The back curtains closed again, as Michael turned his attention back to the cart.

“All right, ladies and gentlemen, I think we’re ready for our second volunteer,” announced Michael. “Please send her in!”

A red-haired woman walked in from stage left. She was wearing what appears to be a white sundress adorned with a modest amount of floral prints and a pair of heels to match. Her long wavy hair tapered neatly down her back.

“Ah, the humble sundress, it’s a classic look,” said Michael, “and your name is?”

“My name is Clare,” the woman answered.

“Okay, Clare, this is the situation. You’ve seen Abby lose her head, and I think you and the others got a good look of her as Violet escorted her body offstage,” Michael emphasized. “I believe you have a pretty good idea of what’ll happen to you if you fail your challenge. Are you still up for it?”

“Well, the way I see it, I’ll either receive a pretty-looking severed head for rent or lose my head and become a rental display, so whatever happens to me will be an interesting experience to say the least,” Clare explained.

“Hmm, I like the way you think, Clare, so I’d take it that you will proceed with your challenge?”

“Yes, I will.”

After that introduction of Clare, Michael took the big sack of heads from the cart and opened it for Clare to choose within. With a pointed finger signaling her selection, he pulled out the chosen small sack and placed the big sack back onto the cart. Moving behind the cart, he placed the chosen sack, mouth end up, on the table. Pulling the sack’s mouth down and around the severed head inside, he slowly revealed the head inside.

“Clare, it looks like you’ve chosen Haley!”

Pulling the sack down made a slight mess of Haley’s short brunette hair. Her eyes were closed, but her mouth was forced open by a black bit gag. Instead of saliva, a little blood drooled from the corners of her mouth, as did it drip from her severed neck when Michael lifted her head up for the audience to see. He then gently handed it over to Clare, who quickly began to inspect it.

“Can I remove her gag?” asked Clare.

“I don’t see why not,” replied Michael.

Clare removed her gag, careful not to get any more liquids on her hands. With Michael’s nodding approval, she tossed the gag aside, letting Haley’s mouth hang open. She checked inside her mouth, and she found what looks to be one end of a rolled-up piece of paper, lodged deep in her throat. Thankfully, since Haley’s been decapitated, the other end of the paper was sticking out of her neck, which Clare retrieved subsequently.

“What does it read?” asked Michael as he took Haley’s head from Clare and carefully put it upright on top of the cart.

“It says ‘ESCAPE’…,” read Clare. “Does that—"

“You got the ESCAPE challenge!” Michael interrupted Clare’s thought.

As if on cue, the back curtains reopened revealing a long thick table. Its surface was made of metal, and it was supported in the middle by a large tube on a wheeled base as its pivot. On the table were an assortment of thinner than usual leather shackles of varying sizes. Each shackle was connected to the table via a rope that fed through one of six holes into the table, a hole for each shackle.

“All right, Clare, let’s get you settled into your challenge while I explain how it works,” invited Michael. He helped Clare lie on the table, making sure all her hair was put away above her head. She filled up most of the table, leaving at the least a couple of inches between her body and the edges of the table.

“The Escape challenge goes like this,” began Michael. “We strap our volunteer—that’s you, Clare—onto this mechanical table that John made—thanks John!” Michael shouted to offstage. A thumbs up from John popped out of stage left.

“We’ll strap you down using these shackles: two for your wrists, two for your ankles, one for your waist, and one for your neck.” For each body part he mentioned, Michael had gone around the table and somehow instantly shackled that corresponding part of Clare. He had also fixed six keys on the waist shackle.

“Wow, that was… fast,” blurted out Clare, dumbfounded by the speed with which she had been restrained. “At least I’m not too restrained,” she commented on the surprising amount of slack on each shackle.

“Hmm, you’re right. Let’s change that,” Michael said with a subtle grin.

Upon the snap of Michael’s fingers, all the ropes of the shackles suddenly became taut, forcing Clare flat on her back. Her arms were pinned to her sides, and her legs were a little spread apart.

“Jeez, table, relax!” jeered Clare. “I can barely move anything now.”

