"Welcome to Club WAM, how may I direct your mess?"

Those were the magic words that I greeted all visitors with.

There were no signs on the non-descript redbrick building to advertise what went on inside. Most of our neighbours believed we were an escape room, which explained the endless deliveries of large packages which came to the back door.

People were typically nervous when they set foot inside and saw me. They were broadly two groups - on one hand you had the giggling hen dos, tipsy stag dos and other parties of young people keen to re-enact the gameshows of their youth. They were mostly mess virgins (unless they'd been here before), and we led them to the rooms at the front of the building. The rear ones were reserved for the second group. These people were no strangers to WAM, and got a kick out of contraptions with names like The Annihilator, The Tormentor and The Chamber of Mess.

My approach varied depending on which group was arriving. For the casuals, I was a pretty, friendly face, not unlike a gameshow assistant. For the latter group, I put my hair up and became a stern, austere goddess, welcoming them into a world of mess.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed working with both - I just never understood the thrill people received from getting messy. It was like some foreign cuisine that I was glad others appreciated, but had no appeal for me at all.

Still, my final day at the club was unexpectedly sad. I'd made a lot of good friends, and it had helped pay my way through being a penniless uni student. My final session saw me dumping mess over a group of pissed girls in a hen party. Most of the party had received moderate amounts of mess through the warm-up games, and the bride-to-be - inevitably - got a stupendous gunging in a tank right at the end.

As they trooped off to the changing rooms, I wondered if I would miss the job. I headed to our own staff room to grab my things one final time.

"End of an era, eh?" Joe teased me as I opened my locker.

"Time to get a real job now," I sighed. "You still up for leaving drinks tonight?"

"Sure thing. Actually, we've got you something as a going-away present now, if you've got a minute?"

He led me down at the corridor, and insisted I closed my eyes at a certain point. Luckily, we had one of the games' blindfolds handy. I practised my surprised reaction - Oh my god, a cake? You shouldn't have! That's so kind of you.

But we didn't seem to be heading to the kitchen. I lost my bearings as we kept walking. A door opened, and I heard a muffled hum of a large group trying to be quiet. "Ok, just stand here" Joe said. "And lift your arm up."

I obeyed, and felt something cold close around my wrist. "Wait, what's -" Then my other arm was pulled up and the process repeated there. I discovered I could barely move my arms, which were immobilised above me head.

"Surprise!" Joe declared as he took my blindfold off. Two things stood out to me. Firstly, a large group of my friends and co-workers were stood in front of me, grinning mischievously. But most importantly, my hands were suspended from a wooden frame that held multiple pipes pointing down at me in a threatening manner. I knew it as the Annihilator.

"What the hell, Joe?" I demanded with a hint of panic.
"Well Lucy, we're all sad to see you go. But we were shocked to hear that you've never once got messy in your three years at Club Mess! So think of this as your exit interview."

I looked up at the chains which held my hands. They'd been calibrated to my height so there was almost no give in them - and I knew from experience that it was impossible to escape the sludge which poured down from the machine. I'd stood in Joe's position plenty of times, listening to people having second thoughts and plead with me not to do this. But they'd paid their money, and I always pulled the lever anyway.

"If you let me go, I'll I'll"

"Get on with it!" Someone called to cheers. You had to have a sadistic element to work here, and unfortunately I was now at the mercy of my cruel co-workers. A sheet was pulled off revealing a trolley full of fluffy white pies, which I was quite familiar with, although usually from delivering rather than receiving.

My heart was practically beating out of my chest as Joe pulled a card out of his pocket and cleared his throat. "Ok, question one of your exit interview to see how much you've learnt. How many pies are used here every week?"

Every week? I had noidea. One session could range from three to 30 - it was impossible to guess. "200?"

"Sorry, too low. So prepare to get messy for the first time in your life, Lucy."

