The October air carries a bite tonight, sharp enough to stain my cheeks crimson but not cold enough to explain the wild drumming behind my ribs. My fingertips tingle as I pass through the fairground entrance alone, deliberately so. The turnstile catches, then yields with a metallic click that reverberates through my hollow chest. No friends trailing behind, no casual date to witness what comes next. No safety net. Just me and the night's promise.

"Just one?" the ticket-taker asks. His eyebrows arching as his gaze searches for companions that don't exist.

"Just one," I confirm, rolling the words across my tongue like forbidden fruit. I offer no manufactured excuses about meeting someone inside. The truth feels dangerous, delicious.

The fairgrounds unfurl before me in vulgar autumn splendor. Carnival rides slash neon signatures against indigo twilight. Strings of lights undulate like bioluminescent creatures, canvas tents snap and whisper secrets. The scent of caramel apples mingles with decaying leaves. Families orbit around me in bubbles of laughter. Their normalcy makes my isolation sweeter, my skin crackling with invisible current.

I catch my reflection in a funhouse mirror. Faded blue jeans worn to whisper-softness at the knees. An oversized navy hoodie frayed at the edges. My fingers trace the cuff where threads dangle like exposed nerves. A thought crystallizes: These clothes are sacrifices to whatever comes next. Let them be ruined.

The thought sends a liquid shiver down my spine, pooling hot between my legs.

I drift past ring toss games with their hollow wooden clacks, carried along by the fairground current while remaining untouched by its momentum. My empty stomach knots itself tight. At a candy stand draped in orange and black crepe paper that rustles like insect wings, I pause.

"One, please," I tell the vendor. Indicating the spun cotton candy, its pink cloud incongruously innocent. When he passes it to me, our fingers brush, his warm and slightly sticky against my cool ones. I catalog the sensation: The last ordinary touch I'll feel tonight.

I tear away a piece and place it on my tongue. The sugar crystals scrape, then surrender, collapsing into syrupy sweetness. From beyond the Ferris wheel, high-pitched screams punctuate deeper laughter. The haunted corn maze releases its survivors. My pulse trips and races beneath paper-thin skin. I check my phone: 9:17 PM. The maze closes at 10:00.

Perfect timing.

I finish the cotton candy methodically, each bite a countdown ritual. The sugar leaves my teeth feeling film-coated as I observe the maze's survivors. Teenagers with false bravado, couples clutching hands. A girl whose mascara has carved black tributaries down her flushed cheeks. She laughs with residual hysteria. Her boyfriend's arm locked around her shoulders.

None of them know what waits inside for me. What I wait for.

I drop my cotton candy stick and gravitate toward the maze entrance. A machine exhales artificial fog around the arched gateway. A college-aged attendant checks tickets with vacant efficiency. The crowd has thinned to scattered few checking watches, whispering about making the last run.

I hang back, watching minutes dissolve. 9:47. 9:52. 9:56. Each passing minute constricts my lungs, invisible bands tightening around my ribs.

When the attendant calls, "Last entries for the night!" I step forward. My heartbeat throbs in the hollow of my throat, pressing against skin like a trapped animal seeking escape.

"Just made it," he says, tearing my ticket.

I nod, not trusting my voice to emerge as anything recognizable.

The entrance gapes before me, walls of corn stalks rising ten feet high. The path vanishes into fog and darkness that feels more ancient than it should. From within comes one final scream balanced between terror and excitement.

I could retreat. I could return to my car, drive home to sheets that hold no surprises. Owen would understand. He'd call tomorrow, voice gentle with thinly veiled disappointment. We'd reschedule, pretend tonight never happened. The choice remains mine.

I won't take it.

I need this. Need it like lungs need air, like bodies need release. Need it with an intensity that makes my cheeks burn with shame. I've stopped fighting because I've recognized it as essential kindling. The shame is part of it. The wrongness. The surrender.

I step into the corn maze, and the fog swallows me whole.

The fairground sounds vanish abruptly. One heartbeat contains carousel music and laughter. The next holds only the dry rustle of corn stalks and my wet, animal breathing.

