Anna was standing slightly in front of me, breathing hard. She looked tiny in the shadow of the tower, clutching her oversized weapon. Her arm was starting to turn purple from the burn I accidentally gave her, and her caramel hair, long and straight, was tangled and matted with sweat and dirt and guts, which were also smeared all over her clothes, discoloring them.

I took in the details of the tower. The brownstone blocks, cut in thick chunks. The lighter stone framing the edges. The heavy wooden door with iron bars, which was so ancient that the wood looked half-rotted, smoothed by decades of horrors. The door was arched, and on either side, lighting the way, were two torches in iron holders.

Anna gently pulled on the door and it began to open. I edged forward, slowly, hearing a guttural growl behind the space where dusty, hot air was blowing outward.

"Maybe I should just torch it," I said. "Whatever it is."

I walked forward, flamethrower at the ready, and whatever it was blasted the door open with a large metal sword.

At first, I thought I was looking at an action figure, but soon realized it was just another crazy creation of Umlaut's - a large, muscular form with two heads but each head had one eye sitting in the middle of its forehead, and several other large eyes were inserted around its body, chest and arms. The eyes moved independently, spotting us both, and blinking out of sync. The creature was clad in metal shoulder pads and spikes.

"Ugh," Anna said. "Gross."

"Bye-bye," I said, and began to fire as it raised its sword and swung at my head.

It was stronger than I expected. I guess it was like some kind of mini-boss. My flames deterred it and burned it, but it growled and spit blood and continued walking forward, swinging its sword in an attempt to decapitate me.

I aimed for the eye on the creature's arm and it squealed, dropping the sword. Anna stopped flamethrowing for a moment to grab the sword, still red-hot from the flames, and as she screamed with pain, she pushed the sword through the side of the creature's head, spearing both eyes in one swoop. It crumpled to its knees, dead, the eye socket on its arm red and empty where I had burned it.

I fell to my knees, too, grasping the flamethrower for balance, and vomited uncontrollably. It can't get worse. It can't get worse. It can't possibly get any worse.

But I knew that wasn't true - we hadn't even set foot inside yet.

"Help me, help me!" That voice again.

"Do you hear that?" I asked.

"Yeah," Anna said shakily. She was also on her hands and knees spitting up.

Delicately, I got to my feet and stepped onto the wooden door, avoiding the sight of the demolished thing - whatever it was. Eyeclops, I thought to myself, almost chuckling. It was a joke I would've made…before.

We tiptoed into the stone tower, our flamethrowers held out. My arms were getting so tired they were numb. Gotta hang on, I thought.

A long, dark hallway with tattered flags greeted us. As we stepped inside quietly, the wooden doors behind us slammed shut, and iron bars shot up in front of them, blocking our way.

Forward. Like Anna said. Maybe she was onto something.

"Help me, help me!"

We moved down the hall in the direction of that voice, stepping carefully over the moldy red carpet. At the end of the hall, an open room-a torture dungeon. The dark, circular room was lined with torches, braziers, chains, and blood stained the walls. An electric chair was in one corner and in another, an iron maiden that was open, its maw filled with long spikes. Another end of the room held a scaffold with a guillotine. Near it, a skeleton hung by the ankles from the ceiling, and iron cages hung from various points in the room.

I mean, the place was called the "Chamber of Horrors."

In the center of the room was a round stone platform, where a girl was locked by her head and wrists in stocks.

"Hang on!" I yelled despite myself. "We're coming!"

"Help me, help me!" she shrieked. It was the girl with the pink crop top again. Her big blue eyes seemed blank from fear and her lips were large and full.

"Dylan!" Anna yelled.

From behind the platform stalked two figures - two horrible, terrifying figures. I believed then that this was the final confrontation, and that we had reached the end- we just had to defeat these two.

Oh, how wrong I was about that.

They staggered forward, the girl still crying for help above us. They were tall, monstrous beings of yellow skin dripping with blood and metal torture devices. As they walked, the creatures groaned in a way that made me feel weird and uncomfortable. It was some kind of noise I didn't understand.

"I'm Tort," one of the creatures said in a high-pitched voice, and as he walked, I saw that his white glossy kneecaps were visible through blood and muscle. Tort wore a spiked collar around his neck, his mouth and eyes held open by leather straps with hooks on the ends. His chest cavity was a giant hole, pulsating and red jelly, the skin held open by hooks just like his knees.

"Mmmm and I'm Rodz," said the other creature, who was punctured with screws all over his body. The top half of his head was hidden inside a thick metal helmet that was dripping with blood. "I can't wait to meet you."

The girl was still calling for help.

"We'll help you," I said desperately.

"No one's gonna help her," Rodz said. "See, we are the caretakers around here."

"Taken from the asylum cause we're so deranged-" Tort giggled.

"To keep our prisoners nice and happy," Rodz continued.

"You can't hurt us," Tort said.

Both creatures were carrying saws. Big ones, that were round-ish. They started swinging them.

Anna and I both blasted them with fire as usual, but they didn't stop walking. More of those creepy groans echoed out of them.

"Uh…"

As they burned, they giggled, and groaned, and eventually, died.

I rushed around the back of the platform, to get to the girl who was trapped. There was no easy way to get up- I threw the flamethrower up and grasped the ledge with my arms, which was almost as tall as me, scraping with my toes to get up.

Meanwhile, Anna screamed my name.

I grunted, pulling, sweating, trying to get up - the girl was crying for help - Anna was yelling and I heard the flamethrower on full blast, along with more of those groans-

Wait, what?

