The sound of the tires driving at the old, weathered street was disturbing your tranquility you had kept during the whole time since you entered the car. Looking outside of the window you noticed that the reason for the fitful drive was that you were passing a forest. Or were you heading towards the center of it? You couldn't tell and nobody had informed you about where you would go and how long it would take.

Your head directed to the front again, you listened to the dull voices of the persons driving the car.

"Every time we have to get another one, I feel distraught. I doubt I'll ever get used to that.", The man on the co-driver’s seat told the other one wearily.

"Just another 5 years and you won't feel that sorry for them anymore. Believe me.", The driver said with a slight encouraging chuckle.

You didn't feel encouraged. You didn't feel like laughing. You were tired and the medicament the two persons in front of the car had adhibited you had taken any kind of feeling like happiness, sadness or anger away.

The heavy eyelids were slowly dragging you into your dreams again, the white jacket you were wearing feeling warm and cosy.

♤♡♢♧

When you opened your eyes again, the car wasn't driving anymore. Your head was slowly turning around, checking through your whole surrounding. The two men had disappeared... something seemed off.

"Hello?", you called out but received no response. It was completely mute. Not even noises from outside were reaching you inside of the car. 

This was weird and it left you with an inner restlessness you didn’t want to stand for too long. 

Slowly you got up from your seat, all irritated at first because there was nothing to hold you back. The seat belt and even the extra security clasps had gone.

Hesitatingly your feet led you to the back door of the car, opening it with caution. The door was lighter than expected and once it was opened the cold forest air was coating you with a fresh shiver. The night had already chased daylight away and rested on the forest like a heavy, lazy bear.

The forest seemed dead. There was no hint of wind nor was there any sound coming from the trees. No animals, no human being, not even bugs. It was as if you had jumped into a cold, pitch black lake and we're drowning in its darkness now. 

As you walked around the car you had to recognize that it wasn't parked at neither the street nor a parking space where you could follow the street to get back to the city or just anywhere with civilization waiting for you. It was standing in the woods. The woods! The freaking woods! How on earth did the driver manage to get here?!

"Hello?!", you called again and stopped in front of the door where you had encountered freedom just a few moments before. "Is anybody out there?!"

Again no response.

"I need help! I'm all alone here! Everybody left me!"

You had already given up on your hope that somebody would hear you when finally something was reacting. Further away, deep in the woods there seemed to be something. You could clearly hear it. Laughter. Evil giggling. It sounded bad and dangerous but what other chance did you have? You had the choice between waiting at the car all alone until the laughters would catch you or you would go for it and see what it was.

You decided to go.

The giggling didn't stop, which made it pretty easy to follow it. It didn't move either which left you a bit suspicious. Did it try to get you to it? 

Whereas following the noise was easy, the way through the forest was hard to walk. There was no real path to follow, only bushes and copse to cross which on top were scratching your legs open. It had been a stupid idea to dress up in a dress and these stupid plateau shoes in the morning. Well…who had thought the day would turn out like this anyway?

The laughters died out, leaving you with nothing but darkness in the middle of nowhere. 

"Seriously...?", you huffed in a mixture of anger, depression and anxiety.  You wouldn't even find back to the car now...!

As you were about to lose it and start crying, a releasing light in front of you was and blinding your eyes.

You were intensely blinking into it, covering your eyes and waiting for it to be turned off again. But it stayed.

"HELLO?!", you called out, this time louder than before. "CAN ANYBODY HEAR ME? IS THERE SOMEONE? I'M LOST!"

For some reason you had expected someone to answer but there was again nothing. So, you decided to check out where the light was coming from. There must have been something. Someone had deployed floodlights in the middle of a forest! They weren’t walking around and deciding on their own that a forest was the best place to stay!

The light in the end decoyed you to the entry of what looked like a left alone theme park, a row of floodlights awaiting you and enlightening a path they seemed to want you to follow.

With a short gulp you moved forwards with little, slow steps, awaiting a trap or similar to snap your feet. The crunching underneath your feet was the only sound surrounding you and the further you walked, the darker it got. The floodlights had already stopped and instead the buildings were showing you where to walk with the light installing which was still working on some of them. Masses of dirty lightbulbs were leading you trough the park, the bigger lights flickering. The buildings looked ragged, mostly destroyed with parts of them already crumbling to the ground like dried out pastry.

The atmosphere was cold and lonesome, yet you couldn’t believe that this all was actually happening. Getting lost in the middle of a forest where a left alone haunted looking theme park was waiting for you… this was no fun. 

The lights led you past a big display panel on top of a building. It wasn’t working correctly anymore and constantly turned off and on. The words on it were easy to read, though.

Jackpot.

You couldn’t agree to that. This didn’t look like you hit the Jackpot.

In front of the Jackpot building another one caught your attention. A building on which a sign was emblazoned, the number 777 on it. Little light bulbs were circling the numbers and directed your eyes to what was placed under the sign. A show window in which six mannequins were standing, dressed in colorful suits and their heads covered by masks. Clown masks. 

The big, red lips revealed huge teeth in a grin that was supposed to look amused. To you they looked threatening. You’d never been a fan of clowns.

Green fog was crawling around their feet like hungry animals, fed to be too fat to get up once in their life again. The Jackpot sign was reflected on the glass while you moved from the left clown to the one on the other end. Each clown was uglier than the one before, leaving you with a disgusted frown. 

You were about to reach the last one when the fifth suddenly jumped a step forwards and moved his arms in a circle to his head, his fingertips directed to his crest, the legs frog - like bent.

„…!“

In pure shock you had also jumped - backwards. 

What the heck?! How did that happen?! 

Your breathing became unsteadily, your legs feeling soft and flabby all of a sudden. The control over your body was lost as it was shivering like you had jumped into a pool of ice - cold water. Your feet were carrying you backwards, your eyes fixed on the clown mannequin that had moved as if by an invisible hand. You stumbled the few centimeters until you suddenly hit something with your back and quickly turned around.

What was standing in front of you was beyond any expectations.

It was another clown mannequin. And it moved its head down to you the same moment you moved your head up.

A scream was stuck in your throat but it didn’t come out. Instead it was suffocating you, the shock growing as the air was escaping your lungs and no air was coming to replace the absconded one.

Shock, fear, suffocation…whatever it was it caused you to faint. 

♤♡♢♧

Bright light was burning not only on your skin, it also burned through your eye lids, leaving a stinging pain in your eyes until you finally opened them and turned your head away as much as possible.

The room you woke up in looked weird. It had a strange circle pattern on its walls and beside that there was nothing…nothing except the chair you were sitting on, the table in front and the person sitting on the table, holding the lamp which was directed straight to your face to blind you.

You couldn’t identify the person as there was nothing more to see than a silhouette because of the bright light next to it.

„Did you finally wake up?“, the person said, revealing himself to be a man. „Well, well… then welcome to the 7 Deadly Sins!“