"Mike, that's your name, right?" Ke$ha mused from across the table.
Mike stared at her sternly.
"Yes. You know this, Ms. Sebert" he replied, rolling his eyes.
"Do I really?"
Ke$ha smiled as she continued her story.
Christine was still hanging on the wall; her vacant stare filling the room with screams and terror. Her body had turned pale, and nearly all of the blood had been drained out from her multitude of stab wounds. The blood on the wall still left its eerie message engraved in Christine's blood.
"I'm gonna puke" Peter mumbled from the back of the room, rushing to the toilet.
"Jesus Christ, this asshole is ruthless" Jan said from the back, astonishment flooding his eyes.
"I've seen worse" Lauri said from the couch.
"No you haven't" Alex replied, glaring at her.
"Whatever the case" Steven said, interrupting, "We need to get her out of here."
"It's too late. One of us is going to get killed if we even open the door" Claire stammered from the corner, twirling her brown locks in her fingers.
"I know this sounds stupid and mean, but if we just toss the body, nothing will happen to any of us" Steven suggested.
Alex shot him a disgusted glare.
"She's not a fucking chew toy you asshole" he shouted, rushing up to Steven. Jan pulled him back, while Michelle grabbed at Steven, begging him to stop.
"Well she's fucking dead and there's nothing we can do about it. The sooner you stop acting like a moron the better off we all are!" Steven yelled.
"Go bury your dick in Vivian again, why don't you. See how many things you can fuck up in the span of twenty four hours" Alex yelled back, pushing Jan to the side.
"Try me" Steven said, cocking his head to the left.
Steven broke free from Michelle and took a swing at Alex's face, narrowly missing him. Alex responded by shoving Steven right into a wooden bookshelf, a squeal of pain emitting from his mouth. Steven got up and threw another jab at Alex, this time hitting him square in the stomach. Alex coughed and reeled backwards, a splatter of blood coming out of his mouth. He grabbed Steven by the head and kneed him in the chest, pushing him onto the floor afterwards.
"Try me" Alex mocked, walking away and Michelle tended to Steven.
"We're not going to get anywhere fighting" Peter said, returning from the bathroom.
"The only way we can ensure our safety is if we stay as far away from those damn doors as possible."
"But what about Christine?" Jane questioned, looking towards Peter.
"She stays there" he responded, his eyes looking at the vacant kitchen.
"Um, excuse" Vivian said, clearing her throat.
"This is my house, and we play by my rules. I don't feel like having a rotting corpse hung up on my wall, and I doubt any of you want to look at it. We're taking her down and putting her outside, end of story."
"If you want to get yourself killed, by all means, please, go ahead" Peter responded, shooting a cocky smile at Vivian.
"Go call the moose herd in to protect us" Vivian sniped back, winking at Peter.
Jan and Steven had managed to un-mount Christine from the wall. The blood had dried, so nothing new came spilling out when they picked her up. However, the cleanup was something none of them had ever experienced. Vivian found the bleach and peroxide, and they got scrubbing. Claire didn't want to be anywhere near the bloody omen, so she opted to sit in the kitchen and read.
Steven and Jan opened the door. Jane stood behind them, shotgun cocked.
"You know the emergency word, right?" Jane asked, looking around.
"The emergency word is 'oh shit there's a killer run'" Jan replied.
The front yard, past the fountain, was a wall of darkness. All of them waited with baited breath for the killer to come rushing out, but nothing out of the ordinary came flying out of the forest.
They placed Christine's body back near Miranda's, making sure the two were tied together.
"See anything?" Jan said to Jane. She shook her head 'no.'
The two got up and began walking back towards the front porch, Jane in tow.
A rustle emitted from the distance.
"Probably just an animal" Jan suggested, shaking it off.
"Eight people have died in the span of forty eight hours. It's not an Animal. And Jane, the next time a piece of furniture falls over inside of the house I can assure you it was not the wind" Steven said. "Now lets get the hell inside."
The trio ran into the house, slamming the door and locking it behind them.
"Did anyone die?" Vivian said, looking up, a sponge in her hands.
"We're all alive" Jane replied, sitting down on the couch.
"We really should make sure all of the doors and windows are locked. The last time it got in was when Alex's window was unlocked – this time it was because someone left a downstairs window unlocked" Vivian said, rubbing the sponge deeper and deeper into the wooden floors.
"Yeah. After that, there's no way it can get inside" Michelle said, looking up from Lana's autobiography.
"Why are you reading such a morbid piece of junk?" Peter questioned, trying to see what the text on the page read.
"It's not morbid. Lana just writes about the facts of life. She is god. God is her. The bible is wrong."
Claire was walking up the oak stairs, the tie strings from her long cardigan dragging along the floor. With each step she took, the downstairs became quieter and quieter. All she needed was to get away from the depression surrounding the living room. She needed to sleep, relax, is put herself in a happy place. She would lock all of her windows, lock her door, and shut off the world. She smiled, thinking about her comfy bed, warm and inviting.
She opened her bedroom door and flicked the lights on.
Her jaw dropped.
"No" she whispered, tears welling into her eyes.
The walls were covered in red marker and scratches, spelling out ghastly letters and mangled words. Her body shook with terror, reading each and every one along her plain of vision.
