Page 26 of Trick or Treat
The drive to work is fuzzy. When I try to push the events of last night out of my mind, everything else becomes a massive blur. It seems as though every memory but that one has been erased from my mind.I shouldn't have gone out.
Every time I close my eyes, I keep seeing his mask—his red mask—and it makes me gag.How is it possible for one person to make you feel so dirty?I shiver as I finally pull into the prison's parking lot. After arriving at my office, I set up for my first patient while taking a few extra minutes to enjoy my coffee and try to put these gruesome flashbacks out of my mind.
The two months I have been working here, counseling prisoners who are about to be released, have been great. It undoubtedly aids in distracting me from Carli and Shawn. It'll be a year in just a few months since she was murdered and he went missing, and there's still no word about either of them. It's like they were forgotten about. I'd hate to see what would happen if I were to ever end up dead or missing.
Riley
"You didwhat?" Blade and Silver growl in unison as I smirk and bite on my apple, my feet kicked up on the couch.
"I went to see her last night."
"But she wasn't home!" Saint spits through his clenched teeth as he yells. When I told them, I anticipated their outrage.
"That's cus we didn't make it back to her place. I followed her from the bar."
They stare at me as if they want to rip off my head, which I find amusing.
"You're not supposed to touch her, Riley."
"Relax. She's still a fucking virgin if that's what you're getting at. Besides, you seem to be forgetting that it wasmysister who was killed,notyours. Why can't I have a little fun?" In defiance, I bite back and finish my apple before throwing the core behind me into the trash.
"You take shit too far, Riley, and we agreed we'd visit hertogether," Blade bites, clearly pissed off.
"It was one fucking time; relax." I keep a smirk on my face that makes both of them squirm.
"Tonight, we take the fucking ex. It's time to play another game," Saint hisses, turning on his heel and speaking with a tone that makes my skin tingle.
Theysprinted out of the apartment, leaving me alone with Nixon, who’s so absorbed in whatever game he's playing on his Xbox that he didn’t even hear the argument we had just moments earlier.
"Did you hear that, Nix?" I challenge him while flinging a crumpled piece of paper at the back of his head.
He spins around, itching the spot where the paper hit him and staring at me through his dark, evil eyes, the tattoos covering his face giving him a sadistic appearance. But they're quite fitting, really.
"What the fuck, Riley?"
"It's paper, Nixon. Boo fucking who."
"What do you want?"
"Did you hear Saint?" I ask, a smile curling dangerously on my lips as I lick them.
"Nah, what did he say?"
"Tonight we play."
His eyes light up and he sets the controller down, shifting his body so he's focusing on my face now. "Oh, and who's the unlucky player this time?" He grins again, clearly wanting to play along.
"River, the ex." I rub my hands together just as his brow raises intriguingly.
"Oh fuck yeah. This ought to be fun."
Scarlett
After work, I spend the entire drive home looking over my shoulder, in my rearview mirror, and in my side mirror, making me feel like a fucking crackhead,for God's sake. I haven’t stopped looking over my shoulder since my terrifying encounter with the man in the red mask last night. It was very different from the visits in the middle of the night with the men wearing the Black and Silver masks. And while these visits are already terrifying enough, this one truly shocked me.
Since they usually don’t bother me when I’m out in public, I figured I would be safe walking. Normally, they torment me while I sleep, but not the man in the red mask. As I was returning home after meeting Melanie at the bar, he came for me. She wanted to get drinks because she was spending the night at her boyfriend's apartment. She persuaded me to meet her at the nearby pub because it wasn’t too far from our apartment.
When I arrive at my house and pull into my spot, I quickly gather my belongings and dash inside, checking to make sure no one is following me. I’m hit with a vivid flashback of my walk home and the horrific events that followed the moment I walked through the door, bolted the locks, and turned on the lights.