Something to Bond Over || Until Dawn Jossam

The Martyr [Part 01]

CHRIS; BLACKWOOD STATION; 21:52
FIFTEEN HOURS SINCE INCIDENT

So, it's ten minutes to ten, which means it's about fifteen hours since we barely managed to get out of the Washington Lodge alive. God, I can't even think straight because my mind keeps coming back to the images of fire, those fucking wendigos... and deaths. So many deaths in one night.

The only thing anchoring me in this existence is the feel of this beautiful girl on my left, burying herself in my arms.

"Hey, Ash?" I whisper in her ear.

"Yeah?" she whispers back, her fist closing in on my blue jacket as if speaking at all will result in something we don't want to happen.

After the need to stay still and quiet unless you want to fucking die, I can understand the left-over fear. Even Mike—the one who sort of became our leader at the time of distress—nearly hit Sam in the face half an hour ago just from a touch on the shoulder.

Goddamn, I don't know what I would do if someone tries to scare the shit out of me.

Would I think they're a wendigo, too? Would I try to hold whatever-it-is-I'd-be-holding up like a shotgun to someone's face whenever someone startles me? Who the fuck knows? I didn't really think about it until Mike lashed out. Now, it's stuck in my head along with everything else.

Ashley hasn't been doing better. She's still shaking from time to time.

"How are you holding up?" I ask her for the hundredth time because I really want to make sure she's okay. No, I need to make sure she's okay.

Well, not okay-okay. We all know we're not. Not after last night. At least, I want to make sure she's not spiraling down that dark hole of thoughts of wendigos and fires... and death.

Ash's shaky breath and the tug on my jacket brings me out of my own dark thoughts and I let out a heavy sigh.

She doesn't answer me this time. She doesn't need to. Her answer's gonna be the same anyway.

Instead of forcing her to say anything else, I tell her, "Yeah, me, too," kissing her on the top of her head.

A part of me is fucking thrilled that I get to do things like these now—show Ashley how much she means to me without hesitating like I did in the past—and that she is responding positively to my gestures.

But then a part of me reminds me how I got this far—how Ashley and I got together in the first place—how we even got to know each other's feelings. Then, a part of me is now back in the lodge, reminded of everything that happened there—both the real and the faked.

And then I go back to ground zero. Ready to detonate at any second.

Josh... Goddamn shit, my best friend is fucking dead. I... I still can't believe it... along with Jess and that guy with the flamethrower... I never even knew his name.

I can't stop thinking about them. All three of them.

That guy with the flamethrower—I can't stop thinking about how he died... and I saw it with my own two eyes. I can't stop thinking about how his head got cut off with one swipe from the wendigo.

I can't stop thinking about how I could have been him.

I could have been the one with his head cut off. I was lucky enough to have been standing where I was standing, and he was unlucky enough to stand where he stood. If I hadn't been faster than him, I would have been the one who is dead.

A butterfly effect that could have changed a lot right now.

And fuck, Josh and Jess are both probably dead the same way, too, now. It's ten in the evening. The wendigos probably caught them by now and are feasting on them. Fuck. Fuck. What did that man say wendigos do?

"He will render you immobile, and then he stripes the skin off of your entire body piece by piece... And he keeps you alive, and aware, and feasts on your organs one piece at a time."

To think that Josh and Jess... Josh... Jess... Josh... and Jess... Josh... Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.

Oh God no, no, no, no.

They can't be... I can't think of... They shouldn't be... No, I can't think about it. I shouldn't think about it. I mustn't. I shouldn't, but fuck it all, the thought of their dead bodies being mangled by those fucking monsters won't stop rewinding in my head. FUCK.

"Chris," I hear my name in a muffled tone, as if I'm deep in a cave and the other person is just on the other side of it, calling for me but never coming in to get me.

I know what's happening. My logic knows what's happening. I'm having a panic attack, and someone's trying to calm me down.

"Chris," I hear again, a bit clearer this time. "Chris..."

I blink a couple of times to see green eyes staring right back at me—eyes filled with concern, fear, and a kind of worry I can't understand.

"Chris?" the soft voice of Ashley Brown asks.

I'm in the Blackwood Police Station. Of course.

"Y-Yeah?" I ask her, unsurprised at how shaky my voice had become. I did just have a panic attack.

I clear my throat, but I realize that my whole body is still shaking. I look at my tremendously shaking hands incredulously. I can't believe I just had a panic attack.

"You're not breathing right," Ash tells me, her own eyes showing as much panic as I had felt.

But she's right. I'm still not breathing right. I'm not breathing right because a huge part of me still doesn't believe in the supernatural, and yet how else can I explain what happened back there in the mountain? How else can I explain the fact that all six of us saw what happened at the same time? That those things were real? I know they were real.

And I don't want them to, but there's nothing I can do to change the past. What did that graffiti up in the mountain say?

"THE PAST IS BEYOND OUR CONTROL."

Was the graffiti Josh's doing, too? It probably is. And even then, he's right. The past is beyond our control. I need to keep my cool. I need to be strong.

I need to be strong for Ashley.