Heretic The Parallel Inversion Rancor Horror Extreme Haunt

Heretic: A Recollection of Parallel Inversion 1 – Rancor

Below is a Recollection. This is not a review, but rather a walkthrough of the author’s experience in Heretic‘s Parallel Inversion 1 – Rancor.  Taking place in several locations in Pasadena, Rancor tells the story of a body found in a park and taken by a pedestrian. This recollection is vague and does not contain spoilers beyond general themes and memories. This experience in this form will never be remounted, so do not be worried about spoilers. 

 

 

 

“I’m here.” Two simple words start my first experience with Heretic. I wait in my car, parked on a Pasadena street corner, until I see a man in a suit walking towards me, and I get out.

 

Adrian introduces himself to me, and we walk towards the park in the arroyo, the wooded trails looking less welcoming than usual. It’s a perfect night – a nearly full moon and clear skies make it almost as bright as day. He describes a bit about the show I’ve been invited to see – some concept, but more critically, the structure: I’d be presented with choices, each one unlocking a part of two parallel stories moving in the same direction.

 

With that, we reach the entrance to the park and I make my first choice: two names – Andrew or Simon. I make my choice, and we continue on, walking deeper into the arroyo.

 

We reach a trailhead, and Adrian sends me into the dark alone. A little way down the trail, I see a figure huddled on the ground – a man, blond and pale, in a heavy coat. He grabs my wrist, pulling me close.

 

Were you followed?” he whispers.

 

I respond with a quiet “No,” looking back over my shoulder to be sure.

 

Still holding my arm, he walks down the trail, telling me his story.

 

“They just left me here to rot.”

 

Every few yards, we pause for him to cough – harsh and body-wracking.

 

“I thought my eyes were going to pop-out from the squeezing.”

“It was my friend’s house. There was music playing.”

 

He asks if I have a car, and where it was parked. I gesture back up the trail, but we continue in the opposite direction.

 

“Are you sure no one followed you?”

“They just dumped me, like garbage”

 

We are reaching the bridge now, and in the distance, a group of people hides dim lights and speaks in muffled voices.

 

“Wait here.”

 

He leaves me there, standing in the moonlight and goes ahead to investigate the group.

 

I wait on the trail for a few minutes, looking around, and feeling anxious regarding who might actually return. After a few minutes, the blond man jogs up the trail, grabs my wrist again, and as we turn around, he tells me, “It’s them – the ones who dumped me.”

 

He starts to walk back to where we started, and I follow, glancing behind us. The lights move closer now, like another person is walking towards us. We’re walking faster now, almost a jog.

 

Suddenly, he pulls me off the trail, into the shadows of the trees. We wait there, hiding in the dark, until the lights behind us seem to turn back. We get back on the trail and soon reach the entrance to the park.

 

 

Seemingly out of nowhere, a man in a blue hoodie and pajama pants walks up to me. He reminds me a bit of my little brother when he starts to talk.  He tells me I seem kind and nice, and then me a bit about himself – that he was in recovery, and came to the park looking for a fix. He couldn’t bring himself to score, and wants a ride to his sponsor’s house. The blond man orbits our conversation as I hem and haw about driving him.

 

Eventually I am convinced, and we all walk back to the street, with the blond man staying further behind, and the man in the hoodie talking to me, chiding me for not wearing a jacket, talking about the people in the neighborhood. We reach my car, get in, and the man in the hoodie begins to navigate. Occasionally, the blond man, sitting behind me, whispers to me.

 

We reach the destination, and my passenger gets out. The blond man instructs me to park, and then we get out of the car and start to walk. It’s a residential area, my neighborhood, in fact – old houses converted to apartments, older cars, and people walking home with laundry and shopping. The passers-by don’t seem to notice us as we approach the two houses on the corner.

 

“Which house was it – the red one or the blue one?”

 

Through lack of decision, I end up at the blue house. The blond man knocks briefly and opens the front door. We stand together in the foyer, and he points to an apartment door.

