In a secret location, a group of masked attendees are gathered before a small stage. On the stage is an ornate cabinet with a swinging door left wide open. The inside of the cabinet is lined with plush red velvet, contrasting with the dark, vicious spikes that line the door. A well dressed host is addressing the crowd.

Two figures mount the stage, dressed respectively in silvery grey and burgundy ballgowns with sequinned silk opera masks. The lady in grey whispers something to her companion before stepping into the cabinet and settling against the red velvet interior, facing out towards the audience.

A hush falls across those assembled as the lady quietly looks down, as if making mental preparations. After a dramatic pause she looks up and smiles, her eyes sparkling through the eyeholes in her mask. She makes one final glance around the room and gives a small nod. There is the sound of a spring being released and the spiked door swings forcefully around, slamming shut on the cabinet and its sole, willing inhabitant.

—–

This is a story of many little deaths, some not so little.

What is your darkest fantasy? Don't tell me you don't have one, if you're human you have a dark side whether you like it or not. You shouldn't be afraid to admit it, because the way we choose to deal when the darkness manifests is a huge part of who we are.

The ultimate darkness is, of course, our own mortality and that of our loved ones, and it is frightening as fuck. Some deal with it through denial, as if simply wishing the darkness gone is enough to make it so, usually by invoking religion. When that doesn't work they turn to righteous justification to deflect the darkness onto others. Others veer towards psychopathy and sadism, using the darkness as an excuse to hurt people simply for the feeling of power. Both of these groups are dangerous.

But then there are those that come to embrace the fear and intensity of their own destruction and make it into a game, the thing that shapes life itself, controlled, committed to and enjoyed as the ultimate thrill ride. When you meet the darkness on your own terms, by your own rules, it can even be befriended. The French coined "La Petite Mort" as a metaphor for the orgasm. The little death. Consensual, passionate, romantic, infinity in a moment and to Hell with everything else.

As you may have gathered by now I'm not everyone's idea of a people-person but I don't hate people or the world. I love it all, I just happen to find the shadows more comforting than the light, where, ironically, evil hides more readily.

I am Lexie. I am a gender non-conforming bi cult horror geek, a dreamer with a deathwish. I have a guillotine in my bedroom. Mostly I hang wet towels on it.

—-

Maise and I met in a shared house let by a landlord who crammed tenants into every part of the building that could possibly be called a room, down to, and including, the downstairs utility cupboard. We were all nominally "professionals" as per terms of the rental agreement, but mostly this was in the "desperate temp" sense of the word. The house was flaky, poorly maintained and with an aloof community of occupants who passed in the corridor or communal kitchen and knew or cared little of each others' business, which made it all the more interesting when you did happen to form a bond with someone.

Maise lived in the room opposite mine, up in the attic. She was a confident, good natured woman with a light olive complexion, long dark hair and chestnut eyes, who I often met while cooking in the communal kitchen. Most of the house's inhabitants lived off of takeouts and ready meals, so being the only ones interested in actually using the cooker and work surfaces was the first thing we bonded over. Sometimes we would pool resources and cook together. But aside from that, our relationship was limited to when we met on the landing in between our rooms on the way out to work, or if we happened to be going out in the evenings at the same time. Maise was a creative dresser and put together some beautiful themed outfits, I admired the eye she had for building an image. But after a while, an odd pattern started to emerge.

On Saturday nights and a few other evenings, Maise would wear a similar themed outfit for weeks at a time, until she would suddenly change her image to something else entirely. Her day to day attire didn't change, only her dressing up persona for going out. I became curious about where she was going.

There was a distinct gender fluidity in her going-out outfits which I appreciated as an androgynous dresser myself. For a while she went out dressed in a beautiful tailored tuxedo which I absolutely loved and thought she wore brilliantly, I was a little disappointed when she replaced it out of the blue with a new outfit one evening. I mentioned it in the kitchen the next day while we were chopping vegetables.

"Oh, that guy?" said Maise, "He died."

Maise was a bit of an eccentric, that's what I liked about her, but that response threw me.

"Um, what?" I asked.

Maise froze as if she'd said something out loud that she hadn't meant to. She stopped cutting vegetables, looked at me and smiled.

"Sorry, I was miles away," she said. "Yeah, the tuxedo look... it was to do with this thing I do, a kind of roleplay game. Thanks for the compliment though, it's cute of you to notice."

She went back to chopping vegetables.

"Sounds fun," I said.

"Uh-huh."

I'd heard of LARPing, but never associated it with Maise's style of dress. I could sense that she was blocking, so maybe it was just me getting too nosy about her personal hobby, but I hoped we were friendly enough for her to know that I wouldn't mock her for it.

"What do you mean, he died?" I asked.

There was a bang as Maise's knife slipped and crashed against the chopping board. Luckily, she wasn't hurt, but she obviously wasn't entirely comfortable with the conversation.

"In the game. It was a character I was roleplaying, and he died in the game."

She didn't seem angry, just defensive. I wondered why she was reluctant to open up, but decided to back off.

"Sorry to hear it. I hope he didn't suffer," I said.

Maise smiled and gathered up her chopped vegetables. I didn't press her further.

This macabre mystery took a new turn about a week later, along with our relationship, this time based on my own sartorial choices.

I'd come in from work, changed out my office clothes and slung on a comfy pair of joggers, only to find no clean tops in my day to day drawer. So I went to the drawer below, where I kept my more collectible shirts, the one-offs I'd wear from time to time but tried to avoid wearing out. The first one out of the pile turned out to be a Suspiria shirt I'd bought at a film festival that had screened the Three Mothers trilogy back to back. I pulled it on and headed off down to the kitchen.

Maise was there when I entered and perked up when she saw the shirt.

