Final original part! Vote if you managed to get this far! Thank you so much for taking the time to read and if you comment, I <3 you so much!

Echoes, distant, glimmer and hope. She shines, she's free, she loves. Who is she? It's me... what is this place? Am I dead? A light turns on, the room flashes bright then fills with colors, hundreds of colors, thousands of colors. I'm in awe; she's in awe. I look around the vast expanse of the room, absorbing the ten thousand hues which reflect off glass walls. There's a huge lamp in the center, it's the focus of all light and where everything seems to come from.

I'm happy; she's happy. With a huge grin, I look up at a person standing next to the light. He teasingly casts his shadow in front of the lamp to transform the angles and thus the colors. It's Chase, the big hulk of a man I've come to love. He has this grin on his face from ear to ear. His soft eyes look kindly at me as he runs a hand through his hair, allowing the short blond ends to sway to one side.

All this, for me. He looks happy, very happy like he just opened Pandora's Box and ten million butterflies flew out. I take two or three large strides and leap at him in excitement. This is the most beautiful place I've ever seen in the world. It's utterly wonderful. He takes a step forward, he catches me midair. I wrap my legs around his waist and lower my face close to his.

I kiss, that's probably what he wants as payment for showing me one of the hidden wonders of the world, and that's entirely what he deserves too. I'm ready to lose myself to him, to lose everything in this delightful place. What is this place? Is it heaven? Is it paradise? Is this place a dream? A thought? No, I know what this place is. It's a memory. A memory I'm remembering now. Why am I remembering it now? Why is this memory coming back to me right now when all hope is lost? What sick, twisted joke is my mind playing on me. What sick, twisted joke...

I snap myself back to reality. Dreaming of the good times at a moment like this, what am I thinking? I squeeze my hands tight around Chase's arm as if letting him go now would mean I'd never get him back. We've walked a distance up the mineshaft, making sure to steer clear of the hanging limbs, bones, and other generally terrifying things roped to the rafters.

After falling into a pile of bodies, I feel I'm inches away from just snapping. The only thing still holding me together is Chase. It's his sudden braveness that's keeping me whole. If I lose him, everything would be lost.

I'd be left to my own devices and my own devices are telling me to dream about the good times, to get sucked into a world that no longer exists, to indulge in the good and become entirely numb to reality. My mind is telling me to forget what's real and what's not. But I can't. Chase is real, he's right here and he needs me.

"It opens up," he says between short low breaths. The air down here has gotten musty and humid and it's grown incredibly hotter since we first fell down the pit.

Gears, we hear gears again, turning and cranking, but this time we don't see bars, we can just hear the gears—spinning. I point the light forward as best as I can, trying my best to ignore the blasting noise. In front of us is some kind of room. I see a wooden floor and a table. It looks like there is rotten meat on the table. I slowly move the light around. That's when I see a lantern hanging from one of the beams right next to us. The gears stop cranking again.

I take a slow, deep breath and reach up, catching the lantern between my fingers. It feels old, but there's a switch. I assume the switch would do nothing, that we'd need to light it, but I flick it anyways. The lamp is electric. It's bright, very bright. A room lights up. It looks just like a cabin.

I gasp in air slowly as I stiffen up and tighten my hold on Chase's arm. He's just as frightened and I feel him lift his arm up to wrap it around my body. I'm not entirely sure if his hand around me is security for me or comfort for him, but it makes me feel safe either way.

We see a human head on the table. The wall on the other side has four headless skinned human bodies dangling upside down by metal stakes lodged through their ankles. Pools of dried blood are under the bodies like someone was bleeding out the corpses before cooking them.

The place really does look like an exact replica of a mountain cabin, but one of some demented witch or serial killer, right down to the bloodied metal tools and well-used fireplace with a caldron sitting over it. Everything is covered in a layer of dust and the wood is damp wet with mold. A rotten smell of decay seems to penetrate everything. We're going to die in here.

I lean my head against Chase's chest and think back. I try to bring back that memory I had before while Chase leads us around the room in a caution. I just want to have the memory again, the memory of us at the entrance of the cave our first time here, anything to block out this horrible place, anything to prevent me from seeing my death coming.

Him again. I'm ready to lose myself to him with my face full of his. The place is lovely, it's amazing, I release my legs from around his waist and he lowers me to the ground. He's about a head above me but has no issues bending down so we can kiss again. The place is amazing. The place is perfect. I don't want to leave.

A scream.

Gears.

My vision goes red. Blood is in my eyes, it blinds me and I push away. Chase is yelling Bloody Mary right at my face as a horribly twisted image flashes in front of me, a ghost, a monster, a demon. No. No! This isn't right! This isn't part of the memory. Something is wrong. Maybe this is hell, maybe my mind is just playing tricks on me and I've been in hell all along. Maybe we died when we fell down that pit and this is just the path to the place we deserve. Everything's a lie, everything's a farce.

