The Invite

It was a fall friday night, the weather was amazing (more descriptive) and Oliva couldn’t wait to get home. She worked long hours at work all week and needed a break. Her boyfriend was supposed to come over, but he was out of town for a football game and wouldn’t  be back until Sunday morning. Olivia was planning to binge watch her favorite show on Netflix while she drank her favorite lavender tea. She arrived at home and immediately changed from her work clothes to her pajamas, boiled water for her tea, and turned on the TV. She laid on the couch with her tiny new puppy for hours and even ordered pizza. Olivia could barely keep her eyes open and was startled when someone rang the doorbell. Her dog immediately jumped up and began to bark. Olivia drowsily walked to the door thinking it was the pizza man. When she opened the door she was surprised to not see a pizza, instead she saw a white envelope closed by red wax imprinted with a wine glass. Olivia hesitated before she picked up the envelope and she walked a few steps out of her house. She looked around and shakingly said, “hello?”, but no one answered. Still confused, she picked up the note and took it inside locking the door behind her.

Olivia went straight to her kitchen counter and began to open the envelope. Olivia then read what the note said, “Dear Olivia, You are invited to my Halloween party this Saturday. It is at the Redbarn Winery. Wear a spooky costume if you please. Party starts at 7. Hope you can make it. Sincerely, Elizabeth.” Olivia was confused at first because she doesn’t remember anyone  named Elizabeth . She quickly went onto Facebook and started to look for someone named Elizabeth. After about twenty minutes of searching she came to the conclusion that Elizabeth is her coworker, Emily's sister. Everyone was commenting about how excited they were for her party this Saturday. Olivia was just confused as to why she was invited to this girls party that she doesn’t even know. Olivia didn’t stress about it and decided to go to bed and she would figure out what to wear tomorrow.

In the morning Olivia was woken up by a loud thud coming from her hallway. She shot up from her bed, grabbed her phone and darted into the hallway. She was relieved to see that the noise she heard was coming from her boyfriend that had arrived early from his trip, turns out that the football game was off because his friend didn’t have enough tickets. Olivia greeted him with a big hug and after he explained his situation she began to tell him about the unexpected invite she had received the night before. Olivia started to get ready for the day and realized that she needed to get a costume ready for tonight. Olivia had no idea what to wear so she texted Emily, Elizabeth's sister, and asked her what she was wearing. While she waited for Emily to text her back she went into her basement to see if she had a witch hat of fairy wings that she could just throw on with a cute outfit. The only thing Olivia found was a pair of genie pants, she aggressively scrunched them up into a ball in her hands and stomped upstairs. Olivia was annoyed because she needed to get a costume, all she could find was purple genie pants and Emily still hadn't responded to the text. Olivia decided to work with what she had and went to her closet to find a plain white flowy shirt and sandals that she could wear with the pants. Along with the shoes and shirt she found a big black belt to wear around her waist and monstrous necklace that she had gotten at a flea market two years ago that she forgot she had. Her outfit was almost complete all she needed was something to go on her head, she went into her craft drawer and grabbed out some tiny sequins to glue on a headband she had. Olivia started to get excited about this party because she had worked so hard on making a perfect costume. When Olivia checked her phone to see if Emily had responded she saw that she got a text from an unknown number saying how excited they were to see her at the party tonight. Olivia responded, “ Who is this?” and they replied with a winky face which was weird but Olivia didn’t think much about it.

