A Twist in my Story

I smiled out of Xander’s tinted car window with a pleased expression as we drove away from the small café where we enjoyed our breakfast. The café wasn’t that far away from Rose’s house and apparently, they go there often since they are well acquainted with the employees.
“Hey, Caleb?” I heard Rose ask, making me draw my attention away from the moving scenery to look at her cheerful face.
Rose had moved in the passenger seat to look over the top of the seat with her back to the road. Rose’s joyful face held excitement as she looked down at me, her grin practically reaching from ear to ear as she held her iPod Touch in her right hand.
“Yes Rosie?”
“I’m going to be playing music for you to listen to, so we can establish what sort of music you like, and since I so badly want you to like our taste of music, I shall be using my iPod,” Rose finished, waving her iPod in the air in front of me before she turned around in her seat to plug her iPod into the car’s radio-thing.
I bit my lip as I waited for the music to start playing, watching as she pressed shuffle. A small beat started up before a male voice was heard.
“Please leave all overcoats, canes and top hats with the doorman, from that moment you’ll be out of place and underdressed. I’m—”
“This song is called 'There's a Good Reason These Tables Are Numbered Honey, You Just Haven’t Thought of it yet', by Panic! At the Disco,” Xander interrupted with a smile as the song played on behind his confident voice.
I nodded, awaiting the car trip full of songs that weren’t so bad, some were actually really good. As a song would end, they would pause the music and ask me to rate it out of 10 on the ‘Caleb factor’, whatever that means, but nonetheless I did what they told me. At the start of each song they would list the title and artist, and so far my favourite band was Three Days Grace.
I smiled at them as we pulled up to an unfamiliar black building. The building was made out of large bricks and cement with a large sign hanging above the door that read ‘Laser Tag’, the letters in multi-coloured laser lights. I furrowed my eyebrows as we climbed out of the car and stared up at the sign. What was this place, some sort of dungeon?
“Only bring one crutch, preferably the left, you won’t need the other one,” Xander said as he shoved his hands into his jean pockets.
Furrowing my eyebrows I followed his orders and placed one of my crutches back into the car as Xander smiled and locked it before we slowly started to walk towards the building.
“By the way this is Laser Tag, Laser Tag is a game played by many and you pretty much go around trying to shoot people with the plastic gun. The guns are of course, not real and just shoot out little beams of light. When you are playing Laser Tag, be careful of yourself because you don’t want to get shot yourself. Got it?” Rose explained before skipping forwards without my answer.
We followed Rose slowly as we entered the place. I bit my lip as we walked through the sliding glass door, instantly the warm air from the room hitting my body, making my face heat up. The room was small, and also made out of bricks, except, the inside was a light blue and there were pictures, notices and documentations hanging all over the walls, along with a small waiting area that included a couch, a small glass table and a drinking fountain.
Xander and Rose paid not attention to the empty room as he walked towards the counter with a kind smile. He murmured things to the girl that was around my age that sat behind the counter of this facility. She nodded, her eyes flickering over to me before she leaned closer to Xander, whispering something that only Rose and Xander could hear. Xander’s eyes narrowed onto the girl, his face irritated as Rose just smirked at Xander’s reaction, her eyes flickering over to my curious expression before she mouthed ‘I’ll tell you later’.
I nodded as Xander shoved some money at the girl before he stomped through the door opposite to the entrance. Rose chuckled before she skipped after him, clicking her tongue and leaving me to tuck my hands into my pockets and follow them, my eyes focused on the ground.
“Hey, hey, hey!” I heard the girl at the counter yell out, making me look back at her in confusion. “Hey, I’m Marissa, maybe you could give me a call,” the girl said in a flirtacious voice as she held out a folded piece of paper.
“N-no thank you,” I mumbled before I bolted over to where Xander and Rose were standing, Xander beyond furious.
Xander gave the girl a death glare before we moved down the corridor towards a wooden door that had ‘Enter if you dare’ written on the front in what looked like fake blood. Xander, Rose and I entered through the door, before closing it behind ourselves as we entered a room that had nine kids sitting around, all of them in black vests that had either green, red or blue triangular buttons on it, three of them having red guns, three having green and another three having blue. I swallowed nervously as a man entered through behind us moments later.
“Are you the last group?”
“I’m assuming so,” Xander replied, looking at the three other groups.
“Good, grab the yellow equipment on the wall and put it on before I explain any instructions,” the guy informed gruffly as he watched us put on the vests and hold our guns tightly. “Excellent! Now, moving on, okay, we have four teams. There’s the blue team, the red team, the yellow team and the green team. The aim of this game is to shoot the other teams with your gun and if you hit them on the chest it will make a noise and the light on it will go out. You will have to wait thirty seconds before your vests and guns will work again. If you shoot a person which is what we classify as ‘dead’ you will not gain any points for your team. There is also an aim to this, for every person you hit you gain ten points, you will have an hour in there to try and kill as many of your rivals as possible and try and find the golden egg. I cannot give you a description of the egg but I can tell you if someone does find the egg in the hour their team will gain two hundred points, but don’t forget, that does’t necessarily mean you win. Now please, press the coloured button on your vests and then we shall enter the arena.”
