Mesmerized | ✓

27

Candace quickly found out that it was impossible to talk to her high school friends. Each time she called either of them all they talked about was Yuli and the prom he was organizing. Candace didn't even have the time to open her mouth when her friend was already in the middle of describing every single detail of her evening gown or raving about just how perfect Yuli was. They could go on and on about how he looked like a porcelain doll with milky white skin, emerald eyes that looked straight into your soul, and the hair that was in the shade of the most spectacular of sunsets.

She didn't understand why they would be so infatuated with someone they had seen once in their life, on a video. Besides, from what she remembered her friends never went boy-crazy like that. It was weird but it seemed to Candace like the whole town had collectively gotten insane.

Each time she left the house she could see that the people generally didn't care about the threat of getting killed or being kidnapped. The malls was loud with people going from one dress shop to another. The lines to the dressing room were insane. Girls tried dozen dresses on before settling on one and it was an unusual sight to see a girl walk out of the store without a dress neatly packed for them.

It seemed like Candace was the only sane person left in the town as she was not going to the prom and it seemed to her like the most ridiculous of ideas. Stuck with nothing but her thoughts in her bedroom Candace carefully pulled aside her curtain to check if the insanity had reached her house. And surely, she saw her neighbor carry a box with what seemed like shoes inside. Candace rolled her eyes and sat back down on her bed feeling her cell phone vibrate in her pocket.

The girl took it out but it was Carl, which as she head learned was really just Yuli trying to reach her through his friend's phone, so she ignored the phone call wishing that she could really talk to him, and make sure that it was the town going crazy and not just her getting lost in her delusions. Luckily, her parents seemed to be unaffected for the time being, but they didn't even know who that Yuli guy was.

Soon after the call Candace heard a doorbell. With both of her parents at work she decided to go and have a look, hoping that it would be a mailman or someone like that who was not going to bombard her with a litany of superlatives regarding either anything to do with prom or Yuli himself.

She quietly waked down the staircase, making sure that the steps didn't creak under her feet. The front door had a small window obscured by a semi-transparent drapery so the girl walked over carefully and looked through. Maybe she was being ridiculous and those people weren't threatening but she was not in the mood for listening about Yuli. Luckily, it was Carl on the other side and her heart skipped a beat as she remembered the kiss that along with Carl's sudden disappearance and alarming behavior had both hurt and freaked her out. But there was another person next to her friend. A guy that she didn't know, a few years older than them by the looks of it.

Nevertheless, Candace longed for a connection with someone her own age, she unlocked the door and couldn't stop herself from smiling. But her friend, though, didn't look happy. She could hardly remember him smiling and excited about something in the recent weeks. Carl was always broody and didn't talk much. "Hi." Candace greeted them.

"Hi." Carl said back and the trio just stared awkwardly at one another for some time. "This is Mark." He finally introduced his friend gesturing at him. "And there's something we need to show you."

*****

"What the hell is this?" Carl watched the horror appear on Candace's face as the girl watched the recording of Yuli killing Lance at the bait shop. He wished he could feel the same disgust and disbelief but he had become completely numb to it. "Did he...kill him or is this some kind of joke?"