The Uninvited Guest

The Game Begins

The room was suffocating in its silence. Elena's pulse roared in her ears, her hands trembling as she processed the gravity of what was happening.

Her phone buzzed again. Another message. With shaky hands, she unlocked the screen and stared at the text.

Let's start with the truth, shall we? The night you all tried to forget. It's time for the reckoning. One by one.

Elena's stomach dropped, the air rushing out of her lungs. No. He couldn't mean that. Not that night.

Her eyes darted toward the guests, each one oblivious to what was coming. But she knew exactly what Norman was about to do. That night—the one they had buried, the one she had worked so hard to forget—was coming back to haunt them all.

Jason turned to her, his voice low and urgent. "Elena, what is this? What is he talking about?"

She opened her mouth to speak, but the words felt heavy and stuck. How could she explain this to Jason? How could she tell him that the people in this room—her closest friends, her family—had all played a part in something so dark, so damaging, that they had sworn never to speak of it again?

Before she could respond, the screen flickered, and suddenly, a grainy video began to play. The footage was old, shot from a shaky camera phone. The timestamp at the bottom read **10 years ago**.

The scene showed a car speeding down a dark, winding road. Inside the car, the camera captured voices—laughter, shouting, music blaring from the radio. Elena recognized the voices immediately. Hers. Yennifer's.

And Sam's.

Elena's breath hitched in her throat, her body frozen in place as the footage continued. It was supposed to have been a fun night, a carefree evening with friends. They had been drinking, laughing, celebrating—just teenagers, invincible and reckless. None of them had been paying attention. None of them had seen what was coming.

The video continued, and the laughter in the car grew louder—until suddenly, the sound of tires screeching filled the air. The camera jostled violently, and then came the unmistakable *crash*

The screen went black for a moment, but the audio continued. Elena could hear the sound of her own voice, panicked and shaky. "What happened? Oh my God, what happened?"

Her phone buzzed again, and her stomach lurched as she read the message.

"You told me everything, Elena. Now it's time to share."

It wasn't another video. It was something worse—her words. Norman had collected every confession, every desperate, panicked message she had ever sent him, and now he was using them as weapons.

It wasn't just her secret anymore. Several people in this room were connected to that night. And Norman was about to expose every piece of it.

She remembered it all too clearly—the late-night messages she had sent years ago, back when she had thought Norman cared. She had poured her heart out to him, told him everything about that night. The night she had tried so hard to forget.

The accident. The boy they'd hit.

Sam's death.

The lights flickered again, and the screen in the reception hall buzzed back to life. Norman's face filled the screen, his expression a mask of cold amusement.

Jason's grip on her arm tightened. "What was that?"

Elena opened her mouth to answer, but before she could speak, the screen crackled with audio. Her own voice filled the room, shaky and broken, from a recording she had sent to Norman years ago.