She doesn’t question the silent directive.She just puts one spiky-toed foot in front of the other until she’s at my side, staring at the cleanest patch of carpet in front of us.When it starts to darken from the expanding pool of Curtis’s blood, she raises both her hands to cover her mouth, and the sight of her empty shaking palms in contrast to the Kahlúa bottle clenched tightly in my own makes me realize she’s not following rule three.
The table on my left has a half-empty beer bottle on it, so keeping my eyes on the other emerging members of the room, I reach across Laurie and curl my fingers around the neck.Once I smash the base against the tabletop—a collective flinch rippling across the room at the sound of breaking glass—it’s a travel-sized version of the weapon in my hand.
Now that all eight of us are standing out in the open, I try to identify everyone.
Me, Laurie, John, Wes, Drew—I mean Stu—the guy I would’ve had a date with after Curtis, and the two women I first started talking to during cocktail hour: the Kate Hudson blonde and the Meg Ryan pixie cut.
That seems like a long time ago now.
“Take this,” I say, pushing the neck of the bottle into Laurie’s palm as I straighten, her fingers trembling until she tightens her grip.
“Okay… what… what do I do with it?”Each word shakes as it leaves her mouth, and it just makes me focus extra hard on making my own voice sound steady when I answer, “If it looks like someone is going to attack you… stick it into them.”
“Right…” She nods, as if I’ve told her she needs to stop believing the contouring tricks she sees on social media are going to work for her in real life.“Of course.”
A scream echoes from above, and eight heads jerk up like it’s the beginning strains of “Mr.Brightside.”It cuts off so quickly, so abruptly, that I know that—even without the weighty thud of a bodyfalling to the ground—whoever is doing this, whoever iscapableof doing something like this, must be up there.And while there is a moment of relief that they’re not still in the room with us, it’s quickly overwhelmed by what that scream means.
They aren’t finished, not by a long shot.
Curtis was just the first kill—the first offour—and any one of us could be next.
CHAPTER 7
“If you want to kill someone, you do it, you do it right then, out loud.Otherwise, the moment just… passes you by.”
—NotMy Best Friend’s Wedding
“Is anyone hurt?”
Wes’s voice is even more raspy than before, the question jarring in the stunned aftermath of what was supposed to be a normal, fun, nonmurdery night.
It’s also kind of ironic given the scene around us, and the fact he’s holding a weapon as he says it.I can’t find it in me to point out the obvious.No one can.We all just shake our heads and then, one by one, survey the room.Take in the way most of the tables and chairs are splayed across the space, how the blood spatters on the gas lamps look almost intentional from afar, or how there is a clear distinction between the red shag of the carpet and the darker-toned stains that spread across it.Those details are going to form the backdrop of our nightmares from now on.If we can get out of here, that is.
John is the one who finally speaks, combing a hand through hishair and confirming that that cute, disheveled look is entirely by accident as he states, “We can’t stay here.”
“You want to go up there?”Dr—Stu, damn it, says incredulously, pointing to the shard-like section of stairs visible through the doorframe.
Aside from Curtis, the other bodies—our host and the bartenders, people who were just here because of theirjob—make heinous markers toward the exit.I saw the daters who panicked and ran out of the room going in that direction before the lights cut out again, and I think it’s safe to say the killer worked their way toward the stairs just the same as those who were trying to escape.
After that initial scream, and those heavy panicked footfalls, the level above us is now eerily silent, and that prompts the question: Who made the right choice?Those who ran, or those who hid?With the killer upstairs the answer might be obvious, but there is one advantage the runners have that we don’t: they’re closer to accessing the outside world through those heavy double doors, while we’re standing in a basement surrounded by four bodies.
“I don’t think there’s an exit down here,” I say, memories of Laurie and me stumbling around this level after we’d had a few Kamikazes running through my head.
“You’ve been here before?”John asks, moving farther into the room.Farther away from Marion’s body.
I nod.“It’s been a few years, but I remember that.Right, Laurie?”
“Right,” she replies automatically, her eyes glued to the ceiling in an attempt to avoid looking at the puddle of blood seeping into the carpet at our feet.
“There are stairs on that side, too.”I point to the other archway with my free hand.Nobody tried to go that way because terror gives you tunnel vision.“We could go up that way, cross the dance floor, and try to get to the front entrance.”
I don’t know how my voice is so steady.I don’t know how I’m thinking so straight, but I’m certain that being underground is not a good idea, and that this bar is far more claustrophobic than I first thought.There’s also the voice in my head that keeps reminding me I’ve seen this movie before.
“Try?” the Kate Hudson blonde in the pink dress says.Colette.She must’ve been at a table close to the bar, because a heavy spray of blood covers the left side of her body.The loopy handwriting and the cute heart on her name tag are covered with it.The sticker may as well just be one big block of red, and when she gingerly peels it off and blood soaks into the untouched square of knit material beneath it, she gags.I want to pick up a napkin from the bar and offer it to her, even a paper coaster, but it would be useless… they’re all soaked.
“Whoever did this, they’re probably still up there,” I say, because I doubt the killer slaughtered four—probably five, if that scream overhead was anything to go by—people and then decided to call it a night and flick through some new releases on Netflix.“I don’t think they’re just going to let us walk out.”
I make the mistake of glancing over at Wes and he goes from looking gravely at the two dead bartenders to staring back at me with that same intense, guarded look from before.Before.When Ijokedabout this very thing happening.God, to think I was babbling about how the very scenario we’re living out would be the worst way to end our night.My manifestations about my career and love life never come to fruition, but I utter the words “speed date” and “killer” in the same sentenceonceand speak it into existence?