"Jasper?" I snap out of the dream and focus on what's ahead of me, "How did you get here?" Chase asks.

"That little bitch."

"What?" Chase replies.

Jasper walks over to the table and picks up the human head. He throws it at Chase, who tries to dodge out of the way, getting hit in the chest. The head drops to the ground with a heavy thud. Plastic, it's plastic. "Woah," Chase says as he takes his arm off me and reaches down to pick the head up. It's fake.

"What is this place?" I ask, trying to hide the fact that I literally scared the shit out of myself with my own thoughts.

"I don't know, but everything is fake," Jasper answers. "After you guys fell down that pit I panicked a bit. I couldn't hear anything and was too afraid that if I fell down I'd die too like I thought you had. That was when I leaned up against one of the walls and realized it was made of wood, not rock. I slid it aside and there was a small path, a staircase, and a light switch. The entire place is fake. There is even some sort of monitoring room with cameras everywhere. That bitch Emily set us up."

"Hey, that's your girlfriend." Chase snaps.

"Yeah... I know... she got us good man." An awkward laugh escapes Jasper's mouth. "Hey, come this way. I found the way out—also what looks like a staff or costume room. Lights still work and everything."

We follow Jasper across the underground witch's cabin. Behind the headless bodies is a recessed corner with an opened crevice. He leads us into the hidden passage and slides the Styrofoam wall shut behind us.

It goes dark, but only for a second before he flicks a switch and reveals a concrete staircase which leads up to a metal door. We go up and he opens the door to a large room which looks like a flashback to the nineties. There is technology, but everything is very dated. The screens for the camera system are dozens of small box TV's and the computers are ancient things covered in dust and cobwebs.

"None of the computers or TVs work, but I did find this." Jasper leads us passed the monitoring equipment and to a second door, when he opens this door it exposes a closet of sorts, a long, narrow room full of costumes, props, bags of fake blood and guts, and anything else the employees of a haunted house would need to scare the crap out of its visitors.

"I was thinking... she got us, I mean she got us good. But... we could use this stuff to get her back." Jasper picks up a sack of fake blood and tosses it over to me. I look at the red mushy sack and notice what looks like flesh-like worms inside it. I gag at the sight, but keep it in my hands.

Chase moves around me and takes the bag out of my hands, "Wow, this looks like a serious bag of blood-n-guts."

"Yeah, then I found this," he pulls a layer of what looks like fake skin out of a pile of prosthetics and throws it to me. I catch it. The fake skin was covered in a layer of dirt, but it has a nearly invisible slit down the middle. The skin was almost an exact match to my own.

I smile and say, "No way, you're thinking of that? That's just gross."

"What Emily did to us was just gross." Jasper replies.

I turn my smile to him. I wipe most of the dirt off the prosthetic, lift my shirt up and press it against my stomach. The correct angle and some patching with the body paint I can see in the corner and this would literally look just like my actual stomach.

I pull open the slit in the fake skin. I understand exactly what Jasper wants, he wants to put the blood and guts under the fake skin, make it look like my stomach, and have me or someone else rips my stomach open.

"I mean, that's really, really messed up," I comment.

Jasper smiles and says, "I know..."

He grabs a leather jacket off a coat hanger. The jacket has fake blood covering it. He then picks up a pair of yellow teeth off a shelf. He opens a few drawers and finds a box full of colored contacts.

"I really know..." he repeats himself with this twisted look on his face. "We're going to scare the living shit out of her. Jenny, you'll be the star—your acting will freak her out since she trusts you more than she trusts us."

"Not after this prank," I muse.

"I'll be the ringer, the monster that chases her all the way home. Then we'll let her sweat it out for a bit before we all walk back and get the last laugh."

"What about me?" Chase asks.

Jasper raises his eyebrow, "Hmm, you'll be... dead... let's make it gruesome, ripped in half and eaten by the monster. Um, no. Eaten by me." Jasper lifts the jacket over his body and begins to stick his arms through. He realizes one of the sleeves is torn off and decides to keep his second arm under the jacket. Missing an arm, that would be more twisted anyways.

I fall in next to Jasper. Chase then circles around to finish the small pact of the evil plot. I sneer, dark and twisted. Emily seriously had me thinking I was going to die. I probably didn't show it, but I think I was the most terrified the group. We're going to make sure to fuck her up. We're going to make sure to scare her so bad she'll never mess with us again. "So tell me boys... what should I do to really freak her out?"

-Fin

Well, that's that.  A short story horror for all of you.  If you got to the end and enjoyed it don't forget to leave a vote and comment.  What did you think of the story? Did you expect the twist at the end?  What were you expecting?  <3 you all, thanks for visiting!  PS: two additional chapters added ")