"You're kidding, right?" Meg grumbled, uncomfortably stepping out of the bathroom. Tied around her face was a black sock with uneven holes cut out for her eyes and around her neck a green scarf that flowed downward like a cape. Finally, the horrendous costume was topped off with a pink leotard and a pair of cheetah print spandex shorts over top. She looked ridiculous.

The room erupted in laughter at the sight of the poor girl in the thrift shop mess of a supervillain ensemble.

"I think it looks good!" Dana, one of the girls on the track team along with Meg, remarked with a voice dripping in fake sweetness. Meg knew she was lying. Obviously the outfit didn't look good- but she knew for a fact that Dana had a secret agenda to outcast Meg from the team in any way possible. Every morsel of that stereotypically wicked jock wanted to see her crash and burn one way or another. Even if it was lying and trying to convince Meg that the shit show on her body was anywhere near a fashion statement.

That's why Meg was going to impress them in their little hazing ritual that they had prepared.

"What's our supervillain's name?" Asked Chelsea, one of the nicer girls on the team. However she too seemed to be having a little too much fun making Meg feel extremely uncomfortable. Did everyone seriously have to do the outlandish hazing? Or did they not like Meg that much that it began with her entrance onto the track team?

"Street Rusher!"

"No, Super Blaster!"

"How about Dare Diva?"

"Whatever, they're all stupid. Just choose a name already!" Shouted Dana as she rolled her eyes.

Chelsea put her hands up, spreading them apart as she announced her amazing title. "Dare Damsel..."

Meg chuckled. "Okay, okay! Dare Damsel, holy shit." She stepped back toward the front door, ready to get it all over with. "So I seriously have to go slash some poor person's tire and bring a piece back as proof?"

All of the girls nodded in unison, each wearing a vile grin.

"Okaaaay, can I please get something to do it with? I'm not the Hulk for God's sake."

Hannah, who was the girl that lived at the house they were all hanging out in, got up and ran quickly to a room down the hall, returning with a flimsy pocket knife in her manicured hands.

"It's my brothers, try not to break it!" She pleaded. Meg raised her brows and looked at the girl with a heavy load of doubt. There's no way that butter knife was going to make it through the whole ordeal but she would nevertheless treat it with care.

"Alright," Meg sighed. "I'll be back."

She slammed the door behind her.


It didn't feel real. It couldn't have been real. She wasn't able to grasp the fact that this was her life right now- running away from a deranged murderer in a place that she deemed to be a realm of torture meant for nothing else but pure suffering. She had no idea how they all ended up there, whether it be some sicko that drugged and kidnapped them all or something far beyond that- she wasn't sure. All she could ask was why? Why her... why any of this?

Meg wanted to throw up. The way her insides twisted in terror every second was beginning to take a physical toll on her body and she wasn't sure how much longer she could keep going.

She mentally pleaded with herself and begged whatever motivation she had left to hold out a little longer.

Her legs carried her far away from everyone's screams and cries of utter agony. She eventually spared a look behind her, seeing that she was once again alone. No Dwight, no Killer and definitely no Jake and Claudette. But she didn't stop running until she was physically unable to.

There was a wall blocking her and when she craned her head left and right, she found that it extended so far off in both directions that it looked as if it was infinite. They were trapped.

However a towering structure sat within the center of the brick line, looking like a ginormous gate. On the left side of it was a lever system with three bulbs above the dingy metal box. She approached it, keeping her surroundings in check as she did so. Still alone so it seemed.

The lever squealed metal to metal as she yanked down on it. Nothing happened. But it did make her wonder... was this a way out?

"C'mon," she said frantically as she continued to pull the lever down with all her might, thinking maybe it needed a little elbow grease. "Please, please, please!"

The results remained the same. She took a discouraged step away and snooped around the gate. Maybe there was more than just the lever. That's when she noticed that there were some heavy duty wires leading up to the exit gate, some going into the lever box and others going into an opening above the structure.

Aha! The generator! It was meant to power the gate. But that meant there had to be more of them if the one they finished didn't activate the lever...