The next few seconds seemed to happen in slow motion. I scrunched up my face as a guy picked up a pie and pulled it back. He drew out the moment as the crowd enjoyed my discomfort and anticipation. Then without warning - splat. It hurtled towards me and splattered goo across my face. I couldn't help gasping in shock. It was just like I'd imagined, both disgusting and humiliating. My friends whooped at the sight of my creamed face as I hung their, tied up, unable to even wipe it away.

"How does it feel to be on the other end for a change?" Joe asked.

I spat out a bit of cream in response, unable to put it into words.

"Well let's hope you do better with the next question. How many people have been gunged here over the years?"

Even if I'd known the correct answer, I would have been too dazed to give. "A million?" I guessed.

"Too high this time. If the next person would like to do the honours?"

A girl stepped up this time - someone I counted as a good friend. Apparently this camaraderie wasn't enough to spare me though, and she smirked as she drove the fluffy pie into my face, smearing it around.

"Bad luck," Joe said. "Ok, next question"

On and on it went. The quiz was never designed to be fair, only to let my friends see me utterly destroyed by pie after pie. Once my face was a gooey mess, they moved onto my chest, my legs, and one guy even went behind me to deliver a pie to my butt. But as much as I hated the experience, I knew what was still to come was going to be even worse.

"And now onto the Grand Finale," Joe said, with a smirk that was quickly matched by everyone in the room except me. "I'm sure you know the rules, but I thought I'd refresh you anyway. One last question - answer it right and you'll be released. Answer it wrong and we'll fling every last drop of gunge we can find at you - and that's a lot. In fact, why don't we get it all ready?"
My former friends began carrying in dozens of buckets full to the brim with green, pink, orange and blue slop. It looked like the thick, chunky kind. In my worst nightmare, I had been imagining four or five buckets. This was more on the order of twenty or thirty. The mess I'd endured so far would be small change compared to what could be unleashed on me from those. I would go from having a bit of cream on me to being unrecognisable beneath galleons and galleons of gunge. Joe must have seen my terrified expression, because he said: "Don't look so worried, it might not happen!"

"I doubt that!" I replied, to bursts of laughter.

"So here we go," Joe said. I could physically feel my heart pounding in my chest as though I'd run a race. "Over all the years you've worked here, you've gunged, slimed and trashed dozens of people. You've covered them in mess, destroyed their appearance and left them utterly humiliated. Until tonight, you've never got a drop on you, you the Grand Finale question is" he paused for effect. "Were you secretly hoping you'd one day get messy?"

Me? Get messy? What kind of question was that? "No, of course not!" I shouted back.

He made a sound like a malfunctioning buzzer. "Wrong answer, I'm afraid - you were in fact begging to get messy! So you know what that means."

He picked up a bucket and had the honour of chucking the first lot at me. The green slop hit my straight in the chest and face, but before I had time to shake it away, it was followed by another which coated my front, and another which pretty much covered me from head to toe. Before I knew it, gunge was flying at me from every angle while I stood there like a human canvas. Just as I thought I couldn't get any messier, another layer would coat me. The cuffs held me tight as I flinched and recoiled from every new batch. It was somehow even worse because of all the times I'd inflicted this on other people, never dreaming I would be on the receiving end.

And just when I thought it was over - when I would be able to wipe my face - the Annihilator sprung into action and more gunge swamped me from every angle, forcing me into a humiliating dance just to keep it away from me. Eventually - a long, long time later - the deluge stopped and every bucket had been emptied on my face and body.

"Do you want to see the before and after?" Joe asked when it finally ended.

"The what?"

He showed me a picture of his phone of me chained up five minutes ago, dressed impeccably and looking pretty damn hot. Then he swiped to me a picture he'd taken just a moment ago - an unhappy, embarrassed, ruined mess. "I'll print them out and them on in your leaving card."

"Thanks," I winced, gunge still running down my face. "But I might have to take a rain check on leaving drinks anyway."