Chapter 20 #2
He simply waves his machete in the air like he’s saying goodbye, and slams the door shut. Danny jumps, moving to the door and smacking his hands against it.
“Hey!” he screams. “No, no, no.”
Pressing my free hand on my bleeding arm, I glance around the room.
It’s a tight space, slightly bigger than the closet we hid in earlier.
It’s dark in here, and I struggle to make out the shadows of items around us that fill the metal shelves on each side of the room.
My body trembles from the drop in temperature, making the beads of sweat on my skin feel cold.
It’s a freezer, I realize.
These assholes from Theta have a fucking walk-in freezer.
Which one of their rich daddies paid for this?
Danny continues yelling at Cupid or anyone to open the door, but it’s pointless. The door is tightly shut, and Cupid must’ve locked it from the outside. If there’s something we can assume, it’s that the freezer has layers of insulation that will drown out our calls for help.
Besides, who would hear us anyway?
Carmen, Cerys and Bethan should be two floors above us now, safely hidden in the attic, trying to find a way out of here through the vents.
Who else is there? Zelda? Too injured to move, if she’s not dead already.
There are some unaccounted-for people, like Sophia and Ollie, but what are the odds they’re alive to help us?
We haven’t caught sight of them since we split up.
“It’s no use,” I tell Danny.
I hate to be the voice of reason in this situation, but it’s a waste of time and energy for him to bang on the inside of the door, hoping for something that will not come.
We’re not getting out of here. Not unless Cupid himself wants us out, and who is to say he won’t leave us here, turn the full power back on and put the freezer settings on blast so we can have a slow death.
Leaving us to die of hypothermia could be another nice addition to his collection of kills.
Perhaps not as bloody as the other options, and odd for a slasher who has been brutally murdering people, but it’s surely creative enough to stand out.
We’re the tragic romance. Some might even call it a homage to a popular movie, with the difference that, in this story, there’s no door-space to debate about.
In this story, both lovers die.
After all, this night was never intended to be a romance. It was always meant to be a horror.
Danny’s loud sigh echoes in the emptiness of the freezer. He presses his forehead to the door, shoulders slouching in defeat. I’ve never seen him so lost before and it breaks my heart that he fought so hard tonight only for it to end like this.
“This can’t be it,” he laments, his voice sounding broken. “For a moment, I really thought we had him.”
His words hit me right in the gut, provoking a sudden surge of emotion in my body. My lips tremble, and I press them together to prevent any noise from coming out.
“So did I,” I admit, sharing the sentiment.
When I stabbed him, I got a rush of power, I truly thought we had the upper hand there, with Cupid wounded and submitting to the edge of my blade. I thought we were going to win without having to go through another horrible spree, without having to worry about my sister anymore.
I believed Cupid would be the last one to die tonight.
But he wasn’t.
He’s still out there, roaming the halls, looking for his next victim. Wounded, but not fatally. Instead of stabbing him in the shoulder, I should’ve gone for the head or neck. Something that would inflict more harm.
I walk to the back of the freezer, and press my back against the wall so I can slide to the floor. The humidity gathered on it helps me drop to my butt faster, hitting my coccyx on the way down, but I can barely recall the pain when other emotions are clouding my sensors.
The disappointment of our failure is stronger than the pain from the gash on my arm.
The certainty of death is bigger than everything combined.
In the darkness, I spot Danny’s shadow approaching me until he sits next to me.
“Are you okay?”
I mumble an affirmation. Sadly, hoping to die from the wound on my arm would be too much to ask for, considering our circumstances.
He riffles around, pulling an item from his pocket, and turns on the flashlight from his phone. I didn’t even notice when he retrieved it from the bathroom. I can’t even recall him turning it off as we abandoned that place, but it’s here now.
The brightness makes my eyeballs hurt for a second, forcing me to close my lids until the sharpness of it dulls.
I blink a few times, slowly getting used to the illumination.
I’ve spent most of tonight trapped in dark places or dimly lit halls with pink neon lights.
Great to create a scary atmosphere, but not so much to get good visibility.
I open my eyes just in time to catch Danny slicing off part of the hem of his shirt.
Once he has a long strip of fabric, he moves to me and begins to wrap it around my arm, improvising a tight bandage to stop the bleeding.
