𝒙𝒗𝒊. don't look down
❪ ﹟SIXTEEN ❫ ࿐ྂ
━━ UNDISCLOSED NEW YORK CITY APARTMENT BUILDING !
"QUINN!" SHE SHOUTS, pushing away from the table and scrambling toward Quinn's room, everyone behind her. She's in front of everyone else, and halfway there when someone grabs her arm. "Carina, wait. Wait!" Chad yells, pulling her back to him and the group. She fights him for a moment because that's Quinn, their friend, but stops when she listens to the sounds coming from the room again. Because they've stopped.
They all stare at the door, and she's pretty sure she could throw up right now if it weren't for the fear keeping it all inside. She stares at the door, trying to figure out what to do as her heart races and her stomach churns, but she doesn't know. You'd think after already doing this once she might have a better idea, but she doesn't. Nothing is fueling her past fear, and she can barely think straight.
"What do we do?" She whispers, not taking her eyes off the door.
"Run."
The word doesn't register, because Quinn's door is flung open and something is flying through it--flying toward them. Carina jumps back, a silent scream stuck in her throat as she watches Anika go down. "Oh shit!" It's Quinn's body, she realizes, the urge to throw up back and stronger than ever. Anika screams, covered in blood and almost frozen on the floor next to it.
She doesn't know what's going on as she's pulled away from it all and out the door, only that Chad's still holding her arm and she thinks she's screaming. Tara's behind her, shouting over her shoulder. "Guys, come on!" Carina doesn't look back, because why would she? Ghostface is there, and she and her friends are going the other way.
In the hallway, she sees that the door to her apartment is open, and her heart drops. "Amaya!" she shouts, running toward the apartment with wide eyes. "Fuck!" she cries when she runs in, stumbling to a stop before she can trip. Her hands fly to her mouth in horror.
"No!" Carina screams, shaking her head at the sight in front of her. Right at the entrance of their apartment, Amaya's unblinking eyes stare up at her. Red pools under her stomach from multiple gashes and her limbs are all contorted uncomfortably from what looks like a fall. "Amaya!"
Chad and Tara are halfway down the steps, and she doesn't need them to confirm to her what she already knows. Amaya is dead.
"You fucking monster!" She hollers. Turning around and unblinking, she runs back into the previously abandoned apartment before she can even register what she's saying. She didn't think she'd ever be the one to run toward the danger, but she's also not thinking anymore. Amaya's eyes are bleeding into Dewey's and her mom's, and she feeling like screaming.
The scene she runs in on is horrifying. Ghostface is leaning over Anika, holding her by the throat. Screaming with a new found vengeance, she launches herself onto their back and tries to pull them off, but they throw her against the wall almost immediately. She crumples against it, a pile on the floor.
"God," she whimpers, shaking her head to reorient herself. She stops, trying to take stock of herself, but is thrown into action by Anika's scream. It's blood curtailing, and she feels tears spring in her eyes at the sight she makes. Ghostface has her pushed against the mantle with a knife carving into her stomach, and Carina has to think--fuck. Pushing herself up, it's just in time for Sam to hit Ghostface over the back of the head with the empty knife block. The older girl hauls Anika up, not letting her crumble even after taking a knife to the gut.
Ghostface falls back and knocks the door closed, so the three of them, plus Mindy, reroute to Quinn's room. Anika is stumbling, only held up by the others. Sam slams the door shut and locks it behind them all, just as Ghostface hurls themself into it!
WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!
Anika and Mindy both fall onto the bed, and Carina pushes against the door with Sam. "Fuck!" Turning around, she presses her body weight into the door the best she can, she tries to hold it there. She scans the two on the bed. Both of them are bleeding severely from one place or the other, but Anika is fading quickly. "What do we do?" She asks again, looking at Sam.
The pounding stops, and Carina freezes. In front of her, she stares at the open bathroom door. "Bathroom door," she whispers, pushing off the door and beelining it for the bathroom door. She cries out a little when she passes the shower, now a pool of blood with a body in it. Mindy, who must have followed behind her, pauses just as Carina slams the door shut and presses on it. "Oh fuck, that guy's dead!"
