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I can feel the way my expression turns incredulous, my nose scrunched up and my lips twisted in a grin. “What the fuck does my crowbar have to do with–”

“Welcome to the Diamondback. Please keep your arms and legs–” The recording cuts off again, annoying and invasive. Before I can help myself, I’m vaulting over the roller coaster car in the way I’d done so many times back then, and I walk to the broken booth to jam the button that will cut off the voice. Halfway through another welcome, the recording dies. The lights and music stay, but they’re not nearly as abrasive to my senses.

“Okay, well, since I have the crowbar, why don’t you tell me who you are. And why the fuck you think you know me?” I demand, feeling braver on this side of the coaster car. He can’t get to me without making his way over the car as well, and there has to be a few seconds where I could–

“Mmm, Nah. Don’t think so.” As I watch, he lunges forward, faster and more graceful than I ever could, and instead of having the reaction of whacking him with the crowbar, I take a few quick steps back from him.

Shit.

Flipping the knife in his hand, he slowly stalks forward. Even with the mask, I can feel his attention on me, and my hand tightens on the weapon. I have to be faster than him. Smarter than him, since he has the knife that could do way more damage than my crowbar could on one swing. My heart seems to rise in my throat until it’s almost choking me, but I only back away to keep my distance from him.

“You…you can’t kill me,” I snap at last, looking for any logic to slow him down. “You’re not my hunter. That guy from the motel brought me here. Not you.”

“That so?” He doesn’t stop.

“You’re breaking the rules.”

“My bad.”

Still, he circles me, matching me step for step on the Diamondback platform. Though he never lunges forward, not even when I stumble over a stray piece of loose wiring. My stomach clenches–this is his chance and yet…

And yet he doesn’t take it.

Why doesn’t he take it?

When I stop, curious, he does too. Mirroring me even now. “What are you doing?” I demand finally. I’m frustrated, and my hand aches from gripping the crowbar. “What do you want? You could’ve stabbed me by now. You could’ve–”

A scream breaks through the noise of the music. Loud and terrible, though it becomes a wail before long. I can’t help it. I look around into the darkness, past the flashing lights, and at that moment, the man lunges.

“Fuck–” But I’m too slow to stop him. My back slams into the broken window of the operator booth, and even as I bring up my weapon, the man knocks it away, sending it clattering to the floor. I expect a knife in my ribs, but instead I get his hand slipping around my throat, holding me under my jaw.

“What I’ve been doing,” he drawls, close enough I can hear him breathing behind the mask, excitement in every rasp. “Is looking for you, Sable Carver.”

Another scream sounds, and footsteps suddenly pound up the stairs to the coaster platform. I writhe, jerking in his grip, expecting to see the two men from the motel at any moment, come to grab me from this man to kill me slowly.

“Let me go!” I snarl, digging my nails into his wrist. “I swear if you don’t–”

“Suit yourself, feisty thing.” and he lets me go. Just like that, the man lets go and steps back so quickly that I stumble. I don’t stop to consider why. When I look to the stairs on the right of the platform, the ones for the public to enter the platform, I see the shape of another black, shiny mask with a neon blue face painted on it. My chest tightens, and I whirl around instead, running away from both of them even as another voice calls out.

“Sable!”

I know that voice.

I know that voice very well, but I don’t stop. My feet slam onto the concrete, eyes fixed on the emergency stairs behind the operator booth. As much as I wish I wouldn’t have dropped my crowbar, I’m not about to go back for it when there are two men waiting for me.

Hitting the stairs hard just means that when a third figure dressed similarly appears, but with a mask painted with a pink smiley face instead of blue or green, I can’t stop myself. I stumble and overbalance, tripping down the concrete stairs.

At the very least, I think to myself as I careen through the air, maybe I’ll take him out with me too.

But the man catches me in his arms, managing not to go sprawling, and when I scream at him, no longer able to contain my dread and the fear of getting murdered slowly and painfully, he freezes.

“The fuck–whoa, whoa whoa, Sable!”

I know that voice too.

“Let me go!” I howl anyway, writhing and kicking at him. “Let me the fuck go–”

“Sable stop!” He lets go of me with one hand, fending me off with the other, and reaches up to jerk the mask off of his face. “It’s me!”