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There's laughter in the hallways, muffled from the dorm walls. The window is open as wide, Dana lies against the wall feeling the cool night air blow against her face. She's far from home, further than she was before. Marty’s a few feet away laying sprawled out on the ground like a starfish probably off in his own world.
It took them months to learn to survive, mentally, physically with the amount of injuries cultivated over that night, and face the world again with knowledge of what exists. The most difficult part was facing their families, lying, and telling them the story they were given.
Vanishing right before the eyes of their own family members was easier. Leaving behind as much of their old selves as they could.
Dana and Marty were relieved when they were able to go through with the transfer. Flying across the country where they were going to start their new lives. With new friends they hold at a distance, new professors, a new change of pace and sight.
They cling to whatever normalcy they can have. Yet forever unable to trust what this world was, and whoever lived in it now. Were they a part of it? Watching them like hawks to see if they were worthy of sacrifice? How they had so many questions and so many theories.
An empty bottle of beer lays next to Dana's thigh and a half-smoked joint remains sitting on a rolling tray a foot away from her. She's unsure if the bottle is hers or Marty's. She’s pretty sure that the joint is hers.
Fuck it was pathetic she couldn't handle her pot well.
And of course, her (incredibly unexpected considering the world-ending circumstances that helped start their relationship) boyfriend was one of the biggest stoners on campus.
“I can grab the box fan if you want more cool air, and can lay in the bed if you want,” Marty says, walking over and sitting next to her on the floor.
“After you change the sheets,” she mumbles, opening her eyes and she looks over at him, grabbing the water bottle he offered. “How much longer am I going to feel like this?” everytime she thinks her experience will be different, better even, but it’s always the same.
“Two to three hours. Maybe a bit longer.”
“Fuck,”
“We already did that,” Marty says, voice brimming with humor and traces of excitement. Who knew their shared trauma would be what got them intimate with each other. “Just gotta ride it out, you’ll be okay. I’d suggest sleeping it off, but I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Dana turns her head to glare at him, red hair falling in front of her face. “Don't get smug on me,” she says, taking a low slow sip of the cold water before she sets it down and lays her head on the edge of the window sill. Her gaze drifts to the three-quarters-empty bottle of wine they've shared, she'll have it later when she feels like the dorm room isn't spinning around at full speed.
The wine was cheap shit, and it was far from good, but she wasn't wasting her money. Or getting through the weekend without something
“I never even knew the word until now.”
She shifts her position, moving over and pressing her back against the wall.
“What's been on your mind?” he asks after a few minutes.
“So much and so little,” Dana answers. “Her birthday passed, y'know. It was all I could think about, probably flunked that test I had going on at the time.”
She knows Jules would have gotten on her case about it, repeatedly asking how her study sessions were going. Her confidence in her knowledge of the test contents. Instead, Dana sat at her desk, staring down an empty wall while her new roommate rambled on about whatever was on her mind. Dana’s glad her new roommate talks so much, filling the void of silence that plagued her for months.
Dana appreciated the new friends she and Marty made, but they hardly knew anything about the two. They were nothing but a big mystery to the people around them now. Hardly seen without the other, survival having super glued them together. They just pass it off as being a clingy couple, but the whispers and stares gives her other ideas. Marty’s been vocal about wanting to know what goes on other peoples minds when their seen. Dana would rather turn into a werewolf every single night than learn what people think.
Sometimes they were sick of one another, but unable to be far from each other. Dependent on each other for any sense of stability, any sense of normalcy. Dana and Marty both craved someone consistent in their lives. Someone that knew, someone that saw the horrors they did.
“In those elevators what did you see, Marty?” The question hangs over like a large storm cloud, thundering and growling like a wild animal, just ready to strike. Dana drags her fingers along the exposed werewolf scars that trace her neck and chest, covering most of the upper half of her body.
Marty is the only one she allows to see them.
At first, it was out of anger, perhaps even punishment, to make him see what he caused. That didn't last long, it became something shared with survival and intimacy when she finally saw the ones that were on his thighs and his back.
How she hates that anger now, how could she be that angry with someone she loves so much?
It had been a long day, and from the looks of it, growing into a longer night. They craved a distraction from the world, and their demand for each other was growing. The night became something of an intimate one for them followed by some reflection.
They called themselves the fools that were struck by lady luck. Fools to think they would have any normal life. How the fuck do you get a normal life when you’re a werewolf? You only get routine, and maybe that becomes something normal, but should it? Dana shakes that from her head and can just come back and think about it later.
“Fuck, Dana,” Marty sighs, turning to look at her. “This conversation?”
“Marty, honey, you said it yourself the first time we tried to have it. It's gonna be inevitable.”
“Can't it be, for a little while longer? I changed my mind about wanting to relive that moment.” He sinks, lying on the carpet again. “What about we listen to that pop shit Jules liked so much? Can we use that as a bitter distraction?”
“Yeah, why not. Happy birthday Jules! How about we queue up heads will roll by that band she liked so much?” Dana says sarcastically. “She'd fucking love it!” she comes off harsher than she’d like. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that, I just. I don’t want to keep hiding from what you and I saw. I don’t think Jules would love it if we kept hiding.”
