Page 12

12

FUCKING SPIDER GUTS

QUINN

It’s a torrential downpour outside the night before Halloween. A deluge of rain hammers against the window panes of my dorm room, drowning out the muffled sounds from the hallway. I watch the torrents of water slide down the glass, distorting the streetlights into wavy orange blobs before pulling my focus back to the text in front of me.

Sitting cross-legged on my bed, I balance my book on one knee. The faint scent of cedarwood drifts through the room, courtesy of the flickering candle on my nightstand, the flame casting dancing shadows across the pages.

The sporadic sounds of laughter and the occasional shriek pierce through the stone walls, overpowering the steady drumming of rain. Despite the chaos of other students acting like they’ve never experienced a power outage before, I am determined to maintain my focus on studying for my exam.

As long as I don’t set off the fire alarm with my makeshift study setup, I should be able to avoid the wrath of the douchey dorm room authorities.

The textbook is for Jack’s class, so my evening has been filled with eyeballs full of gruesome crime scene photos and detailed reports of serial murder investigations. Not ideal for a night alone in a supposedly haunted dorm, but ‘tis life.

My life anyway.

I am tempted to send him a miserable-looking selfie of me studying for his class, but opt not to because I need to reserve my cell phone battery.

Kruz doesn’t have the same concerns because she left to stay with her parents the first time the lights flickered.

Kruz: You know you can still come stay with us.

It feels so weird to me to stay with anyone else’s family. Probably just another of the many effects of my childhood trauma, but she still offers despite the number of times I’ve refused for various reasons.

Quinn: I am fine here. It’s quiet and I’m using the time to study.

Someone squeals outside my door and the sound of footsteps pounding down the hallway as they run away makes me a bit of a liar.

Kruz: How are you not scared?

Quinn: Of the dark?

Kruz: Of the possibilities of what could happen in the dark.

I really don’t know how she gets through the day most of the time. I laugh and roll my eyes.

Quinn: You are seriously so dramatic.

Somewhere in the middle of reading about the social characteristics of a particularly disgusting serial killer who enjoyed peeling off his victims’ skin and frying it up like bacon, my eyelids grow heavy and my head droops.

I jolt awake to complete darkness, the candle having burned out leaving me disoriented in the disconcerting silence. I don’t know if minutes or several hours have passed, but it seems to be the latter.

I fumble in the dark to re-light the candle, and a sudden coldness settles in the air, making the hairs on my arms stand on end.

I swat at something crawling on my hand and lift it in front of my face, inspecting it in the dim light.

Fucking spider guts.

“ Gross .” I wipe the offending hand on my comforter.

From the edge of my bed, a strong grip clamps down on my wrist and jerks me off it, nearly dislocating my shoulder. If I thought Jack grabbing my arm the other day hurt, that I was nothing compared to this. My body slams against the hard floor with a thud and I release a loud scream, instinctively flailing and fighting against whoever the fuck has balls enough to do something like this in the dead of an overly silent night where anyone and everyone will hear.

"Shut the fuck up," the voice unmistakably belongs to Adrian, and for the first time in a really long time, I am actually scared.

Before I can react, he kicks me hard in the ribs, knocking the air out of me and silencing my screams.

I try to fight back but his weight is on top of me now, straddling my hips and covering my mouth with his hand to muffle any other sounds I might make to draw attention.

He’s bigger than I am, but not so much bigger that I am unable to give him a fight. I buck my hips as hard as I can, catching him off guard and gaining enough space to flip onto my stomach and shove myself to my knees. I try to scramble away but before I can fully escape, he grabs a fistful of my hair and yanks my head back, pressing something cold and metal against my bared throat.

I must be fucking stupid, because I hadn’t even considered he might have a weapon until this moment.

“What the fuck do you want?” I grit out, my heart threatening to claw its way out of my ribcage.

“Oh, I think you know.” He slams my face into the corner of my nightstand and the last thing I’m cognizant of before everything goes black is my candle smacking against the floor and rolling toward the open door.

When I finally regain consciousness, I gasp for air, jolting upright. My eyes adjust to the dim light, and flick nervously to the candle still burning on my nightstand.

Jesus Christ.

Relief washes over me as I suck in deep breaths, trying to calm my racing heart. What the fuck kind of nightmare was that?

I fumble around the bed, trying to find my phone in the tangle of sheets so I can see what time it is. My fingers finally close around it, but when I tap the screen, nothing happens. It’s dead and won’t be able to charge it anytime soon because the power is still out.

I groan and blow the candle out because it’s been burning for long enough that it’s a fire hazard at this point, then wrap my blankets tighter around myself. Typically I would be able to drift back to sleep quickly to the sound of the rain outside, regardless of whatever mental gymnastics I just did in sleep, but something scrapes at the edges of my mind.

My thoughts involuntarily wander to my parents and the lack of their presence in my life up until these last few years, particularly these last few months. My dad’s voice still echoes constantly in my head even though I haven’t heard it since our meeting at the beginning of the term.

I can’t say I miss it.

The fact that his case is still open is something I desperately want to put behind me. It fuels this relentless anxiety that has consumed me lately, apparently even in my sleep now.

Every second I spend in the quiet of my head sends me spiraling, and I’m thankful for the busyness of the majority of my days outside the walls of this haunted dorm room.

Thankful for the busyness of Sienna.

For the distraction of Jack.

And in this panicked state I’m struggling to come down from, I find that right now, all I want is him.

Most of the time the only ghosts are the ones in your mind, but that doesn’t make them any less terrifying.