A Nightmare on Elm Street: Circle of Death
Chapter 12: A Dance with Death
As she stomped past the long swimming pool, Felicity suddenly felt a jolt that shook her to her core. She staggered for a moment, clutching her middle and wondering what she had run into now.
But there was nothing there to run into; it was the fear she felt earlier, only it was different somehow. Closer.
Her frightened eyes spanned the room, drifting across the water. Moonlight glinted off the surface, an image that was both soothing and serene. Felicity loved swimming, but for some reason the sight of the pool terrified her.
An image popped into her mind, just like the one from before. Another pushed its way in, and another, until the scattered bits of images merged together. Pieces of sound joined them, until Felicity again felt like she was seeing a movie through her own eyes, and she was helpless to do anything but watch.
"Stupid jerks," Felicity muttered as she stormed into the pool room. She had been having fun at the party downstairs, until one of the older students decided to prove what an asshole he was and told everyone her mother slept around in order to get her daughter into high school. She must have, because Felicity couldn't possibly be smart enough to actually get a real scholarship.
Everyone agreed—and laughed. Felicity was used to being made fun of and didn't pay attention anymore, but she exploded when anyone dared drag her mother into it.
She told them to all go to hell and stomped off. She didn't think anyone would follow her, but someone did; Kelly Anderson.
"Don't cry," she said, even though Felicity was no where near crying. "They're just mean. Just ignore them."
Felicity couldn't believe how fake Kelly was. She had plenty to say about every girl in school, so long as it was behind their back. And she wasn't very good at it...Felicity knew full well that Kelly thought she was a liar and a cheat. So she was one of the only kids in town who paid more attention to her books than to gossip and parties...why was that so horrible?
"Cut the crap," Felicity told her bluntly. "No one believes that you really care."
Kelly wasn't even a person. She was a doll, one whose every motion was controlled by her mother. A perfect match for her puppet of a boyfriend.
The cheerleader's gentle expression vanished in a hurry. "I was just trying to help," she snapped. "You know, you'd have more friends if you weren't such a bitch all the time."
Speak of the devils...Kelly's own posse of friends had followed her. "Don't take it as an insult," Aaron Stevens told her. "That's just a school boy's way of saying your mother is hot. If I were a little older, I'd totally do her."
The girls pretended to be horrified, but Felicity could tell they were hiding laughter behind their hands. Craig Tyler stood to the side, indulging in his favorite pastime; getting drunk.
"Screw you, Stevens."
Aaron just laughed. "I wish. Try as I might, I'd say the chances of me losing my virginity before I die are about as slim as Craig knowing what feckless means."
Craig stopped draining his bottle long enough to glare. "I think that better describes you."
Aaron rolled his eyes while Kelly and Rowena started giggling. "Uh, I said feckless, genius."
He frowned at the basketball star, but he was soon laughing along with the girls. Felicity noticed that they had somehow made a ring around her, making her feel trapped. She didn't like feeling trapped.
"No girl in her right mind would sleep with you anyway," she snapped. "Everyone knows you're responsible for the prank that put a teacher in the hospital last year. I know I'd never go to bed with a guy who might set off a cherry bomb in my room, just for the fun of it."
Her accusation just made Aaron laugh harder. "Like you would sleep with anyone anyway. Everyone also knows that you're an even bigger virgin than I am. At least I've gotten tongue action. You've gotten, what...practice with your bathroom mirror?"
"Oh, stop," Kelly told him, though she was still laughing. Laughing at her.
Felicity wanted to hit her, but she forced her hands to stay at her side as she tried to get away. She bumped into Craig, who reeked of alcohol. "He's right, though," Rowena said. "You need to loosen up a little, or you're going to wind up living alone with a smelly house full of cats. Oh, right...you're a dog person. Not much of an improvement, really."
"At least I'm not digging up graves and violating someone's ancestors," Felicity said hotly.
Rowena's amused look melted. "Watch it," she hissed, sounding like a cat herself. "Or I'll put a hex on you that you'll never recover from."
Aaron was sniggering. "She has a point, though."
"You want a hex too, little boy?"
Craig suddenly wrapped his arm around Felicity's neck. She cringed as leaned to speak in her ear, his rank breath uncomfortably close to her nose. "See? Even friends disagree. Fighting can bring you closer together."
"Totally," said Aaron, grabbing Rowena and giving her a noogie. She looked ready to strangle him, but Kelly just laughed.
Felicity had had enough, and she wrenched out of Craig's grasp as she said, "I'd rather be dead than have friends like you."
None of the others paid her words much mind, but she felt Craig slap a strong hand on her shoulder. "That can be arranged," he growled into her ear.
And he threw her into the pool.
Felicity thrashed for a moment before gathering her bearings and pushing herself to the surface. Only she couldn't reach it. Something was in the way, blocking her. Pushing her back down.