"Dario Argento, nice!" she said. "I never had you down as a fan of Italian horror."

I told her about the Three Mothers screening and my love of horror in general. I've been collecting dark and schlocky movies ever since my teens, it's the best kind of escapism.

"Well, this is interesting," she exclaimed, pulling up a chair. "OK, let's compare, you tell me yours, I'll tell you mine. Fave director?"

"Clive Barker."

"Mario Bava. Barker's good too, though. Scream queen?"

"Fay Wray. Original and best."

Maise laughed. "Barbara Steele, and I like that we both went vintage. Best death scene?"

"Ring. The original Japanese, of course."

"Ghost Ship. I love that old cruise aesthetic, even before they all got sliced in half."

Maise paused before asking the next question.

"Which killer would you let kill you?"

"Pinhead or Jigsaw. Jigsaw because he makes super creative deathtraps, Pinhead because he cares."

Maise was impressed. "You barely stopped to think about that one, it's like you've already considered this."

"Maybe," I said. "Who's yours?"

"Freddy Kreuger. Can't beat a good wisecrack. What film do you wish was better?"

I thought for a moment about this one. One of the great things about horror is when it's bad it's good, but there are some which just fall in the middle and don't quite deliver as you want them to. There was one in particular which I'd really wanted to escape into, but never could.

"The Wizard of Gore," I replied.

"The HG Lewis one? Why so?"

"Same as with most of his films, I feel like he's making them bad on purpose so he can go further with the gore effects. I mean, I like a hokey film and I like gore, but not for its own sake. Montag spends so much time chewing the scenery and insulting everyone before he wheels out his industrial factory tools, there's no warmth, no reason for the victims to volunteer."

Maise raised an eyebrow.

"Say that last part again."

"No reason for the victims to volunteer... actually, that does sound a bit weird, doesn't it?"

Maise laughed.

"No, I get it," she said, "You wanted to be one of the volunteers getting murdered, just not by him."

"Sure, why not. It'd be fun getting sawn in half."

Maise was looking at me with a curious smile.

"I'm glad we had this talk," she said. "I think we're going to be good friends."

In the coming days we talked more about horror movies, compared which ones we'd seen and how different scenes made us feel. Like me, Maise had come to horror fandom as a form of dark escapism and became hooked by the rush of confronting death in a fantasy setting, in counterpoint to the horrors of the real world – neither of us were interested in actual murder cases or real death, but fantastic fictional terrors were like a drug, the more outlandish the better. We also talked about death and peril scenes in non-horror movies and TV shows, hokey, shocking and everything in between. Other housemates started giving us strange looks as they passed through the kitchen, but we didn't really care.

Then one evening I offered to lend her a couple of cult favourites I had in my collection that I didn't think she'd seen.

"Tell you what," said Maise, "Why don't we watch them together? I think it's time we did."

I agreed immediately. I was delighted that we were finally doing proper friend stuff.

"I've got some to show you too," she said. And went back to cooking.

That night she let me into her room. It was cluttered as digs in a shared house inevitably are, but kept as tidy as it is possible to be when your life's possessions are all in one room. Vintage poster art decorated the walls, lit by amber lampshades and a faint smell of patchouli incense. In one corner of the room, a large clothes rail was covered over with a curtain, with a full length mirror and dressing table like the dressing room of a vaudeville theatre. We sat on Maise's bed, facing the TV mounted on the wall.

"So what do you fancy?" I asked her, DVD cases in hand.

"Tough to choose," she said. "Let me show you the beginning of something else first. It's in the player."

The movie turned out to be Quills, Phillip Kaufman's film about the Marquis de Sade. The opening sequence featured one of the Marquis' stories acted out with a voiced narration, as a French aristocratic woman faced the guillotine while being ravaged by her executioner. As the scene unfolded, I realised Maise was watching my reaction instead of the screen. When the woman's head tumbled and the scene ended I was beginning to wonder if this was more than just a movie binge.

"Like it?" said Maise.

"Um, yes?" I replied.

"I love it," said Maise. "We both love a good movie death and gore's great and all, but to me this is a different level of intense. The sexual thrill, the whole idea of giving yourself willingly."

She fixed me with a stare and slowly enunciated three French words.

"La Petite Mort."

I knew exactly what she meant.

My heart was pounding as I turned to look at her and carefully considered my next question.

"Maise, which one of us are you imagining in that guillotine?" I asked.

"Both of us together," said Maise.

Next thing I knew we were kissing passionately.

"I knew it!" she said as she came up for air. "You're a deathplayer, just like me. The gleam in your eye when you were talking about being sawn in half... I know it because I've felt it, so many times. The rush, the moment of destiny, the feeling of telling the whole world to go to hell just for that one instant... you do know I'm not a psycho killer, right?"

"Sure," I replied, "me neither. But you're right, I get a serious kick out of stuff like this. It's awesome to find someone else who does too."

Then I remembered one of our first conversations.

"Now I'm wondering a little more about this live action roleplay game of yours. What happened to Tuxedo Guy?"

Maise bit her lip.

"All in good time. His name was Steve, by the way."

"Steve, eh? Too bad I never got to know him. He seemed my type."

We spent the rest of the evening swapping dark fantasies, looking up scenes on Maise's laptop as we went. We were both varied in our dream demises – being dismembered, drowned, eaten by strange monsters, buried alive and burnt at the stake were all discussed. We cast each other as doomed maidens, tragic lovers and plucky heroes making noble and passionate sacrifices. And we imagined dying just for the hell of it, in the most creative and spectacular ways possible.

That night we slept together in a tight embrace. In the morning, we each got ready for work and left together.

As we parted, we kissed like newlyweds.

"Have a good day, Sexy," said Maise. "Kill you later."

"Kill you later," I replied, strangely.