44. Tess
TESS
For all the money the Freaks had spent renovating this place, the sound insulation was lacking. Could they keep it down?
The metal shutters on the windows made it impossible for me to see outside, but for hours, all I could hear was the grind of amusement park rides, the tinny carnival music, and the screams.
Who have they brought back?
A scream of terror made me jolt from my spot on the couch, and I nearly tossed my phone across the room. The cry reverberated off the walls, even from this distance.
Glancing at the time on my phone, I tried to comfort myself.
It’ll be over soon.
I just needed to distract myself for a few more hours. And what better time to work on my escape plan?
Winning Fright Night had been a great start, but starting out with just a duffel bag of clothes, the costs of finding my own place were going to add up quickly.
Frankly, considering the advance rent any landlord would require to overlook my credit score, the $20k would be a nice apartment starter kit and little more.
I needed a way to grow the pot. Picking up my phone, I tried searching how to invest in the stock market. But I was quickly met with an overwhelming wave of information: brokerages, index funds, tax-advantaged accounts, IRAs.
By the time I scrolled through one whole page of a discussion board, I’d ended up with fifteen open tabs of extra reading and no clue what to do. Everyone seemed to have different opinions about the best place for a beginner to start investing.
But there was one thing they all seemed to agree on: there would be no quick return. Wherever I chose to put my money, I needed to let it sit and “mature”. Some people recommended leaving it in the market for decades if possible.
I don’t have that kind of time.
My plan was crushed before I could even start it. Closing out the search, I shot Nico a text to let me know if there were any slow nights at the club I could pick up. Then, I moved over to TikTok to scroll away my despair.
I was hardly paying attention to the videos as I swiped them off my screen: dog videos, thirst traps, local-coded jokes about Valemont’s local roads. None of it was a match for my gloom.
Then, just before I could close out the app and drown my sorrows with the TV, something finally caught my attention: a girl about my age with “MONEY HACK” written across the center of her screen.
She looked polished and confident as she explained the new betting app that let her make $700 overnight.
“Bullshit…” I muttered, but then the screenshots flashed across the screen: huge payouts every day for betting on everything from popular TV shows to the weather.
I’m lucky if I make a grand on a busy weekend at Velvet Paradise before club fees and tip outs.
And even that required an entire weekend of dancing.
I clicked into the suggested video tab and flipped through a few more videos of people talking about the app, complete with screenshots of their own earnings. It sounded too good to be true. But if this many people were swearing by it, it couldn’t hurt to try…
Clicking one of their affiliate links, I downloaded the app and was gifted $10 of betting credit to start with. Scrolling through the options, I was totally overwhelmed. You really could bet on anything. But what did I feel like an expert in?
I started off placing a few bets that the Lionshare had labelled as favorable, focusing on ones that would close soon: oil prices, stock values, and sports outcomes in the next fifteen minutes.
I hardly had a clue what I was betting on, but I rounded out my $10 of credit with $40 of my own dollars and committed to the popular vote.
Competing bets flashed in the lower left corner of my screen while the live graph charted out the real life trajectory of the bet. I wasn’t even sure where to look — the live chat on the left, or the countdown timer on the right.
It didn’t matter — in a matter of fifteen minutes, I’d grown my $50 investment to $120.
This really is easy.
Adding another $100 of my money to the app, I looked for more favorable wagers, as well as a few questions in the pop culture category that I could bet against the popular vote on to increase my earnings potential.
I bet on everything from how many streams Taylor Swift would get on Spotify this week to who would get sent home on Sweetheart Shores tonight.
There was even a section for sports betting, but I knew better than to poke around in there. I could hardly name three professional sports leagues, let alone their players.
And with each successful wager, my confidence grew — so did my deposits into the app. Before I’d even realized it, my dozens of tiny wagers had added up to thousands of dollars in the app, waiting for a final verdict to pay out.
I contemplated placing one last bet on the color of Sabrina Carpenter’s costume at tomorrow’s concert, but a squeal from outside startled me out of my contemplation — much higher pitched than the others.
