I had my return bout with the crusher on Thursday afternoon.

I ended up wearing a knee length black dress with a flared skirt, tights and a deep red faux leather jacket. It was comfortable and not too girly-girly or dressy-uppy, this was an outfit that could even make it into my regular rotation if it survived the crushing. Maise got completely carried away in the dressing room, making me try on everything from fifties poodle skirts to anime cosplays. I reminded her that I was dressing for a test run, not a deathplay performance under an avatar.

"I know, Sexy," she said. "I just love any excuse to play dress-up with you!"

We set aside a few selected outfits for future play.

By this time, I spent most days doing office work in the morning and odd jobs around the studios in the afternoon. I wondered how admin boss Susan would react if she ever found out just how odd those jobs were, but Uncle Morbid set the terms of my schedule so she went along with it and didn't ask questions.

Every shadowy organisation in history must have relied on people like this, mid level managers who could be relied on to unquestionably execute any order from above while shoring up their authority over those they commanded. They aren't evil, they lack the imagination. But they are blinkered. I thought about my automatic mode when carrying out routine admin tasks and reflected that Susan was actually doing something very similar. The differences were that she cared much, much more about her career and while I fantasised about checking out in spectacular ways, her dreams were of enterprise and social mobility.

"You look fantastic," said Chris when he saw me, "just right for what we wanted. You even got a little cosplay in there too!"

Wait, what cosplay?

Hangar 4 was pretty much the same as when I'd last left it, the main addition being a large screen on the back wall to display the feed from inside the car. Chris told me they'd taken on board what I'd said about Winky and to let them know how it felt in there this time. I heard footsteps and looked up to see Scott and Uncle Morbid walking towards us, followed by a third person crossing the hangar floor in a long dress and sunglasses like a catwalk model, long dark hair blowing slightly from the breeze coming through the hangar doors. I'd have known her anywhere.

"Maise!"

We hugged and kissed briefly.

"I took the afternoon off so I could see you getting crushed in person," she said. "I couldn't miss this for the world!"

"Hey, I've got a question. Why does Chris think this outfit is cosplay?"

Maise did the little held in chuckle she always did when one of her jokes came together.

"You don't watch a lot of superhero movies, do you? Sorry, it was such fun winding you up with silly costumes I couldn't resist. And it does look very good on you."

"It's Scarlet Witch, from the Avengers movies," explained Chris.

Well played, Maise, well played. I had to admit, I did like the look.

"Lexie, assemble!" Chris called out as we went to our positions.

So there I was again, strapped into a car about to be crushed into a cube. Last time it had been a ridiculous stunt we weren't sure it was even possible to do safely. Now I knew what to expect, I found it much easier to commit to the deathplay.

The first addition to the experience came as I was being lifted up into position on the crushing plate, looking towards the large video screen showing my reactions in real-time. It was a surreal feeling glancing between the huge hydraulic presses waiting to consume me and my own nervous face staring back. As the car was placed in position I had my giant image on the screen to my right, with Chris looking up at me from the controls on my left. I felt like a ritual sacrifice, prepped and sanctified.

Chris engaged the mechanism and the side plates began rising and curling inwards, blocking out the light. The little red dashcam light burned into focus as darkness enveloped the car.

Hi, Winky. Did you miss me?

Then came the monstrous clang of the plates making contact with the car and the walls began buckling inward. The protective cage around me buckled and changed shape with a dreadful noise and the air began to swirl around me. I tucked my arms in in front of my chest as the cabin compacted, pinning me in.

Then came the sudden silence, the eye of the storm moment before the front and back plates engaged. Knowing what was coming made that moment feel like an eternity, until the terrible hydraulic bellow suddenly engaged and the car started shaking once more. I pulled my knees up into my chest and listened to the sound of crunching metal getting closer and closer until the dashboard began buckling towards me. I fixated on the little red camera light as if making a suicide pact. This was it, this was the moment... just a little bit more...

The wall of metal advanced further towards me and Winky's little red light flickered and died, just as engines stopped. In the sudden pitch darkness, there it was. The deathrush, the imagined moment of fatality.

I was still enjoying it as the engines started again, withdrawing the crushing plates to reveal my metal cube tomb. I was aware that there was now no way for the spectators outside to know how I was in here, all I could do was sit and wait to be rescued. I could hear very faint voices outside, I yelled out that I was OK but didn't know whether they could hear me.

Then came the feeling of the cube being lifted up out of the crusher and carried off by the loader. Bit of a longer ride this time, I guessed that they were taking me around to the area behind Limbo by way of a full run-through. Then, finally, I heard the faint whine of the angle grinder as they set about cutting me out.

It turned out my dress had become tangled up in the twisted metal, but came free without too much damage. Chris helped me up out of the cube, Maise ran forward and kissed me.

Everyone agreed it was better than before. Maise told me the camera had cut out on the death moment just as I had suggested, that it had made her heart stop to see it happening.

Uncle Morbid gathered us all around.

"Excellent work, everyone. Unless anyone has reason to disagree, I believe we're ready to put this in as a swansong deathplay at the Masquerade this weekend." We all concurred.

"Who's the lucky victim?", I asked. "Is it Maise?"

I'd sensed her machinations throughout this whole thing, but it turned out she had a different role.

"No," said Maise. "I was just helping to get this ready for a friend. Do you remember Didi, my opponent in the cement burial game?"

"Didi the Doll?" I answered. "Yes, I remember. So this is what she chose for her prize, eh?"

"Quite right. Now, would you like to guess whose avatar Didi is?"

Maise gave me a moment to consider the question, until I realised that Chris was sat there beaming in a very particular way.

"I'd never have got to do it if it wasn't for your help, Lexie," said Chris. "Thank-you so much, from both me and Didi. I hope you will be there to see it."

He then turned to Uncle Morbid.

"She called me 'Didi the Doll', that's really cool. Can you introduce me like that?"

——

After work Maise, Chris and I stopped off for a drink.

"You want to hear something weird?" said Chris. "I don't remember how long I've been working at the Masquerade, only that Maise was always around somehow. But once Lexie showed up, it suddenly felt like everything up to that point was just waiting for the three of us to find each other."

He thought about what he'd just said.

"God, that sounds stalkery. Sorry," he added.

He had a point though. I had only hazy memories of my life before Maise appeared, or for that matter of anything not related to Morior Studios and the Mortal Masquerade. My temping career, my travels around the city... all had only enough detail to set the scene, like painted theatre flats.

I didn't know when I'd last spoken to my parents, or even how to contact them for that matter. I felt strangely at peace with that, and not because I'd had a particular bad relationship with them. I just knew, for some reason, we couldn't see each other.

But when I met Maise, and even more so when Chris appeared, it was like grayscale Kansas becoming technicolour Oz. Obviously Maise and I were very much a couple, but Chris never felt like a third wheel. He was more like our little brother, or sister. It was around us he was most able to be himself.

Maise was a walking embodiment of self confidence, which she inspired in those she cared about. She had a way of making everyone who knew her feel better about themselves. As for my role in our trio... well, I was the scrapper, the battler, the adventurer. Between the three of us we were equipped to face anything.

Though we didn't yet know what it was, we sensed there was something big we would have to face soon.