Page 1 of Stay Scared

Chapter 1

Editing is what comes after fear has burned off.

The good part happens inside, when an attraction gets close enough to real that my body forgets what my brain knows. A hand catches my arm harder than expected. Someone in a mask uses my name, even though I never gave it to them. Then I come home, dump my keys on the counter, and spend six hours taking those seconds apart.

The man on my monitor wears a cracked skull mask and a cheap rubber butcher’s apron spattered with fake blood. I drag the footage backward as he lunges from behind a plywood wall. One boot lands badly, forcing him to catch the frame before his shoulder hits it. Once I notice the mistake, the scare is finished.

I pause with the mask’s eyeholes facing the camera. Under the red strobe, it almost works. The attraction marketed him as the Bone Collector. He was the main scare, following me through two rooms before swinging a foam cleaver beside my head, and my entire reaction was a blink. This is exactly what the people want.

I cut six seconds from the Bone Collector’s approach and swap in a tighter angle. He moves faster now, and I look less prepared. It is the closest I can get to appearing frightened without outright lying.

A corridor narrows because that’s how it was designed. A door refuses to open because someone is watching to see how long it takes you to panic while another person with a knife stands at your back. Once the guest screams and reaches the end, they can safely return to their life knowing none of it has come home with them.

My job is supposed to be seeing what happens behind it all, but lately, that has become the problem. The analytics show forty-eight thousand views after five days. Two years ago, the same upload slot would have passed a hundred thousand before breakfast, and my sponsor sales are way down too.

I open the viewer graph, trying to see where it goes wrong even though I already know. It has been the same thing for the last few months. The line rises when the first actor appears and drops when I start talking. They came to watch me react, and apparently, explaining why the scare failed isn’t interesting enough.

A new comment notification appears beneath the graph. I open it despite knowing better.

SALEM STERLING IS OFFICIALLY UNSCARABLE

The comment has more likes than my pinned review. Beneath it, someone writes that I used to be fun before I started acting like I was above everything. Another viewer clipped my blank reaction to the Bone Collector and captioned it with a joke about taking an accountant through a haunt. The loop already has twelve thousand shares on another platform.

Rain taps against the window over the kitchen sink. I left it open because the apartment holds heat too long, and the burnt smell from the coffee maker needed somewhere to go.

My uploads used to mean more. I’d pace while videos processed and refresh the page until comments appeared. People waited to hear whether an attraction was worth their money because they trusted me. Now half the audience wants to see whether anyone can finally scare me.

In the final scene, a clown in stained coveralls blocks the exit with a plastic bat. He is tall enough that the costume should have worked, but the makeup has settled into the lines around his mouth, stretching the painted grin into something tragic. He swings past my shoulder while I keep the camera steady.

“Nice try,” I say in the clip.

The clown lowers the bat and glances toward whoever is managing the room from behind the wall. “Jesus, you’re hard to scare.”

I can already hear it as the trailer line before I finish the cut. I isolate his voice from the room noise and lay it over the opening montage, then try a title.

HARD TO SCARE: HOLLOW HARVEST REVIEW.

It sounds defensive, so I delete it and type WHEN HAUNTS STOP WORKING. Somehow, that sounds even worse. I clear the title box and leave it empty.

My phone vibrates near the edge of the desk. I expect another work notification, but the screen shows a message from an unknown number.

You still stay up too late.

My hand stops on the mouse.

Viewers send invasive messages all the time, but they usually mention an outfit from an old video or tell me where they last saw me. They make sure I know exactly how they found me. This person doesn’t bother. They only want me to know they have been paying attention.

The time at the top of the screen reads 2:17 a.m. I look through the open window toward the apartment across the alley. It is dark. A security light throws a pale rectangle across the brick near the service entrance, but nobody stands beneath it, and the parked cars show no glow from a phone screen. I shut the window and sit down again with the message still waiting on my phone.

There are plenty of ways to get my number. A viewer once found my previous address through a reflection in a spoon and mailed me a key without explanation. I changed my number afterward, and this one is supposed to be private. I block the sender, report the message, and set the phone facedown when a neat confirmation replaces it.

The skull-masked performer remains frozen on the monitor with one gloved hand reaching toward the lens. I move the cursor over the timeline and miss the clip marker by half an inch. I drag it back and try again, but the mistake bothers me more than it should.

“The set design is stronger than the performances,” I say on-screen. “The actors rely too heavily on predictability and give away the major scares before they arrive. Newer haunt fans may enjoy it. Experienced guests will see everything coming.”

I stop playback. The review isn’t hiding the flaws, and it is also going to die.

My email chimes, and a subject line appears in the corner of the monitor.