Christina put the phone down, taking a moment to soothe her lurching stomach. Slowly, she walked through the house, ensuring every door and window was locked. It was dark now, but when she dared to peer out into the night, she saw nothing of note; nothing unusual.

Her parents finally returned soon after, within fifteen minutes of each other. Her mother had a trunk and backseat full of groceries.

"Sorry, mija, got held up at the office," her father had said when he arrived first, kissing her cheek. "You weren't scared, were you?"

"N-no, I was fine."

Her father looked down, noticing the large knife she was still holding. When he inquired concernedly, Christina spluttered and made up an excuse that she had been using it to cut her pizza into smaller slices—though the knife bared no evidence of crumbs or tomato sauce. She returned the knife to the block before he could get any more suspicious.

Sleep evaded her that night, for every time her eyes grew heavy, an innocuous creak downstairs would bring her to the fullest attention again. Eventually, she turned on the light, reached into her backpack to pull out a loose sheet of lined paper, and sat at her desk to write out the issue at hand.

Should I tell my parents what happened tonight?

She began to form her arguments in interconnecting thought bubbles, underlining and emphasizing as she saw fit to illustrate her points, creating a map of her fragmented thoughts.

Option No. 1: Tell them.

Pros: Maintains honest communication with my parents. Protection from a potential stalker.

Cons: Parents (especially Mom) become worried. May want to keep me from going out. May insist on taking me to and from school instead of riding with Judy.

Option No. 2: Don't tell them.

Pros: No worried parents. Does not give the phone creep the satisfaction of seeing me/my family react to his harassment.

Cons: Keeping secrets. Potentially frustrate the phone creep into calling again.

Christina stared at the paper for a moment, held it up to her face and read it once, twice, then crumbled it into a ball. This was stupid. She threw it into the small garbage bin beside her desk and crawled miserably back into bed. She'd have to sleep on this.

When her exhaustion finally overcame her anxiety, she saw, from the blackness permitted by the inside of her eyelids, an approximation of another person emerge, teetering between a conscious thought and a dream. The figure raised its hand, beckoning her. She moved cautiously, the dark abyss transforming with every step into a familiar wooded area—the trail that passed her house, in fact. As she grew close, the figure turned away, leaning against a tree. It was a man much taller than her, with strong arms and dark hair.

"I thought you weren't going to come," he said, in a voice that she could never forget. It was that voice—The Voice—she had heard on the phone, but in her subconscious state, she did not immediately regard it as such. He was still not looking at her.

"What do you mean?" Christina said. "Of course I came. I wouldn't miss this for anything…I love you."

She reached out and touched his arm. He finally turned to face her then, and it was the face of Billy Loomis, fuzzy around the edges, illuminated by the sunlight streaming in through the brown autumn trees. He looked positively ethereal, almost inhumanely handsome. It nearly pained Christina to look at him. He was even more handsome than John.

"What will we do, then, about Johnny?" Billy asked, still in the voice that was not his, as if reading her thoughts. "Would you hurt him for me?"

"N-no, no," she declined, shaking her head. Tears welled in her eyes. "I couldn't hurt John. I couldn't hurt anyone."

"But if he sees you with me, that will hurt him. That will kill him."

"Then m-maybe we should just run away. We can leave Woodsboro and go find your mom."

"Do you love me?"

"I love you so much. I love you like Sidney d-doesn't."

Billy reached out to Christina, putting his hand beneath her chin much as he had once done in real life, making her meet his intense eyes.

"Show me, then. Show me how much you love me."

She got down on her knees and began to undo his belt. He fondled her hair tenderly, twisting a strand around his finger and grunting.

"Good girl," he said, only this time it was no longer in that monstrous phone voice, nor was it Billy's actual voice. It was John's.

Christina looked up to see her boyfriend leering down at her with a euphoric, almost crazed grin that was so unlike him that it frightened her. She began to scoot away on the leaf-covered ground. The sunlight was fading, casting shadows over his face.

"What's wrong, Christina?" came The Voice from John's mouth. "Don't you like me? I thought you were my girl."

"No!" she protested weakly. "You're not John. Or Billy!"

"Aren't I? You don't know who I am. I could be anyone."