Jealousy twisted the pit of my stomach as I listened to the shrieks and moans that followed. Had they brought other women back here?
I knew that they’d been doing Fright Night long before I came around. I just figured that while I was staying here, it would be more of an exclusive deal. But we’d never set that out in the terms explicitly.
Images of Blade taking another girl over the bumper cars or on the ferris wheel made me sick. Or Nash taking another girl back to be her muse? Bile burned at the back of my throat.
I shouldn’t have cared. But that didn’t stop me.
I’ve heard more than enough.
Gritting my teeth, I shoved my phone into the pocket of my sweats and stood from the couch. Investing wasn’t enough of a distraction. And maybe if I could get some space from the living room windows, I’d get a reprieve from the noise.
The exhaustion of being here was starting to get to me. I wasn’t thinking strategically enough. With the Freaks indisposed outside, I had the perfect opportunity to snoop through their shit and find some sort of advantage for Fright Night.
I padded down the hall, keeping my footsteps light despite the fact that I was completely alone. Still curious about her arts and crafts project, I tried Nash’s room first. But no dice; she’d kept her door locked.
Probably for this exact reason.
Farther down the hall, Cyrus’ door was the same. But that was less of a shock. Her door was locked even when she was home. Sometimes, it felt as much like a way to keep her in as it was to keep us out.
Kind of bullshit that mine is the only room that doesn’t have its own lock.
What else did I expect from my keepers, though? They thought they owned everything in Feverpoint, including me.
On my way to sulk in my own room, I half-heartedly tried Blade’s doorknob, certain that it was no use. But to my surprise, the door eased open at the lightest touch, inviting me in with a soft creak.
I blinked hard, trying to convince myself I wasn’t dreaming. Certainly, she hadn’t forgotten — Blade was erratic, but she wasn’t that careless.
Maybe… she wants me to look?
Taking a step forward, I pushed the door open and peeked in. The lights were out, but it looked exactly how I pictured the inside of her brain — scrawled marker and spray paint across the walls, tools scattered across a work desk, ropes strung from hard points all around the room.
At the center of it all was a minimalist, metal bed frame with a cushy king mattress. Stepping past the threshold, I could see that the bedframe had the same kind of metal loops built into the head and footboards.
The room smelled like her — earthy musk filled with a sweet sweat — and I was surprised to find that despite the general chaos of her mind, there was a certain degree of order here.
Her bed was neat, her scatter of tools was confined to her desk, and even the ropes that hung from the walls seemed to be sorted.
There was a method to her madness, even if I couldn’t quite parse the specifics.
I hadn’t realized how far I’d ventured into her den until my fingers brushed over the soft linen of her dark gray sheets. I peered down at the bed with a furrowed brow. Blade was always so full of energy, it was hard to imagine her peacefully sleeping.
Peace. I took a deep breath, enjoying a moment of that for myself. The amusement park rides had grown quiet, the tinny speakers finally taking their reprieve. And the screaming — I was finally free of the fucking screaming.
Fuck.
It only took a moment for me to realize what that silence meant. I scrambled for the door, careful not to disrupt any of Blade’s belongings.
I’d barely made it into the hall when the front door swung open. I’d tried to close Blade’s bedroom door quietly but just missed the latch. And as the Freaks trudged into the apartment, Blade’s door creaked its soft protest, threatening to betray me.
But I couldn’t reach for it now. Not without confirming where I’d been poking around.
It didn’t matter, anyway. The clowns were clearly preoccupied with other matters.
Even from down the hall, I could see the mess they trailed in through the door. Blood coated their boots, their masks, their weapons — and now, our freshly polished floors.
They hadn’t been playing out there. They’d been hunting.
And whatever they’d killed wasn’t enough to sate their appetites.
Under the cover of their masks, the hunger in their eyes was apparent. And my heart thundered in my chest as their ravenous gazes turned to me.