“I don't think she'd love this,” Marty says.
“What, that we're wasting our college prime, high, drunk, shutting the world out?” Dana asks. Why is youth seen commonly as the prime of one's life? Dana knows her prime will possibly be later on down the road, maybe when she's found a bit more happiness. A bit more stability.
“Yeah, she did try to get us to live. As much as we could.”
“Sometimes I think it should've been me,” Dana says quietly.
“No, no,” Marty shakes his head, sitting up. “Whatever you'll say next, don't bring up the past. That's not relevant anymore.” He pushes himself over to her, carefully grabbing the side of her face and turning it to face him. “It's also the least of our issues,”
She wants to melt into his hold, shove out the rest of the world, and just spend the rest of her days floating in space in their little part of the world carved out from the earth.
“Weight of the fucking world,” Dana sighs. “Of everybody in the world, it just had to be us?”
“I wouldn't want it any other way,” Marty tells her.
Previously Dana would have disagreed, but now, and when she thought her life was going to end, she couldn't agree more.
“Is it wrong to say I still would end the world with you?” She can’t tell if saying that is on the same level as I Love You, maybe it’s their little way of saying it. Eat your fucking heart out John Green, her and Marty are doing better at this whole special way of saying they love each other.
Marty shakes his head. “I still think society should crumble, do you think they're still sacrificing the youth?”
“Definitely yeah,” Dana nods. “The rest of the world probably has a lot more on their shoulders since we knocked America out of the running.”
“Think they’ll come back?” Marty asks.
“Don’t know, don’t care. It’s not our problem, anymore, or,” she trails off, unable to find the words to speak. Does she leave it at that? Add on not yet.
God, she missed Holden for this reason. He always knew what to say, always could reassure her that everything was going to be okay. Even if it was for a few minutes. Dana can only hope his final moments were okay, that the release of death was sweet and fast. She’ll wonder about it for a long time. What were his final thoughts before he slipped away? What moments of his life flashed before him, were any of them there? If there is anything she learned, it's that a couple of hours can really impact a person.
“Dana?”
Her face feels warm, she’s back to reality, back to Marty’s dorm. “Hm?” she wipes her face, feeling tears she hadn’t even known that she shed.
“Are you okay?” His voice is gentle and nothing but kind.
Although her love with Holden was short, lasting a bitter-sweet few hours, she’ll never forget it. He showed her it’s okay to love again and how Dana will appreciate that for such a long time. “Fuck if I know,” she forces a laugh. “I only know two things right now, one that I really love you and what the hell I saw in those elevators.”
“What did you see?” Marty asks, breathless with the traces of defeat.
“Marty, we don’t have to talk about it,”
“It’ll be okay,” he cuts her off. “Just, forget what I said. You have a point, talking about it will be inevitable and we hide so much. Sometimes hiding is more exhausting than running.” Neither of their minds seemed to stick to something for long, thoughts and feelings changing quickly like a switch being flipped.
What could have been their final few hours alive together was full of quick decisions. Back and forth fighting for the survival of the world or letting it crumble.
“Hiding made me feel trapped, and well. It did literally trap us in that security guard station.” Dana tells him that, sometimes in her nightmares she's back in that guard station. By herself, watching Marty get torn to shreds by monsters or crashing down in a rainstorm of bullets and lying in a large pool of his blood.
She will never truly forgive herself.
“Until the dragon bat ruined it,” Marty says. “Shattering glass everywhere, all the fiberglass we probably inhaled.” He laughs.
“Wonder what we consumed more, blood for fiberglass.” Dana jokes, she doesn't want to know.
“You know, blood and fiberglass are good for the human body,” Marty says sarcastically. “Great source of fucking yourself up, makes this shit look healthy,” he gestures to the alcohol and pot.
A smile cracks through her tired, reminiscing expression. “Did you see the alligator dog?”
“The what dog?” Marty's unable to hold his laughter and confusion. “Fuck, I think I missed that. The one monster I kinda wanted to see.”
Dana nods. “Yeah, head of a gator, body of a dog. German Shepherd, I'm pretty sure. Kind of a basic dog to do that to, y'know?”
“Were you expecting a Great Dane? Fucked up Scooby-doo?”
“What breed is Cujo again?” She asks, looking at him.
“Saint Bernard.”
“Yeah, I expected that, guess it'd look kinda strange though. Big fluffy body and then just a gator head.”
“I think any dog breed with a gator head would be weird,” Marty says. “I saw a Banshee, it was worse than that angry spirit that was yelling at us not to go down.”
“I wonder why it was warning us,”
“Probably wanted to kill us. Everything did,”
“I don't want to know how the man with flaming pipes in his chest would have killed us,” Dana shudders, she's had plenty of nightmares of that monster specifically killing her. She'd always wake up feeling a horrible pain spreading like wildfire in her chest and stomach. Her ribs always ached for a bit before reality had settled. Nightmares were far more realistic now, and she always felt trapped when she'd sleep at night.
