Work Text:
SCENE FIVE
They had boarded the bus nearly four hours earlier, yet they were still not even halfway to their destination. The ten college students were en route to a competition for their forensics class. Though they came from a very small school, they were among the best in the nation.
Charlotte Voldt slept quietly in the back, her head pillowed on her friend Greg’s shoulder. To anyone who looked at her, Charlotte was the epitome of angelic repose. In her own mind, however, frightening images assaulted her.
“Hello, Charlotte. Do you know who this is?” the voice on the telephone asked.
Though she could not see the person, Charlotte shook her head slowly. “N-no.”
“That’s too bad, Charlotte. It’s all your fault, Charlotte. You didn’t work fast enough.” Then, the line was disconnected.
“Suddenly, Charlotte found herself in a house of mirrors. Everywhere she turned, her own distorted image glared back at her. The room slowly filled with a hazy fog. Charlotte could faintly hear a whistling noise, then a scream reverberated off the glass walls. Her reflections seemed to move closer as Charlotte searched frantically for a way out.
A chirp from her waist brought Charlotte’s attention to her cell phone. “Hello?” she answered hesitantly.
“It’s over now, Charlotte. Someone’s dead. Turn around.” For the second time, she heard the dial tone. The fog dissipated before her eyes.
Spinning slowly, Charlotte turned to see what the caller had wanted her to notice. A body was hanging in front of her, suspended by a thick rope tied off high in the rafters. But it wasn’t just any body. It was his body. His familiar, battered sneakers were partially hidden by his baggy khaki pants. Charlotte’s eyes trailed upwards slowly, taking in his lifeless form. His hunter green sweater had a few drops of blood spilled on it. A splash hit the floor, catching Charlotte’s attention. Blood dripped freely from the gaping wound in his neck, the result not of the rope by which he hung, but because his head had been partially severed. Feeling the bile rise in her throat, Charlotte forced herself to look at his face. The corpse smiled at her.
Charlotte’s unexpected, high-pitched wail jolted Greg into an unnatural state of awareness. Realizing she was still asleep, he dropped his hand to her thigh to give it a friendly shake. “Hey, Char, wake up.”
She awoke with a start, not yet aware of her surroundings, and immediately backed away further into the seat.
“Charlotte,” Greg said her name firmly, concern registering in his hazel eyes. “Charlotte, look at me.”
Timidly, she raised her gaze to see the worry on her best friend’s face. Her coffee-colored eyes contained a depth of pain he’d never before seen in them.
“Tell me.”
“I had another nightmare,” she confessed. Charlotte pulled her knees into her chest before speaking again. “It was awful. I was at the hotel, but nobody was there. My phone rang. A voice told me it was my fault. Then, I was in a carnival house; you know, the kind with the mirrors. A fog rose up out of nowhere. My phone rang again. That voice told me I was too late, that someone was dead. It told me to turn around. Then, it disconnected again.”
“Then what happened?”
“I can’t, Greg. It’s too awful. Please,” Charlotte begged. Her brown eyes filled with tears, and she looked down at the floor of the bus.
“Char, you know you can tell me anything. These nightmares have been going on for weeks now. They haven’t stopped, and they aren’t getting any better. What’s going on?” Greg’s tone brooked no argument. He never raised his voice to her, but he wanted answers.
“It’s you! All right? It’s you I keep seeing. You’re always dead, and it gets worse every time. Is that what you wanted to hear? Are you happy now!?” Charlotte yelled. A few other students on the bus looked in their direction, but Greg’s warning glare halted anything more. The tears that had been pooling in Charlotte’s eyes spilled down her cheeks. Lowering her head to rest on her knees, Charlotte whispered “I’m sorry, Greg. That was out of line.”
Greg put his arm around her and pulled her close. “No, it’s okay. You’re stressed, you’re barely sleeping –”
“You’re making excuses for me.”
“Yeah, maybe I am.” Taking her chin in his free hand, he forced her to look up at him. Greg’s roughened thumb brushed away the last of the tears from her eyes. His palm came to rest against Charlotte’s cheek. “You’re not going to lose me, you know?”
“I know, but I can’t get those images out of my head.” Charlotte grasped the hand on her cheek in her own, then brought them down to rest on the bus seat between them. “Every time, it gets worse. This last one, you were hanging from the rafters in the house of mirrors. Blood kept dripping down. When I looked up, your head had been nearly severed. You were dead, but you grinned at me. That’s when you woke me up.”
Greg squeezed her hand tightly. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”
“I’m scared, Greg. What if this is some premonition-type thing?”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because I don’t want to,” he answered.
Charlotte looked up at her friend. Though they’d known each other for years, she’d never heard such conviction from him. As chocolate-brown eyes met hazel-green, she saw for the first time a side of Greg that he’d always kept hidden from her before. Gone was the protective, big-brother façade he donned in her presence. In its place, however, was an equally protective, yet different, persona. Charlotte realized that Greg could easily be more to her than a simple friend. She just had to let him in.
“Trust me?” he asked quietly.
With a nervous smile, she replied softly, “Always have.”