I thought about jumping down, racing to Anna, but I needed to help the girl. I needed to. I pulled with my armpits, straining my arms with all my might, groaning myself as I pulled. Finally, I fell onto the top of the platform, sweating, and reached for my flamethrower.

With a couple hard knocks, I freed the girl. She was trembling, with her blonde hair in a ponytail, large boobs spilling out of a pink crop top. I opened my arms for what I was sure would be a hug, her falling into my arms in gratitude, but instead she just raced away from me.

"What-!" I cried. "Wait!"

I hopped down from the platform and came face-to-face with Tort. The Tort we had just killed!

"We killed you!" I cried.

"Can't kill us," he grinned.

Tort was standing in front of the electric chair, so I shoved him with the flamethrower as hard as I could, until he fell back into the chair. It began electrocuting him, his body flailing and jerking and his mouth made crazy sounds, sounds of pain and pleasure all at once. His hips bucked and blood dripped from open wounds.

The rest of the room was full of doorways, but they were all locked with iron bars. Rodz was coming at me from the other side, and I looked around for Anna - and the pink-shirt girl. Neither were anywhere to be seen.

"Anna!" I called.

I didn't hear her, nor the "help me" of the other girl. It was just Rodz left, and me.

Behind Rodz, who was lurching forward by the Iron Maiden, I fixed on the chains hanging from the wall and dark bloody stains that made the room swim and spin. The stains grew closer and closer, as Rodz did, too.

But I had the flamethrower. With a few groans of "OH, OH," he was dead, again.

I figured there was only a couple of minutes before they came back to life this time, and ran around the room. "Anna!" I screamed. There was her flamethrower, abandoned on the ground next to a steaming black corpses of the first Rodz and Tort.

I heard a quiet knocking, a pounding sound, and jerked toward it - it was coming from the Iron Maiden, which was now closed.

"Anna! Are you there?" I ran to the iron sarcophagus and pulled on it.

"Dylan!" I heard her calling. "Get me out, please! Get me out!"

I pulled and pulled and pulled. The door lurched open and she tumbled out. Gasping and sobbing, she fell to her hands and knees. Her crying wasn't a whimper or a pitiful whine. It was loud and painful, like someone was stabbing her in the chest. She sputtered and struggled to breathe through her sobs. I glanced around, worried that Rodz and Tort III would be heading our way any minute, but didn't see anything.

"Anna? Are you okay?" I knelt beside her.
Without warning, she reached for me with shaking hands and grasped me around the waist firmly, her tears hot and wet against my shirt. I wrapped my arms around her in return. Her whole body trembled. She had raw red marks where the spikes had poked and slashed her, but I didn't think that was what had gotten to her. "I need to get out," she shivered through sobs. "I need to get out!" her voice rose in panic and her heartbeat quickened, her fists tightening on my shirt and she began to hyperventilate.

"It's okay," I whispered, breathing slowly and deeply. "Just breathe with me. I got you."

She continued to stammer, her head shaking, eyes rolling, that she needed to get out.

I adjusted my legs on the moldy, battered stone and her head pressed into my heartbeat. All I could see was the top of her head, her dark blonde hair greasy and stained, and rested my cheek on it, breathing as calmly as I could.

After what felt like ages, her back stopped fluttering and she was breathing in sync with me. Besides her crying, which was slowly quieting and slowing, there was no noise in the still, suffocating air of the dungeon. The doors around us were still locked and barred, which prevented any escape.

"Hey," I whispered. "How are you doing?"

"I don't know," she sniffled. "This place…" she glanced around, and I saw how raw and red her eyes were. "It's…evil."

"I mean, it is called CarnEvil," I cracked, but she didn't say anything in response, and I shivered.

"Are you okay to get up?" I didn't want to, I really didn't - I wanted to sit with her forever in this quiet place, horrible as it was, and comfort her. She raised her head and at the same time, I glanced down, and our faces were so close, so close…closer than I'd ever been to kissing someone. We both swallowed and gently moved apart.

"Um, yeah," she said. "I'm okay."

"We should find a way out, maybe."

I took a few quiet steps towards one of the doors and glanced inside - it wasn't an exit, but a cell, with an old bloodstained mattress inside. Chains lined the wall where someone might have been forced to lay, spreadeagle on their back.

"Over here," Anna called, but her voice was strained and weak from crying.

She stood in front of one of the other doorways, thinking. One of the bars was missing, so that we could wiggle in between and get to the next room. "This must be the right way," she said, but she sounded less sure.

Groans sounded behind us and Anna panicked, hoisting her flamethrower again. Her eyes were wide, the whites blank with fear, in a way I hadn't seen before.

"I think we should chance it," I said. "Let's go."

The floor sloped down, down, down. The once-white tile was slippery with old bloodstains and had faded to a dull yellow. I pushed Anna through first, and fired behind me at Tort III and Rodz III. The fire didn't slow them just as it hadn't before.

"Oooooh yes!" One of them giggled, and my stomach turned over.

"Ahhhh-ahhhh-" the other one pushed his body forward, pulling back against the pain yet straining to get more. His loincloth bucked just like Tort's had in the electric chair. There was something really weird going on.

They weren't quite dead when I began pushing myself through the bars to escape their advance. My feet slipped on the tile and I fell heavily on my side, sliding down toward a giant circular hole in the floor - it looked like a manhole without its cover. Anna was sliding too, desperately trying to stop.

"I think-we go down-" I gasped.

She looked up with fear but didn't say anything.

"I'll go first-" I grunted, and flipped to my seat, where I slid slowly down toward the hole. "Here goes nothing."

I dropped feet-first into the hole.