JV Hampton-VanSant

One row from the front, eyes glowing behind that hockey mask, your watcher raises his machete.

Ahead, skeletal branches paint the aisle and side with a dense and hopeless forest, the light of fiction rippling like lake water.

You pivot up the side aisle of the theater, not daring to look behind you, trying to see beyond the trees.

As you reach the middle rows, your watcher's machete slices past your head, whirling like a helicopter blade.

It lodges into an evergreen tree and the Rialto's wall.

You don't miss a heartbeat.

You hobble over and yank, but the machete remains buried handle deep.

Your strength feels gooey, transient.

Still, you put all your weight behind one more tug.

The machete doesn't budge.

No!

Your skin prickles with desperate futility.

Your water shines at you from the foot of the aisle now, a dozen odd rows below.

The machete's a lost cause.

You gotta leave it.

Tumbling through phantom branches, you land hard on all fours and scramble up the remaining half of the aisle.

Behind you, the hockey mask clatters to the sticky floor like a snake molting, revealing... a new nightmare?

Gutsick, you glance over your shoulder.

Your watcher still lurks near the bottom row.

All at once, the woods and his projector glow drops away as he collapses into a fetal ball.