They have paid money to be afraid in the house where I once simply lived.
They come in clusters, gripping each other's sleeves, and I watch how easily they touch. A whole hand closing around a forearm without thinking, a shoulder pressed to a shoulder, breath warm on the back of a neck. They do this to steady themselves against a fright they invented. If they only knew what they were doing, they would never let go.
The floor I remember is still here, though they have hung it with cobweb they bought in a bag. They shriek and stumble and laugh with their whole chests, that big shaking laugh that starts in the belly, and one of them clutches her ribs because it aches to laugh that hard. It aches. Imagine having ribs that can ache from joy. Imagine feeling the cold plastic hand brush your ankle and knowing, absolutely, that you are still warm.
There is a boy in the back who is truly scared, eyes wide, feet dragging, and his friends pull him along by the wrist. He would give anything to be outside in the ordinary dark. I would give anything to be him, dragged unwilling through the best evening of his life, alive and shivering and annoyed.
They will leave soon, spill out into the cold, buy something hot to hold, complain that it was not scary enough. And they will forget this house by morning, the way you forget a Tuesday.
Forget it, then. Forget me. Go home warm. Take the long way.
Let someone hold your sleeve.