said.

He re-found his clothes and put the rest of them on. And then together they managed to find the door that led to the way out. And there stood both their cars parked side by side. 

“You sure you want to go to the Breakfast Hut? There’s still time to go by Totsi’s Haunted house if you want?” Tazon asked Oxy.

Oxy looked over at Luther and Reckle, then back to Tazon. “What do I need ghosts for, when I’ve got my pact-bound demons by my side now?”

Luther chortled. “One for all and all for one! We are the Faustian Polyteers!”

“Are we really calling it that?” Reckle drawled with a shake of his head. 

“I kinda like it,” Oxy said.

“Me too,” Tazon said.

“Welp, I know when I’ve been outvoted. Let’s go get some pancakes then.”

“Which Breakfast Hut are we going to, the one on Columbus Blvd or on Hominy Rd?”

“What about the one on El Dorado Drive, by Claire’s Enclave.”

“Claw-Cunt-Claire? The Domina of Nowhere Nebraska’s Dungeon?”

“Yeah. Maybe we can bring her some pancakes, as a way of saying thanks?”

“Just show up in the middle of the night, that would scare the shit out of her.”

“I’m counting on it. It is Halloween after all. What’s gratitude without a spike of fear on All Hallows Night?” Oxy said with a manic cryptid grin. “We can even get some bright red syrup. I think she’d appreciate the gesture, wouldn’t you agree?”

Luther chortled, “Count me in!”

“And me,” Reckle said, taking the keys out of his pocket to the hearse he drove with tinted windows.  

Tazon took the keys out of his pocket to his buttercream colored classic Chrysler with red interior. “I’m in too. If she has a coronary, there will need to be a doctor on call, and I’m the only one of the four of us that has training.”

Everyone gave him a look, and Tazon scoffed, “Did you all forget again?”

“At this point, I just react that way to you because it pisses you off,” Oxy admitted. 

Tazon sighed. “Just get in the car. Let’s get the damn pancakes.”

“We should stop by a Walmart as well, get you some fresh pants — the last thing we need is for Claire to smell us coming and it ruins the scare.”

“I have a spare set of pants in the trunk. I can get changed right here. Keep a look out for me?”

“I can do that! I’m the Voyeur after all,” Luther said.

Tazon smirked. “Yes, yes, you are.”

As Tazon changed his clothes, Reckle and Oxy kept a look out while Luther kept a look in. 

“Hey, what happened to the building?” Oxy asked after a moment. 

Everyone else looked up and around to where the building was and saw not just a warehouse with a revolving door, but something more majestic, as if the macabre energy of the night itself and the journey the four of them took through the thin veil of self, made the brick look more crumbling and nestled into the ivy creeping, crawling over its strong walls.  

“It didn’t look like that before. It looks … changed.”

“Maybe we changed it with our secrets, our lessons.  Helped something about its secrets and lessons escape too?” Luther offered.

Reckle took a deep breath. “Well that was wise and profound, piglet. I think that’s our cue to get some pancakes in you, before you start burping out puns.”

“Can you really burp out puns?” Oxy asked.

“Only when I’m really, really hungry,”  Luther replied with a slight chuckle.

The night yawned deeper into darkness as the four of them got in their respective vehicles and drove off into the night, the quiet and eerily alive Halloween night.