"You're a killer"
"Killer Claire"
"Blood on your hands"
"You're still dead"
"I thought we were friends"
"Come play with me"
"Bang bang"
"Killer"
What terrified her even more was the paper hanging in the middle of the room.
It was a page from her diary.
She ran up to it and grabbed it, reading the contents.
August 4th. 2012
I'm going on a trip with my friends next weekend. I'm really excited. I feel like it's going to be a good experience for me and all of them. I'm just kind of nervous. We're going to be going out in the open, away from everything. Literally, everything. And it's not just that, it's the fact that we're going to be smack-dab in the middle of nowhere. I don't even think there's cell reception there.
Anyways, I've been having this really weird recurring dream, and it's starting to scare me a little. I'm with all of them, but they all look really sad. Not like tired sad, but sad like they just found out their grandparents died. Not heart wrenching sadness, but a look that makes you kind of scared to approach them. Anyways, we're all sitting there, and one by one, they all start dying. They just start bleeding and screaming. And I just sit there. I don't even try to help, I don't scream, I don't run. I just sit there. What scares me most is the fact that once it's all done with, I'm the one holding the knife. But I don't feel upset. I don't seem mad in the dream. I just seem calm and normal.
I always wake up in a cold sweat. But when I wake up, I always feel like someone's watching me. Like some creep is getting a kick out of my misery. But I know nobody really is there. I have a really active imagination.
Michelles calling.
Claire ripped the page off of the tie connecting it to the ceiling, and began to cry.
She began to sob.
She began to lie on the ground and shake uncontrollably.
During of the middle of her meltdown, she had inadvertedly flipped her paper over. Bright red marker caught her eye, making her look up from her bout of tears.
Written on the back of the paper was a phrase she hoped she never read.
"GOT YOU"
She screamed and began heading for the door.
Before she could finish her run, she ran straight into Michelle, and screamed again.
"Claire, Jesus, it's just me" she said, hugging the shivering girl.
Michelle looked around the room and saw the writing etched on the walls.
"Th…They have it!" Claire sobbed from Michelle's shoulder. "They found my diary!"
"They can't do anything with it" Michelle said, stroking Claire's hair, cooing her in a vain attempt to calm her.
"Let's call up Vivian, we're gonna need the cleaning stuff" Michele remarked, looking around the room.
"No. Just you and me. I don't want anyone finding out about this" Claire said, her red face enlarging with every huff she took in.
"Okay. I'll make it happen."
"I love you" Claire said, smiling through her tears.
"Love you too" Michele replied, shutting the door behind her.
Jane had settled herself into the nook of the couch. She had watched Michelle take some of the supplies upstairs and assumed to was for some juvenile purpose, not knowing of Claire's discovery earlier.
Peter walked up to her, grabbing the shotgun lying next to her.
"Peter, what the fuck are you doing?" Jane asked, cautiously walking towards him.
"Don't worry, I'm not going to shoot you" he said, trying to edge himself away from her.
"Peter, put the gun down" Jane said, demanding he place it on the ground.
"No"
"Peter"
"No"
"Peter!"
"Jane. Listen to me" Peter said as he loaded the gun.
"We're all going to die here. What's the point of living if your only purpose is to be killed at the end? Only a fool would stay around here. You're all going to rot here. He's going to get to you one by one. He's going to kill off every last one of you like fucking sheep in a herd. You're just sitting ducks for whoever it is. Eight fucking people have died. Christine's dead body was just hung like a Christmas wreath in the living room. Do you really think that he won't go any farther? He's just toying with us now. He's going to snap each and every one of you like little braches.
"Peter, I don't think you-"
"No Jane, I do. And I'm warning you in advance. You aren't going to live. You might as well just end it right now and here so you don't have to go through the pain of having your body thrown off of a cliff or stabbed in the chest eight times."
"Peter, think about-"
"I've done all of my thinking Jane. I've come to my conclusion. I know that I would rather just end it now than be forced to watch all of us get picked off like ants. I'm done with it."
"Peter, stop it, you're scaring me" Jane said, walking towards him.
"Have fun on the rest of your vacation."
"No!"
Peter pointed the shotgun at his face and pulled the trigger. A loud 'BANG' boomed through the house. Blood splattered on the wall behind him, and his body fell to the ground, spastically shaking, before finally stopping, lying there in a heap.
The blast had taken off the entire top of his head with it, his skin plastered in bits and pieces along the walls.
Jane sat in front of him, trembling, so terrified to the point that she couldn't even cry.
"What the fuck was-"
Jan saw the blood and immediately knew what happened. All he needed to do was hear the blast.
"I didn't-" Jane began to say, tears flooding her eyes.
"I know."
Alex came rushing into the room, seeing Peter's body crumpled up in front of him. He lifted Jane up from the ground, slinging her over his shoulders.
Alex was the only person in the entire house to know why Peter did it.
"He was ready to go."
The killer sat with its accomplice, clinking a glass of red wine with its friend.
"Job well done" it muttered, smiling at it's accomplishment.
"We didn't even have to pull the trigger" the other said, taking another sip.
"We're going to have to find a way in without looking so obvious."
"I'm surprised they still haven't guessed yet."
"They're obvious to everything at this point."
"I managed to grab something while I was in her room today, by the way."
The friend handed over a tube of bright red lipstick, the name MICHELLE emblazoned on the side.
"Perfect."