AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Behind him, I see the shadow of Luke fighting. He’s quicker than Rei, meaner, but it doesn’t seem to do anything for him. He’s being swallowed by this horde of people no matter what he does.
Misha and Malon are on the other side of the crowd, close to the pool. They’re also losing. There’s nothing I can do but watch as they get beat up, each punch landing on their faces and extremities harder than the next. It’s fucking terrifying. I want to stop it, but I can’t.
I can’t even scream at them.
They won’t hear me. This window doesn’t open. And even if they did hear me, they would just ignore me.
I close my eyes, trying my best to calm down.
But it doesn’t fucking work.
Because I’m not in that room in Alana’s house anymore. I’m in a hospital corridor, a bunch of nurses walking past me. I can hear the constant beeping of something, the smell of formaldehyde enough to make me nauseous.
“You shouldn’t be here,” a nurse in bunny scrubs says to me. She looks vaguely familiar, a white headband on her long hair. “You aren’t a family member, are you?”
I should probably answer her, but I don’t. I just look past her. In the room behind her, I see two beds, and I recognize the people in them immediately.
Rei’s cheekbone is swollen and black, his glasses on the little table next to him. Malon is in the bed next to him, his eyes half-open but focused on nothing but the ceiling tile above him.
“Where is Misha? Where’s Luke?” I hear myself ask, even though my voice sounds entirely unfamiliar to myself.
The nurse with the bunny scrubs tilts her head, her eyes narrowing.
“The other two. The priest? The tall guy with the tattoos and the…”
“I’m sorry,” she says. She doesn’t say anything else, but she doesn’t need to say anything else. She doesn’t sound sorry, though. She sounds gleeful. I want to punch her. “You really shouldn’t be in here. You can go back to the waiting room and a physician will come talk to you as soon as possible.”
“No,” I hear myself say. It sounds more like a gasp. I take a step back, but when I blink, I’m back in the guest bedroom in Alana’s house.
“Trine, are you okay?” Kelly asks. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
I want to scream. I need to scream.
But I can’t, because I also need to get down there and make sure none of them fucking die on my account.
“Stay here,” I bark at the girls as I open the door to the bedroom. “I mean it. Don’t fucking come out.”
“Trine, what the fuck are you doing?” One of them–I think it’s Alana, hard to tell when I’m trying to run away–screams after me. I can’t lock the door from outside, but there’s an accent table with a heavy vase on it I can try and drag across to put in front of the door.
They knock from inside, slinging curse words at me, asking me what the fuck I’m doing. I assume one of them is calling my phone, but I’ve left it in the room with them.
I run downstairs as fast as I can, practically stumbling over the stairs until I get to the glass doors. It isn’t until I get there that I realize that I don’t actually have a plan. I have no idea what I’m supposed to do now that I’m here.
I just know I need to stop this. Whatever the fuck this is.
“Hey!” I say. Through the sound of grunting and fighting and screaming, none of them can hear me. I take a deep breath so I can shout at the top of my lungs. “Hey!”
That doesn’t do anything. I’m going to need to fix this, and I’m going to need to fix this fast, since the boys are getting their asses handed to them.
My heart hammering in my chest, I spot Kelly’s mic next to her overturned keyboard. I ran toward it, taking it off the stand, and screaming into it. “Hey, bitches,” I say, the mic practically in my mouth. The feedback is almost enough to make me grimace, but I do no such thing. “Fucking cowards. Didn’t you come here for me?”
They all look at me. Everyone looks at me.
The crowd, with their weird, multicolored eyes.
And the boys, too. When I meet Rei’s gaze, I see a bruise already forming on his cheekbone, which looks like it’s been broken.
“Then come get me.” I say. I drop the mic and stare at the people around me, at the way their eyes are looking at me. Zero chance I can outrun these many people. I’ve never managed to run, you know, full stop. But I can hopefully avoid them for long enough to get the cops to come, and the only way I can do that is if I avoid getting captured by them.
