Page 45 of Run for Her Life
How dare Rachel now haunt her?
Zoe couldn’t breathe. She dragged the man she was making out with outside the club. A blast of cold air hit her face and a chill skipped up her sides. She almost tripped over a crack in the pavement as she pulled him into a dark alley. They were kissing again. She didn’t even know his name. She was young and stupid. And she deserved to be, after her mother made sure to rob her innocence, because she loved her secrets more than she’d loved her daughter.
But even this distraction failed to silence the chaos building inside her.
“This isn’t working for me.” She pushed him away and decided to go back in, when he grabbed her by the elbow.
“Come on. Don’t be a tease.”
“Sorry. But I’m not interested anymore. Find someone who is.” She took one step away when he grabbed and twisted her arm, slamming her against the brick wall.
“You little slut,” he sneered, his grip tightening on her arm. “Who do you think you are rejecting me like that, huh? I’ll do whatever the hell I want to do.” He pressed his lips onto hers, shoving his tongue down her throat.
She slammed her hands against his chest, trying to push him away but he was strong. She struggled against him for a minute and then something snapped inside her. Her teeth bit his tongue.
He yelped, staggering back and peeling away from her. Instead of running away, she struck him across the jaw with her elbow. He tripped and landed on the ground. She could have walked away then. Instead, she swung her leg into his chest over and over again. He curled into a ball to absorb the blows, moaning in pain. And she got high on it.
This feeling was intoxicating. This is what she was seeking at clubs, in alcohol, with strangers. Whatever this liberating feeling was. When someone came around the corner, she broke out of her daze. Her attacker was whimpering, still on the ground. But he deserved it. It felt good to fix something, to dispense a little justice. She wiped her mouth with the sleeve of her top and walked away. Her legs were still shaking.
What had she done? Why did it feel so good? And why did she know she would do this again?
Rachel’s ghost appeared. Zoe walked past it, not even sparing her a look. But this time she heard Rachel’s voice carry in the wind.
“Don’t become this, Emily.”
Mothers.
The bond between a mother and a child is disturbing. Calling it pure is an insulting simplification. It’s a quiet, consuming need that blurs the lines between love and possession. It isn’t just maternal devotion. It’s ownership, dependency, something far heavier than affection. A bond forged from the undeniable—one life carved from another, flesh stretched, insides rearranged to make room, to grow, until the split is inevitable. Separation isn’t just an event; it’s a brutal tearing, a before-and -after written into the body itself.
How do you come back from that? How can you exist as separate entities?
Zoe stared at the picture of Dawn’s daughter. The girl who died at Fun House after someone sabotaged the ride’s mechanics.
“What do you want now?” Dawn came into the room clad in a robe, looking frail.
“We need to talk.” Zoe sat across from her and locked her fingers tight. “Is the prototype a simulation of the big fire?”
She didn’t need to wait for Dawn’s reply. Her face gave it away. Surprise mingling with shame. “How do you know that?”
“Because someone used the prototype… on Annabelle.” She didn’t know how else to frame it. “How does it work?”
She drew a deep breath. “It’s a VR headset with a device that when put on simulates mild sensations like heat. Highly sophisticated, offering a full immersive experience. As if you were in the haunted house that night.”
“It’s total sensory immersion? It inflicts real-world trauma through controlled stress.”
Suddenly, Dawn turned a sickly pale as she began rubbing her chest with her palm. “I still remember when it was presented to me. It was too much. Some people on the board were all for it. It was bold, it would get everyone talking. That’s what our company needed to stand out in a crowded market. Build something rooted in a real incident. But there weren’t enough votes. Most of them feared it was tasteless.”
“If anyone found out about the prototype, your company would have gotten bad publicity,” Zoe said. “Why didn’t you just destroy it?”
“Because it was remarkable and involved the hard work of a lot of talented people. We kept it, thinking one day in the future we could salvage something from it or maybe consider releasing it after more time had passed.”
“How could you?”
Dawn’s mind was adrift. She lifted her eyes to her daughter’s picture. A churn of emotions brewed in her tired eyes. “Around three years ago, our company needed a big pivot. Something to drag it out of the financial mess it was in. This isn’t about AI or VR or whatever new tech is on the rise. The reason is always psychological. People want tofeel. People today are disconnected. Lost in their screens, numbed by routine, afraid of real emotion. So they chase intensity—horror, violence, chaos, all kinds of taboo behavior—anything that makes them feel something, even for just a moment. That’s where immersion comes in. And now we have the technology to make that possible. For people to feel completely at one with something, to totally forget who they are and live an intense experience.”
“I meant how could you, given your daughter died in the fire?”
“It wasn’t my idea, Agent Storm. It was David’s.” She struggled to maintain her composure. “I wanted to create a game and he came up with linking it to the massacre. It was unique, it would put Pineview Falls on the map, it would benefit this wretched town. A homegrown product based on a homebound tragedy. It was a marketable idea.”
