The screaming girl almost trips over me as she plunges out of the woods. Too quick, just an impression: a flash of black and white and red – the piss smell of her fear, pungent sweat, the salt of her tears as she shatters through our space.

Some people in the audience gasp, cry out; some laugh nervously, looking to the hosts for direction. When the wolf-men and the monstrous, stinking ram-figure crash through after the girl, the laughing stops.

‘Quick! Quick! Put these on.’ We’re issued with crow masks and instructed to follow the chase.

It must be subtle lighting, clever marshalling by the actors, great sound and set design, because although they’ve set a busload of theatregoers into a panicked flurry through what I’d swear is an authentic Scandinavian forest, we all come out into the next sequence perfectly choreographed.

Imagine it: fifty plague-crows all emerging into a circular clearing from every angle, converging on the scene. I am one of the crows and unprompted, unrehearsed, I step forward in perfect synchrony with the fifty other witnesses. I hesitate; they hesitate. I lurch forward three steps; so do they.

How does Metamuse achieve this? How do they fire the same signals into fifty different brains at the same time? I was impressed by the way Idiopathy and Falling got into my head, and in those shows, they toy with participants individually – but this… This is mass mind control. It’s a bewildering effect. I am utterly in control of my movements, but entirely connected to the rest of the group. We’re a herd organism; Metamuse has turned us into the Borg.

I can see the wide and darting eyes through the masks, flickering at me in fear and astonishment just as I know they can see mine. We step forward and witness.

Two men in wolf costumes with bloody muzzles eating raw meat. A giant man in a rancid ram’s costume laying a white sheet over the girl. The blood blooming like live art as it touches her torn body.

The light changes like firelight glaring off the trees and the animals become shadows and melt back into the forest.

The hosts bring us sheets and instruct us to swaddle the corpse. In teams of six or eight, compliant, the audience lays the sheets out and folds and rolls the girl’s body into it.

But I hang back – I don’t want to do this. It’s horrible. Why are they all so obedient?

All I saw of the girl as they turned her was a hank of black hair. As she sprinted past, toenails painted green. But that’s enough for me to know – it’s her. They brought me here to kill my desire.