She struggled and fought, but her strength ebbed quickly. She had swallowed a lot of water when she first hit, and had very little air in her lungs. The only thing she could see as she sank to the bottom of the pool were a sea of bubbles, which slowly faded from sight as her vision turned dark.
Felicity fell to her knees as the memory faded. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she stared, eyes unseeing, at the water in front of her.
She couldn't believe it. She was really, truly dead, dead at sixteen. She never had the chance to do anything, go anywhere, or be anything at all. Sure, her instructor said she was the most skillful dancer she had ever seen, but she never got to go out and see exactly what she could do with that skill. She had been waiting to finish high school before she tried getting a dancing job.
It was all for nothing. What could she possibly hope to do in death? And it was all because of...
Felicity wiped her eyes and stumbled out of the pool room. She didn't know what she was going to do now, but she knew she needed to figure out how to get out of the school. She was just about to take a step down the hall when a yell rang through the air.
Felicity paused and made a face. The yell sounded strange, sort of like...
Footsteps made her turn around. Noisy, rapid footsteps. The person rounded a corner and Felicity found herself face to face with Kelly Anderson.
The bleached blonde was dressed in a go-go outfit, complete with a brightly colored mini dress, white go-go boots, and her long hair teased in the back. Felicity stepped to the side as Kelly rushed by, so distracted she failed to notice the dead girl completely.
Felicity didn't fail to notice the large blue stone hanging from the cheerleader's neck. As Kelly hurried down the hall, Felicity felt the same tug as before, only much stronger. Kelly rounded another corner and disappeared from sight, and Felicity felt an overwhelming urge to follow her, as if the older girl were taking away something she desperately needed.
The small dancer was about to chase after that feeling when Freddy suddenly materialized beside her. "Did you notice?" she asked, not bothering to wonder where he had gone. "Kelly's wearing a pretty funky necklace."
Freddy cocked a hairless eyebrow. "And this matters because...?"
"Well, I don't know how or why, but I think it has something to do with our little problem."
She didn't know how she knew, just like she didn't know how could now sense human emotion. She just did.
"By the way," she added casually, "if she really is the source of the sphere, she happens to be moving that way. Quite quickly, I might add."
The meaning of her words hit him a split second before the sphere did. Knocked clear off their feet, they both went sprawling to the floor. Felicity tried to scramble back to her feet, but the sphere was moving too fast, and kept knocking her down again. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that Freddy was having the same problem.
They were both banged against lockers and garbage cans as they were painfully dragged down the hall. Felicity wound up on her back and was shoved along headfirst with her feet in the air, and she was pretty sure she would never be able to sit down again.
She suddenly spied the unpleasant sight of a closed door ahead of her, looming up fast and upsidedown. Felicity quickly flipped over, ignoring the pain in her legs and rear as she tried again to get to her feet. Kelly must have decided to run; the sphere just kept moving faster.
Felicity lunged as hard as she could, crawled for a few inches and managed to stand. She reached out and shoved the horizontal handle of the door—only to discover it was locked.
"Oh, shit," she muttered.
The other door was unlocked and partway open, but the sphere was already brushing her back. To her right, Freddy was in a similarly bad position; he had drifted too far to the side and was in danger of being crushed against the wall next to the open door.
Felicity's back felt like it was on fire, and she was pretty sure a few ribs had cracked. Grunting, she stretched her hand out. "Here," she ordered, wincing. "If we both pull, maybe we can get each other to the opening."
Freddy looked at her hand like he was considering it, then suddenly snapped his fingers together like he had just remembered something. An instant later, he vanished from sight. Felicity imagined him reappearing on the other side of the door, safe and sound.
"You bastard."
The sphere was pushing so hard now Felicity knew she wouldn't be able to breathe, if she had still needed to use her lungs. She desperately grabbed the side of the closed door and started to pull, but she was so badly pinned she could hardly move.
As she continued to pull with all her might, she heard the sounds of her bones cracking and popping as they were crushed, and images of herself being smashed until she was a gooey puddle flashed through her mind. She was going to be smashed to a liquid and then squish beneath the crack of the door...
She suddenly popped free so fast she felt like a bar of soap squishing through someone's fingers as she briefly fell through the air and landed on the other side of the threshold. One leg dangled in front of her face at an impossible angle.
And then she was being pushed again, her other leg bending in the wrong direction. Felicity held still, resigned to her fate, and waited until the sphere stopped before she even dared tried to move.
She watched another long row of lockers as she slid by, noting that the pace was slowing down. It stopped abruptly, and she lay in the middle of the hall, feeling like a doll or mannequin whose limbs had been attached all wrong.
Felicity lay still for a while longer, muttering to herself as she listened to the sounds of her bones putting themselves back together.
"If that stupid turd wasn't already dead, I'd kill him myself."