Survive the Night

1

*Songs For Scenes*
1) Devil's Been Talkin' - by Needtobreathe

The putrid smell of bleach and urine pinched Victoria Brooke's nose the moment she entered the restroom at Eldridge Senior High School. The sound of chuckles bounced off the walls and she stopped mid-stride. They sounded masculine.

"Hello?" she called, thinking for a humiliating moment that she'd entered the wrong room.

The boys made shushing sounds to each other from within the stall while one of them bellowed out a nasty cry. Victoria was the only girl in the room, she realized, and she turned, noticing that the three sink faucets were running full blast to drown out the noise in the stall.

"You guys cut it out," she shouted over the rushing water. "Whatever you're doing in there, stop it."

The boys laughed hysterically, and she heard the toilet flush. More laughing and hushed, secret words. Then, making Victoria take an involuntary step back, one of the boys regressed from the stall, smiling at her.

It was Kevin Cooper, the boy who'd brought Eldridge High's varsity basketball team two consecutive state championship rings. Eldridge High was a small school, but if it was a kingdom, Kevin ruled it with an iron scepter.

Grinning, he brushed off a few beads of toilet water from his polyester letterman jacket.

"All yours," he said, then turned and walked out of the restroom.

The two other boys inside the stall-Michael Sage and Geo Malovich (Kevin Cooper's varsity basketball teammates)-quickly surfaced, chuckling and avoiding eye contact with Victoria. They followed Kevin out of the room like faithful tails.

There was still someone in the stall. And he was sobbing; his voice echoing dimly from the hem of the toilet bowl. As she approached, Victoria knew that it was Icarus Foster, a petite boy from their class, even before he turned his soaked face to her. His hands were blindly searching for his glasses on the floor and he was sobbing a confusing stream of tears and toilet piss, spitting foul juice from his mouth. His black mushroom hair was pasted on his forehead like a glossy poster.

She walked past him, pretending not to notice his darkly drenched uniform and his piss-licked hair, and the smell of filth protruding from his general direction. She locked herself inside the stall beside his and breathed in the thick, awkward air before settling down on the toilet. This always happened to the poor kid, and she didn't know how much more of it she could stand to watch.

A minute later she heard Icarus's feet as he exited the restroom, leaving small puddles of toilet water behind him.

***

"When you think of Halloween, what comes to mind?" asked Mr. Crockett, rolling a stick of chalk in his hand.

"Pumpkins," said Wendy Cho.

"Good. What else?"

"Ghosts," said Emily Black.

"Good."

"Candy!" said Sasha Perkins, and the class giggled.

"Right! Wonderful. One more."

"Ashmore house," said Winston Patel, and the laughter stopped.

Mr. Crockett seemed to stand up straight for a moment, then nodded and returned to his desk.

"The assignment tonight," he said, "is to write an essay on Halloween, its origin, and why it's so important in society today."

He jotted out that night's homework assignment on the board. Victoria and Ashley were seated at the far left of the room, by the windows that overlooked a block of yellow houses and the bus stop. She watched a pick-up truck roll slowly by the road, and thought about the nightmare she'd had the night before. She knew why the dreams were more consistent now. Tomorrow would make a year since...

"You look tired," Ashley Dooling said.

Victoria had her fists beneath her chin. "What gave it away?"

"Another nightmare?" Ashley asked.

"Yes."

"Was it...?"

"Yeah, about my mom," she finished.

"Oh."

Ashley dropped the subject and darted her attention back to her textbook.

The remainder of the school day proceeded like it always had in the past-even more homework was distributed, students were dozily fighting to stay awake, and the clock above Mr. Crockett's classroom door cranked its needle hands as slow as an elderly woman walking with a cane. But it was that very evening that life in the small town of Marbury changed forever.

It was the night Victoria Brooke, Ashley Dooling, Kevin Cooper, Winston Patel, Sasha Perkins, Emily Black, Geo Malovich, Michael Sage, Robby "Bleak" Reed, Wendy Cho, and Icarus Foster went missing. Though at first, no one knew they were gone.

They were all normal high school kids. None of them deserved such horrible things as trauma and terror and death. But they each had it coming to them. From the best of them to the worst.

They were all equals that night.