What Game Will You Play

Chapter 23

(Edited)

Aiden walks us back a few feet on the path so we are further away from the light. "You were right about there being more guards," Aiden says to me. "We're going to have to take a different way around. It will probably take longer, but it will be safer."

I nod in agreement, and then I take another look at the now-sweating Ethen.

"You guys are insane," Ethen says. His voice is quiet enough for no one else to hear, but I do not miss the way panic and shrill make up his tone. "The guards are right over there, just a few feet away from us. If they are like that everywhere, then I am so dead. We should go back into the room and wait them out."

"There is no waiting them out," I say. "We got lucky with those two guards coming in the room. Pretty soon, there will be more coming to check the kitchen, and we might not get so lucky again. Besides, once those two guards wake up, they will be doing everything they can to alert the others. Going back there is not an option."

Aiden joins in, "Sam is right. We need to keep moving. If we go back into the room, we will be waiting with our backs into a corner. We can make it out of here as long as we are careful."

"You two are crazy," Ethen says. "I'm going back to the room. They are going to kill the two of you out here, and I want to be as far away as possible when that happens. If they come into the room, I will shoot them. That is the whole purpose of having a gun, right?" By the time Ethen ends his sentence, he is practically crying, and the pitch in his voice has gone up.

I give Aiden a quick, worried glance since I'm not sure I want to go with Ethen anywhere anymore. I'm afraid he is going to panic and get us killed.

Aiden stares at Ethen hard before grabbing Ethen by the shoulders, pushing him to the wall, and giving him a piece of his mind. "You don't have enough bullets. None of us do. You are a grown adult. Stop acting like a child. If you don't grow up right now, then we will all die. Do you not think we are scared, too? We are, but we are not showing it because right now is not the time to feel scared. We need to be calm so that we can think things through clearly and make reasonable decisions."

Aiden continues in a sedate voice, "If you want to be scared of something, be scared of me because right now, I am your biggest threat. I want to help you get out of here, I really do, but if you don't stop and get your shit together, then I will have to leave you here. Do you want that?" Ethen shakes his frightened head no. "Good. Then you are going to follow Sam and I, you are going to do as we say, and we are all going to get out of here alive. Got it?"

Ethen nods his head in understanding, and Aiden lets him go.

Aiden angrily stares at Ethen for another minute and then walks back down the pathway where we came from. We pass the kitchen again and move further down the dark path until we can't go any further since we are met by a fence with a red tarp over it, like the one around the perimeter of the carnival. Aiden looks at the fence that goes around the back of the kitchen. I try to think if there is a way to climb the fence, but I scratch that idea the second I look at Ethen.

It's not that I don't think he could climb a fence. I just don't think he could do it quietly and without panicking.

"I think we can fit through. There is just enough space for a person to move back here between the fence and the wall. We'll take this way until we get to the end of the building. Then there should be another spot of games along with another open space we can cross to get over to the other side of the carnival."

I take a quick look between the building and the fence, and I know that he is most likely right. We can fit as long as we walk sideways. Then, it looks like there are more games at the end that we could hide behind until we get to a spot where it is safe to cross over to the other side, where the Mirror Maze is. I notice that Aiden hasn't told Ethen about the Mirror Maze being our way out.