I advance with prey-animal caution. The path narrows, forcing me sideways where untamed corn reaches across. The fog clutches my ankles, then climbs to my waist as I push deeper. Each step brings a temperature drop my nerve endings record as truth.

My senses sharpen. The rough denim between my thighs rasps with sudden intimacy at each step. My hoodie shifts from suffocating to inadequate. The cotton underneath clinging to my skin where sweat collects in the small of my back. Even my underwear announces itself against heated flesh. The elastic edges branding awareness into my skin.

Something rustles in the corn to my left, a deliberate, predatory movement.

I freeze, heart slamming against bone, vision contracting at the edges. Just a mechanical prop, I tell myself. Designed to frighten teenagers.

But I know better. The knowledge settles in my marrow: heavy, poisonous, thrilling.

The maze forces a choice between three shadowed passages. I select the right fork, stepping over extension cords half-buried in soil that smells of petrichor. The fog thickens until visibility shrinks. I hear the last visitors escaping toward safety. Their voices fading until all that remains is my increasingly fractured breathing.

I'm alone in here now.

No. Not alone.

I navigate another corner and collide with corn stalks. Dead end. As I turn, something coalesces in the gray murk. My body recognizes the threat before my mind can name it, muscles locking in ancient warning.

He solidifies from the fog. Ghostface. The bone-white mask traps what little light exists. Its elongated features are frozen between agony and mockery. His head tilts with predatory curiosity, assessing me with patient hunger. Black robes spill around his tall frame, blurring the boundary between man and darkness.

We stand motionless. He makes no sound. No movement except that unsettling head cant conveying both calculation and certainty.

My mouth turns to sand, tongue swelling against teeth. This is Owen beneath that disguise. I know this. Yet in this moment, he has transformed. The familiar lines of his body are reborn into something elemental and unnerving.

I retreat one step, soil crumbling beneath my heel. Then another. His body shifts, sealing the narrow path with absolute intention.

Something electric ignites between us, a current that blurs terror and arousal into a single sensation. My thighs clench involuntarily around sudden, shameful wetness. I'm already responding, already opening, before we've begun.

When he takes his first deliberate step toward me, I bolt.

I crash through the maze, abandoning proper paths. Corn whips against my face and arms. I stumble forward, changing direction randomly at intersections. My breath clouds in sharp gasps before me in the cool night air.

I glance back, see nothing, and allow myself a moment's relief.

That's when I slam directly into something solid.

The impact knocks me backward. I catch myself, look up, and my stomach drops through the earth.

Jason towers before me, at least six-foot-three, broad-shouldered in a tattered jacket. The hockey mask catches moonlight in dull gleams. His chest rises and falls with controlled, measured breaths. One hand grips a prop machete that looks disturbingly authentic in the darkness.

Dylan. It's just Dylan under there, I remind myself. But the thought feels distant, abstract, unconvincing.

Jason takes a heavy, menacing step forward. Then another. Each footfall sends vibrations through the packed earth. Unlike Ghostface's silent stillness, this is methodical pursuit—unstoppable, relentless.

I gasp, pivot, and run again. Corn stalks lash my skin, leaving thin scratches where my sleeves ride up. Sweat finds these tiny wounds with stinging precision. My hair snags on broken stalks, tearing painfully before I wrench free.

Left turn. Right turn. Left again. The maze warps into endless chaos, its pathways dissolving into disorder. Direction vanishes with my sense of the world beyond these walls. My breathing scrapes my throat raw, my legs burning with exertion.

I slow to listen. Nothing. Have I lost them?

The realization hits me with physical force: I'm no longer playing at fear. I'm actually afraid. My body has crossed some threshold where rational knowledge (this is planned) no longer governs my response. I exist in pure prey-mind now, running on instinct and flooding chemicals.

And God help me, I'm more aroused than I've ever been.

My nipples have hardened to aching points against cotton. Between my legs, I'm slick and pulsing with each heartbeat. Every racing thud sends want surging through my core. This is what I needed. Not pretend helplessness but genuine vulnerability. My control isn't symbolically surrendered; it's actually slipping away.

