There’s something about fall.

I find that everybody gets so wrapped up in summer they end up forgetting about the first fall of red and orange and yellow and brown leaves from the humongous trees that once plagued the neighborhood with pollen months prior. There is something about the feeling of trading in summer — finishing the last bottle of sunscreen that leaves your hands greasy and clothes smelling like an artificial piña colada, sweeping the sand off of the porch, taking that last dive through the glittering ocean waves, your eyes stinging from the salt — for the breath of fresh, cool air that is autumn. The way I see it, autumn is not a number of weeks out of our ever-busy calendars, rather, it is a time of experiences. It is gently covering your hands with the soft, familiar sleeves of your well-loved sweatshirt as the air gets just chilly enough. Sipping a warm cup of warm, spiced tea with a splash of cream and the perfect number of sparkling sugar cubes. Snuggling beneath a cozy cable knit blanket as you lounge sleepily on a Sunday evening. Reading prose and People Magazine and Pride and Prejudice by the fireplace. Smothering your face with the steam from a piping hot bowl of tomato soup, the slice of grilled cheese a mere memory made up of crumbs. Handing a piece of chocolate to the chubby hand of a young trick-or-treater, his eyes full of wonder as the orange lights twinkle within the bushes.

There’s something about fall.

Four minutes in and I knew I had made a colossal mistake. See, I didn’t ask to be trapped inside an escape room in a billionaire’s secluded Vermont mansion, yet one too many espresso martinis and a drunken bet with a suspicious, straight-out-of-Clue looking man later, here I am. He didn’t mention the apparent lack of oxygen in here, or even the blood that’s dripping down the walls that seem to be closing in, its deep shade of crimson illuminated by the candle in my grasp — but that doesn’t seem to be all he forgot to mention about this “once in a lifetime opportunity.” As I step over a dilapidated skeleton who seems to be screaming at me for help, I force some air in my lungs and realize, alongside a new, bone chilling growling noise behind me, that he forgot to mention a bit more than I had thought.