He emerged from the shadows as Billy again. Christina struggled to get to her feet, but it was as if some force had tied invisible weights around her ankles. She could only barely manage to drag herself, only choke out pathetic cries, as the fallen leaves cracked beneath her.

"John—I'm—I'm sorry!" Christina cried out. "I'm so sorry, John!"

"Sorry for what?" came John's voice, soft and concerned, from Billy's mouth. "Are you apologizing for what you've already done, or for what you're planning to do? What you want to do?"

It was hard for her to make out who was standing before her now, looking down at her. Her vision was blurred from the tears which now ran hot and angrily down her cheeks.

"Oh God," she said desperately, throwing her head back. But instead of the cold, hard ground of the wooded trail, she landed on the soft pillow of her bed. Had she scared herself awake?

"That's what I'll have you screaming before I'm done with you," said Billy, finally in his own voice. No, she hadn't.

He too materialized in her room and hovered over her body, which she realized now was clad only in one of the thin-oversized t-shirts that she often used for sleep. It clung to her body as if it was wet, leaving little to the imagination. Billy's eyes were bright with appreciation as he searched her up and down. "But first," he continued, "you have to tell me you want it. I won't give it to you otherwise."

"Fuck you," she said unconvincingly as her body wriggled beneath him, desperate for contact.

He saw right through her, the devil that he was, and smirked.

"You sure about that?"

There was no point in denying herself now. He read her as easily as one of the many books on her shelf, every touch an annotation on her delicate pages. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him, their tongues entangling as the full weight of his body sunk into hers.

"I'm going to make you scream, Christina," Billy confidently restated his intention in between kisses. "Hmm. Christina…Christina…Christina…"

"Christina."

She woke with a start, sitting up and looking around her room. Her mother was sitting at her side, fully dressed, her purse on her shoulder.

"What—?"

"It's nearly noon, mija," she said. "I came to check on you and it looks like you were having a rough time sleeping. Bad dream?"

"Oh, sorry, Mom. I didn't mean to scare you. Yeah…bad dream." That was more than an understatement.

"Do you feel okay?" her mother inquired. She predictably pressed her hand to Christina's forehead to check for a fever the way she always did when her daughter acted any bit unusually. "You don't feel sick, do you?"

"No. My period came yesterday, so I'm a little sore."

"Do you have everything you need? I was going to run out for a bit. Can you believe all that shopping I did yesterday and I forgot to get cheese? I'll need that for the enchiladas I'm making tonight."

"That sounds so good, Mom," Christina said, sighing, and fell back against her pillows. "I've got enough pads. Thanks for asking."

"Okay. Your father is coming with me. Get up and make yourself some hot tea. It'll make you feel better."

"I will, thanks."

"All right…" Her mother made a move to get off the bed, but stopped, touching the side of her daughter's face, and tucking a curl behind her ear. "You know, mi amor, that you can talk to me about anything?"

Christina sat up to face her mother once again, reading instantly the concern behind her beautiful brown eyes, and the pain in her expression. It was a lingering sort of pain, something that never truly went away, only ebbed and flowed and blossomed to different degrees. Christina had never known her mother not to have it, and she imagined it had been a constant part of her life since the passing of her first child. Christina wished she could take it away, to absorb her mother's heartbreak the way the Kotex between her legs was absorbing the monthly reminder of her own fertility. But she couldn't. She could only try to be the best daughter she could possibly be, to never give her mother any trouble or reason to worry, to make the pain that she lived with every day, at the very least, tolerable. She knew her father lived with it, too, but was better at masking it.

This train of thought led Christina to deciding in that moment that she couldn't tell her parents about what had occurred last night. Not if it would augment her mother's ache. Not if it would make either than them worry. That was the whole reason they had moved to this quiet town.

"I know that, Mom."

Christina hugged her mother and told her, this time in the Spanish that she knew it comforted her to hear her daughter speak, that she was quite all right and only feeling a bit out of it due to her cycle, and that she was very much looking forward to her cooking. She kissed her cheek and told her that she loved her.

Her mother seemed satisfied to leave her then. Christina sighed again, this time in relief, but remained in her room until she saw her parents driving off from her window. She made herself an herbal tea with plenty of sugar and curled up on the couch will all the lights on—only after, of course, making sure everything was locked up. Maybe now she could catch up on that Twin Peaks marathon that had been so rudely interrupted the previous night. Maybe now, she could just forget.