11 awake (11)
===
The lights are dim, but I would know this place even when there's no light at all. I'm at the school hallway, by the row of lockers, and the atmosphere is cold and eeriely silent. There's not a single soul but myself, and although I'm aware it's in the middle of the night and I'm not supposed to be here, I don't care. I walk over to my locker and open it, but when I see it's empty, I close it again.
For a long moment, I don't move. It's as if I'm waiting for something, but I don't know what. I continue to stand there facing my closed locker, still as a statue, but when I hear heavy footsteps echo behind me, that's only when I stir back to life.
Suddenly, I'm not alone anymore.
My heart pounds as I slowly turn to see who the additional company is. But when I do, I gasp in fear and stumble backwards, the sound of my body hitting the metal cabinets a harsh disturbance to the quiet night.
My eyes are wide as the hulking figure of the red devil stands a few feet from me, and he's wielding his weapon of choice in his right hand. Not a pitchfork, not a chainsaw, not a spray-tanning machine filled with hydrochloric acid—but a gleaming silver baseball bat.
A fucking gleaming silver baseball bat.
Red Devil advances on me in fast-motion, ready to attack, and I open my mouth to let out a bloodcurdling scream. But no sound comes out.
Panicking, I whirl around and run outside, and he chases after me. Now I'm at the school grounds. The lights flicker like crazy. On. Off. On. Off. On.
Off.
On.
I'm still running, towards the gate now. I'm almost there. I have to get out of here before he catches me! Even though my legs feel like jelly, I push on. To the limit. Because I know I can make it. I'm not gonna die.
Not tonight.
But I make the mistake of looking back. There's a big rock that was conveniently placed there in the middle of the road. I don't notice it. So I trip and fall to the ground in a pathetic heap.
A shadow falls over me. I look up to see the hideous mask of the red devil as he looms over me, his red gown swaying in the chilly breeze and his red cape billowing behind him.
Then he raises his free hand to his face and he removes the mask with an easy flick of his wrist.
I gasp once more as I realize who it is.
It's France Kinsley. It's him all along!
"This is for my balls, Clare-bear," he bites out in a barely recognizable, gravelly voice. "Revenge shall be mine!" Then with an ugly sneer of victory, Francis raises the baseball bat in excruciatingly slow motion...then swings it.
A high-pitched scream tears away from my lungs. "Nooooooo!"
I raise my arms to protect myself. But it's too late. I'm falling...
And everything goes black.
===
My eyes flew open, only to be met by more darkness. But as soon as they adjusted to the dim light that was coming from the lamp posts outside, I began to see the familiar silhouette of my dresser, my study table, the door to the bathroom, the wall clock, and the lampstand by my head.
It took my brain sixty seconds to catch up, and when it did, I realized that I was in my bedroom, curled in a ball on the left side of my bed, and that I'd just woken up from a nightmare which, in the split second it took me to switch from my dreaming state back to reality, had felt so disturbingly real. My heart was hammering in my ribcage, and I had to wait a few more seconds to calm the hell down, before slowly rising into a sitting position to assess the freaking situation.
Once upright, cold moisture trickled a path from my temple down the side of my ear, and I wiped it away, shivering. My comforter was now a messy heap by my feet, halfway covering my left leg and halfway dangling off the bed. If I were to guess, sometime in the middle of the night, it came off me as I thrashed and kicked, my limbs instinctively responding to the happenings in my dream. Or nightmare. No wonder I was cold. Cold, yet I was also sweating bullets.
"Dammit," I muttered in a croaky voice, forcefully dragging my hands across my face to get my bearings. But instead, flashes of the dream came rushing in vivid detail. Me running. Being chased. Tripping. Red Devil and his silver weapon. His horrible voice. My pathetic scream. And most of all, France's face. His loathsome face as he swung his bat at me.
My body shuddered violently, if from the cold or the dream memory, I wasn't sure, but I wrapped my arms around myself and wished the blasted images and this baseless, freaked-out feeling I had would go away quickly. Frack. Of all the stupid nonsense to dream about! Why did it have to be of that stinking prick chasing me in Red Devil costume? And with a baseball bat!
Really?
I was going to have to have a serious, sit-down talk with my own imagination soon. It badly needed to learn the glaring difference between having a dark sense of humor and plain wanting to give me heart attack in my sleep. For my own sake.
And I shouldn't have binge-watched Scream Queens last night. I should have just gone straight to sleep after reading Twice A Rake and never opened my damn laptop, then the contents of my dream would have been much different. They would have been of the sinfully sexy Lord Quinton as he ravished his innocent little wife Aurora instead. Definitely more preferrable. Rather than having to look upon the vengeful grimace of the Red Devil, right before he tasted victory in the air and right before he delivered that final, killing blow—
Ugh.
But who said dreaming about one's own downfall was designed to give you a sexy, thrilling experience, right?
Groaning frustratedly, I let myself fall back on the bed with a thud, pulled the covers up to my chest, and then closed my eyes. I was still sleepy. The clock said it was only 3AM.
I laid there staring at the ceiling, willing my brain to shut down and halt all trains-of-thought at once.
I laid there waiting for sleep to come and take over me again, in the hopes that a nicer dream might replace the nightmare so when the morning comes, I would have already forgotten all about the sordid details of my mini trip to Stoneville High in the middle of the night.
No such luck.
~~~~~
