Blame

Hope You're Happy

"Arlen?"

Elizabeth knocked on his door one more time.

There was still no response.

She hesitated for a moment.

And then she hooked her fingers onto the door handle and slid his door open.

The small room before her was dark.

And empty.

Elizabeth sighed, "He w-went outside, didn't he?"

She glanced back out the window, biting the inside of her cheek.

She wasn't super fond of the idea of going out to look for him, but she couldn't just leave him outside if that thing was out there.

What if he got hurt?

She didn't want that to happen.

Elizabeth tried to shake off her apprehension.

She opened the door at the end of the train car, stepped out, and jumped off without any further thought. 

It was practically dead silent outside.

The only audible things were crickets and her own uneven breathing.

A nasty and indescribable feeling hung in the air.

It made that unpleasant tingle shoot through her body.

She looked around, straining her eyes to see in the darkness.

The dim light spilling from the windows didn't really illuminate all that much.

Arlen still wasn't anywhere in sight.

He frequently took walks and Elizabeth knew that he usually liked to take them next to the train and the tracks.

But she still wasn't particularly sure which direction to head in.

After a very short moment of internal debate, she ended up deciding to head towards the back of the train.

The muddy grass squelched beneath her boots as she walked.

Her eyes scanned over every single thing the limited lighting allowed her to see.

She also looked over her shoulder about every fifteen seconds.

The feeling that she was being watched simply wouldn't go away.

It got darker as she approached the storage cars, as she no longer had the light from the windows.

Elizabeth automatically pulled her lighter out of her pocket.

Clink.

She was getting close to the end of the train.

A dark shape became visible near the very last car.

"Arlen?" Elizabeth called out.

Again, no response.

But still, she picked up her pace, practically running.

As she got even closer, she found that it was indeed Arlen.

"Oh Scott..."

He was slumped against the side of the train.

A dishtowel that covered his eyes was tied around his face.

Dark stains crept over the shoulders and sides of his jacket, running onto his front.

Right next to his head, there was something written in blood. 

'I hope you're happy. I know that you didn't like him very much.'

A little smiley face with a round nose was drawn right next to it.

Elizabeth could feel her blood run cold.

The jagged, weirdly spaced, and in a few places, backward letters that gave her dyslexia the urge to scream looked very familiar.

They looked just like what she had seen on the window.

She had the very nasty feeling that those words were also intended for her.

And that little smiley face looked just like the one that Laura had carved into her skin. 

"No, no, no..."

Elizabeth wasn't happy.

Not at all.

She felt a lot of things at the current moment.

Confused, terrified, disgusted, weirdly guilty, and generally terrible.

But not happy.

Sure, maybe she and Arlen didn't get along particularly well, but she didn't want him to get hurt.

Or die.

She looked around anxiously before kneeling down next to him.

As if on cue, Arlen fell onto his side, a large red smear being left on the side of the train as he did so. Partially because his back seemed to be bloody, and partially because he rubbed against some of the words.

It now only read, 'I hope you're happy' with the smiley face.

The new position he was in revealed the handle of a small flick knife sticking out of the back of his neck.

Elizabeth took hold of one of his thin wrists, checking to see if there was any pulse left at all, even if it seemed unlikely that there was. 

"Please don't be dead..."

By some miracle, there was still a pulse there.

A very slow one.

But who knew how long that was going to last.

She needed to find him help.

You weren't supposed to carry injured people, were you?

You weren't supposed to because you could end up hurting them more.

Right?

Elizabeth was fairly certain she had been told that before.

But she had zero idea where the nearest person or phone was, and how long she would have to leave him alone in order to find one.

...She could be fast.

Right?