“Perfect, now to explain the rules,” Michael continued. “The table has been calibrated to only give you a certain amount of slack that’s shared across all the ropes. That means, if you pull on one rope to get slack, you can only pull on another rope so much until it reaches the maximum and begins to take slack from the first rope. This applies if you pulled on three ropes, four, and so on,” he elaborated. “You understood all that?”

“Um… I think so,” replied Clare, confidence waning. “How much slack is the maximum?”

“It’s about two feet of rope, if I recall correctly,” answered Michael. “It should be plenty of rope for a woman of your figure, which brings me to the challenge proper.”

On cue, a timer mounted on a wheeled platform was kicked in from stage left. Michael caught it, rotated it to face the audience, and turned it on. It displayed a label “TIMER” and a clock showing five minutes.

“Clare, do you see those six keys on the shackle at your waist?” Michael asked in a loud voice.

“Uh-huh,” Clare responded in a similar volume.

“Your challenge is to take those keys, insert them in the appropriate shackle, and release your limbs from each shackle, thereby escaping the table. The keys can just be yanked off and fixed on again, but they are not labelled nor give any indication to which shackle they may unlock. Don’t worry; each key there corresponds to exactly one of the shackles. Once the timer starts, the shared slack rule I explained earlier will take effect, and you will be on your own,” Michael explained. “Do you have any questions?”

“What happens if I fail?” asked Clare.

“Oh, it’s a surprise, but expect to lose your head,” Michael responded. “Any more questions?”

“I think I’m good.”

“Excellent, now I can do this,” said Michael as he produced a red bit gag. Despite the short distance, he managed to convincingly sprint to the head end of the table and secure the gag into Clare’s mouth.

“EEEHHHYY!” Clare was reduced to incoherent vowels, diphthongs, and nasals.

“No use complaining now, Clare,” remarked Michael as he went back to the timer.

“All right, ladies and gentlemen, the timer starts… now!”

It took a moment for Clare to fully realize that the challenge had started. Once it dawned on her, she snapped into action. First, she tried pulling on all the shackles except the one on her waist. Her limbs and neck all only got a little slack each. Then, she tested how far each arm could reach. She found that she could reach her waist no problem, but she could just about reach the shackle of the opposite arm only after pulling really hard.

“Four minutes left!” said Michael, watching both Clare and the timer along with the audience.

Clare was trying her best to stay calm. Four minutes was plenty of time, she thought, but it wasn’t a lot when you can only move your limbs a couple of feet. She reasoned that she needed to free her arms first, since they’ll be doing most of the key work. She thought of freeing her dominant right arm first, but upon trying out the first key from the waist shackle, she found that she couldn’t maintain up the force to keep her left arm at max slack. She retried by freeing her left arm first, but that key didn’t match. Putting that key back, she tried the second key, and then the third, which worked. She freed her left arm and threw away the successful key to avoid confusion with the other keys. It landed on the floor with a clink.

“Three minutes left!”

“What? That took two minutes?” Clare thought. She was panicking a little, but redirected herself to the task at hand. With her left arm free, she decided to free her other arm. With fives keys remaining, she took one and as she tried to insert it into the lock, her nerves got the better of her. She dropped the key, which fell into the gap between her arm and her body. Desperation took over for a good while, and she frantically felt for the key. A lot of time was wasted.

“Two minutes left!”

Upon hearing that, a great dread fell upon Clare. Although she didn’t mind losing her head, seeing the pain on Abby’s face earlier certainly made her second guess that sentiment. Nonetheless, she snapped herself back into the situation at hand and returned to trying to free her right hand. The fourth key she tried, thankfully, unlocked the shackle, which meant that both arms were now free, and another key was thrown away. Like the first key, it produced a clink upon landing on the floor.

Clare didn’t have much time to choose which shackle to unlock next, but she decided to free her legs next. It took her some maneuvering to bend her right leg as far up as she could, but she was shocked to realize she could only reach her heel.

“Crap, I need to free my waist first!” Clare realized.