Carina, with her back on the door, cries out and falls forward when she feels a burst of pain in the back of her right shoulder. "AH!" She screams, falling forward and turning to see the knife retreating from where it had been plunged through the door. "Fuck you!" she spits, grabbing Mindy and running back to the bedroom as the bathroom door starts to splinter open.
Just past the shower, the other door of the Jack-and-Jill bathroom flies open, revealing Ghostface. They charge into the bathroom at them, wielding their bloody knife. The two dive forward back into the room, turning to lock that door as Sam struggles to push a dresser in front of it. But even with the vanity in place, it won't hold for long. Ghostface is still throwing themself into the door, and there's no other way out except through the window that has no fire escape.
She looks over at the window and sees a flash of something through it, and she waves Sam's attention toward it. The older girl rushes over to the window, pushing it open and shouting. After a moment of conversation Carina's too disoriented to acknowledge, Sam starts pulling something through the window. At the sight of the ladder now in their window, Carina's stomach churns. They're not on a low floor in this building. In fact, they're four stories up.
WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!
The wood by the hinges is starting to splinter, and Sam turns around once the ladder is as secure as it's going to be. "You three first," she demands, and Carina nods. "Mindy, go. Then Anika, and me and Sam. You're hurt, you'll be less help here."
"So are you," Mindy argues, not moving from the spot next to her holding the vanity back. "Go, Sam! We need to hold the door. You go, then we'll send Anika. Go!"
Sam doesn't have time to argue, and she knows it, so she climbs onto the ladder. Carina grunts as Ghostface throws themself at the door again. The vanity is digging into the wound next to her shoulder blade, but she doesn't dare let go. She squeezes her eyes shut, shaking her head.
"Sam," Mindy calls out the window. "She's losing a lot of blood!"
Carina's eyes fly open to look at Anika, stifling a cry when she sees the blood pooling at her feet. "Say something more positive!"
After what seems like hours, Sam and Danny start shouting. "Come on! Let's go!"
Carina nods, pushing the more stable part of the vanity in front of the door, and runs toward the window. She turns around to tell Mindy or Anika to go first, but Mindy's still holding the door. "Someone needs to hold it as long as we can."
"So I'll--" she starts, moving back toward the vanity.
"Carina!" Mindy cuts her off, shaking her head. "GO!"
So she does, she turns around and hauls herself on the ladder. Wasting time arguing won't help, and she knows Mindy won't let herself go before her. As she climbs onto the ladder, it digs into her palms and knees, but she doesn't let herself stop to feel the pain. Instead, her eyes connect with Sam's, and she does her best to keep them there. She can't look down, or she knows she'll freeze. If she does that, she's not only killing herself, but Mindy and Anika too.
Crawling across the ladder, she winces when it creaks under her weight. Sam and Danny are talking in front of her, but she can't make out any of the words over the pounding in her ears. When the ladder creaks again, she almost balks but keeps going. Sam did it, she tells herself, it'll hold you. Just don't look down. She forces herself to grab the next rung. Deep breath. Brings a knee forward. She's doing it.
No part of her is sure how far across she's made it. Only knows that despite as agonizing as it is, she can't stop. Even as the ripped-open skin of her shoulder pulls, she can't stop. Can't stop until she's close enough to grab Sam and Danny's hands, letting them pull her into the apartment.
"Mindy!" She's screaming before her feet are even off the ladder. Touching down into the apartment, she can almost pass out from relief but turns to shout out the window again. "Anika!"
The two have moved in front of the window, and she can't hear what they're saying. Sam and Danny crowd the window again, and she moves to join them. "Are you okay?" She isn't sure who she's asking.
When she looks back, Mindy's halfway across the ladder. She shakes her head, heart pounding as she watches her best friend do what she had just done seconds ago. Mindy's faster than any of them across the ladder, and she knows it's because Anika's coming behind her.
"Anika, come on!"
"Come on! Don't look at it!"
They're all screaming across the way. Carina doesn't know if it's helping, but can't stop. Not when she sees Anika weeping and barely holding onto the ladder. "Oh, God! I can't do it, I can't do it."
