Together

I'm not a popular person. I only have a few friends, I don't play any sports, I'm known as the girl in the back of the class who’s in the art club and occasionally goes to watch her friends’ volleyball games. So why I was invited to join a bunch of other seniors for a Halloween sleepover, I will never know. 

A few of the girls going to the party came to pick me up. I was dressed as a somewhat realistic skeleton. Three of the girls were dressed as Regina George, Karen Smith, and Gretchen Weiners from Mean Girls, while the other two were dressed as a pumpkin and a dragon of sorts. All of their costumes were spot on to what they were supposed to be. I know I felt better about having a silly costume.

It took a little over 30 minutes to get from my house to the mansion that was rented for the party. It seemed like everyone from school was there, popular kids, unpopular kids, kids who come to school so rarely they must have had to get their invites through mail, and kids who spend so much time at school they practically live there. 

We walked into the large kitchen to try and find the host, Luca, he’s a kind hearted person who’s dating a monster of a girl. Aria Lester. Rich girl, the kind of popular girl that’s only popular because she’s annoying, loud, never knows when to shut up. She’s the kind of pick me girl who cries whenever someone calls her out on something. Which is actually why she hates me so much. I never let her get away with anything she tries to pull which led to us fighting a lot throughout middle and high school. We cannot stand each other.

Obviously I was expecting for her to be here. I was just kind of hoping I could avoid her and just enjoy myself with my best friend, Jesse. Me and the girls I came with found and greeted the host then split up to go have some fun. I found Jesse over by the candy table. He was stuffing starburst into a small bag. 

I asked him what he was doing which seemed to scare him a little bit. But after that we went and danced around, ate some pizza and other junk foods, and just had a good time. Strangely enough, throughout the first few hours of the party I didn’t see Aria once. I would’ve expected her to be here since I know she’s still dating Luca. I tried to push all thoughts of her out of my head but it still lingered in the back of my mind.

By around 1 am everyone was finally starting to get tired. Luca said we could spend the night so I called my mom and got her permission to stay over. There were some rooms open for everyone to stay in. Jesse and I planned to stay in the same room and just share a bed. We found one on the top floor that was far enough away from the rest of the party for the music to not bother us. Jesse opened the door to go in and we saw Aria, lying on the floor in a pool of blood. 

Both of us screamed at the top of our lungs and she hopped up laughing. “I got you! I scared you! I scared you” she sang in her high pitched voice. I stormed over to her ready to yell when, in that moment, two things happened. Jesse collapsed, and the floor underneath Aria and I dropped. We flew down four stories, the height of the building, then five, we were underground, six, seven, eight, I lost track of how far we fell as there was no light in the small hole. We finally landed on some sort of air mattress. A very thick air mattress.

A few small torches lined the walls and the small sign in the middle of the cobblestone room. Aria climbed off the mattress to read the sign. “Hello. If you are reading this, you have been chosen. If you prove your worth you will live. If you cannot prove your worth, you will be fed to our master,” she read. We stared at each other when a low growl filled the room. I threw myself off the mattress and ran over to Aria's side. We stared at the large… thing, that was staring at us through stone bars. Behind us, a tunnel opened up. We wasted no time, running into the tunnel as fast as possible. 

We ran for a few minutes before coming up on another sign. This time I read it out for both of us. “Welcome to task one. Feeding.” We looked at each other then both of us looked back at the sign. Neither of us knew what that meant. A small goat waddled out of a hole in the wall and came towards us. “Maybe we’re supposed to feed the goat,” Aria said. The ground started to shake. Another big creature was walking towards us. It wasn’t as big as the thing from the first room, but it was big enough to scare me. 

I ran forward and grabbed the goat, throwing it at the monster. It ate it with no hesitation. The door behind it opened. It clearly takes a lot more than a small goat to feed this monster. Aria sprinted in a circle around it and ducked under its stomach to get through the small door. The monster was distracted by her which gave me the perfect opportunity to throw something and slide through the door while it looked for me. 

We moved as far away from the first task as we could. Shoving against each other in a fight for space. Finally we crawled out and were met with another empty cobblestone room with another sign in the middle. Aria read it out, “welcome to task two. Maze.” Another extremely vague sign. “Aria. Look at the ceiling.” She did. Carved into the ceiling was a trail of some sort. We walked over to the entrance of it. Both of us planned to stay on this line no matter what but there was one issue. 

