Title: This Isn't the Time to Be Dead
Pairing: Quinn&Rachel
Author: The Candlestick Maker
Rating: M
Genre: Horror, Romance
Summary: "They say that if you fall and die in the dream, you die in reality."
Author's Note: Decided to write something completely different for me: Horror Romance. This takes place pre-Glee. Based off of Catherine, because I am a videogame addict. If you have no idea what Catherine is, check out the trailer at youtube: /watch?v=-a69nmiAvSY
This Isn't the Time to Be Dead
Chapter One: The First To Die
You may have heard this story before and though the names and faces have changed, I can guarantee you that what happens in this nightmare realm will not. Now before I continue, I must warn you – what you are about to discover, should you continue, is a tale of misery, betrayal, uncertainty, and hatred. But most of all, it is a tale of love. There are people casted into the nightmare that you will be able to see with love, people who will never be able to escape their fate. Still, there will be others who you see with hatred, only to be met with a love undeserved.
I cannot guarantee you a happy ending, if that is what you scourge for; I can only guarantee you the harsh reality of what will transpire in the next few days. If you may be a skeptic, I can assure you: people will die. Not necessarily the residents of the world of the waking, but residents nonetheless.
This story begins with death and ends with death.
A girl in the small-town of Lima, Ohio had been prematurely skirted away by the Nightmare.
X O X O
"Did you hear about it?" Quinn Fabray's self-proclaimed best friend and fellow cheerleader, Santana Lopez asked her on route to the school's parking lot.
Tentatively, McKinley's blonde head cheerleader nodded her response. It had been all over the news that last night –the death of a teenage girl, who no one really knew until it was too late.
"She went to our school, Q." Santana said with an unreadable expression, which was uncharacteristically sullen of her. "She just…died. No signs of illness or struggle. According to the autopsy, nothing was wrong with her. It was like there was no cause of death; she just died in her sleep."
That notion sent a shiver down Quinn's entire body.
"It's probably just something that didn't show up in the scans," Santana reasoned, hopelessly reaching for that little bit of closure. The latina placed a sturdy hand on her friend's shoulder, sensing her sudden discomfort with the situation. "Are you okay?"
The blonde cheerleader shook her head, "I just wish I would have gotten to know her better." Her words were like hollow echoes in the empty school halls. On some level, they had probably known the girl better anyone else at the school had, having tormented her for years. As evidenced on her MySpace account, she didn't have many friends.
"I knew her. Kind of," a third cheerleader known as Brittany S. Pierce claimed, sneaking up behind the two rather swiftly. She snaked her arms around a shaky Santana Lopez. "Her last name was like a fruit." Then frowning, the taller blonde turned to her shoes in guilt. "I'll miss her."
"It's okay, Britt," Santana soothed while grazing her unofficial girlfriend's forearm. "You never really did anything wrong to her. It was me and Quinn who deserve to feel guilty."
Which was true. Quinn swallowed, but it didn't make it sound any easier. While they certainly hadn't been the reason for her death, they certainly hadn't made her life any easier. Her head was spinning now; her stomach, queasy with the overwhelming blame. She stumbled forward, only to have Brittany reach over to steady her.
"Maybe I should drive, Q."
Santana leaned over to reprimand her keys, while Brittany kept her from heaving in the backseat. The taller blonde cheerleader opted out of sitting shotgun to rest Quinn's head on her lap in the backseat. Always the sweetest member of the trio, Brittany rubbed circles in her temples with the pads of her fingers until Quinn's eyelids shut.
What's wrong with me?
X O X O
The Nightmare was coming.
X O X O
Few people can make sense of it the first night they experience the Nightmare. How they ended up here and what it is they are running away from – these are only the questions they say out loud. What they are afraid to ask though, is why.
Right? Left? There is only one escape from the night terrors: Up.
X O X O
Climb. Quinn told herself, bringing her other hand onto the ledge as her legs dangled off the sides of the tower. Someone, no something, was following her up the tower and forcing her to climb. Its face was hidden by the shadows and the darkness that seemed to consume everything around her.
She heard the horrid screams of those who were not fast enough to escape the Nightmare. Those who fell to the beast below, did so with little grace. Her chest tightens. They didn't teach you how to climb like this at cheer camp. With every inch she forced herself to climb she knew was an inch further between herself and…whatever was eliciting those blood-hurdling screams below.
She was almost at the top now, and her hands had started to sweat, making it hard to climb away from the beast. Grunting, she threw her right hand onto the next ledge, digging her fingers into the gritty surface. She heard the inhuman sounds of the beast growing closer now and thrusted herself to the final ledge, pulling her limp body to the top.
"Please, help me." Called a voice from the bleakness down under, perhaps the first voice Quinn had heard in this place. She casted her gaze down to capture the image of a boy with thickly glasses desperately clinging to the cliff. In a second he consumed by the beast. He screamed, too.
Frightened, she ventured closer to the ledge tentatively, and looked down the tunnel of darkness. The creature met her eyes, its face suddenly growing clearer to her. She wanted to look away but couldn't. Because, while its form looked different – with eyes of eerie, misty red and tangled, dark-brown hair – she recognized the face that had been plastered all over Lima's news channels. The girl who had died in her sleep, the girl who had every reason to haunting her dreams, who she had tormented for years -
Suzy Pepper.
X O X O
"Get away from me!" Quinn Fabray had woken up screaming. Clinging to her sheets, she realized that Santana and Brittany had more than likely brought her home after she had passed out. They were good friends though she would have never admitted it to Santana.
She brought a hand to her head, trying to mentally thwart the near aneurysm-like headache she was having. Instead, she felt her pulse and blood gushing through the vessels in her head. Why was heart beating so fast, she asked herself, still unable to recall just what it was that woke her so suddenly. She pursed her lips, realizing she actually wasn't quite sure what she had been dreaming of in the first place.
It was probably just Coach Sylvester's new training regimen that was putting such a strain on her, Quinn reasoned.
A cold sweat had covered her body, her muscles were sore and her body felt limp, but she managed to move herself off the mattress. She made her way to the living room only to find that her father, Russell Fabray, passed out with the television set still on. Quinn reached for the remote, but paused before clicking it off.
The news channel was on.
Through bleary eyes, she glared at the electric screen. There were two things, she realized at that moment. The first, which she noticed quite quickly, was that Brittany thought that peppers were fruits. The second, she realized that there was another name written underneath Suzy Peppers in recent local deaths:
Suzy Pepper, aged 16.
Artie Abrams, aged 15.
When they flashed his picture on the screen, she couldn't help but notice how familiar the boy with thick glasses looked to her. A jolt of pain surged through her head again and she pressed her hand against her migraine, letting out only a quiet, anguished 'ah.'
McKinley High school's head cheerleader shook her head, finally gathering the nerve to shut of the electric screen in favor of retrieving some Advil for herself.
"Don't worry about it. You're just losing your mind, Fabray." She murmured to herself as she downed the capsule and returned to bed, though she knew she would be unable to get any sleep now anyway…