The warning sign above the door read:
Caution: Beyond this door lie your worst fears. Do not continue
Harry, being the fearless adventurer wanted to continue with the funhouse experience. I, on the other hand, wanted nothing more than to leave. I’d hurt my ankle in the Moon room. The darkness of the room concealed the bouncy surface making me lose my balance and twist my ankle. The pain wasn’t too intense but I wanted to have it checked anyway. Harry knew this and urged me to continue. Being the accommodating girlfriend I am, I gave in.
A water tunnel was next. I could hear it from the other side of the door. The single narrow path down the whirlwind of water sprayed us with droplets and blew wind in our faces. There were projections on the water with clowns, pirates, skeletons, and other scary characters. It was cheesy and stupid, but Harry was delighted. He was like a kid again.
Once we were past that room, we reached a fork in the path, and another sign post:
Final Warning: Beyond this door lie your worst fears. Do not continue.
“Oh god, it’s like they’re challenging us,” Harry said with a laugh.
“Can we go? My ankle is starting to hurt more,” I said, and shifted my weight to my uninjured leg.
“It’s almost over. Let’s get our money’s worth. There’s probably nothing back there. Let’s go. Come on!”
Harry didn’t even wait for my response before he was heading through the door with the ominous warning above it. I shook my head and just gave into him again. I shouldn’t have done that. I wish I’d been braver.
As I passed through the door, and followed Harry through a dark corridor, I heard the door slam behind me. It gave a loud, audible click from behind. It was definitely locked now. I felt a twinge of worry as we couldn’t go back the way we came. We couldn’t go back to the exit now, even if we wanted.
“This is so dumb,” Harry said with the same jubilant tone he’d had the whole time we’d been in the funhouse.
As soon as the echo of his words stopped bouncing off the walls around us, a light suddenly came on, and all at once, hundreds of people appeared to be standing around us in all directions.
The lighting was designed to be creepy, and was successful in this goal. The circular walls were backlit, so the silhouettes of the silent people made them seem like walking shadows. I reached for Harry’s hand without conscious thought; he squeezed me tight.
“We paid $31.91 for this; it’s kind of dumb to use people instead of props,” he offered in a hollow voice, failing in his attempt to sound brave. “So, I guess we’re supposed to… push our way through them?” He stepped forward.
I pulled him back. He moved toward me, and we stared at one another in silence. I shook my head without breaking eye contact.
Something wasn’t right. Actors don’t touch people in haunted houses, and fire codes demand multiple exits with no locked doors.
Nothing about this room should have been allowed.
My heart beat so hard that my chest hurt. My ankle throbbed. My left palm ached from where my fingernails were drawing blood.
“We’ll… be on our way, then,” Harry announced to the silent watchers as he pulled me forward.
I tried to pull him back a second time, but it was too late. The shadowy people descended on us, crowding so close that we couldn’t move. I felt like I was in the world’s most tightly packed subway car. It was impossible to expand my lungs enough to take a full breath. I smell body odor and copper. Harry squeezed my hand, but the crowd kept him from wrapping me in his arms.
Then they stepped away. Harry and I both fell to our knees, gasping. We huddled close together, staring at one another.
We both understood that something was very, very wrong.
That’s when one of the shadowy people stepped toward us, coming to a halt three feet away. Harry shot violently upward, yanking me to my feet and standing protectively in front of me. “The fuck do you want, man?” he demanded.
The man raised his hands, and two more people came out of the crowd. One approached Harry from the front, and the other met me from behind. Harry tried to pull me even closer, but they had us surrounded.
My breath stopped as the person closest to me pulled out an enormous hunting knife. I turned my head to see the other had done so as well.
We’ve all considered our final moments on earth, and can mostly agree that we would like them to be profound. The simple reality is that they’re just ordinary moments for the rest of the world, and are not guaranteed any sanctity or sacredness. All I could think of in those seconds was that I really, really didn’t want to piss my pants.
Then both people spun the knives around and extended them to us handle-first. I balked.
“Take it,” Harry whispered. “We’ve got nothing to lose.”
So, I reached a trembling hand out for the weapon and grabbed it from the person whose face I still could not see. It felt heavy in my hand, powerful and violent. I wondered how many people it had hurt.
Then everyone stepped back, leaving Harry and me in the middle. My anxiety shot higher, because it’s easier to accept a miserable fate when it’s known and quantifiable.
“Fight like you want to live,” the first man announced in a deep and quavering voice as he stepped aside.
“Shit,” Harry breathed, pressing his back against mine. “They’re going to make us kill someone if we want to get out of here. Just stay close to me, Jenna, we can pull this off if we work together, but you have to be aggressive, understand?”
