You paid actual money to be frightened, and I want you to know: it works. Look at you. Waiting in line on the wet pavement, holding the ticket you will lose before you're through the door, laughing too loud with people I still love decades from here.
The fog machine smells like a burnt hair dryer. The teenager in the rubber mask is bored, checking his phone between screams, and you will never learn his name. The floorboards are plywood over cinderblock. None of it is real, and you know none of it is real, and your heart is slamming anyway, and your hand has found the arm of the person next to you without asking permission.
That grip. That is the thing I would go back for. Not the plastic skeletons or the strobe light. Just the way you grab someone in the dark because some ancient part of you decided, wrongly, that a man in a mask was worth being afraid of together.
You screamed at nothing tonight. You'll do it again next fall, and the fall after that, in different houses with different rubber masks. Keep going. Waste the money. Let the fake blood get on your good jacket.
And when you come out the far end into the parking lot, blinking, embarrassed, still catching your breath, don't rush to the car. Stand there a second longer than you want to. That's all.
Just a second longer.