Nightmares felt like this odd death loop, and every time she'd go to sleep Dana felt like she was waking up on the same day. Dying and dying over and over and over again.
“Jesus, can't imagine how that'd feel. Pipes shoved into your chest,” Marty shudders at his phantom feeling. “And I thought the people with lava cracking through their skin was awful.” Realistically yes, but everything they saw separately or together was awful.
“I think the least awful thing I saw was a swarm of birds, but they probably tore someone's eyes out so,” that's how birds would kill right? Alfred Hitchcock made a whole movie about killer birds. She's pretty sure someone's eye got plucked out.
“There was a giant cat I saw,” Marty says. “Either tuxedo or some other kind of cat breed. Maybe all gray, ever see Pet Sematary?”
Dana shakes her head. She never wants to watch another horror film in her life. It's a bit of a loss to her, she loved watching them around Halloween with her friends. “Never, and I don't think I will now. I think Halloween is done for me too,”
“I loved Halloween growing up, one night a year I could be something I wasn't. I was a superhero a lot as a kid. Spiderman, Superman, Batman, Spiderman again. I don't think I'll see him the same again, giant fucking spider terrified me.”
“Well, you were a hero, you prevented the whole world from ending.”
“Only because I died for like five minutes.” He pulls back the two layers of shirts, revealing the scar from the fatal gunshot wound she inflicted on him. “What do you think is worse? Dying from a gunshot or werewolf attack?”
“You got a scar and some chronic pain that'll flare up for days. I turn into a furry monster every full moon or whatever weird phase it has,” Dana says glancing over to the calendar on the wall, the date for the full moon circled. “I think we’re pretty even on the worse death and consequences that came with a second chance at life hon.”
“And they say romance is dead. In actuality, it's coming back from the dead minutes apart.”
“Sometimes it doesn't feel real, what we went through and all. It's like this awful, awful nightmare and I'm just waiting to wake up. I still want to wake up, end up back in the rambler, and just stop that trip altogether. But it's never gonna happen.” She looks at Marty unable to hide her guilt and sorrow. “I'm sorry I never believed you.”
“Hey, hey, no, shh. It's okay.” Marty assures her. “It's not your fault, none of it was. Those puppeteer assholes manipulated us and that cellar coaxed us in. Then I threw a huge wrench into that plan.”
“I'm really glad you did,”
“You got Judah Buckner to thank for that. He kinda dragged me into his grave elevator thing.” Marty says, an expression of reminiscing spreading over his face. “Glad I could take his dismembered self home.”
“What did you do while in there?” Dana asks. “You never really told me, only that you dismembered him with a trowel. Jesus, how did you even manage that?”
“I was too damn high to die, I swear.” He jokes, a half-hearted smile spreading over his face. “Honestly I'm not sure, all I knew was that I needed to get my shit together and walk out of there. For a dead guy Judah really put up his fight, but hey. It's hard to fight when you're losing limbs.” Marty answers. “After that, I was crawling out of that grave. I tried to find you guys, but than I saw the rambler was gone. It only made sense that you guys got the fuck out of there.”
“It sounded like you put up a fight yourself,” Dana says softly. His screams haunted her the entire drive in the Rambler. “I'm sorry we didn't go and look for you. Curt he, he said you were gone,”
“Oh Curt, that big ass hole. I miss him. Even if our last night both alive sucked. How was the crash? It was a lot louder than I expected.”
“Terrifying,” Dana answers. “I wanted nothing more than to just allow myself to drown. Let Father Buckner take me like he took Holden. The swim was worse the second time in the lake I will say.”
“Oh hm, I wonder why. Y'know, I thought my second time at that lake was going to be a nice private moment, floating around by myself with a recently finished joint in my system.”
“Instead you stopped a bear trap from killing me.” She adds on, sadness lingering in her words. God that fucking bear trap, stained with the blood of Jules, Holden, and Curt. Hungry and ready for hers. She never wants to know what those rusted teeth would feel like, sinking deep into her back and ripping at her flesh. How much would it hurt compared to a werewolf attack? Would rusted trap teeth turn her into a monster?
Scratch that, she would much rather take rusted bear trap teeth than werewolf teeth if it ever came down to the two.
Marty pulls her in close, wrapping his arm around her. “Don't sound so disappointed!” He laughs, poking light fun at her tone.
Scratch that again , she'd take the werewolf teeth. That bite, the curse of lycanthropy saved her life and in turn, saved Marty's. Sitting so close to him now, she's safe in his hold. Warm and loved in the way she deserves. Dana looks at him, not with sadness or guilt, but with something else. Something worth living for that she'll cling to.
“I love you, Marty.”
“I love you too Dana. You gonna be alright?”
She nods, melting into his hold, wrapping her arms around him, careful not to hold on too tight. “Yeah, I'm gonna be alright, We're gonna be alright.” Dana shuts her eyes, searching for his heartbeat. “We're gonna be alright.”
“We're gonna be alright,” Marty repeats, confirming her words.
They were gonna be alright, and nothing else mattered.