It's Terribly Perfect.

16. It's Terribly Perfect: Happy Holidays and Haunting Horrors.

You know those moments where everything just seems to completely stop around you? Your breath becomes shallow, you can't hear or feel a single thing, and you're just numb? The clock stops ticking, your heart skips every other beat, and your mind goes utterly blank? You can't tell up from down or right from left because everything is fogged over, black spots appearing in your vision. Nothing moves, noting makes a sound. Everything is just frozen.

Until the haunting sound of your dead friend's ringtone snaps you out of it, and you're brought back to the cruel thing we call reality?

Never happened to you? Oh.

Well it did to me, and I'm pulled back down to earth to look at the screen of my ringing phone, Luke Bradford's contact picture staring back at me.

Maybe I'm going crazy? After all, he is dead. Right?

But if he isn't . . . .

"Hello?" I try to say firmly as I answer the call in a rush, but my voice comes out hoarse and broken.

"You answered, thank God. I was afraid we may have to do this the hard way," the person on the other end replies with a strange tone of voice.

That's not Luke, not even close.

The alien reverberation and the way the words bite at the air.

No, definitely not Luke.

That guy.

 "What do you want?" I hiss coldly, not even bothering to ask who he was, already knowing he'd refuse to tell me.

"Oh, feisty are we? I just wanted to say hello," he teased, the voice modifier hiding a clue to his identity.

"Cut the crap. Why do you have Luke's phone?"

"You really haven't figured it out yet? Wow Kasynne I really thought you'd put it all together by now."

"You're the one that raped me, right? I already guessed that much," I retorted, wincing when the 'R' word came from my lips.

"Congratulations. But did you figure out the whole part about how I'm the one who pretty much killed your little friend?"

There it is again. Everything around me freezing, including my breath, my heart skipping the necessary beats. Words? What are words? How do you speak? How do you breathe? The simple tasks now seemed foreign to my brain as his words echoed in my head.

"Kasynne, dear, use your words," he spoke again.

"You . . . you're the one who r-ran him off the road?"

"Bingo, we have a winner," he mocks dryly. "Honestly how did you not figure that out sooner?"

"Why?" I asked, ignoring his question. "Why would you do that to him? Why did you do what you did to me?"

"Well see if you knew who I was then you would know, but, you don't. So too bad for you."

"You're sick," I spat, grinding my teeth together.

"Aw, no need to be so cruel," he whines, feigning hurt. "But listen Kasynne," he continued, changing the subject, "driving Luke and his drunkard of a father off the road was such a rush, I quite enjoyed it. Maybe I'll do it to someone else, yeah? Maybe Tyler or Arin, or maybe even your cougar of a mother. Oh! I know, how about I'll kill our baby?" I could almost see the smirk on the mask from my dream growing wider.

"Don't you dare," I try to sound threatening but it comes out as a weak plead. A booming, transparent laugh came from the other end of the phone.

"Oh you're so cute, thinking you can intimidate me or beg for my mercy. Silly girl, it's only a matter of time before I kill someone else who has your love. Oh and don't bother calling the cops to get them to track this phone. It'd be pointless seeing as how I'm about to throw it into the river under the town's bridge."