 

“That one. I can’t go in there. Go.”

 

I open the door to the apartment, and as I step in, the door closes behind me as the blond man whispers, “Find my flashlight.”

 

The room is covered in plastic, and someone is standing in the middle of the floor, wearing a plastic teddy-bear mask, cradling a wig form wrapped in tape. I’m slightly confused and a little nervous – the room is silent, and the man is so still – what am I supposed to do, to say? We stare at each other briefly, and then I start to explore. After a few long moments, music starts to play, and the man in the mask begins to dance with his head, eventually falling to the ground, wrapping himself in plastic.

 

I kneel down near him to see if he’s okay, when suddenly I hear footsteps from the hall.

 

 

A man, heavily built and slightly taller than me, dressed all in black, face obscured by a mask, barrels in. He glances down at the person on the floor. Then his attention turns to me. His fingers press into my cheek, and he wraps his hands around my throat. I stare at the masked face, struggling slightly to breathe, wondering what will come next. I’m strangely calm, almost relaxed.

 

After a moment, I am pushed to the floor, my hands forced behind my back – there’s a moment of anxiety, an urge to resist, but acceptance wins out, and I allow my hands to be pulled between my shoulder blades. He flips me over and drags me across the floor, my feet scrambling for purchase as I try futilely to keep up, to get to my feet – something, anything to have some freedom, but again, I submit. He stops. Then he hauls me off the floor, throwing me against the wall, and lifting me off my feet and over his head. For the first time in my life, I feel small – even feeling the force of his gloved fingers digging into my forearms and biceps. It seems effortless for him.

 

After a moment of feeling weightless against the wall, I’m dropped to the ground and half-led/half-dragged into another room, pushed to the ground on my stomach, and again my hands are pulled roughly behind me, bound over a bar. My heart is racing, and there is no way for me to even consider freeing myself. Arms pinned behind my back, the masked man drags me to a sink, where he splashes water on my face before pushing my head under the running tap. Wet and stumbling, my hair in my eyes, I’m pulled over and seated in a chair. My pulse races again – and I wonder what’s coming next. The chair spins around rapidly: left, then right, then up and back down the hallway, leaving me disoriented.

 

Suddenly, my hands are free, the device binding them falling to the ground, and his hands are around my throat briefly. There’s a short, hard blow to my sternum, and as I lean forward to catch my breath, he shoves me to the ground. I’m on my back, staring up at this face on top of me, both of his hands wrapped around my throat. My fear is rising as I’m pinned beneath his weight, struggling for breath. Still, though, I submit silently, waiting.

 

I hear a voice.

 

Live or die!

 

It’s Adrian, next to me. In an instant, I gasp, “Live.” It was a habitual response, the answer the world trains you to make, and not the one I’d make with another moment’s thought.

 

The hands around my throat release, and suddenly, there’s a stun gun firing near my face. For the first time, I’m startled, and I make an unprompted sound. After that, he’s off of me, turning down the hall. I follow, and I’m directed to kneel.

 

I’m face to face with the blond man again. He’s lying on his back, being strangled by the man I followed. Someone behind me presses my face over his as he gasps for his final breaths. I stare down at him struggling to breathe, guilt rising as I realize that I may have sent him to his fate. I’m apologizing over and over for my decision.

 

After a moment, I’m led from the house, and just like that, it’s over, and I’m back in the real world. I realize that I was the blond man, or he was me, and I was reliving the circumstances of my own death, fruitlessly trying to find meaning or change the outcome.

 

The experience is still there in my head, a fever dream of fear and absurdity and death that changed familiar locations into a tense world that had me staring at shadows and looking over my shoulder the whole time. The balance of story and experience and experiment was new for me, and despite knowing that I’d make different choices if given another chance, that night still haunts my memory.

 

Heretic Haunted House: The Parallel Inversion – Rancor – Official website – Facebook – Instagram

 

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