Effortless

Twenty-one

I had never been to a haunted house before and I never had thought about going to one. Just like in horror movies, the 'monsters' were just actors in costume and makeup. As long as I knew that there was no real threat, I had nothing to fear. The whole point of a haunted house was to be scared and since I didn't believe that I would be, I never had any desire to go to one.

However, a haunted house had recently opened in our town and tonight it was doing a discount for high school students. They probably thought since it was a school night that most parents would not let their child go even if it was at a discounted price. What parent sends their kids to go be scared all night when they have school in the morning? Apparently a lot of parents because it looked as if every high school student in town had shown up. The line to get into the haunted house was out of the door and deep into the parking lot. Nonetheless, my friend group insisted that we wait for the estimated time of two hours.

We had been standing in line for almost an hour and a half and I was tired of it. I, as well as many other people, sat on the ground while we waited. I had found a small patch of dirt and was occupying myself by drawing in it with my finger.

Bella and Ricky were arguing about which had a better scare factor: ghosts or vampires.

"How could you possibly tell me with a straight face that vampires are scary?" Bella said in utter disbelief. "Are you okay in the head?"

"Are you okay in the head?" Ricky asked incredulously. "Vampires have fangs and suck your blood. That automatically puts them above all monsters."

"Ghosts can possess you, Ricky. I think that's worse. Are you saying that if you saw a ghost right now you wouldn't be terrified?" Bella asked.

"Not as scared as I would be if I saw a vampire." Ricky said before looking at Kailey. "Kailey, you agree with me, right?"

Kailey was watching me draw in the dirt as she sat on the ground next to me. She sighed, Bella and Ricky had been having this debate for over ten minutes.. "You won't like my answer."

Ricky was shocked. "You think ghosts are scarier than vampires?"

"I think vampires are hot."

Bella and Ricky paused like they didn't believe what she had said. They glanced at each other, then at Kailey. A few seconds later they both broke into laughter. Kailey watched as they laughed before she started laughing herself, and I couldn't help but laugh too.

"You watch too many vampire shows and movies." Bella said between laughs. "Eli, what do you think?"

I had just finished drawing a horse in the dirt. Well, it looked more like a deformed cow than a horse. I wasn't an artist in the slightest, but I was proud of my horse-cow.

"The only monster that could come close to scaring me is clowns." I said. Some would argue that clowns aren't monsters, but I fully disagree. Clowns appear in horror movies just like zombies appear in horror movies. They wouldn't show up in the movies if they weren't monsters.

"So you scare yourself?" Asked Justin.

Justin had just arrived because he opted to meet us at the haunted house rather than to go there with us. We didn't know the reason why, which was fine because I couldn't care less. I was hoping that he was going to skip out on us.

"There's only one scary-looking person here and it's you." I said dully.

Justin laughed condescendingly. "I'm surprised you're even here. I figured that out of everyone in the group you'd be the one to chicken out."

"Out of all of us here, you'll be the one running scared." I said confidently despite that I didn't actually believe that he would. If I had to put money on the one whom I thought would be terrified tonight, I'd say Kailey. However, for the sake of needing a retort, I lied.