Title: 11:11

Beta: Verity Grahams

Prompt: Unicorn: Write about someone who is luckier than most (can be bad or good) for TQLFC

A/N: Mad that I missed the horror movie prompt, so, here you go. Doesn't follow Saw to the T, but, eh. And, yeah, it's based on Zabini's mother, and if you know anything about Saw, you would know that she is perfect for this role. Didn't feel like spoon-feeding you information, but I also was limited to two hours of writing time. So, sorry not sorry.

4:37 AM

There was a flash and a sort of jarring shutter as if a mockingbird beat its wings against a chimney, and Elda blinked as it passed through the silver of her shades. She was gnawing at a stick of gum slowly, opening her jaws and lips wide with each bite. She shaped the gum in her mouth, rolling it under her tongue and between her teeth — the empyrean around her still, quiet, but the flash didn't seem to want to leave her mind. The ambient light had reflected across the gold-plated button pinned on her dress collar and through the half-empty beer bottle in her hand, and the shutter that followed it ebbed its way into her pounding temple.

Elda chewed as rhythmically and thoughtfully as a cow before rolling her eyes, letting the neck of her beer bottle rest against the base of her throat. The mephitic alcohol circulating through her thick veins was making her see things, surely. The parking garage was empty except for the crow rested on her windshield, staring at her with its deep-set, auric eyes. She stared back at it, watching as its left eye drooped lazily to the ground as if it were hanging by a thread. Its sable feathers were bestrewed in dew, and Elda admired it as she gnawed at her spearmint gum, lolling the mass across the roof of her mouth, relishing in the fresh burn of it as it meshed with the liquor still present at her lips.

Crows were supposed to mean the call of misfortune, but Edna didn't believe in superstition. Crows were birds as monsters were monsters.

Her dalliance was still sleeping inside of his apartment, and she could still feel his cold, water-like sheets against her flushed, dark skin. She didn't care for his endearing words or his private touch; she wanted the glory, the bijous, the effervescent gowns, and cascading gold chains that hung across the frame of his bed. She wanted her son, Blaise, to bleed coins and cry liquid diamond, but perhaps, that was the ethanol thinking. She didn't know, she couldn't think, and as her drunken stupor spiralled, she laid her head against her shoulder and laughed. Edna Zabini was a gold digger, sure, but it wasn't like she would admit that.

She wasn't petty like all her other relationships.

In front of her car, not ten feet away in the dark depths of the garage, was a thick, wiry man with the mask of a portly, grotesque pig on his head. He was still; still enough that Edna had to squint to see if he was breathing, but she couldn't tell. She blinked, and the man in the mask had moved. He was next to her passenger window, now, and it was then that she could see the dark creases on his cheap, grey suit.

Edna squirmed, rolling down her window — she didn't dare think on as to why she did — and raised her eyebrows at him. "Leave a woman alone, won't you?" she sneered, spraying his mask with the thick saliva dripping from her bottom lip. He continued to stare at the empty space around her as if a ghost of an image was sitting beside her.

She snapped her fingers at him and leaned over the drink holders, her breasts swaying as she pushed even closer to him. She could smell the miasma of sweet, spoiled eggs, and she reared her head away from him. "Didn't you hear me? I said for you to leave, so, get on with it!"

He still didn't speak, but he was swaying, now, as if in a trance — tick, tock. Edna followed him with her eyes until he stilled and stared behind her as if time had frozen — tick, tock. He was moving closer to her, she thought, but she wasn't sure until she felt the leather of his dark gloves and moist latex of his mask against her neck — tick, tock.

It was all dark, now.

At least, for a little while.

9:34 AM

Edna didn't know where she was, but she didn't care. She already tried yelling, and she already tried screaming. But, it was silent as far as she could tell, only the deafening buzz of the radiator next to her was alive, and her pounding temple wasn't helping her any — she was gripping at the loose strings of her sanity, surely. There wasn't a cool, silver chain secured around her ankle, and there wasn't the distant echo of struggling water splashing against a basin. She was dreaming because superstition was a maiden's tale, surely. A crow was just a bird, but she wasn't so sure as she felt her pulse beat against the thin, pale skin of her throat.

"Help! Somebody, help!"

She wasn't sure what day or year it was, but she couldn't bring herself to care as the boy's whines grew in length and volume. He was screaming, now, and Edna listened for a while, savouring the reality of the situation — she wasn't alone, but it wasn't a fragment of her imagination, either. "Shit, I'm probably dead..."

Edna rolled her eyes, but couldn't blame him. "You're not dead."

She could hear him falter in the dark with his chains as if scared of her. "Who's that?"

"There's no point in yelling, you know. As if I hadn't tried that enough."

"Turn on the lights!" His voice was aggravating, now. She wished she was alone, again.

But. she felt around the walls and pulled at anything she could get her hands around. "Here, I think I got something."

When the lights turned on, she was staring at the portly form of a boy just a few years younger than her.

He was just as drunk as her, she thought.

11:09 AM

His name was Peter Pettigrew, and Edna couldn't say she liked his company. He threw up when he saw the dead body in the middle of the room, and he cried when he heard the voice in the tape recorder. "It was threatening," he conceded, but Edna didn't care just as long as he stayed quiet and away from her line of sight. Tick, tock.

"Did you know eleven-eleven signifies enlightenment?" He was staring at the clock, again, as if he blinked he would miss it. There was a sense of hope about him, and she reared her head towards him, motioning for him to continue. "You make a wish, you see. It's supposed to come true."

11:10 AM

"Why don't we try?" He had an ugly smile, she noticed, but she humoured him. Tick, tock

"Sure."

She wanted out. Tick, tock.

11:11 AM

Edna waited and waited. But as the minute passed, nothing happened, and she turned back to him, incensed by his lily-white ambitions. She pulled at her restrainment, trying to grab at his neck from across the room when she felt the pipe holding the chain snap across the middle and hit her ankle, cutting a deep lance across her blemished flesh.

Peter stared at her, his eyes fixated by the blood pooling around her toes. "It worked..."

Edna didn't know what to think, she reached for the gun sitting on the dead man's chest. "That's what you wished for, right?" He sounded crazed, and Edna didn't know if she wanted to answer.

"Yeah, I guess. I don't know."

"Help me out, then!"

He was pulling at his chain, now, his hands covered in beads of sweat. And, Enda stared at him with eyes of pity. He was portly with watery blue eyes, and the face of a rat, but she didn't care about him. He was hindering her from escaping. He was in the way.

Edna kneeled next to him, as if taunting him. "Do you have money?"

He reeled at the question, sneering at her. "Who cares? Just get me out!"

"You don't, do you?" It was tormenting, now, and she watched as he struggled to reach for her.

"Please, Edna..."

Edna laughed, standing up and moving towards the opening door, handgun in hand.

"You don't seem to have the best of luck do you?"

"What?" He was pathetic, really.

"I never even told you my name."