The Entanglement Clause ✓

The Pit: An Amazon Prime Video Panic Bonus Chapter

Author's Note

In celebration of Amazon Prime Video's newest series Panic, I am thrilled to be teaming up with Amazon Prime Video and Wattpad to write this exclusive chapter that puts my characters from this story into the world of Panic!

I hope this chapter intrigues and inspires you to learn more about Panic. Visit the #PanicWritingContest on Wattpad for the chance to put your creative writing chops to the test and learn more about the show!

To find out more about the contest, prizes, and how to enter, check out the #PanicWritingContest here: wattpad.com/AmazonPrimeVideo

Don't forget to watch the series premiere on May 28th, only on Amazon Prime Video, here: http://primevideo.com/

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The Pit

Knee high by the fourth of July. Aimee Larsen remembered one of her mom's relatives using that expression. Her aunt, maybe, or one of her older cousins. It referred to the height farmers expected their corn to be by Independence Day. Midwestern farmers. Farmers from the country parts of Illinois, not the concrete and asphalt city where Aimee had spent all her life, save for the past year.

That knee high expression didn't apply to corn here in Carpe Texas. The fields surrounding Spurlock farm surpassed the citizenry's tallest knees before summer officially began. Before graduation. Before the game had kicked off with contestants tossing themselves off a cliff into the treacherous waters below.

Before Panic.

The rows of corn, a foot or more taller than Aimee, stretched endlessly. All she had to do was follow a line of them, but in the darkness, even a straight line could be disorientating. She walked forward without feeling like she'd made any progress, carrying the stagnant, oppressive heat of the summer night with her. It slowed her movements, made her muscles feel like they had to work twice as hard to be half as strong as they normally were.

Everything felt wrong. The corn was the wrong height. The air, too thick, and so sickly sweetness it threatening to strangle her. The farmhouse, her destination, might as well have been a hundred miles away instead of a hundred feet.

Everything was wrong because Aimee herself was wrong. She was knee high corn to this place's giant stalks. She was a cool breeze and a night at an airconditioned movie theater, corn, popped and buttered in a red and white striped container, not green kernels tucked inside tufted ears. She was a good student, a rule follower, not a delinquent, not a thief.

Tonight was all wrong, though, and so tonight, Aimee Larson was a thief. Or she would be if she ever made it to the Spurlock house. She contemplated her life choices as she inched her way forward.

Choice number one: Her father left Chicago a year ago to take care of his terminally ill mother here in Carpe, his hometown. Aimee could have stayed in Chicago with her mother and her newly minted stepfather, but this was her last chance to connect with Grandma Bette. She chose this place. No one forced her hand.

Choice number two: Participate in Panic, a game with risky and sometimes life-ending challenges, the winner of which won a large pool of money at the end of the summer. It hadn't appealed to her at first. With her grandmother's mounting medical bills, however, Panic went from a stupid, irresponsible game bored teenagers played, to an opportunity. She imagined the weight of responsibility lifted from her father, how he would hug her when she handed him the money, how after years of listening to him praise her older sister, Jennine, it would be her turn to shine. She jumped into the contest, literally and figuratively, without even thinking about it.