Let's Make A Trade (RL Stine's Fill in the fear contest)

Each their obstacle, Each their fear

"I'm getting out of here!" Marty yelled as he turned to make a run for it.

"Not so fast, don't think you can escape our game so easily. At least, not until my dear sister returns..." Alyson's warned as the boy stopped dead in his tracks and began shaking.

"Also, the woman with sight in my family taught me more than just how to bring someone back from the dead..." she continued.

Suddenly, all the doors and windows of the house slammed shut and the wind blew out all the candles, leaving them in total darkness.

"Marty..?" Jillian asked nervously after seconds of uncomfortable silence.

Nothing.

"This chick's crazy.." one of the teens muttered.

"Yeah, no kidding." someone else replied.

"Is that so?" Alyson's voice mocked with a bone chilling voice before bursting into a fit of hysterical laughter.

As she stopped laughing, the candles lit again, as if by magic, making everyone else in the room jump.

From the corner of her eye, Jillian spotted Marty's silent, trembling figure, and walked over to see if he was alright.

"Now, allow me to explain how the game works. The rules are simple. You will each individually appear in a room, or area, and have a task to complete. But there's a catch. You'll find out what it is when you arrive."

Students begin to disappear and they each appear in a different area. Each area filled with their deepest, darkest fears.

Jillian appeared in a room, and as she looked around, she saw that hers was a test of wisdom and wit, her strongest points. A maze. Her biggest fear being that of of labyrinths. It was a seemingly long dark narrow maze in which she had to find the exit to within the given time. She saw her first clue on where to go and advanced towards it. It was a riddle.

'The right is not always the right way to go, yet the left can be deceiving. Choose wisely.'

Jillian looked ahead to see three entrances. Based on what she read, she decided to go into the middle entrance. Answering the first riddle correctly, she continued to walk towards the second riddle's location, knowing not to let fear get the best of her, though it was eating at her trembling figure.

Meanwhile, Marty appeared in a small white room with flickering candle light and shadows. His weakness being claustrophobia. He noticed that the walls were very slowly closing in. He looked down, and in the center of the room, he saw some sort of complicated puzzle. He was the smart and cunning one in the group, unless he was under pressure, which he was at the moment. He began to tremble slightly before advancing towards the puzzle and beginning to observe it. He breathed slowly, trying to suppress his fear and concentrate, until he noticed a shadow that caught his attention. He looked down at the ground and saw a riddle, to which he had to find the answer within the hundreds of pieces in the puzzle.

'What ends sooner than it begins?'

Now having a few ideas of what the answer might be, he began to search through the puzzle pieces.

Veronica on the other hand, was in full on panic mode. Her deepest darkness fear was arachnophobia. The fear of spiders. Those crawling hairy beasts caused her to have nightmares that she would awaken from in cold sweat. She sat, her back against the wall, hugging her knees and rocking nervously back and forth whilst reading the riddle over and over. Being too afraid to process it. She was the athletic one. She could run for awhile without getting tired.

'They creep and crawl, but can you outsmart them all?'

She sighed shakily and scrambled up onto her feet before starting to run. She needed to find a way to kill them before they multiply. She ran into an unfamiliar, force field surrounded forest that looped. Meaning no matter how far she ran in the same direction, she would end up back where she was before.

'Outsmart the spiders...?' she thought, and then she got an idea.

Bradly, another one of the Shady high school students was afraid of blood, hemophobia. Just the thought of someone bleeding made him sick to his stomach. He was also very superstitious. And he believed in ghosts, demons and such.

Drip

Drip

Drip

Blood...

He looked up at the ceiling. Blood. It was dripping onto the ground slowly. His breath caught in his throat and he backed away. He back into a wall. It was covered in blood...

He tried to scream, but nothing came out.

His pulse quickened to the point where he was dizzy. Then, he heard footsteps. He could have sworn he felt someone's breath on the back of his neck, and it sent a shiver down his spine.

He turned around, only to come face to face with his own reflection... Or so it seemed... but the reflection flickered into the form of a girl he knew. Marie...

She looked at him with a shady, devious smile crossing her thin lips. Blood began to leak from the corner of her lips. And she started to laugh...

A demonic, cruel, murderous laugh.

The lights in the room started to flicker and he backed away.

"N-No...please...!"

And then she disappeared, whispering.

"I'll be waiting..."

'An Illusion...?' he thought, looking back around the blood covered room, not believing his own thoughts.

He turned his attention back towards the wall and then, written in blood, he saw a riddle.

'Marie's counting down the seconds, tic toc, find a way out, little boy, don't wait for the clock.'