Chapter One: Scars

This was basically a normal college experience. There were a few differences, like the fact that she had to live in a three bedroom, three bathroom house with the other survivors to be monitored for psychological reasons, or half of her classes were online and she had to attend mandatory therapy instead, but if she closed her eyes, Sam could pretend this was all normal. Everything was normal.

Then she would walk into the bathroom and strip down to take a shower. The door would be locked, no fear in anyone barging in and seeing her naked, but then she would notice the camera hiding in the two opposite corners of the bathroom, just like they were perched in every other room. "No escape," she muttered under her breath before stripping down to nothing. Sam looked at the camera, a part of her wanting to flip it off. Instead she chose to ignore it. The doctors weren't watching to be perverted, she hoped. They were watching to make sure no one grabbed a shaving razor and attempt to start cutting open their wrists with them, or try to go in the bathroom and just throw up everything they had been eating, or try to drown themselves in the bathtub... All of these have been incidents that have happened within the past few months. Matt... Ashely... Jessica... "Just finish out the year here, prove I'm sane as ever, and I can go back to real life." Sam had to remind herself of this everyday to keep herself from going insane. Her thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a knock on the door. "I'm in here!"

"Hey, I really need to talk to you! Can you come out real quick?" Sam heard Mike's voice from the hallway. He rarely came to the girls living spaces, so something was off, but she really didn't want to put her clothes back on.

"Can't it wait?"

"No, it really can't!" There was an intensity in Mike's voice that she hadn't heard in a while, an intensity that couldn't be ignored.

Sighing, Sam covered herself with a towel and opened the door to the bathroom. "What?"

Before she had time to really react, Mike grabbed her wrist and was dragging her into the living room. Chris and Emily were all sitting down throughout the living room, Emily spreading out her small body as much as she could on the couch, and Chris sitting casually on one of the chairs. Sam leaned against a wall, one hand holding her towel up before Emily moved over to give Sam a spot to sit. "Okay, so what do you want? Why couldn't Matt come?" Emily looked annoyed, but was willing to listen to Mike.

"Why did you tell Ashley to stay in the room with Jessica? I don't want to keep secrets from her." Sam looked at Chris. He was tapping the arm of the chair with his pointer and middle finger, a habit that only occurred when he was nervous.

"Has anyone else noticed the news reporters suddenly stopped coming?" Sam was taken aback by Mike's statement.

"You brought us in here because you're pissed you're not getting your fifteen minutes of fame anymore?" Emily crossed her arms and gave Mike a nasty look. Chris looked mildly annoyed too, but shot Emily a warning look.

"Come on, Em. Knock it off," he then turned his attention to Mike, "but what has that got to do with anything?"

Sam noticed Mike massaging the spot where his fingers used to be, stroking the angry scars that once held his fingers. She didn't think Mike even noticed he was doing this. "That isn't suspicious to any of you guys? The psychologist were getting a ton of money off of us. We made news all of the country and in Canada! It's suspicious, that's all."

Sam stood up and pat Mike on the shoulder. "We're all paranoid since Blackwood, but I think we just need to learn to relax. It was a pretty traumatic experience."

"That's why I didn't have Jess, Ash or Matt come in here. I didn't want to trigger anything with them."

Everyone in the room became silent. It was no secret that the three of them were the most screwed up after their time in Blackwood. Jessica was still walking with a severe limp and it was unknown if she would ever completely recover. She couldn't stand up for long periods of time without getting tired, so she took baths more than showers. More than once she fell asleep while she was in the bathtub and almost drowned, never doing anything to try to help herself be safe the next time. Ashely would wake up in the middle of the night with nightmares of the saw blades coming after she and Chris, and would run to the bathroom and cry until she threw up everything she had eaten throughout the day. Matt was getting progressively worse since Blackwood. He didn't seem as effected as the others at the time, but now he was starting to lose it, feeling like he was constantly being watched by the wendigos. He narrowly escaped being killed, only because he had been lucky and had the flare gun with him. Matt, more than once, had gone into one of the girl's bathrooms and stolen a razor blade and attempted to slit his wrists open. Everyone knew that they were screwed up, but everyone made a point of not mentioning it. The fact Mike just did... everyone was speechless.

After a few silent moments, Mike spoke up again. "Sorry. I just-" he took a deep breath, "something is going on. I wanted to say something now because the scientists are on rotation and won't see what we're saying now."

Sam took a deep breath. She understood what Mike was trying to get at. "We'll keep an eye open for anything suspicious and we won't tell the others," she paused and looked at Chris and Emily, "right?"

Chris nodded immediately, probably thinking that Mike was being paranoid, but was being cautious anyway. Emily took a few more moments to consider what had been said before agreeing. "Fine, but it's all going to turn out to be nonsense anyway."

Sam got up from her spot on the couch and returned to the bathroom to take a shower. She let the hot water wash over her and lathered her body with lavender scented soap, letting the bubbles caress her. She tried to focus on the shower rather than what Mike had said. She didn't want to believe something was going on. She stayed in the shower longer than she usually did, which was a feat in itself considering her normal showers had been known to take up to an hour, and focused on what she could do to keep her and her friends safe. She had already lost Beth, Josh, Hannah.

Hannah.

She and Hannah were friends, and she did nothing to help her. She just killed her once the opportunity presented itself. What if Hannah could've been saved? What if Josh could have been saved. It was unlikely Josh was still alive. Mike said he saw Josh get dragged away by Hannah. Who knows what she had done to him before she was blown up. She probably crushed his skull with her bare hands... The more Sam thought about it, the more she thought Beth was the lucky one. She died, her body was eaten, her last moments were likely lived in terror, but she never had to face the wendigos. She never had to face the consequences of that night. Sam couldn't believe she was thinking it, but she envied Beth.

Upset with herself, Sam made her way out of the shower and went to the room she shared with Emily. Emily was laying on her stomach with a fashion magazine open on one side of her bed, her psychology textbook open on the other side. Somehow, she seemed equally immersed in both of them at the same time.

Sam sighed and made her way to her pajamas, putting on a pair of leggings and sports bra, long sleeve t-shirt, and throwing her hair up into a bun. "I'm going to go for a run. Care to join me?"

Emily looked up from what she had been reading, the textbook, and gave Sam a look that easily read 'are you fucking kidding me?' Sam shrugged and left the room, making her way to the front door and outside, letting the cool air wash over her. "Alright Sam, let's be even faster today." She set the stopwatch on her phone and started to run. She might not be throwing up chunks in the bathroom, or actively trying to slit her wrists, but she had her own scars. Attempting to become fast enough to outrun a wendigo was just part of that. With each step she motivated herself with 'I'm sorry Hannah. I'm sorry Josh. I'm sorry Beth.' The meeting she had with Mike was forgotten.