I stand in my spot three quarters into the mystery maze. I hide in the dark, jump out, and scare the bejesus out of the little kids. My partner, Larry, hides across from me. He stands under three feet tall and dresses like a clown. He tells everyone he is height-challenged. I call him a dwarf. The correct term, I think, is person of short stature. I like dwarf. Larry doesn’t mind. He knows he is short.
Last year, Larry came out of his corner and chased a real hot chick. She screamed. Oh, did she scream. His little legs following her so fast. We laughed a long time after that. Those were the best six weeks ever.
Tonight we worked fast. A ton of people walked through the maze. We struggled to keep up. The maze is the least scary of all; more of a haunted house for babies. Fake blood on the walls, hanging string, and guys jumping out of the corners. In the next room, Charlie did his best to look trapped in a ghoul’s kitchen. He would flay about on the table and move his fake intestines back and forth as the kids walked by. Those intestines freaked me out in the dark. In the light you could tell they are just plastic ropes.
Larry chased down a lot of kids his own height. He dislikes that. He likes it best when the mothers jump out of his way. Like I said, he gets a kick out of chasing the girls with blonde hair.
The fast pace made our job hard. We barely got back into place before another group wandered in. Plus, the maze owner added a new guy to our room. It made it real awkward to move around. Up towered this big nasty looking dude wearing a canvas robe, a black hole with just two red eyes, and a large scythe. He might as well been a wall in the way. We kept tripping over each other. Larry ran into the guy and fell down more than once. The guy kept whipping the large scythe around the top of Larry’s head. And that evil laugh. He seemed to get a kick out of that laugh.
So, here we were, trying to do our best to jump out and scare the kids and all the while trying to keep from running into each other. Larry ran out, the scythe came down, missing Larry by millimeters, and then I jumped out. Somehow we managed to scare quite a few kids. But it was hard work. All this worked like clockwork until the scythe came down, missed Larry, and hit a kid in the face. I heard a big thump and this small ball rolled to me; a bloody head with surprised eyes and a screaming mouth. The kids around me started screaming and the lights came on.
The guy with the scythe ran out the maze and Larry hauled the kid’s body out of the way. I threw up on his head and you guys showed up. Now that I think about it, I don’t think it was such a good idea to have the angel of death here. He kind of took the fun out of it.
© 2016, Michael Shawn Sommermeyer. All rights reserved.
