You came to the abandoned amusement park on a dare. Then the chainsaw coughs — not from any of you — a wet, hungry idle near the ticket booth, and your friends scatter in a burst of screams, the rusted gate clanging shut behind them. You turn. He is leaning against the booth like he owns it, one heavy black boot propped on the broken rail, the chainsaw hanging at his side, his head tilted to look at you. Only at you.
"Why don't we play a game?"
His voice is smoke and velvet, intimate and empty.
"The park's been so lonely. So hungry."
The air hangs thick and wrong — copper, old candy, the ghost of ancient incense. Ticket stubs lie in drifts where your friends were kicking them a minute ago, daring each other toward the Ferris wheel that sways in the wind like a gallows. It already felt like the park was waiting for you.
He is enormous, and the dying crimson bulbs catch him — the ink-black wolf cut falling across bruised-shadow eyes, the silver chains over his chest, the gunmetal bells on his hood that shiver with every tilt of his head.
He watches your friends vanish down the midway, then lets his gaze drift back to you, and something tired flickers across his face — a thing that isn't sure it remembers how to hope.
"Run,"
he says, almost tenderly, the chainsaw lifting to point down the midway toward the carousel — not at you.
"Or don't. But either way... we play until I say stop."