A Deadly Game, A Dangerous Midnight

A Merciful Kill

Alexandria's P.O.V

I focused on my breathing, fighting to keep it from sounding ragged. Looking over at Jake, I realised he was the opposite of panic. In fact, he looked as if nothing had happened. What was wrong with him? Hadn't he just seen what happened to Walter back there? 

"Alex!" 

I looked up, noticing a slender figure slinking around in the shadows. 

"Omg Paisley, you're okay!" I reached out and grabbed her hand, forgetting about our argument, just a few minutes ago. 

"Of course I'm alright." she playfully rolled her eyes, but I could not mistake the tension in her eyes. 

"What happened?"

"We're down to three." 

"What?" 

"Jared got caught, but surrounded himself with salt at the last second."

"Ah." I tried to absorb this piece of information. Three of us left standing. I breathed in a sigh, trying to control my mixed feelings. I was glad that I was still in one piece, but as the clock ticked on towards 3:33 a.m., I felt even more anxious, sure that something terrible would happen during that stretch of time. Sure enough, it did, in the most horrifying way.

I was walking around a corner of the hallway upstairs when I heard a scream of absolute shock. Immediately, I rushed downstairs, only to find Paisley standing there, face as pale as snow, her shaking hands holding nothing. 

"Paisley, where's your candle?" I yelled, frightened by what would happen once her time was up. 

She shook her head once, and I knew then and there that there was no hope for her, just like Walter. She was doomed to suffer the same fate. 

After what seemed like an eternity of standing there, staring at each other with gaping mouths, she let out an agonized scream. It sounded excruciating. Her body jerked from side to side, her legs bent at an awkward angle. Her stiff arms stuck out from her body like gnarled branches. She was thrown backwards into the wall by some unseen force. Slamming into the wall with a loud 'thump!' and a disturbing 'crack!', she let out a breathless moan and collapsed to the ground, groaning. Before she even had a chance to regain her balance, she was thrown forward, once more, and collided into me. 

It seemed as if the world had utterly gone into slow motion. As we tumbled backwards, I caught a glimpse of her clouded eyes. Losing its color completely, it had a sense of dread and insanity. We both  toppled over to the ground, a tangle of arms and legs. I gasped, my lungs were fighting for air and my heart was beating rapidly. Without warning, Paisley, still on top of me, let out a piercing scream. 

I had never heard anything like it before. It was a shrill, almost demonic sound. Driven by pure madness, she reached down and drove her long nails into my cheek. I screamed as she slashed at my face over and over again. 

Instinctively, I shoved my hand in her face, hard, all the while making a huge effort trying to unseat her. But she was too strong. Her frenzied rage, her unmistakable urge to attack, her desperation to flee her deepest fears somehow making her lash out at the first thing she sees.... it made escaping almost impossible. I screamed over and over again as, one by one, deep gashes appeared on my face. Her short bursts of breaths got more audible, and her clawing and scratching at my face became more frenzied. 

In one last attempt to free myself, I tensed up my right arm, clenched my shaking hand into a fist and swung it forward without a moment of hesitation. I winced, clearly hearing the loud 'bwak!' as my fist connected with her abdomen.