1.
"Honey, Linda's here.!" Mom cried to me.
"Really?"
Before Mom could answer, I was already at the doorway.
"Whoa, Jessica!" Linda's eyes bulged out of her head. "I guess you've got a 3:42 mile record for a reason."
"Yeah," I answered back. "It isn't hard at all for me to run really fast." Linda just stood there. "Umm, can I come in?"
"Huh? Oh yeah sure." I walked back into the house. Linda stepped in after me. She closed the door behind us, and locked it.
"So, you brought your stuff?" Linda picked up her backpack to show the bag to me. "What are we going to do?"
"Well, David's asleep, so we'll have some peace and quiet," I replied. "But the bad thing: no TV. No horror movies or
anything. He needs sleep." I looked down at the ground. Suddenly, I looked up. "I know, we can go on the internet!"
After a while, it became boring. "Um, let's read your manga novels," Linda suggested. "Eh," I answered back.
After a while, that became boring, too.
So, for I don't know how long, we just sat on the couch in the living room, thinking of something to do.
"LET'S PLAY TRUTH OR DARE!" Linda said it so loud, so suddenly,I jumped 4 feet in the air. When I
landed on the ground, I stared at her. Then I started laughing uncontrollably. "What? What?!" Linda was an impatient girl,
and telling her what she wanted to know ASAP was the wisest thing to do.
"'Truth or dare?' That game's for kids!" I laughed like a maniac. Linda looked hurt. "Well, we just played it a few weeks
ago with Jason and Freddy!" "That's just because they were using it to get a chance to make out with us."
"It was US who WANTED to stay after-school. C'mon Jess, don't say you didn't enjoy it." She nudged me. Well, of course I
did. I have a major crush on Jason. I think I went into a trance or something, because the next thing I know, I was being
shaken by Linda.
"You all right? You kinda spaced out." She had a concerned look. Then, she shouted, "Stop grinning! It's creepy!"
I stopped grinning. "So you're gonna use truth or dare to make out with me?" "NO! I just wanted to end our boredom.
I mean, it's better than lying on the couch, right?" I considered her statement for a moment. Then I nodded my head.
Linda suddenly became excited for reasons only kown to her.
"Okay Jessica, truth or dare?" She looked at me.
I looked back at her. "Umm, truth."
Linda looked slightly surprised. "Okay, do you have a crush on Joey Farley?"
I stared at her. My face felt like a red-hot poker. No, make that white-hot. "Umm, can I choose dare instead?"
"You have to answer me first."
"Hell no!"
"What the-? Answer me!"
"I just did."
"Oh." Linda gave a sick little grin at me. "Are you sure?"
"Linda..."
"Okay, okay, your answer is good enough. Okay. Dare, dare, dare, dare... Oh, I know! Let's make up your brother while
he's sleeping!"
Mom was giving me a weird look. I knew there was gonna be trouble if I did so. "Umm, No thank you."
"Steal your brother's underwear!"
Mom was still staring at me. "No."
Linda finally noticed Mom. She nodded, and scratched her head."Hey! Let's play Bloody Mary."
I just gave her a dumb look. "What's Bloody Mary?" She stared back at me. "You, uh... you haven't heard of bloody mary?"
"Why ? Should I know it?"
"Well, there was an accident reported in the news lately."
"I know. Now there are some idiots trying to tie it in with the Mirror Queen or whatever."
"But it's real! Jessica, when one of the girl's little brother sucsessfully opened the bathroom lock after hearind the girls
scream, he started screaming bloody murder! And it WAS bloody murder. There was blood all over the walls, and on the
mirror too. They found the four girls on the floor. There were handprints on all of their necks. And their eyes were
just...gone. I mean, no blood was found anywhere around the eye sockets, only inside. It's like their eyes just dissappeared."
We sat in silence, trying not to think if that would hurt or not.
"What does that have to do with Bloody Martha or whatever?"
"Well, all my friends kept on telling me that if you go to the mirror, light two candles..."
"Ooh, light two candles, that's so SPOOKY."
"...then you say Bloody Mary 13 times, Bloody Mary will appear, then..."
"OMFG, a ghost!"
"...she will choke you until you die, and simply take your eyeballs with her."
I was silent for a long time. "Does that beotch have any motive for choking you and taking your eyes out?"
"The motive my friends give me is that she was the spirit of Elizabeth Bathory, who was a woman who thought that
bathing in young girls' blood would keep her skin young and soft. So, she went around, looking for young girls to kill. She
mnanaged to kill at least 30 girls and bathe in their blood." I stared at her. "Don't worry, she got the death penalty, and even
if she didn't, she would be like 100 years old. AND she's in Hungary." I breathed a sigh of relief. "The reason people think the
murderer was Bloody Mary have some evidence; like the fact that the door was locked, the bathroom had no cracks in it of
any kind on the door, walls, mirror, or ceiling. It had no windows, or anything that could possibly let anyone in, and no
evidence suggests that the murderer broke into the home or bathroom."
"You sound like a friggin' news reporter."
"That's what happens when you quote a friend who quoted a friend who quoted from the news. I still don't see why she
would take your eyes, though." Linda watched me, studying me to see how I reacted. "Well, Jessica, do you wanna play
Bloody Mary?"
My mouth dropped. After telling me that gruesome story, and knowing Linda, I did not expect her to say that. If she
relates an urban legend to a news story, it means she believes strongly in that urban legend. To ask to do the same thing as
she believes the girls in the story did is nothing short of ironic. She was asking for death. This wasn't Linda. "Come on, you
don't acutally believe that Bloody Mary bullshit do you?" Okay, this was definitly not Linda. Instead of asking what the hell this girl did with my friend, I said, "Okay, let's play."
Note: The names Jason and Freddy were a UNINTENTIONAL reference to horror movie icons Jason Voorhees and FreddyKreuger. They were just the first two names that popped into my head. Strange, isn't it?
