trigger warnings: violence, gore, and death.
Pushing her way through the crowd of her classmates, Ophelia made her way to her car as fast as possible. The class had run ten minutes late, and she was already fifteen minutes from the lake. She pulled out her phone, shooting Ryan a short text to let him know that she would be late before buckling herself into her seat. She knew that she should have been nervous, but for some reason, she felt no amount of anxiety as she turned the rock music up loud and pulled out of her parking spot. She wondered what he was going to say to her, if anything different than what he had on the phone. Ophelia did appreciate the idea of him wanting to apologize to her in person, the genuineness of his words on the phone had her putting all of her trust in him. She wasn't sure if she believed it quite yet, but she had tremendously high hopes that he really had changed. That everything he had said to her was true, about his new girlfriend, his dad, and wanting to do better.
Ophelia had always been told she needed to stop seeing only the good in people, and that she could get herself hurt by doing that. She did understand that she might be walking into a death trap, but for a reason unbeknownst to her, she didn't care. Not in the slightest. Maybe some part of her, deep down, hoped it was a trap. Hoped Ryan had nothing but malicious intent, so maybe one stupid mistake would end all of the pain she was bestowing upon others with her existence. She seemed to be making every wrong decision in the book the past few weeks, and she wasn't sure how to stop it. Maybe this was her way out. Maybe, just maybe, if she could get Ryan mad enough at her, he would go off the rails. Do something far worse than just kidnap her. She deserved it for all that she'd done. She knew that.
Her thoughts were shoved to the back of her mind as she finally pulled into the parking lot, glancing around for any sign of life around the pitch black field. The lake was nearly invisible, only lit up by a strip of the moonlight running across the rippling black water. Ophelia took a breath, checking the time on her car to make sure she hadn't gotten it wrong. 8:34, her dash read. Maybe he'd seen her text about being late and stopped somewhere on his way, or taken a little longer to leave being unsure of when she would arrive. Ophelia had seen enough movies to know that if you were gonna murder someone, this was exactly the place to do it. A secluded beach on a pitch black lake between two forests, no sign of civilization for a mike on either side. No one to hear the screams, Ophelia thought.
She decided to take matters into her own hands, picking up her phone and dialing Ryan's number. She pulled the keys out of the ignition, getting out of the car and nearly jumping out of her skin when she triggered the automatic street lamp. "Hey." Ryan says, his voice more gruff than the last time they had spoken. Much less sincerity. "You almost here?" Ophelia asks, squinting her eyes as she looks around the empty beach. "Yeah. Sorry, just stopped to pick up a few things when you said you were gonna be late." He explains lowly, the tone of his voice sending a chill down her spine. Things. She wanted to ask, but she decided it was probably better not to. For her own sake. The girl saw a pair of headlights lighting up the street as it began slowing down at the entrance to the parking lot.
"I think I see your headlights." Ophelia says, walking close to the car pulling in and further from her own. "What did you say?" Ryan asks, and she narrows her eyes, unsure of why the self-explanatory sentence was hard to comprehend. "I see you. I'm gonna hang up, I'll talk to you when you park." Ophelia says, pulling her phone away from her ear to hang up the call. Before she could press the button, she heard Ryan scream in protest, telling her not to hang up. The car pulled into the parking lot slowly, stopping when it was about twenty feet from the girl. "What are you yelling about?" Ophelia asks, waving towards the car. "Turn off your brights. I can't see anything." She complains, and Ryan takes a deep breath on the other end of the call. "Did you get out of your car?" Ryan asks, his voice low now.