“Okay,” I answered, my breath trembling. “Harry, do you think they’ll have more weapons than us?” I asked, eyes darting around at every shadow. “Will they be trained to fight? Oh, fuck – Harry, do you really think we can do this?”
His words came in quick gasps. “Just – just keep your eye out for the attacker, Jen, they’ll be counting on the element of surprise and we cannot concede that.”
My stomach knotted itself as I looked through the statue-still crowd for our attacker. Would they leap out at us? Were they armed? I looked from shadow to shadow, trying to see which of them might be hiding a weapon.
But nothing happened. Who were we supposed to fight?
I pressed my back against Harry. He was looking everywhere that I wasn’t as we huddled together in the center of the room.
And still, nothing.
“I – I don’t get it, Harry,” I gasped. “I’m looking everywhere for a potential attacker, but no one else is moving, and I don’t see anyone else who has a weapon. Who are we supposed to-”
I froze.
I stared at Harry’s knife. He looked at mine. I stepped away from him and gazed at his white face.
“Oh, shit.”
My heart sank into my stomach, as anxiety and dread froze me like a deer in the headlights. Harry’s hand trembled, with a glint of light sparkling from the cold blade in his stiff hand. He grasped tighter as we listened to silence other than our breathing.
“This is enough! You’ve gone too far!” yelled Harry as his voice echoed in the dim room and through the corridor farther away.
That was when we heard footsteps from the corridor, calm and steady, approaching towards the center of the room. The footsteps grew louder and heavier, but nobody answered Harry’s cry. I could not believe my eyes as I witnessed the man appearing before us from the corridor. His dark, curly hair was familiar, and his blue eyes were like those that I had fallen in love with months ago, just as Harry’s. In fact, the man had the same dimple on his left cheek, as well as the same height as my boyfriend. If I did not know better, then I would have guessed that I was staring at Harry’s reflection.
The man brandished his knife, as sharp and apathetic as ours, as he struck Harry like a serpent’s bite. The men struggled briefly, and before I could blink, the doppelganger had wrestled his way on top of Harry. I watched in terrifying slow motion as the assailant raised the blade above him and thrusted with all his might into Harry’s chest. The mortal blow was so violent that I heard Harry’s ribs crack as he struggled to take his last breathes. The man stood up, searching the room until his Gorgon gaze locked onto me as I stood like stone.
“Is it you, Jemma? Show me your left arm.” He called forth.
I reluctantly rolled up my sleeve, bearing my birthday tattoo that I had received a few months ago as a gift from Harry. The man’s eyes lit up for a moment, like the bright flames of a furnace, before becoming dark as the fading sparks of dying coal.
“Ah, I am sorry. I really mean that, but you are not my Jemma.” The man said as his voice dragged reluctantly.
The man stepped forward, his arms flexed with the weapon in hand, as I sprinted my way into the crowd of the shadow people. To my surprise, the doppelganger had trouble grabbing me as he refused to cut through the bystanders – how could I know that the creepy strangers would be my saving grace, keeping me at an arm and knife’s length away from harm. The assailant became entangled in the crowd as I snuck down the hall.
“Jemma!’ boomed the voice of the doppelganger.
I snuck away from the remnants of the world that I understood and my boyfriend’s bloodstained corpse, as I dashed into the darkness of the unknown corridor. Many rooms were on the left and right sides of the corridor, each with their own black door and golden doorknob. I decided to hide in the 10th room on the right so that I was not near the beginning of the corridor because I wanted more time to plan my next move. The room was filled with mirrors and an old, dusty chandelier above me at the center. My reflections looked at me, with wide and teary eyes, except for one at the back of the room. Only one reflection appeared to be moving towards me.
She was dressed in a nurse’s outfit and carried a knife which could have been the twin of my blade. All around me the reflections changed. Some of them were taller, fatter, or oblong. There were versions of me with different hair colors, skin tones, and facial features. There were deformities. Amputees. Version of me with four arms. Three legs. Male versions. Androgynous versions.
Yet, my vision remained focused on the doppelgänger. The distorted and altered reflections stood watch over us as we stared each other down. My heart pounded so hard I felt it behind my eyes. The other version of me breathed hard with excitement and anticipation. She had the eyes of a killer. A predator awaiting the moment to strike her prey. She’d been waiting for this moment forever. A moment which might never have come with Harry hadn’t pushed us into this direction. But here I was. Harry was gone. I might be gone soon too. My sanity in this room was slipping away as well.
No, I thought to myself. This can’t be real. It’s all cameras and CGI projections. I didn’t really believe myself, but I needed to hold on to some semblance of reality. Funhouses don’t have doppelgänger murder rooms. This was all an illusion. It couldn’t be real.
Interrupting my rationalizations, the doppelgänger Jemma let out a battle cry which would echo through my mind for the rest of my life. Even though we were the same person, I don’t think I could ever produce a sound like that. She came charging at me with the knife drawn, ready to swing.