Still, she starts crawling out, slower than any of the people before her because of the blood loss. The wind howls around her, and she looks like she may faint. They're all still screaming, only stopping when they watch Ghostface finally break into the room behind them. "What?" Anika asks through the tears, pausing in the middle of the ladder. Their expressions must terrify Anika. "What's happening?"
"Anika," Carina yells, muscles tense and shaking. "Just keep coming." There might be tears in her eyes, she realizes. She's trying to keep her eyes on Anika now that everyone's looking at Ghostface, but it's hard not to notice when Ghostface places his hands on the other end of the ladder. Everyone tenses then.
Mindy, apparently not happy with Carina's warning, shouts. "Anika! You have to move right now! You have to!"
"NO!" Carina screams as Anika turns to look over her shoulder. "Anika! Keep coming!" Everyone's yelling again, but it isn't enough to drown out the SCRRRRRRCH! from the other end of the ladder when Ghostface nudges the ladder closer to the edge. Then, in slow motion, he starts bouncing the ladder on the windowsill.
"Leave her alone, you fuck!"
"No!" Anika cries, holding on tighter to the ladder, but still not moving. She's frozen in fear. Then suddenly, she's tilting forward and staring at the ground. Her screams are heartwrenching, and it looks like she's barely holding on.
"ANIKA!" Carina cries, shaking her head rapidly. It wasn't fair. What did they do to deserve this? What did Anika do other than like them--love one of them? Love never called for this.
Everything was happening so fast, and yet not fast enough. Mindy was reaching out like she wanted to crawl back out and get her, and Carina had to wrap an arm around her waist to stop her. "No! You have to make it!" She calls to her girlfriend, still half out the window as Ghostface slams the ladder up and down again and again.
Anika whimpers, shaking her head. "Baby, I don't want to die!"
Trembling where she's holding Mindy back, Carina feels a sob rip out of her chest. Anika didn't deserve to die. And to hear her like this, so scared and wanting to live, she couldn't do it. Couldn't handle knowing another one of their friends died because of them.
"I have to go get her," Mindy cries, begging with Carina. "Carina, please, let me go."
But it's Danny who answers, sounding stressed. "It can't hold you both. You'll die." Carina holds Mindy tighter, knowing the other girl would try anyway. Both she and Sam are stretched as far as they can out of the window already, the older girl held back by Danny. "No! Anika!"
Ghostface is shaking the ladder even more insistently, and Carina hates them. Whoever it is, she hates them. How can they be this cruel? How could anyone do this?
"Anika," Sam calls, so far out of the window it's definitely unsafe, "give me your hand. I got you."
But Anika's not listening, she's holding onto the ladder with a white-knuckle death grip, shaking her head and in hysterics. She reaches forward after a moment, hand barely reaching Sam's. Carina holds her breath, waiting for the other girl to get close enough that they can all pull her in.
She watches with tear-filled eyes, heart hammering.
Watches as Ghostface tilts the ladder to the side, almost slowly, like he finds this funny. Watches in horror as Anika slides and her face fills with even more fear than before. Watches as Sam nearly topples out of the window, only stopping because Danny pulls her back in. Watches Anika, wonder and sweet Anika, plummets four stories, screaming all the way down.
"ANIKA!!" They all seem to scream, voices overlapping and echoing around them all, giving them their misery back. Mocking them, just like the figure across the building was doing. Showing them there's nothing they can do but listen as Anika falls. Nothing they can do as they watch her head smash off a dumpster below and as her body hit the concrete, impossibly twisted.
Mindy sobs, and Carina lays herself over her best friend's back as she does the same, saying nothing as they stare at the lifeless body four stories down. She curses whoever's listening for letting it be the third one she's seen in less than an hour. Sam collapses on the ladder, slowly looking back across the airshaft to Quinn's bedroom window. Carina doesn't want to, but she can't stop herself as she looks as well.
Ghostface stands there, tilting their head at them in mockery before taking their knife out of the windowsill. Then, like they haven't just ruined their lives all over again, they leave.
madi speaks! 💌
you don't know how badly i wanted to keep anika alive, but unfortunately, her death felt pivotal and important
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