It was the longest week of work I'd ever experienced, Saturday couldn't come fast enough. As always my creative mind went off while my subconscious dealt with the grunt work, but instead of speeding up the day it all just stretched out the time now I had an actual, real time event to look forward to.

I felt my phone go off in my pocket. As I felt for it, I sensed I was being watched. It was Carol, one of my colleagues further down the room.

"Just answer it," she called out. "We've been waiting for you to have a quick skive like a normal person."

It was a text from Maise:

"I need to suggest some music for them to play when we make our entrance. Any ideas?"

A track came to mind that I'd first heard played at the goth nights I used to attend, I danced to it the last time I wore the outfit Maise had sawed me in. It had stuck around in my playlists since and seemed appropriate for the occasion. I found it on YouTube and texted back the link.

Four and a half minutes later, a blank text came through, followed by a little row of dots. Then came;

"It's perfect."

A short while later, a new text arrived.

"This is our song now."

There was a picture attached to the message, a selfie of Maise pointing out badly run mascara. It was clear she'd been crying.

When Saturday finally arrived, we went out for a pedicure (me, a pedicure! I really had been corrupted), had lunch at an art deco restaurant overlooking the park and returned home to start getting ready. Maise had picked up the dresses the day before and they were beautiful, soft billows of silk and satin perfectly flattering every curve.

Maise's was silvery grey. Mine was burgundy.

Maise did my makeup and hair. When she was finished, I tried on my mask, exquisitely decorated in sequins and silk embroidery. The doomed Sofia gazed back at me through the dressing table mirrors, sending a rush down my spine.

We went in Maise's car. That's the problem with underground clubs in secret locations, calling a cab isn't an option. But we made the most of the walk down the stairs together, our masks hidden away in our handbags. Robert was stood in his doorway and gave us a tiny round of applause. Maise stuck her tongue out at him. Then I noticed that Richard's door was ever so slightly ajar.

"Coo-ee, Richard!"I called out. The door was pulled closed hurriedly.

"My god, what did you do to him?" asked Maise.

I told her what I'd added to the carrot note before sending it back.

"Remind me never to get on your bad side," she said.

We travelled out of the city for some miles, turning off the main road just as the last rays of the winter sun were setting. We zigzagged around unlit back roads, copses and farm buildings lurking in the darkness at every turn. Until eventually we took a hard left and the road became an uneven track through trees and bare fenceless fields. After a couple of miles we entered a wide ring of woodland. As we came through the trees dim lights appeared of a large house flanked by outbuildings.

We pulled up next to a group of other cars parked in front of the house. Maise flicked on the internal lamp on the car and pulled down the vanity mirror on her sunshield. I did likewise. We took the masks from our handbags, fitted them in place and Maise and Lexie became Anna and Sofia.

Inside the front door of the house was a reception desk staffed by two masked people in evening dress. Anna (my Maise) took a discreet folding card from her handbag and gave it to them.

The receptionists took two round pin badges from a box on the table, wrote our avatars' names on them and gave them to us. Anna pinned hers to the shoulder strap of her dress and directed me to do likewise. We stepped past the table through a pair of doors, into a large hall.

There was a scattering of masked attendees around the hall, most of whom were costumed to one theme or another. There was a DJ playing electronic and neoclassical darkwave and an ornate bar on the right hand side of the room, staffed by tenders in plain full face masks and matching uniforms. Some wore trousers, some skater skirts and tights, though the masks left the actual gender of the wearer to be assumed.

"Anna! Sofia! So good to see you!"

A lady approached us in a lavender trouser suit and glitzy white mask with gold trim. It was clearly Debs, but her lapel pin said "Betsy". Unlike our round ones, hers was shaped like a pentagon.

"Hi Betsy," said Anna. "Thank Debs for the work she did on the dresses, they are beautiful."

I agreed and added my own thanks, carefully avoiding names and pronouns until I became comfortable with the conventions here.

"Will you be dying tonight?" asked Anna.

"Not outright, I really want to be around to see you two. But I might get involved in a game earlier in the evening. I can always watch from Limbo if I lose."

She turned to me.

"You must be so excited, dear. Your first time! Would you like the guided tour?"

I looked over to Anna.

"Go with her," she said. "I need to go and talk to the management, make sure everything's ready for us. I'll meet you over by the board, until then..."

She broke off on seeing something on the stage. It was a large dark cabinet with varnished panels. There was no clue as to what was inside.

"If that's what I think it is, I really hope it's for us," she said.

Betsy took me to the bar.

"This is the main hall," she said. "There are various rooms and dungeons dotted about the venue each with different games, performances and deathplays, but they only use two or three at a time."

"Deathplays?"

"Mock executions, that's what'll be happening to you and Anna at midnight. The games are like the one you saw Steve get buried in – two or more players, last avatar standing wins.

"If you die, your avatar stays dead, so for the rest of the night you'll be stuck in Limbo. There's close circuit TV of the active rooms so you can see what's happening, but you don't get to come back and can only talk to other people in Limbo. There's drinks and stuff up there though, and it's the only place where you get to speak unmasked, out of avatar. The people in uniforms are called angels, they work here. When they're not doing the catering they act as stand-ins – they make up the numbers for the games, take the place of anyone who changes their mind about doing a deathplay or does it with them if they need to be helped through it."

