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Blackwood Farm remembers everyone who bleeds upon its soil. It remembers grief too. My mother said the corn grew tallest over graves. When she died, I buried part of her ashes beneath the north field and watched the stalks rise higher than my shoulders that summer.

I was twelve. I stopped believing in coincidences after that. The farm remembered Sloane. One year ago, she attended the public attraction with three friends. They laughed through the haunted barn, mocked Dante’s carnival, and screamed when Rhys stepped from behind a butcher’s curtain.

Sloane did none of those things. She watched. Searched. As though the manufactured horror disappointed her because it wasn’t real enough. Her friends headed toward the parking lot near closing time. Sloane stopped at the private gate. I stood twenty feet away, hidden among the corn.

She curled her fingers around the iron bars and stared into the darkness. At me. She couldn’t see my face. Still, she whispered, “Maybe next year.”

I heard those words every night for eleven months. Finding her identity was easy. Contacting her would have been easier. I didn’t. Wanting Sloane gave me no right to enter her life. So I waited until applications opened for the next private hunt. Then I mailed one black envelope.

No threats. No pressure. Only an invitation she could destroy. She accepted. I read her application inside the chapel. Masks. Restraints. Multiple partners. Primal play. A safe word that suited Blackwood Farm perfectly. But beneath every sexual fantasy lived a hunger I recognized.

She wanted to be seen without being judged. Chosen without being caged. Held without being made helpless. I rebuilt the chapel around her answers. Rhys added the safety equipment. Dante added red candles and called my original design depressing.

I added the altar. Tonight, Sloane walks willingly toward it. I watch from the corn as she completes the final consent check. White dress. Dark hair. Three ribbons around her wrist. She looks exactly as I remember and nothing like the woman I’ve imagined. She is real now.

Close enough to touch. Free to leave. That last truth cuts deepest. The registration attendant opens the gate. Sloane steps through. The first bell rings. Her attention moves from Rhys to Dante. Then she looks at me. She cannot see through the burlap mask. She has no reason to recognize the man beneath it. Yet something changes in her expression. Her breathing slows. Her head tilts in answer to mine. For one impossible second, I believe she remembers being watched last Halloween.

Rhys disappears into the northern path. Dante leaves for the carnival. I remain until Sloane looks away. Then I take the hidden route toward the chapel. The gold ribbon belongs to me. I intend to remove it last.

Not because of the warning given to every participant. Not because I need to prove I am the most frightening hunter. Because the final ribbon ends the game. I waited a year for Sloane to return to Blackwood Farm. One night will never be enough. The second bell tolls. I enter the chapel and light the first black candle. Soon, Sloane will run. Rhys will control her. Dante will tempt her. Every path will lead her to me. And when the final bell releases us, the dead beneath Blackwood Farm will learn the sound of their newest fucking obsession.

Chapter

One

RUN, LITTLE PREY

SLOANE

The final bell rings. For one suspended second, nothing moves. Not the dead cornstalks towering above me. Not the fog curling around my ankles. Not the three masked men waiting somewhere inside the maze. Then a chain drags across the dirt. The Devil laughs.

And I run. My boots tear through the soft earth as I race between the rows. Dry leaves claw at my arms, catch in my hair, and scrape across my bare legs. The three ribbons beat against my pulse. Black for the Reaper. Red for the Devil. Gold for the Scarecrow.

One for every man hunting me. One for every filthy fantasy I spent years pretending I didn’t have. Heavy footsteps strike the ground behind me. Fast.

Getting closer. I don’t look back. That’s how women die in horror movies.

Then again, women in horror movies usually don’t sign a consent form asking three masked men to chase them through a cornfield and have their fucking way with them if they get caught.

I’ve always been an overachiever. A dark figure crosses the path ahead. I stop so suddenly that my boots slide through the dirt. The Reaper stands between the stalks. His white skull mask glows beneath the harvest moon. A long black coat conceals everything except his size and the gloved hand resting at his side.

He doesn’t move. He doesn’t have to. The message is clear. Not this way. I turn and sprint in the opposite direction. Laughter follows me. Not his. The Devil’s.

“Oh, Little Rabbit,” he calls from somewhere inside the corn. “You’re making this too easy.”

“Fuck you.”

“That’s the plan, Little Rabbit.”

His voice comes from my left. A second later, it comes from my right. Hidden paths. Shortcuts. They know every inch of this maze, and they are steering me exactly where they want me. My pulse races faster. My pussy getting wetter by the second.

Fear twists together with excitement until I can’t separate them. My lungs burn. My skin feels hot despite the cold October air. I reach a fork. The path on my left leads toward flickering orange lights. The one on the right disappears into darkness. A wooden sign hangs crookedly between them.

PRETTY THINGS SHOULD NEVER

ENTER THE DARK ALONE.

A painted arrow points right.