"Shit!" Meg exclaimed hopefully, seeing if she could trace the wires to their respective generators but found that after just a few feet or so they began to disappear underground. "Ugh are you fucking kidding me. Nooo!"

She tried digging up the dirt but it was so rough and cemented together it was no use. That would waste ages of her time when she could just wander around and find them. The issue there was that wandering around could end up getting her killed.

That part kept hitting her like a sack of bricks every time she thought about it. Flashes of Jake crying with blood all over him invaded her thoughts. She shut her eyes tightly, desperately attempting to block the images from her mind but it was useless- they were burned into her eyelids.

When she opened them, she unintentionally noticed the mini dot of Claudette's blood stained on the top of her sneaker. There was something so disturbing about it, to have the blood of somebody else on your body. It wasn't right. None of this was right.

Meg hated with a burning passion how horrifically things were out of her control.

The one thing that she could control, however, was her drive to make it out of this alive. She had a strong feeling about the generators and now knew where a possible exit gate was- so she moved back into the depths of the labyrinth of ruins, slow and careful. This was her ticket out, she just needed to play her cards right.

Suddenly a blood curdling scream tore through the silence of the night. Off in the distance, a few crows to Meg's left flew off, signaling to her that it had come from that direction. It eerily sounded like Claudette.

Meg shivered. Was she dead? Did that monstrous thing get her? She didn't really want to go and find out, despite there being a chance that Claudette was still alive. She figured it could only be a matter of time before the killer murdered them both given that her and Jake were in fact miraculously still living.

"Meg!"

She whipped around. It was Dwight sprinting over to her.

"Hey I-"

"We have to help Jake and Claudette," He told her urgently. "They're strung up on these hooks and I think that we can pull them down. They're alive!"

What the fuck? Hooks? She hadn't seen any of these hooks he was talking about. What kind of torment was this place built for? First the bear traps and then now there were hooks for hanging people on? It seemed like they were surviving a horror movie.

"Okay- where did the thing go?"

"The Trapper? I don't know but I think it's gone."

"Trapper?"

"Yeah," he said. "Y'know it's setting bear traps."

She nodded, unconcerned with the name of it. "Let's go quickly then, before he gets back."

They ran together, Meg following Dwight closely behind all the way up until they were met with a chilling scene.

It was Jake. She could see the tears streaming down his face, making little clean trails in the blood and grime soaked on his paled cheeks. The whole right side of his body was red and torn up- the same as it had been when he was first struck with the cleaver. The only difference now was that a massive hook was pierced through his right shoulder, suspending him off of the ground by a few feet. It was attached to a thick metal chain that was then connected to a makeshift support beam. It looked like a twisted version of hangman, just serving up much more gore and agony.

Her and Dwight briskly made their way toward him. As they drew closer, Meg spotted... something. A black substance that crackled and slithered at the base of the hook, oozing upwards like a large inky vine.

"Dwight look-" She pointed, breath catching in her throat. "What the fuck is that?"

His glasses fogged up as he covered his mouth, not sure what to say about it. It certainly was strange but they had bigger fish to fry.

"Let's just get him down." He urgently replied, prioritizing Jake above all else. "You're gonna be okay Jake," Dwight told him reassuringly. Meg grimaced as she got a close up on... everything. It made her feel sick to see his torn flesh through the ripped up holes of his jacket, swollen and sloppy with blood as the shredded tissue sagged.

Dwight then reached up, putting one hand around each of Jake's arms and attempted to lift him up like he was a kid. He was so heavy that Dwight heaved a few times until finally he freed Jake from the hook, the smushy sounds of his body slipping off of the metal sending a jolt of nausea through Meg.

He sputtered, blood droplets landing on both of them that stood in front of his pitiful figure.

She eyed just how bad of shape he was in. He needed a doctor- which Meg knew wasn't going to happen because- well it was pretty fucking obvious why. Yet she didn't even know where to begin with treating a wound of that capacity. She was positive he had broken bones and probably a foot long laceration up his torso, not to mention the three inch hole punch in his shoulder.