Despite watching and waiting for her to attack, I wasn’t ready to react. D-Jemma swung at me and in a dramatically wide arc. Seeing where it was going, I dove out of the way in time to avoid getting stabbed. D-Jemma smashed the knife into one of the mirrors containing a pirate version of myself, shattering it to pieces. The Pirate Jemma stood where the mirror stood only moments before. She let out an Arg! sound, swung her pirate hook at D-Jemma, and caught her right in the side of the face.
The hook tore through her cheek, and when Pirate Jemma pulled back on it, the majority of D-Jemma’s face tore off with it. Blood and teeth spilled to the ground, and D-Jemma screamed until it died in her throat.
Pirate Jemma let out another Arrrrrg! of triumph and celebrated her victory with a quick drink of the flask attached to her belt. She took a swig and then turned back in my direction. With another Arrrrg – she came charged at me with the bloody hook. This time, I was ready for the attack, and ran toward the closest mirror. Another version of myself stood staring back at us, a cyborg version.
It’s arms and legs were metal. One of her eyes was replaced with a blue glass. It glowed showing that Cyborg Jemma was ready for combat. Without even thinking about it, I stabbed the knife into the mirror, and it shattered. Cyborg Jemma appeared a moment later, ready to join the melee. She made a noise that sounded like a cybernetic horn blast. It rumbled in my ears as the shockwaves of sound overcame me. Pirate Jemma didn’t fare any better. She covered her ears and cried out in pain.
Cyborg Jemma watched me with the blue glassed eye. It blinked for some reason, and then she turned her attention to Pirate Jemma. Cyborg Jemma walked past me appearing to prefer the Pirate to the real thing. Pirate Jemma also stopped paying attention to me as she went after the cyborg with the hook. It clanked against the metal chest of Cyborg Jemma.
Pirate Jemma let out one last questioning Arrrg before Cyborg Jemma punched her in the face. Pirate Jemma’s skull cracked as her face collapsed into itself. I cried out in horror and fear as I realized I’d unleashed an indestructible killing machine. I ran to the next mirror and smashed it with the knife. I didn’t even look to see what Jemma was in this one. It was a lizard version of me.
I didn’t stop there. I smashed the next three mirrors with the knife and another three versions of me appeared in this reality – a version of me dressed like I worked at Walmart, a child version of myself, and a giant version of myself. Walmart Jemma immediately charged at Cyborg Jemma and was eliminated swiftly. Cyborg Jemma punched a hole straight through her stomach. It’s metal fist came out of the other side covered in all sorts of gore. Bile rose in my throat and I choked it back. I didn’t even bother to watch what happened to the Child Jemma. Giant Jemma fight stand a chance, but I didn’t see what happened.
Something caught my eye in the distance.
An “Exit” sign.
Rather than stand around watching the Jemma battle royale continue, I went for the door, slashing at each mirror standing in my way. More versions of me appeared out of nowhere and charged into the warzone behind me. I heard the screams and cries of all the Jemma’s. The sound of chainsaws whirling, guns firing, and what sounded like chanting in some language filled the room. I shattered all the mirrors I could to put the distance between me and all the others. None of them chased after me when they appeared. They seemed more interested in killing each other instead of coming for me until I reached the Exit sign.
I turned the knob, and with the loudest click I’ve ever heard in my life, the door opened.
A bright flash of light immediately blinded me, and I was found myself standing outside of the funhouse back at the carnival. I turned back and found the door was gone. I touched the wall and wondered where it had gone.
“Jemma!” a voice called from a few yards away.
Harry.
We ran toward each other navigating around the sea of people between us. None of them were doppelgängers. These were real people in the real world.
As we came together, Harry took me into his arms, and held me tightly. I had so many questions, but settled for the warmth of the embrace. My heart was still pounding and my ankle was killing me.
“I can’t believe I found you,” Harry said, as he pulled out my arms. As he pulled away, he looked at my arm, and his brows furrowed in confusion. “You,” he said with all the warmth gone from his voice. “You aren’t my Jemma.”
He pushed me to the ground, and pulled the knife from his pocket. The crowd of people around us cried out in horror. As Harry was about to attack, several men brought him to the ground, and subdued him. The knife fell out of his hand as he struggled against them with no success. Throughout the entire event, he screamed and shouted at me. He told the crowd I was a doppelgänger and the real Jemma was still stuck inside the funhouse. He pleaded for them to let him go. He asked them to kill me. I tried to convince
The police came and Harry was hauled off in cuffs. I haven’t seen him since then. When the police asked me what happened, I told them I didn’t know. I said Harry was fine one moment, and he attacked me the next. None of it made sense, and I wasn’t about to tell them about what happened in the funhouse.