Free Reign

Chapter Eight

The scream pierced Pin's ears like they were Jojo Siwa earrings, and he was a 9-year-old girl getting an ear-piercing done at Claire's. 

All-day, ever since the phone call, everyone and everything going on around him had seemed like a dream. Up until now, his life had been all cute ponies and rainbows, sometimes even literally. Come to think of it, he had never even sworn or heard a swear word. And now, all of a sudden, his life was flipped upside down like a pancake- only not a good, neat pancake. No, his life was an ugly pancake, one that, when it had been flipped, landed at the edge of the pan, and it had to be rearranged, but it was still wet, so it stuck to the spatula and now his life was in pieces and underdone and overdone at the same time. It didn't feel real.

Now, he finally woke up from the dream-like state he had been living in, jolted awake by the high pitched shriek. The police officer he had been with, filing an absurd amount of paperwork, had left five minutes ago to get more pens after the ones they had been using ran out of ink, leaving Pin alone in his guest bedroom.

After hesitating for a long moment, Pin opened the door to the hallway and peered outside. He breathed a sigh of relief. No dead bodies. At least... not yet.

Slowly, Pin crept his way through dozens of corridors, encountering no one (dead or alive). He was beginning to think he simply imagined the scream when he rounded another corner and- Bam!

A second scream pierced his ears, perhaps in the cartilage this time, and he sheilded his eyes, prepared to be murdered- though, why a murderer would scream right before killing someone he had no idea.

"I have a knife! ...Pin?"

Pin uncovered his eyes. "...Zoe? What are you doing here?"

"I heard the scream, and I wanted to see if you were, you know, alive." Zoe whispered that last word conspiritorialy.

"Okay, but, like... what did you do with the horses?" Pin worried.

"I left them with Marcus. He heard the scream and offered to watch them for me so I could find you. I believe his exact words were, 'I've been looking forward to some alone time with Raven and Elvis.' He's such a nice guy."

Pin let out a quick sigh of relief. Good. For a second, he thought the horses might actally be out there all alone, at the mercy of a cold-blooded killer.

"So what happened," Zoe asked, "Who screamed?"

Pin opened his mouth, and was about to respond that he had no idea either, when suddenly a woman burst through the door Zoe had come through at the end of the hallway and began half-walking, half-running towards them.

As she got closer, Pin squinted at her hands and face. It looked like they had a mess of chocolate on them. Had somebody brought cake? God, he was starving. He hadn't eaten all day and now he was suddenly so hungry. 

When the woman was around one horse-length away from where he and Zoe stood, however, his appetite was quickly quenched. Her hands weren't covered in chocolate. They were covered in blood.