"How do you join in? You said you might get involved in a game."

"Don't you be getting ideas – you're dying at midnight, not a minute before. But look over here."

She took me to the end of the bar where a large board was posted, showing the planned sequence for the evening, divided into columns for each active room. In the Main Hall column I saw "Anna and Sofia (debut)" set in the midnight slot. Elsewhere were entries like "Gypsy Queen (burl)" and "Aztec Sacrifice (Deathplay)."

The other two rooms were the Ancient Temple and the Dungeon, where "Boiling Oil (game)" was scheduled for 10:00. There were three blank areas of whiteboard set just below it.

"Hmm, perfect," she said. She took up the pen and wrote "Aunt Betsy (5)" in one of the panels.

"There. Now you can come and see if your Aunt Betsy gets boiled in oil before your big moment."

"What's with the numbers?" I asked. "I noticed your pin is different to ours, too."

"It means I've survived five games. If I survive this one, I'll get traded up to a hexagonal pin. The higher up your pin is, the better the deathplays you can sign up for. They're tiered, you see – the simple ones they can set up without too much trouble are lower tiered, the more spectacular ones you have to build up to by playing games."

"Do you have something in mind?" I asked.

"I'd like to get quartered," she replied. "You lie in a box, first they saw you in half across the waist and then longways with a bandsaw. That's a higher tier one, so you need to win a lot of games."

"Wow. What happens if you lose a game?"

"You get to trade in the pin with a new avatar but can't upgrade it further. This tier's not bad, but Debs has already done most of it. When you get to the top tier, you can even make requests."

"Going for a dip I see, Betsy," said Anna, coming over to meet us. "Hope it goes well for you, many thanks for looking after Sofia."

"You're welcome," said Betsy. "Hopefully I'll still be around at midnight, see you later!"

Anna turned back to me.

"It's all sorted, we need to be in the lobby five minutes before midnight, then we're up. I go first as your sponsor, so you get to see what happens up close and have a last chance to back out, but I know you won't. Then it's your turn, they'll be watching to see how you do, but just go with the flow and you'll be fine."

The room was starting to fill up now. The lights dimmed, the show was about to start.

The show was introduced by Uncle Morbid, who I recognized from the video. He talked briefly about the night in store, including the "debut deathplay of a new willing spirit and her glamorous sponsor".

That's us, I thought. I felt butterflies as I squeezed Anna's hand.

Among the events was a burlesque routine to an industrial track sampling the verse from ELP's Karn Evil 9 in which the Gypsy Queen performs on guillotine. A masked dancer performed striptease against and around a full size French guillotine, teasing her head in the stocks at various points as the blade yo-yo'd down and back, each time coming within millimetres of her skin. As the music approached its climax she flipped upside down, slid into a balance position gripping the sides of the structure, her legs spread either side of the stocks in a wide splits. The blade fell towards her exposed crotch and there was a blackout. Owie.

Each of the three rooms contained equipment and scenes matching the setting. In the Ancient Tomb we saw an Aztec sacrifice recreated, complete with blood soaked entrails. The main hall had a vintage theatre aesthetic while the Dungeon had a medieval castle theme, with recreations of notorious torture and execution methods. We went there at ten to see Betsy play the boiling oil game against a guy in a velour suit called Bobby and a skirted angel. They stepped into iron cages hung above vats of bubbling black liquid and answered riddles asked by a hooded host. You could tell that the boiling oil was some kind of black slime with air bubbled through, but it was lit well for atmosphere and when the cage containing the angel dipped in all the way it began bubbling furiously. When pulled back out, she played dead by curling in a slimy black coated ball in the bottom of the cage. The whole thing was gloriously cheesy, more like a kids' gameshow than a shocking horror scenario. I mentioned as much to Anna.

"Think of it on the level of Scooby-Doo or the Munsters," she said. "Not everything here is hardcore, we're a secret society not because we're psycho killer sadists, but to keep the psycho killer sadists out. We know how dorky a lot of this is, but you've experienced how intense it can be losing yourself in the fantasy even when some scenes are more extreme than others. It's important that everyone goes along with the narrative, so don't talk about the effects while the games are in progress. Suggestion plus Willingness equals Mindfuck. Remember that equation."

Bobby in velour never stood a chance, it turned out that Betsy was a quiz demon. Based on this performance, I rated her chances of getting that quartering. I told Anna about what she'd told me and she chuckled.

"I thought that one would be up your alley," she said.

As his cage sunk into the bubbling gunge, Bobby gave an over the top performance of being boiled alive, waving his arms and screaming all the way until he was completely submerged. Good on you, I thought.

We made our way back to the main hall in good time, ordered drinks and sat down to chat.

"Any clues on what's going to happen to us?" I asked.

"Only that cabinet on the stage," she said. "I'm hoping it's the Daniels '87."

"The what what?"

"The Daniels '87. OK, storytime. You know how for years we never ever got decent horror on TV on Halloween night and they just stuck to normal scheduling?"

