How to Be Cliche (A Novel)

(25) Backstabbing Emo

              I jerked awake with an incredible stiff neck and something big in my mouth. Don't worry, it was just cotton. I think... I cautiously brought my tongue to the tip of the object in my mouth and quickly retreated. Cotton. There was a wad of cotton in my mouth to shut me up.

                  That emo BITCH!

                  It was cold. I'm talking lets-stick-Pepper-in-the-freezer cold. And it was pitch black. The kind of darkness that made someone overwhelmingly paranoid and lonesome. Wonderful feeling, really. Squinting my eyes through the darkness, I started to wonder if I was at the center of a trap, and if I moved even the slightest two giant blades would slice me in half. Or maybe I was at the center of some psychotic, Satanic circle and Gary was off preparing his side dishes for his cannibalistic sacrifice.

                  Finally finding the strength and courage to ignore the pitiful loneliness and quit being such a little girl, I tried to move around and--

                  Oh.

                  Alright, so I was tied up. My hands were bounded over my head and my toes stretched downwards towards the ground as I tried to stand.  Instead, I swung like a loner pendulum ball, like a "wrecking ball" as Miley Cyrus would say, swaying back and forth in the darkness. The knot at my hands was tight as hell. Gary must have been a boy scout. A really, really emo boy scout. Agitated, I wiggled again. Alright, so Gary must have been a really, really, really emo boy scout because this knot was perfection.         

                  I clenched my fingers. All there. I shook my legs. There. I wiggled my feet. There. I rolled my neck. Still stiff, but in the right place. No pain. No notably symptoms of any drugs. (Not that Pepper Ballard did drugs. But there was that time I accidently snorted a Pixie stick...)

                  As I said before, there was a strip of clean cotton in my mouth that prevented me from crying out. The more I focused on it, the more I wanted it out. I started to feebly sob, then gagged on the cotton and kicked out all over again, starting the pendulum swinging back and forth again. Great.

                  My heart thrummed wildly in my chest. Gary was Smiley. I couldn't believe it, but I remembered it all too clearly and it was nauseating. The bastard. He told me I was getting in the way of his "job". Please, I was only like 5'9 or something, he could have easily taken me with him and swung an axe over my head and kill whoever he wanted. Alright, maybe the cotton in my mouth did have some sort of drugs in it because I was taking his evil side. His evil, sexy, dark...muscular--

                  Non-pierced nipples that nobody cares about but you... Conscious reminded me bitterly.

                  Anyways. If I passed out and wasn't feeling any pain anywhere, I knew Gary must have struck me in the neck at a pressure point.

                  The precision of a serial killer.

                  I give up, I thought, hanging loosely from the rope with my head to my chest. I was doomed. Pushing up daisies. R.I.P Pepper Ballard, bitches. I could see it now, my mom and dad standing in front of my grave. My mom had a box of condoms in her hand that she scattered along the dirt in front of it, whispering something like, 'You can still get the itch in Heaven" or something like that. Dad was momentarily sobbing over his beloved daughter dying, then casually leaned over to mom and said, "Can we try for a boy this time?" Nobody loved me. Nobody would miss me. Pepper Ballard was--