It doesn’t need to be as tight as a torniquet, just enough to slow the flow and help the blood clot.
“Does it hurt?” he asks as he ties the ends of bandage together.
Always gentle and caring, even when death is a door away.
My sweet Danny.
Why did I waste so much time being stubborn when I could’ve gotten to experience this for the past year?
“We’re going to die.” I say the words out loud, testing them in the hope that they’ll sound fake, or he’ll deny them.
Neither of those things happen, and it feels as if a heavy stone has dropped in my stomach.
“I know,” Danny whispers in return.
A piece of my heart chips away.
I know.
A confirmation I didn’t expect to hear from his lips.
I guess a part of me was expecting Danny to have a plan, to hold on to hope when it seems like we’ve reached a dead end.
He’s been so good at staying calm, positive and collected through the persistent horrors, I didn’t expect him to give up.
But he has, and it makes the muscles of my heart contract.
“We still have time,” I say, forcing myself to be the optimistic one now. “The power was out for a while. It doesn’t feel as cold in here as it could be. Someone might still find us.”
A pack of lies.
Danny’s glance tells me as much.
“There’s no one left to help us, Mabel,” he concludes with an edge of defeat that makes me want to burst into tears.
He’s right. We might have some time left, but how long?
No one knows we’re here. Even if the girls make it out, would they even think to check the freezer?
The cops would search in every room in the house before they think of this.
We’ll likely die from hypothermia if we’re not found in the next couple of hours.
Hopeless.
That’s the word I’m looking for to describe how I feel—everything seems hopeless right now.
This is the moment I’ve been dreading since the night began.
I’ve always known that the chances of survival were low, but I never thought I’d have a slow death where I could contemplate every single moment I’ve lived through tonight.
After escaping Cupid’s mortal blade multiple times, dying in a freezer seems like a lame joke.
Not even heroic or iconic.
Just . . . bland.
Of course I would have a bland death instead of an iconic one after busting my ass to stay alive.
“Well, at least we tried,” I mumble, attempting to sound optimistic or even ironic, but my voice is frail and tiny.
I bite the inside of my cheek, commanding my body to behave and keep the tears at bay. Crying is the last thing I want to do. It means things are more serious and dreadful than we’re pretending they are. If I manage to keep it together, maybe I can enjoy these last moments with Danny.
I turn to look at him, hoping to remember every detail, immortalizing his appearance and beautiful face in my brain.
His brown hair is slightly wet from the sweat and blood layered along his hairline.
Unlike me, his face is free from any blood smears or splatters, the gold of his skin contrasting with the slight stubble that has grown a little since I first saw him today, back when we were ignorant of what the night had in store for us.
The front of his shirt stained with blood is a map of the victims we’ve met tonight. At least some of them.
While he wasn’t hurt physically, his eyes are no longer warm and bright. They’ve been clouded and darkened by a mask of pain in them. That’s the biggest change I notice in him because I’ve always found warmth and comfort in his sweet puppy eyes. Now, he simply appears lost and disheartened.
“Yeah,” he mumbles, his voice unable to hide the pain. “We tried.”
I put my hand over his, can’t find the words to make his pain any lighter. At least we can share it. Pain is always a bit easier to carry when there’s someone helping you lift the weight.
“I hope the girls made it to the attic,” I say, giving his cold hand a light squeeze. “We bought them some time, so hopefully they can escape.”
He just nods.
A moment of silence passes, and then he returns the squeeze.
Followed by two more.
Squeezing my hand three times the same way he did when we decided to face Cupid together. I might be delusional at this point, but it almost feels like it means something to him.
Too purposeful to be coincidental.
“Danny.”
“Mabs,” he replies, moving his free hand to my chin, grasping it tenderly. His eyes roam over my face as if he’s trying to memorize every inch of it. The caramel of his irises melting like he’s adoring me through his gaze. “You’re so beautiful.”
My heart skips a beat.
“Even when I’m covered in blood?” I joke, unable to accept the compliment.
Danny simply smiles. For a second, the glint in his eye returns, and I wish I had a million more jokes up my sleeve.
“Even then,” he says. His smile fades a second later, replaced by a slight frown. “I’m sorry I ever made you think you weren’t.”