Honestly, how the fuck was he even alive?

Heavy footsteps thudded behind the group. Then came a breathy growling sound that swept right up their backs like a cold chill.

Meg turned and was met nearly face to face with the monster and its cleaver swinging right into her body. In the blink of an eye, she dodged it by a mere centimeter at most, throwing herself on the ground before scrambling quickly back to her feet.

She watched as Dwight and Jake fled the area, the so-called Trapper setting its sights on her.

The dread was debilitating. It felt like someone had their hands around her neck and all Meg could do was have an out of body moment where she realized this could be it. This really could be death. There were no second chances. No way out of this one. It would be painful, slow even, and she couldn't do anything to stop it. Just like that her life would slip away from her battered and mutilated body as if she never existed at all.

She didn't want it to end like this. There were so many things she was living for, it couldn't end like this...

Like a punch in the gut, Meg's mom flashed over her mind. She saw their hands clasped together. The soft words of her mother as she read a story with her, cozy in bed together. It was so sweet and kind and she wanted to see that again. Her mom was her whole world.

As if struck by a sudden bolt of lightning, Meg was invigorated. She was going to survive to see her mom again. She had to.

Her fists clenched together as Meg promised herself that she would not quit until her dying breath, if it came to that.

The Trapper, breathing heavy and hoarse, took fast and resounding stomps directly toward the girl.

She gritted her teeth and dashed away.


Meg took a knee, staring up at the Colorado Police Station past the tinted window of the police cruiser that she was taking refuge behind. If they wanted a piece of a slashed tire, well, they were gonna get it.

With trembling hands, she snaked the feeble pocket knife from her waistband and snapped it open. The blade glinted in the moonlight, looking somewhat menacing as Meg hesitantly brought the tip of it against the hard rubber of the tire.

This was it. There wasn't any coming back from this, that was for sure. Was this whole thing really important? Like... honestly. She was on the team already, it wasn't like she had to do this to make the spot. She had a choice in doing this... this straight up crime. They could easily get in trouble for coercing Meg into doing such a stupid thing, all she had to do was say something to the coach.

The girl peered down at her hand, leading her gaze up to the knife. She thought about Dana and the way her face always twisted in jealousy around her, fueling some internal rage that had been swirling within Meg for a long while. A smirk graced the track star's lips.

Imagining that Dana's face was the tire, Meg thrust her arm backward before launching it straight into the rubber. A loud burst of air emptied from the slice she made there. With all of her might, Meg sawed down and cut a big line all the way to the rim. She went back to the top and heaved the knife to metal again on the other side.

By the end of it Meg was sweating from head to toe, having to put in a lot of work to make that little slice of rubber happen- yet she stood up straight and victorious with the slashed piece of tire in hand.

It was at that moment two police officers exited the station and began walking toward the car she had just finished vandalizing.

"Oh FUCK." Meg cussed to herself, wasting no time in frantically dashing away from the officers. Clearly she was hard to miss in her ridiculous costume, so the two men immediately tracked their eyes on her. They shouted, telling her to stop and come back. Sure, they didn't know what she did but the guilty way she fled the scene was all they needed to know that Meg was up to no good.

She could hear their footsteps pound as they tried to catch up but soon they stopped, not being able to match the sheer speed of Meg. She was light as air and seemingly floated past the shops in town, the setting shifting into neighborhoods before she skidded to a stop in front of Hannah's house.

Meg kicked the front door open, dramatically walking in before brandishing the sliced tire, holding it up high for all the girls to ogle at. The room erupted in applause and cheers.

"This," she announced loudly, "came directly from a Colorado Police Cruiser- so consider me Dare Damsel from here on out."

They shrieked with excitement and disbelief, looking up to Meg as if she was some sort of God. The victorious girl scanned the room, her gaze landing on Dana who stood appearing miserable in the corner, arms crossed with a disgusted frown on her lips. Meg locked eyes with her, shooting her a somewhat devilish smile.

It was about time she started to take down the bad guys for once.