I stumble into a small clearing where corn has been cut back. For the first time in what feels like hours, I see the night sky, stars piercing the darkness. A three-quarter moon casts silver through wisps of cloud. I gulp down air, struggling to orient myself.

That's when I spot it: the faint red glow of an EXIT sign through the fog, perhaps fifty yards ahead.

Relief floods me with such force my knees nearly fold beneath me. I can make it. I've survived the maze, outrun my pursuers. I've experienced exactly what I craved. Real fear. Real arousal. Now I can choose when and how to surrender on the other side.

I move toward the exit, more carefully now. The corn rustles around me, but I dismiss it as wind. I focus so intently on that glowing red sign that I miss the sudden silence, the absence of even insect sounds.

I don't see him until far too late.

He steps directly before me, completely blocking the path. Michael Myers. Six-foot-five, broad as a doorway. Wearing gray coveralls and that blank, expressionless white mask. Mason's massive frame is transformed into a wall of pure inevitability.

Before I can scream, before thought forms, his arms seize me around the waist. I'm lifted clean off the ground, feet kicking uselessly. One gloved hand clamps over my mouth, stifling my shocked cry.

He carries me backward into the corn, away from the exit, away from escape. My body thrashes against him in genuine struggle, not performance. But his arms encircle me like forged steel, immovable and secure.

And in that moment, as he takes me deeper into darkness, something like relief washes through me. The chase ends. The decision vanishes. What happens next will happen regardless of my will, my choices, my control.

I never truly wanted escape. And now, I won't have it.

Myers carries me deeper, away from structured paths. The corn grows wilder here, untamed and natural. My struggles weaken against his impossible strength. My body accepts what my mind already knows: I am caught.

The stalks part, revealing a circular clearing hidden within the cornfield. Moonlight pours across flattened stalks and damp earth. A perfect arena, invisible from the fairgrounds, isolated from civilization. My heart slams so violently I wonder if he feels it against his arms.

Without ceremony, Myers tosses me forward. I land hard, the impact forcing air from my lungs. The earth smells rich and loamy, tinged with crushed vegetation. I lie there momentarily, gasping, fingers clawing into soft dirt.

When I push to hands and knees, I freeze. They surround me.

Three masked figures form a triangle, their elongated shadows stretching across my body. Ghostface with his eerie, tilted posture. Jason, massive and silent, machete hanging from one hand. Myers, still as death, head angled downward.

I open my mouth though words fail me. Before sound emerges, Ghostface moves.

He grabs my hoodie from behind, yanking roughly. The fabric stretches, then tears with a sound like a gasp. Cold air slides across my exposed back. Jason steps forward, seizes what remains, and rips it clean off, leaving me in just my thin tank top.

My lungs forget how to fill. This isn't pretense anymore; this is actually happening.

Myers kneels beside me, one knee sinking into soft earth. His gloved hands grip my tank top at the neckline. Our eyes lock through his mask, empty white plastic concealing the man beneath. With one savage motion, he tears the fabric down the middle. The sound of splitting cloth cracks through the night silence.

They work with brutal efficiency. Jason attacks my jeans, tearing the button fly open, dragging denim down my legs so roughly. Fabric burn against skin. Ghostface hooks fingers into my underwear. The cheap cotton surrenders without resistance as he rips them away.

My bra is the last to go, Myers snaps the front clasp with a sharp twist that pulls a startled sound from my throat. The straps slither down my shoulders, then there's nothing. Just my naked body offered to night air, moonlight, and their hidden gaze.

I lie in dirt, completely stripped, completely vulnerable. Three faceless figures loom above, their masks betraying nothing, their costumes concealing everything. My skin tightens in the cool air, goosebumps rippling across exposed flesh.

In this moment, I am no one. Not the careful professional I present to the world. Not the loving girlfriend. Not the woman with responsibilities and boundaries. I am reduced to flesh and breath and primal need. Exactly as I wanted to be.

They stare down in silence as I await whatever comes next.

Naked and exposed on damp earth, I scramble backward, hands and feet slipping in dirt. Pure instinct drives me now, animal need to flee despite having nowhere to go. The corn wall surrounds us, an impenetrable barrier between this hidden clearing and normality.