“Why do I have to go first!? I blame you for us even being down here” I yelled. “Well Elizabeth we’re down here because you wanted to start a fight so don’t you dare try to blame this on me. I’m not going in first and that’s final” she argued back. “How many times do I have to tell you, my name is not Elizabeth it’s Ella. And this is your fault so you can go first and take accountability for your actions!” “Accountability for my actions? Every fight we’ve ever had was started by you. Plus I took one for the team at the last task. This probably isn’t even dangerous!” 

We went back and forth arguing over who should be the one to go in first when a low growl rang through the room. We glanced behind us into the tunnel leading back to task one, and saw a large eye staring at us. “I’ll go first,” I said. I ran into the maze and started following the trail. Aria was running directly behind me. We were almost out when I stepped on something and tripped.

My arm went outside of where the path was supposed to be and for a second, I thought I had died. Blinding pain exploded through my arm. It felt like someone had just poured liquid glass all over my arm. I couldn’t make any noise. The only thing I could do in that situation was silently sob and hold my arm close to my chest. It took about 20 minutes for me to realize that Aria had dragged me out of the maze and into the room with task three. My arm wasn’t hurting as bad anymore but it was covered in burns. 

Aria helped me off the ground and put my good arm around her shoulder. I could hear her say something but I couldn’t make out what it was. She pulled me while holding me up and slowly but surely, the pain went away and my mind was finally cleared. Aria walked forward to read the next sign.

“Task three. This will be your final task. Both of you will not make it out of this stage. Whichever is standing on the right of this sign will be blue. The other will be red. Take you weapons and fight. If you do not comply with our wishes, you both will be fed to our master. Alive.”

We both looked at each other. At this point it was obvious we weren’t making it out of this. I know the sign said we had to comply but I couldn’t help but notice the tiniest light in the ceiling. “Aria,” I started, “I don’t think we have to do this. We could still find a way out.” She grabbed a large axe, the red one, and turned around to face me.

I had no intention of actually fighting her but it seemed like she had her mind set on getting out of here. I grabbed the other axe, the blue one, and held it up in her direction. She sprinted towards me and tried to slam her axe down on my head. I used mine to defend myself and shot her weapon upwards. It hit the roof and loosened the cobble, letting more light into the room. 

Every swing she took at me I countered by hitting her axe up into the ceiling. Aria finally seemed to be getting tired. Her calming down made her realize what I’d been doing this whole time. A few more swings and the ceiling would cave in, allowing us to escape. She charged at me with a gentler swing this time. I once again pushed her axe upwards into the roof. We repeated this pattern a few more times and finally, the roof caved in. 

I didn’t get crushed by the rocks fortunately but Aria wasn’t the same. She was still alive, just stuck. I helped her push all of the rocks off her stomach and legs but she still couldn’t get up. The large rocks had broken her legs. We both stared up the deep hole, wondering how we could possibly get ourselves out of this mess. 

“Elizabeth. I have an idea but you’d have to go alone,” she said. I looked down at her as she went on to explain. The only rocks there were the ones in the room, I could use the axes to climb up the mud like an ice climber. “Why would I have to go alone when I could just carry you,” I asked. “I don’t need or want your help. I helped you out earlier cause you’d be hopeless without me,” she responded. I glared down at her anout to respond.

Then the growling from the first room once again rang into our ears. I forced Aria up onto my back and she tried to let go almost immediately. I grabbed both axes and stabbed into the mud with one. Surprisingly, it worked! I could tell that Aria didn’t want to let go now that we were off the ground. I’m not the strongest person, and using mostly my arms to pull two 200 pound girls up a deep hole was putting a lot of strain on my burned arm. The only thing keeping me going at this point was the fact that the ‘master’ had broken through the rubble and was starting to climb up. 

It was struggling a bit but it was still moving and that was enough motivation for me to finally reach the top and finally pull us out of that hole. We laid on the grass and the hole filled in with magic dirt. Aria sat up and shifted her legs around, a look of confusion and mild anger pasted onto her face. Then I noticed my arm. All of our injuries were healed. We looked over to each other, got up, and walked back into the mansion to gather anything we still had in there and leave. I found Jesse still up in the room looking like he had just woken up. The time still read 1:37, which was the time we first fell into the hole. 

I grabbed Jesse’s hand and dragged him out of the house. We ended up walking back to my house and staying up all night eating the junk we’d brought back and watching scary movies. I never told Jesse about what happened after he passed out and I never planned to. Whether Aria told anyone or not was entirely up to her. I was just glad it’s over.