It was quicker to undo the maneuvering Clare did earlier to bend her leg up, but that mattered little when there was only—

“One minute left! It’s not looking good for Clare, folks.”

With four shackles left, Clare wasn’t in the most optimistic of mindsets, but she persevered despite this fact. In a stroke of luck, the first key she tried on her waist shackle unlocked it, freeing her the movement she needs to reach her ankle. Quickly, she threw away that third key, which became a clink on the floor, and maneuvered herself with the combined movement of her arms—and now, waist and hips—and bent her right leg up.

“Yes, I can reach it!” Clare thought, hearing a clink immediately after. Though uncomfortable, she managed to keep her right leg bent long enough for her to release it from its shackle with another first try key. That fourth key was promptly thrown away to the sound of another clink.

“Thirty seconds left, Clare!” Michael announced. “You better get a move on if you want to win.”

Knowing that she had two shackles left, Clare wasted no time in maneuvering her left leg up, so she could release it.

“All right, first key, here goes,” Clare thought as she inserted the key into the lock. It didn’t fit.

“Twenty seconds left!”

“Twenty seconds?! Th-that’s fine, since this first key failing means it’s the se—” Clare felt around for the other of the supposed-to-be two remaining keys. She found nothing.

“What the… did I lose count?” Clare asked herself. “Oh, it must be the one that I dropped earlier. Let me just look… for… oh no.”

Feeling around her right side, Clare only felt the cold metal of the table she had been lying down against for the last few minutes. Even after scooching over to her left, she felt no trace of a key.

“Ten seconds!” Michael’s final countdown began.

“Nine!”

“Eight!” The audience joined in the counting.

“Seven!” Clare decided to at least free her neck, so she could sit up and look for the missing key. She tried to keep her composure, but with at most ten seconds left, her hands were shaking.

“Six!”

“Five!” She tried to steady her hand as she attempted to insert the remaining key she had on hand into the neck shackle’s lock.

“Four!” She couldn’t quite steady it enough to catch the keyhole.

“Three!” She tried to brute force the key in, but she ended up dropping it instead.

“Two!” Beside her head, she felt around for the key.

“One!” She found the key but struggled to get a good grip on it.

“Time’s up, Clare,” remarked Michael as he went over to where Clare’s head was.

Clare stared up at the ceiling she had been staring at for the last five minutes, because she mostly went by touch to unlock the shackles.

“Mmmmmm….” Clare let out a muffled sigh. Whether it was one of relief or one of sadness, Michael didn’t let on that he could tell.

“Sorry, Clare, you failed the challenge,” Michael said to Clare. “You know what that means.”

Clare looked at Michael and shook her head. He ignored this and snapped his fingers. For a brief moment, all the lights in the theatre shut off. Then, they all turned on again.

When the lights came on again, the table had been titled forty-five degrees. Clare was back in her shackles, head end down, with no keys in sight. The timer had disappeared along with them. The table also had a gap running along its width. It ran below Clare’s neck, above the shackle. Other than that, nothing else had changed.

“Hmm? Mmm!” Clare blurted out with a stir. She tried to move around, but all the freedom she fought for earlier had been relinquished.

“All right, Clare, prepare to lose your head,” announced Michael.

On cue, a small circular saw emerged from the gap in the table and appeared beside Clare’s head. It whirred to life, but based on Clare’s expression, she wasn’t all that happy to see it.

“Nuh! Uh-uhh!” Clare resorted to pulling hard on her shackles, but found that they no longer give any slack.

“Don’t worry, Clare. It’s perfectly safe,” assured Michael. He went over to the cart and retrieved the basket with Abby’s head inside. He put this basket below the table, just under the head end. “Here, this should catch your head.”

This did little to comfort Clare, who, at this point, was randomly pulling on every shackle to at least try to move away from the saw.

“I hope you’re ready, Clare, because the saw will now saw through your neck.”

The saw started to move along the gap, and with that, Clare began to thrash in her bonds. Fists clenched, desperation caused her to pull and wiggle frantically to no avail. After a few seconds, the saw made contact with her skin of her neck.

