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The dark haired girl wouldn’t stop talking about Tolkein and Moorcock and Leiber and fantasy authors Dwayne had never even heard of. That was fine by him; he’d never been one to lead conversations anyway. Apparently she was driving through California for the summer before college and decided to make a stop in Santa Carla when she saw “so many people with glitter and green hair and corsets and stuff- like I was taking a day trip in the red light district of Camelot.” Her name was Sarah and she was going to major in creative writing, and then when she graduated she was going to write children’s fantasy books or maybe campaign settings for Dungeons and Dragons, and either way, all her elves and fairies were going to look like glam rockers.
Poor kid. Dwayne had decided she was never going to go to college.
He’d found the perfect girl, and David wasn’t around to get her first. There was something worth brawling over further down the beach, and so he’d missed the girl who looked like she’d stepped out of an Italian horror movie and dressed like she was getting ready for a ren faire. Once he’d turned her, they would go get that ruffly white shirt splattered with red.
“Wanna check this out?” he asked her when they walked past the carousel down to the hall of mirrors.
“Sure!” she said with a big smile. “I’ve gotta warn you, though- I’m pretty good at mazes.”
The hall was dark and stuffy, but Sarah didn’t complain. She took a hit off the joint he offered her, and sighed contentedly into his arms. He kissed her, and the feel of her soft lips as she kissed him back almost sent him over the edge. Not yet, he reminded himself. Before he took her with him forever, he was going to give her a good scare.
When Sarah at last looked at the mirrors around them, Dwayne smiled. Her eyes widened as she looked from her own, solitary reflection, back to him. It didn’t take a fantasy fan too long to figure it out.
And then she smiled, and the mirror image changed. Dozens of eyes looked out from the reflection- not human eyes, but things that were round and yellow and belonged to faces with incomprehensible shapes. Sarah stepped towards the mirror, reaching out her hand in fond greeting, then gave Dwayne one last glance.
“I should probably get going,” she said. “Too bad. I liked you.” And then she turned around the corner of a mirror and vanished, along with all the monstrous faces that had accompanied her.
Sarah really was good at mazes. Dwayne looked for hours, but he couldn’t find her.