is my breathing mixed with a high-pitched ringing in my ears. I attempt to open my eyes again. When I succeed, I find it hard to focus on any one thing. It’s all blurring together.
My body feels restricted, and my range of motion is limited. My arms are pulled behind me, tied together at the wrists. The rope scratches and burns my skin as I try to move.
“Oh, you’re awake?”
The voice fades in and out.
My head slumps back as the dizziness intensifies. The room seems like it’s spinning while I’m sitting still. I try to speak, but my lips are forced together by something covering my mouth. It feels sticky to my lips.
“Daaaaani…Daaaaaani.” I hear the voice again and feel a sharp pain in my neck and scalp as my hair is grabbed and pulled forward. “Dani!”
My eyes shoot open. Although everything is still hazy, I can make out a face right in front of mine.
“There you are.” The voice sounds calming, yet menacing at the same time.
I focus and the person’s face comes perfectly into view. Anger surges through me when I’m met with Phoebe’s evil grin. I struggle against my confinements, wanting to rip her to shreds for what she’s done. I say a few choice words, but they’re muffled behind the tape.
She laughs. “What’s that you say? You can’t talk? Well, that’s kind of the point. To be honest, hearing your voice feels like someone’s jabbing syringes into my ears,” she says, tapping my cheek with the scythe in her hand.
She traces my chin with the tip of the blade, and I feel her dig it into the tape over my mouth. “Besides, I already know what you’re going to ask me.” She clears her throat. “Why, Phoebe, why?” she whines mockingly before bringing the scythe up to the tip of my nose. “First of all, motives are so two thousand and late. And second,” she begins and moves her mouth close to my ear, “I’m fucking psychotic.”
I just glare at her.
“Well, shit. This isn’t as fun without you yelling at me for what I’ve done to you,” she comments, caressing her cheek with the curved edge of the blade.
I scream as she rips the tape from my mouth. I hang my head, weighed down by the pain, and try to suppress the sting on my lips by tucking them into my mouth and wetting them. When the soreness subsides, I whip my head up and glare at her again.
“Why did you—”
“Uh, uh, uh. I’ve already told you why,” she says interrupting me, pressing the blade to my lips.
I struggle to talk around the curved blade. “I don’t believe you. There has to be a reason!”
“Fine! You want a reason? Here it is. You’re a brother-stealing, friend-abandoning,” she says pointing at Kevin’s body, “cock-teasing, heart-breaking whore of whores!”
“That’s your reason? That’s the reason you killed all those people? Just because of how you felt about me?”
She takes a moment, her expression getting angrier the longer she stalls. “You fucking took the only man I ever loved away from me and sent him packing to California!”
“Parker? But he’s your brother,” I reply, disgusted.
Phoebe leans in close to my ear and yells, “Stepbrother! He’s my stepbrother.” I flinch at the high-pitched squeal of her voice. She backs away and glances at Kevin’s body on the floor and pans back to me. “Oh, and just for the record, Kevin did most of the dirty work. I just provided the inspiration,” she replies smugly, gesturing to me. “You’d be surprised how fucked up love can make you. And he had quite the major league hard-on for you, Dani. But then again, you already know that.”
“You’re such a bitch!”
“Really? Namecalling? That’s a little low, even for you, isn’t it, Dani?” she asks, grabbing me tightly about the chin and mouth with her hand. “Not to mention very stupid, since I’m the one with the knife.” She releases her grip after shoving my head back.
“Why’d you kill Janice? She did nothing.”
Phoebe giggles, making me waver between fear and fury. “Want to know a secret? Janice was a part of this whole thing. She was our little techie. You can thank her for all the deleted texts, and for tapping into the school’s network, allowing us to showcase your little soft core flick with Parker in the computer lab. I guess all that alone time in her room and the library, gave her a lot of opportunities to do research on this new little