Down Under

Chapter 2

The beeps of the hospital machine surrounded you as you awoke. You made out the bleak atmosphere of the hospital ceiling when your eyes slowly cracked open. The eeriness of the off-white color settled you into reality as the other noises started rushing in. The beeps were constant but you could also hear the rushed whispers behind a closed door near you. Some words were audible while the rest muddled in with all the new noises overloading your senses. A stabbing pain throbbed in your head as it all became all too much for you.

"Wait, so she just passed out after throwing up on your brother," one voice exclaimed, joy riddled in his sentence as he enunciated each word. "Dude, that's fucking gross. What did you guys drink?"

"That's the thing! We had nothing to drink so that couldn't have been the cause for any of this," the clear voice of Tatum shot back at whoever said the first thing. "She was scared over something... claiming to have been killed before waking up in the bed. My only suspicion is that Randy forced her to watch his shitty movies again without any warnings!"

"What! She loves horror, there is no way that she got a nightmare from a scary movie!" another male voice retaliated, probably belonging to this Randy kid. A thick silence followed after his claim, making him slowly realize that maybe he was at fault for this. He did force you to watch most of Friday the 13th again just two days ago, but you did like horror movies - right?

"Randy, sorry to break it to you, but she's only been trying to be nice. She's scared easily by those movies, has been since she was a child," a girl calmly spoke back.

"Don't be nice to the horror freak Sidney! We've tried to tell him, but he's always pushing her to watch more despite all of our warnings. If you're the reason behind this entire fiasco, I am going to punch you," another angry guy spoke.

Managing to push past the pounding headache that continued to grow, you sat up in your hospital bed and looked at the various tubes coming from the machines. The room danced in your vision the moment you got to sit up. The iv in your arm was gently pulled along with your movement. Your bed creaked from under you as you moved as well, a noise that clue in the other people outside that you were conscious.

You silently cursed yourself under your breath after alerting the strangers outside about your consciousness. Considering the fact that Tatum was insistent on your being her friend and how you were still stuck here, you were not in a dream. Normally you would have never dreamed about being in a horror movie such as Scream... perhaps the parody version of it for shits and giggles but not a true horror movie. You were a romance fanatic, not a horror one. Sure, romance could have hints of horror in it, but not to the same degree as normal horror movies. Were you going to be another victim to a gruesome death just for some plot now?

A soft knock broke you out of your various death imaginations. Most of them were centered around you being brutally stabbed to death again while some became more creative. If you were going to die again, hopefully, it would be entertaining.

"Hey (y/n)? If I open the door right now can you promise to not projectile vomit over me again," Dewey asked, some underlying fear in his voice as he cracked the door open. Hey, if you were him, you would also want to make sure. Stomach acid was a pain to deal with.

"Yeah... I have a trashcan right here just for that," you mumbled back. Your throat still burned from the aftermath of throwing up as well as your screaming. Voice practically lost, your answer came out in a rasp that the others winced at.

Dewey was the first to make a full appearance after swinging the door open, with Tatum pushing past him to get to you first. She took your hands in hers, rubbing them together so that they would get warmer. "Do you have any idea how worried I- we were? Not only were you super pale but you were also cold to the touch. The doctors say that it is a normal reaction to something brutal happening, a shock of sorts, apparently." She continued to ramble about the doctor's discoveries. How your vocal cords were weirdly swollen and the side of your body had distinctive scar tissue developing despite you never being attacked (to their knowledge). "Dewey tried to call your mom but she has no signal where she is apparently. Talk about abandoning your child."