Myers moves with shocking speed for his size. His hands seize my waist, fingers spanning nearly half my torso, and I'm lifted off the ground again. This time, he doesn't throw me. He pulls me against his body, my bare back pressed to his chest, feet dangling uselessly. One massive arm locks across my ribs below my breasts, pinning my arms. The rough fabric of his coveralls scrapes against my naked skin.

He turns me to face the others. Jason stands motionless, moonlight gleaming dully off his hockey mask. Ghostface moves forward, head tilting in that unsettling, birdlike manner.

"No—" The word escapes involuntarily, a breathless sound neither protest nor invitation.

Ghostface approaches until he hovers inches away. I hear his breathing now, quick and shallow behind the mask. His black-gloved hand rises to my face, and I flinch. But the touch comes almost gently. His thumb traces my lower lip, pressing just enough to part my mouth.

Then, with his other hand, he reaches up and pulls his mask slightly aside, revealing only mouth and chin. I catch the familiar scent of Owen's cologne beneath sharper notes of sweat and latex. His lips crash against mine in a bruising kiss that tastes of hunger and possession. His tongue invades my mouth, claiming me while the rest of him remains hidden behind the grotesque mask.

When he breaks the kiss, his lips travel to my ear. "You're ours now," he whispers, voice unmistakably Owen's despite his attempt to disguise it. "Everything we talked about. Everything you wanted. It's happening." His teeth graze my earlobe, sending current across my skin. "Remember your safeword?"

I manage a nod, the movement tiny within Myers's grip.

"Say it," Owen insists, voice low for me alone.

"Sunflower," I whisper back.

He kisses me again, harder, one hand gripping my jaw to hold me still. "Good girl," he breathes against my lips. "But you won't need it."

Then he steps back, pulls the mask fully into place, and becomes Ghostface once more. The transformation occurs instantly. Owen's familiar warmth vanishes, replaced by menacing presence. The reassurance lingers even as fresh fear coils through me.

Myers tightens his grip, a silent reminder that I'm captured, helpless, at their mercy. Jason steps forward to join Ghostface. Both advance slowly toward where Myers holds me immobile.

I know these men. I trust these men. I planned this with these men.

Yet in this moment, with moonlight casting strange shadows across their masks, my body completely exposed between them, they feel like strangers. Dangerous and unpredictable. This paradox ignites such intense terrified arousal through me. My knees would fold if I were standing.

This is exactly what I needed. The liminal space between safety and fear. Where I surrender completely while knowing, deep in my mind, that I'm protected. The perfect contradiction ordinary sex could never provide.

Myers shifts his grip, one arm still pinning me while his free hand moves to my throat. The leather glove cools my heated skin. He doesn't squeeze, just holds, a silent promise.

I draw a shaky breath and let my head fall back against his shoulder, offering my naked body to the masked figures before me.

The transition completes. The prey captured. The ritual begins.

Without warning, Myers releases me. I fall forward onto hands and knees in the dirt, breathing hard. For one disoriented moment, I wonder if they've changed their minds. If the night culminates in fear alone.

Then fingers tangle in my hair, gathering strands into a makeshift handle. The grip tightens, yanking my head up with just enough force to make me gasp without truly hurting. My eyes water as I'm forced to look up.

Jason stands before me, hockey mask still in place, but his lower body exposed. His work pants hang open, pushed down just enough to free his cock. Thick, flushed, and fully erect. My mouth goes bone-dry at the sight. Dylan has always been well-endowed, but seeing him like this, masked, menacing, purposeful, makes him seem almost monstrous in size.

He steps closer, one hand guiding himself while the other maintains its grip in my hair. His cock presses against my lips, demanding entry without words. When I hesitate, his grip tightens fractionally. A warning.

I part my lips and he pushes forward immediately. The taste floods my mouth, salt and musk and heat. He groans behind the mask, the sound muffled but unmistakably pleased. His hips rock forward, testing my limits.

"That's it," he says, voice deliberately roughened. "Take it all."

I struggle to relax my jaw as he pushes deeper. My hands brace against his thighs, feeling coarse fabric beneath my palms. Despite his rough demeanor, he's being careful, easing...