"I heard that was to do with the fallout from Ghostwatch."

Ghostwatch was a spoof ghosthunting event the BBC did that caused a sensation when viewers took it seriously, it's often described as a precursor to the Blair Witch Project. I had Ghostwatch on DVD, even years later out of context it stood up, I'd have loved to have experienced it at the time.

"Well, that was the final nail," said Maise. "But the other big controversy was around Paul Daniels."

"The magician?"

"Yes. There's been a bit of speculation round here that Paul Daniels was one of us, Debbie too. He did a Halloween special in 1987 that ended with him doing an escape trick in an iron maiden. It went wrong as soon as the clock started and the spikes slammed shut on him, then they faded to black. It jammed the switchboard."

"Because people are stupid?"

"Yes, and that's the other reason we're a secret society. Folk'll take any excuse to get hysterical about things they don't understand.

"Anyway, the iron maiden he got spiked in that night is what the Daniels '87 is based on. It's a plush padded cabinet that you stand in, with a spring loaded door set with spikes. They slam it shut on you and you're dead. There's some blood effects when the door gets opened so I'm afraid the dresses are going to get messed up a bit. Remember how giving in to the suggestion made you feel it physically when I sawed you in half, and don't forget to play dead afterwards."

Shortly after that we made our way to the lobby, to be met by one of the hosts. He made sure we were ready, wished me luck and told us to wait for our cue.

The music had stopped in the hall, we could hear the hubbub subsiding as the host began his introduction. Then a familiar piano melody began playing, gradually getting faster, electronic drums entering and pulsating like a heartbeat.

The song I had chosen was Love Me To The End by Deine Lakaien. I found it beautifully dark, the swirling percussion combined with Alexander Veljanov's operatic vocal gave me goosebumps every time I heard it. And now it was time for Sofia to die.

Waiting for the dawn, waiting for the night...

We stepped through the doors to a waiting crowd of masked faces, parted to give us a clear path to the stage. Maise was right, it was the Daniels '87 – the cabinet was softly lit to accentuate the red velvet lining, the foreboding black door with its rows and rows of spikes locked into position, ready to be released.

The day's too long, the night's too bright...

I followed Anna through the crowd, my skin trembling with nervous excitement. I saw Betsy in the crowd, I could feel her beaming in spite of the mask covering her face. I was so glad she could be here for us.

Love me, love me to the end...

We reached the bottom of the stage steps. Along with the host there were a couple of masked stagehands, dressed all in black. They wore close fitting t-shirts and trousers with just the right amount of muscle (hey, don't judge... I said at the beginning I was bi).

Fall down by my side, down in my arms...

Anna, my Maise, mounted the stage first, the silver grey of her dress glowing in the lights. I followed behind, reflecting on just how much I utterly, utterly loved that woman.

This night forever, no morning will come...

I wanted to wrap her in my arms and fuck her senseless. But we had to do what we came here to do.

To die beautifully.

Love me, Love me to the end.

The song ended. Anna stepped towards the cabinet. Before leaving my side, she whispered softly to me;

"I love you. See you on the other side."

I watched as Anna settled into the cabinet, with the spiked door looming menacingly between us. There was a pause of anticipation. She was longing for the spikes, I could tell.

La Petite Mort.

The little death.

The orgasm.

With a click, the spring released and the spiked door swung shut, slamming into my lover with a clang that echoed around the hall for what seemed like ages. The stagehands stepped forward to open it, revealing her recumbent against the red velvet, pocked all over with bloodmarks where the spikes had landed. The stagehands grasped her under the armpits and carried her past me like a crucifix, her feet dragging on the floor, her face utterly at peace.

And now it was my turn. This was no longer about joining a club, or getting mindfucked, or anything. I just wanted to follow my love, to the fires of Hell if needed.

I made my way to the cabinet and settled into position. I could already feel the spikes slamming into me, penetrating me from front to back, reuniting me with my Anna.

With my Maise.

Time stood still for a moment. I knew that whatever happened next, my old life was over.

With a click the spring released and the huge, black door swung rapidly towards me. Every muscle in my body tensed and I felt the pointed pressure of the spikes all across me, my heightened nerves amplifying the sensation to pierce through to my back and out the other side. I felt a damp welling as fake blood flowed where every spike had made contact.

Suggestion plus Willingness equals Mindfuck.

I closed my eyes and lay still. I heard the door open and felt the strong grip of the stagehands beneath my armpits. I let them carry me away just as they had done with Anna, my feet trailing on the floor. I continued playing dead as I felt myself being taken into an elevator, going up one floor, then out and down a hallway.

They gently lowered me down onto a sofa and I felt my mask being taken off.

"You can wake up now," said a kindly male voice. "Sofia's dead, I want to talk to Lexie."

I opened my eyes and the room swelled into focus. Maise was sat, unmasked, on the chair opposite.

"You were wonderful, darling. Absolutely wonderful!"

With us was a man in a black polo neck with a silvery, well groomed beard and neat hair.

"I'm Uncle Morbid," he said. "Welcome to Limbo."