All I see in front of me is a sea of dancers, their bodies so closely meshed I can’t pick out a route between them.
How big is this fucking dance floor?
And why the hell is the DJ playing the same track?
ring ring
That sample’s getting real old, real fast.
Hands grab my arm, spin me around. My vision blurs, goes dark.
ring ring
Hands around my throat. Can’t breathe. The press of bodies around me tighter. Tighter.
Suffocating.
Trapping me.
ring ring
I grab at the hands around my throat, already knowing who they belong to.
Rooke.
The fuck is he doing—oh, yeah. I invited him. I fuckinglet him in. Is that why Haven went to him for help? Am I the reason he was even here in the first place?
ring ring
Warm bodies pressing against me. Skin on skin. Those hands on my throat, crushing my windpipe.
I’m going to die on this dance floor. And it’s all my fau?—
Lightning crashes.
It illuminates the person strangling me in crisp high-def.
Not Rooke.
It’s my brother, Ezra.
How the fuck I recognize him is anyone’s guess.
His nose is flattened, raw hamburger meat where his left eye should be. His jaw hangs at a wrong angle, split skin revealing white bone beneath the dark, sticky blood that covers everything. There’s a dent in his forehead like someone took a hammer to it…or their fist.
Myfist.
Blood-coated teeth shine as he grins. “You gonna beg him to hurt you too, little brother?”
He takes a hand off my throat and grabs my dick, squeezing even harder than my neck.
The jumpscare is so real, so terrifying, I gasp myself awake.
I blink rapidly, desperate to clear the afterimage of Ezra’s destroyed face out of my mind. But I know I’m going to see it at night, in the dark, when I’m trying to sleep. I’ll be staring into the corners of my room, waiting for the gleam of wet bone and pulverized flesh.
Haven’s voice draws my attention. I can’t hear what she’s saying, but I’m guessing that dance track in my dream was the professor’s phone. Surprised I even heard it over the drumming rain hitting the roof.
It’s dismal outside.
