Brandy shouldn't have gone there alone. Now she was struggling in a tight hogtie trying to find any kind of slack in the rope but not finding any. She hoped her boyfriend would start wondering where she was and track her down. But she knew he was at home in their apartment snoring away tonight's beer and pizza binge.

Brandy loved getting scared and every Halloween she dressed up and tried to visit as many haunted houses as possible. Tonight was no exception. This year she dressed up as a devil. The costume was a very tight-fitting number in bright red with a plunging neckline, fishnet stockings, opera gloves, pointy tail and a pair of little horns to pop out of her short blonde hair. Looking at the mirror, she thought she should have been the one modeling the costume on front of the package.

She had always had an exceptional figure, thanks to her mom's side of the family. Brandy was nearly six-foot and had large breasts and a beautiful ass. And what was really cool is that she really didn't have to work out to maintain her shape. Her metabolism did all the hard work for her.

Her boyfriend, Rick, had dressed as a zombie and she had planned to hit all the haunted houses together. Rick reluctantly agreed and they both headed out in her old VW Golf to get scared out of their wits. They had fun for the first couple of places and she reluctantly agreed to stop off and getting a pizza before heading to the last few. It would have been okay but Rick had one beer after another until she had to half carry him out of the joint and back to their apartment where she dumped him on the bed.

Looking at the clock, she figured she could hit one last house. There was a new one this year and located on an old abandon farm on the outskirts of town. It had the uncreative title of 'The Body Farm' but it promised to be different from the others she'd been to.

The house and barn were lit up with red spotlights, giving them an eerie glow in the crisp autumn night. A bloodied, headless farmer greeted guests slumped over on top of his rusted-out tractor by the front gate. A slight breeze scattered dead leafs around as she pulled into the nearly empty dirt parking lot. Good, it wasn't going to be crowded like all the other ones; crowds tended to lessen the scare effect.

The dirt parking lot was not very easy to walk on in high heels, but she managed to make it to the old, cracked sidewalk and up the worn porch stairs. There was an old mailbox with the word 'TICKETS' painted in red, dripping letters. She had already purchased her ticket online several days ago along with one for her boyfriend. She stuffed the two tickets into the slot and went to the door. She thought it was a bit odd not to have a greeter to direct customers, but, again, the ad in the paper promised a very different kind of scare.

The front door was one of the old-fashioned kind with a brass doorknob and oval glass window. The curtained window had a pair of bloody handprints streaking down it. The door creaked loudly as she stepped inside.

A single electric candle flickering on the peeling wallpapered wall lit the entryway. There was a stairway ahead of her and what looked like a parlor room to her right. A dark hallway stretched down past the stairs and to the left was a beaded entryway to a darkened room. Everything was eerily quiet. It was definitely different from the other houses where everyone was channeled into room after scary room. This was much more like being in a slasher film where you didn't know where the maniac was.

Slowly Brandy made her way into the parlor. The heavy curtains blocked out most of the outside light and the room was lit only by a single television set that sounded like it was playing static. As her eyes adjusted, she saw two headless corpses, a man and a woman, sitting on the sofa, their clothes drenched in glistening blood. Something moved on the old consol television set and she turned to look.

On the screen were two severed head, a man's and a woman's, floating. The television had been turned into a grotesque fishbowl and the heads were its sole occupants, their open eyes staring back at Brandy.

Icy shivers raced through her.

There was an open entryway past the parlor, spilling its amber-tinted light out into the room. A strange, muffled sound was coming from the room as Brandy cautiously made her way over.

The dining room was dominated by a huge oak table and in the center of it was a young brunette, scantily clad in a tattered Dorothyesque dress, hogtied and gagged with duct tape. She was struggling quite wildly and her eyes caught Brandy's. She screamed and struggled, her eyes wide and pleading for Brandy to untie her.

Brandy then noticed the bloody chainsaw beside her.

As the woman screamed and struggled, Brandy noticed the plate settings around the woman. Each had a bloody portion set in the center: a human heart, a severed hand, a part of a thigh and several piles of flesh that Brandy didn't recognize. An inhuman feast had been set out and the bound girl was obviously the main course.

"Bye-bye," Brandy laughed, waving to the captive woman as she continued on past the table.

Two entry ways beckoned her. One was a closed wooden door at the end of the room and another to her left. The one to the left probably led to the hallway. She decided to go to doorway.

The door opened up into a small pantry. The shelves were filled with glass jars with homemade labels. A single dim light bulb lit the narrow space as she peered at the contents, almost afraid of seeing what was inside. The first jar first looked like preserved carrots but were really severed fingers. Another held a variety of eyes, a staring blankly out of their glass prison.

"This is better than 'Silence Of The Lambs," Brandy said out loud to herself. She really wished Rick was here. He was a fan of slasher films and he would have really gotten a kick out of this house.

Brandy opened the door on the other side of the pantry and walked into a brightly lit kitchen. It was one of the old-fashioned kind tiled, painted and applianced all in white. It was sparkling clean save for the dripping red blood splatters everywhere. The sink was filled with bloody, torn clothes and costumes and several latex masks littered the floor. The kitchen table was littered with bloody knives and rusty iron manacles and half-filled glasses of blood sat on the counter. Carefully stepping over the pools of blood, she made her way over to the humming refrigerator.

Brandy was filled with a morbid curiosity more than anything. She wanted to see how much detail these people went to. So far, they had gotten everything soooo right. Even she was on edge. But deep down inside she knew it was all just props and red-dyed Karo syrup.

Brandy opened the fridge.

Inside was a collection of Mountain Dew and Pepsi cans, a few bottles of water and body parts neatly packaged in Saran wrap. There were more glass jars and a half-eaten sandwich with a cold cut that she didn't want to know what of.