“EEEEHHHH!” Clare screamed at the top of her lungs, her gag doing little to mask the anguish in her voice. Michael narrowly avoided the initial spray of blood. Her scream was cut short a couple of seconds later as the saw reached the middle of her neck. Her hands relaxed as her entire body went limp. In the next moment, the saw emerged out of her neck as her head slid off the table into the waiting basket below. Blood oozed out of her now exposed neck and dripped onto the floor.

A few seconds later, the saw eventually made its way to the other side of the table. On its own, the table titled vertically, orienting Clare’s headless body upright. The saw shut itself off and retreated back into the table, taking with it the section of the table separated by the gap where Clare’s head once rested on. A bit more blood continued to seep out of Clare’s neck, lightly tainting the neck line of her dress with red. Once he saw that the table was vertical, Michael crouched down and fished out her now severed head from the basket. Holding her head with both hands, he observed that her face wasn’t exactly one of joy.

“Ladies and gentlemen, can I get a round of applause for Clare?” Michael invited the audience. The audience obliged. “Hello, there, Clare, how are you feeling?” he asked her, turning her head to face him.

There was some blood on Clare’s face, presumably from the blood that was dripping off the table. She looked at him like she was pleading for something. Her lips moved a little around the gag as if she was trying to voice something, but no sound came out. Her head’s neck wound still dripped a little blood.

“Hmm, it looks like the saw went through your larynx instead of above it,” Michael noted. He stood back up and approached Clare’s headless body. “Can you move your body?” he asked her. He saw her hands clench and unclench. The audience clapped.

“That’s a good sign,” remarked Michael, “but for one last test…” He held Clare’s head in one arm, and with his free hand, he reached up to her body’s open neck wound, noting how it lined up almost perfectly with the table’s new edge.

Her body thrashed briefly. Michael had touched the wound with a quick tap, but based on her reaction, the wound was still tender.

“Okay, ladies and gentlemen, I think that proves that Clare is still very much alive,” Michael stated, facing the audience. “However, I think it is time to finally put away Clare’s head, and for that, I need a this,” he said as he brandished a piece of white cloth, about the size of a large handkerchief. Working quickly, he placed her head on the cart facing the audience, moving Haley’s head aside.

Michael used the cloth to gently wipe off the blood on her face. He then made circular motions with the cloth, causing Clare’s eyes to become droopy. As her face succumbed to slumber, he fashioned the cloth into a narrow strip and blindfolded her, making sure the blindfold also keeps her long hair relatively contained. When he finished, he placed Clare’s head back into the basket with Abby’s head. Out of his sight, Clare tried to kick her legs, but with her shackles, she hardly got any movement.

“Oh, if any of you were wondering why I didn’t fully wrap Clare’s head in cloth like I did with Abby, it’s because I also ‘package’ the heads according to how they were decapitated,” Michael explained. “Less cloth means the method was more painful, and I think Clare got the worst one… so far, anyway.”

“Nevertheless, we can’t forget about Haley’s head now,” said Michael as he picked up Haley’s head. He raised her head up, facing him, their eyelines at the same height, and slowly walked, ending up behind Clare’s body’s table. From the audience’s view, it appeared as if Haley’s head was being put on Clare’s body.

To the audience’s surprise, Michael let go of Haley’s head, and it remained upright. They could tell that it wasn’t placed on the table’s edge, but instead, it seemingly floated in the air.

Michael walked back into view. “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back, Haley!” Upon saying this, Haley’s head began to move, bobbing up and down as it went from behind the table to center stage. What appeared, however, was Haley in her entirety. She was wearing a shoulderless blouse, tight-fitting jeans, and a pair of heels. Her face had also been cleaned up, removing any trace of blood. She proceeded to give Michael a big hug and the audience a quick, confident wave.

“Once again, another round of applause for Haley and Clare!”

The audience cheered as Haley unlocked the wheels of the table and began pushing Clare’s body to stage left. The earlier dormant Clare sensed this and began to wiggle in her restraints, as she and Haley vanished offstage.