It was almost time for Olivia to leave for the party. She had her outfit on and it looked spunky and cool. Her boyfriend said goodbye to her as she left and shut and locked the door behind her after they hugged each other. Oliva walked to her car and typed the address of Redbarn Winery into her gps. She was on schedule to arrive right on time at 7 o’clock.  After about 10 minutes of driving Olivia finally made it to the winery. She didn’t recognize any of the cars there or any of the people that were walking in. She headed straight for the door and went up to the counter to see where the party was being held. The man at the front table said that Elizabeth’s party was gonna be postponed a few hours and that Olivia and all the guests were gonna have to wait. After hearing this news Olivia took a seat on the bench by the door, she tried to send a text to her boyfriend telling him that she would be late, but there was no service and the  text didn’t go through. Finally, after about an hour and fifteen minutes Olivia and the rest of the party people were called into room 7. The room had dark red walls with wood paneling on the bottom half, there was a bar table in the shape of a square with chairs all around it. In front of each chair there was a name tag, Olivia found hers and sat down cautiously. She looked around and tried to find someone she knew or anyone that looked familiar, while she was looking around she made eye contact with a tall man sitting across from her. He had black hair that came just above is skinny eyebrows, he had dark brown eyes that gave Olivia chills and had a mysterious kind of creepy look about him. He was smiling at her without showing any teeth and she tried to think of who it was. The man was wearing a normal black suit and a top hat that Olivia assumed was part of his costume. Speaking of costumes, Olivia was very surprised at how many people dressed up and was amazed at how much effort everyone put into theirs. Soon after about five minutes of chattering everyone was seated and waiting for Elizabeth to arrive. Little did Olivia know that they weren’t actually waiting for Isabelle. All of a sudden the thick wooden door flew open and everyone stared at the door. In the doorway stood a tall lengthy man with a top hat, he looked very familiar to Olivia but she couldn’t remember where she had seen him. She turned to look in front of her where the mysterious man sat, then it hit her, it was the same man. Olivia sat there very confused and shakingly asked the women sitting next to her who the man was. The middle aged women either didn’t hear Oliva when she asked or ignored her, but either way the women did not respond. The man started to walk around the table while everyone's eyes followed him. With each step he took, the more tense Olivia felt and she sat there in fright wondering what was going to happen next. After minutes of silence the man stopped behind Olivia and began to speak. He said, “ I have invited you all to my party this cold evening because you all have something in common.”, everyone looked around at each other, all confused on what he was talking about. The man continued, “ Every single one of you came to this party because of an invite you got from Elizabeth, but do you all actually know someone named Elizabeth. You might have heard of someone named Elizabeth but none of you personally know someone with that name.” The people in the room thought about it and the man was right, no one in that room knew someone personally named Elizabeth. They all started to wonder what his point was, what was he going to do next, and why were they there? The tall man revealed his name as Mr.White , he began to explain why everyone was here, “No one is here for a reason, I do this every year as a fun game for me to play called Tap Out . Tap Out is a game where in a few minutes I will turn the lights off making it pitch black in this room. I will then go around and tap on five peoples shoulders, if you feel a tap on you then you are free to go and can exit this building to go home. The others left in the room will have to stay here and wait a little while longer.” Olivia was so frightened by this and questioned over and over in her what was going to happen to the people that didn’t get tapped. Mr.White  counted backwards from three and then flipped the light switch, everything was black. Olivia sat on the wooden stool and hoped and prayed that she would soon feel a tap on her shoulder. After sitting there was a while Olivia heard footsteps behind her, her whole body stiffened when she felt his hand touch her white silky shirt. Olivia then proceeded to get up off of the stool and use the wall to lead her to the door. She opened the door and was so relieved to get out of that creepy room. Olivia went straight to the door and pushed to open it and was shocked because the door didn’t budge. A moment of fright shot through her body and she started to panic. She pushed again to make sure that the door wasn’t jammed but it was locked and would not budge. Olivia felt a shadow creeping up behind her, scared to turn around, she slowly turned her head to see Mr.White standing there with a giant grin on his face. Olivia stuttered and asked why the doors were locked, his only response was a deep belly laugh. Olivia immediately started to scream for help but Mr.White assured her that no one else was here because she was the only shoulder he tapped on and he let everyone else in the room leave to go home. The only two people that were in the winery was Olivia and this mysterious man. She had to get out of there but had no idea what to do. Olivia made a run for it to the nearest room to her. It ended up being a wine cellar, so she immersed herself into a corner hoping that he wouldn't find her. He entered the cellular and her heart stopped, he slowly started to walk over to the corner where she was at. She got on her hands and knees and began to crawl under the crates of wine. She is made to the door and slowly got up from her knees. When she heard him yell she panicked and fell forward into the door. Her necklace flea market necklace got caught on the door handle causing her to be stuck hanging on the door. She tried to get out of it but she was losing her breathe more and more. Her feet were slipping on the floor while she tried to use the wine shelves to support her standing up but it was too late. She watched in fear as he walked over the door that she was hanging on. This was the end for her and she knew it.