“Quiet!!” I bark at Chad while he continues to blubber and scream. And when he doesn’t listen, I ball my fist and punch him square in the face, watching as blood splatters over the side of Toby’s face. But still… the son of a bitch doesn’t react. He doesn’t flinch either, he just sits there, rigid.
“What the fuck is going on!?” Jack cries in panic beside him.
“Jesus Christ,” I groan, pinching the bridge of my nose. “What’s not clicking for you, huh?” I screw my face up, looking at him like he’s the stupidest fucking idiot in the world.
“You’re d-dead! I-I saw you!” Chad whimpers in fear before he eventually turns his attention to me. “Ricky, what the fuck did you give us!? This can’t be fucking real; Jesus Christ, I’m fucking tripping, man.” The panic in his voice tells me he knows this isn’t a dream, but his brain is trying to rationalise this momentas best as it can. “This can’t be real, this can’t be r-real—” he continues to chant over and over again, squeezing his eyes shut tightly and rocking back and forth.
“Chad,” Toby snarls through gritted teeth, leaning his head forward to look at him. It’s the first thing he’s said since he woke up. “Shut. The Fuck. Up!”
“Yeah,Chad.” I crouch in front of him. “Better take some advice from your friend here.” I remove the knife from my back pocket and slide it out of the black leather sheath, then I glide the sharp tip of the blade against the seam of his jeans, listening as the steel grinds over the denim fabric.
“But… s-she’s… I d-don’t u-understand,” Chad snivels frantically.
“She’s dead, there’s no way this can be real. I need the hospital, man… I’m tripping out my ass right n-now,” Chad blabbers over and over again, his eyes finding Heather again. “Oh, fuck.” His snivelling is exactly what I expected. “Ricky, bro, we’re sorry. I fucking swear it was an accident.”
Jack is next to chime in with Chad. “Y-yeah! We… we didn’t mean it! It was a fucking a-accident. We’re so fucking sorry, bro.”
“Jesus Christ,” Toby snorts under his breath as though he’s embarrassed by their weakness.
I choose to ignore him, preferring to keep my attention on Chad and Jack for the meantime. “Sorry?” I cock my head to the side and frown at the audacity of it all. “Sorry for what? killing her? Or sorry you got caught?” I ask nobody in particular, because it’s a rhetorical question. “Which one is it?”
“Sorry for…” Jack’s eyes flick to Heather. “For hurting…” He swallows thickly. “Her—”
“You can say her fucking name when you talk about her,” I growl with sheer anger, twirling my knife in a circle between hislegs. “After all…” I shrug. “All of youdiddecide to drive away when she was dying at the side of the FUCKING LAKE!”
“That was Patrick!” Chad informs me like I don’t already know. “I was in the back seat! I-I wasn’t—”
“And you think any of that makes a difference? That it makes it better!? That you’re innocent somehow? You knew what happened, motherfucker, and you still… did… nothing.”
Chad drops his head back and screams into the void, but no one will hear him, Gamma Nu is far away from the other frats on Greek row, so we could play his screams through a speaker and not even the college Dean would hear him.
“Chad, calm down for Christ’s sake… it’s not fucking real.” Toby rolls his eyes, chuckling. “Get a hold of yourself! This is all just some stupid game.”
“A game?” I chuckle. “Okay.”
The moment my knife pierces the underside of Chad’s jaw, I breathe a sigh of relief as he starts making garbled sounds while suffocating on his own blood. Every perforated edge of the sharp implement sliding further into his skull, effectively puncturing it like warm butter.
“HOLY FUCK! WHAT THE FUCK!?”
I snap my head in Jack’s direction, watching with a smile as he stares wide-eyed at Chad’s writhing, blood-soaked body before it all settles in for him that this is all real. Jack’s high-pitched screams fill me with irritation, and I twist the knife further into the underside of Chad’s jaw once more before yanking it out forcefully.
“Do you think it’s still a game now, Toby?” I ask him, not taking my eyes off Jack as I do.
I stand to my full height and position myself in front of Jack this time as I point my bloody knife down at him. The smell of his alcohol-infused piss fills my nostrils, making me grimace in disgust as a large wet patch swells between Jack’s legs.
I bark out a laugh and tap the tip of my knife against the zipper. “Did you just piss yourself? Don’t you have any decorum at all?”
“Jack.” Heather steps forward and rests her hand on my shoulder, silently telling me she’s taking control of this now. Her voice is calm and collected even though I know she’s raging on the inside.
Without taking my eyes off Jack, I slowly walk backwards until I’m leaning against the kitchen counter once more.
“When Patrick hit me with his car, was I still alive?”
“Y-yes,” he sobs hysterically. “But—”
“Did you all get out of the car toseewhat it was Patrick had hit?”
Silence.