Everyone followed his instructions almost immediately, the sound of all of the vests and guns going off at once. The guy nodded in approval before signalling us towards the other door that lead us down a hallway that had black walls, the light of the hallway slowly darkening before we entered a colourful room that looked practically like a maze.
I stared around at the maze, the walls were black, yet the tops of the walls were a bright colour, some colours flashed, others moved and some were triggered by sensors. The maze zigzagged, some of it having T sections, some led you to open areas were you were ambushed by machines that sat on top of the walls, it looked tricky.
“Good luck,” the guy said from behind us before he shut the door, suddenly, everyone scurried away from each other, shooting when possible and finding the nearest hiding point, sadly, this left me abandoned.
I couldn’t see anyone in sight, I couldn’t even see Xander or Rose. I trembled before gluing myself to the wall beside a neon blue pole, my gun to my chest as my eyes darted around the dark place, slowly creeping deeper and deeper into the maze, trusting my gut as I wandered around. It wasn’t long until I found the rest of them upstairs, on the second floor, all teams hidden behind hay, barrels, poles and other objects that were randomly placed around the clearing. The only problem I had was that I was on the third floor, so I did what any logical teenager would have done in this situation. I raised my gun and began to shoot at the other teams. I was proud of my accomplishments when I had ‘killed’ all of them, watching as they looked around trying to find me, forgetting to look up, even Rose and Xander were confused, but nevertheless they moved on throughout the maze, and so did I.
I think any logical person could’ve figured out it was me, I mean, I was the only one missing from that stand-off, plus, I was on Xander’s and Rose’s team. Swallowing nervously, I moved forwards, peering around corners before dashing forwards to hid behind a rusted barrel, that looked to be once a light red. Peering over top of the barrel I noticed at set of stairs, biting my lip I bolted towards the stairs, and ran up them as fast as I could before reaching the top. I dived behind a rainbow block once I had noticed two guys, one from the green team the other from the red as they stood at a standoff, the golden egg placed in between them as they had guns raised towards each other.
“Drop your weapon,” the green guy growled, tightening his grip on the gun.
I let out a shaky breath before I rose my gun, aiming it towards the guy that spoke, but a flash of light from the red guy made me turn my gun in his direction and pull the trigger. The guy cursed underneath his breath as his vest declared him ‘dead’. I raced out from behind the barrel and dived for the golden egg, but the two guys noticed me almost instantly and dived as well. The three of us all landed on top of each other, I was on the bottom, with my hands clasped around the egg as the two guys laid on top of me, leaving me almost breathless. I felt large, beefy hands clasp around my hands as the green guy spoke again.
“Pass it over, it’s mine,” he snarled, trying to tug the small object out of my sweaty hands.
I let out a small huff of air as I tried to speak, the lack of oxygen turning my face red. After moments of wrestling around on the ground the red guy gave up and shot both of us before he bolted off to shoot more people.
I had somehow ended up face down on the ground, with the large guy straddling my back as he tried to reach the golden egg which I held tightly to my chest, refusing to let go, refusing to let Rose and Xander down. I felt the guy growl something next to my ear but I couldn’t understand what he had said. I felt confused for a short period of time, leaving him to grab a tuff of my hair. The guy yanked back a bit before slamming my face into the ground, making a thundering crack echo throughout the room. I cried out in pain as I squirmed underneath the guy, I could feel the blood running from my nose, over my lips and onto the floor.
I tried to escape, and suddenly, seconds after my nose had broken there was no more weight on me, instead there was Rose kneeling beside me as she peeled her black jumper off of her body and held it to my nose sympathetically once I had moved to a sitting position. Glancing over, I noticed Xander straddling the guy and punching him repetitively in the face as he cursed multiple amounts of times at the guy.
I yelped before I jumped to my feet to yank Xander off of the guy and wrap my arms around his hard abdomen, tugging him away from the guy, not caring that I had dropped Rose’s hoodie. I could feel the growl that rippled throughout Xander’s body before he deflated in my arms and turned around to face me, burying his face into the crook of my neck.
“Are you alright?” I heard him ask after a siren went off and he had pulled away.
“Fine,” I replied, opening my palm to reveal the golden egg, ignoring the strong pain in my nose.

Although we only came second, we were proud to say that the green team got completely flogged. Coming first was the blue team and the third place belonged to the red team. The first team had been rewarded with a 4 player laser skirmish pack, which they happily took. We were the first group to leave and walking through the door to enter the waiting room was a disaster.
The girl that was there to introduce us had forcibly given me her number and gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek wishing me better and hoping that we could ‘hang out sometime’ which I honestly, did not want to do.