Filed To Story: Pretty Poisoned Novel by Elle Mitchell
I push my way through the crowd, getting as close to center stage as possible. I keep my sunglasses on like I’m Elton John and just kind of wait with my hands in my pockets.
An hour later, when nothing has happened, I get that sinking feeling again. Maybe I’m wrongmaybe they aren’t coming. Maybe the secret concert was on the football field in Pasadena, and they’re there now, and I’m in the wrong place.
But then the lights go down. Fog billows across the stage, and two tall, darkened figures stand in the middle, one with longer hair and a guitar over his shoulder.
My heart stops. I don’t breathe. The intro to “Pretty Poisoned” plays over the speakers, and I’m shaking, waiting for them to turn around.
Turn around. Please turn around.
They do, but not before they reach for something on the ground. Suddenly, we’re all being sprayed with a hot, red substance. Before I can process what’s happening, the lights go up, and the music cuts off. Two more men are on the stage recording as the crowd scatters.
I get a good shot of whatever it is directly in my face and into my mouth. It’s corn syrup fucking corn syrup.
It’s a stupid fucking prank.
All around me, people are screaming and shoving their way to the exits; some are on the ground, shouting for help, while others trample over them. After I’m knocked over for the second time, my sunglasses go flying, and I give up on the front door and head for the back of the warehousethere’s no way there isn’t a back exit or a loading dock in a place like this. Eventually, I spot people slipping out a door on the far-left side. I break out into a run, slipping on the corn syrup-covered concrete floors and falling flat on my face once more before I finally make it out the door and into the dark alley. I step aside to let others out the door, and then stop with my hands on my knees, catching my breath while others run past me. Many of them are crying or calling out for friends as they scatter in all directions while fireworks erupt overhead, somehow making the entire scene even more disturbing.
Once I’m alone in the alley, I slip off my soaked hoodie, using the inside to wipe my face clean before throwing it into the dumpster beside me.
“Fuck!” I scream at the night sky. I kick that same dumpster hard enough that it hurts. “God fucking damn it! Where are you? Why haven’t you come for me? You said you’d never hurt me! I’m hurting! I”
I see a man in a gold mask standing just around the back of the building, half of his body obscured. “Hey!” I scream. “Do you think this is fucking funny? Huh?” I pick up a rock and hurl it at the figure, who casually ducks around the corner before it can hit him. “Get back here, you shiny ass mother fucker!” Seething, I stomp toward that back corner. Glass crunches beneath my feet, and I stop, picking up the largest of the shards, which is about six inches in length but thin enough to fit in my palm. “You want to play monsters? I’ll fucking play!”
Of course, when I round that corner, I look all around and find that I’m completely alone. “Fuck!”
And then the loading door opens. Three men, maybe a few years older than me, step out into the alley laughing, unaware of my presence.
“Holy shit, that was amazing,” one of them says, holding up his phone. I can hear screaming on the video they’re watchingit’s us inside, minutes ago. “This is going to go viral as fuck.”
A fourth man joins them. “We can’t post this,” he says. “We need to call an ambulance. That girl in there isn’t moving; she won’t wake up. This isn’t funny anymore.”
“That’s not our fault,” one of them scoffs.
“He’s right,” another one says. “We have to get rid of her. We’ll put her in the dumpster.”
“She has a pulse!” the shorter man says.
“Well, we can’t let her go to the hospital. Do you want to go to jail?” the man holding the camera says.
“We didn’t do it! It was an accident!”
“No one cares about these girls, Nate,” he says. “They’re just a bunch of stupid sluts. And I’m not giving up this footage; it’s too good.”
Finally, I catch someone’s eye. “Um Jackson?”
The one called Jackson looks back at the other guy, who gestures with his head in my direction. He turns, finally spotting me.
“Hey, there ” Jackson says. “How much of that did you hear?”
I turn the glass shard over in my hand, keeping my eyes on him.
“Holy shit,” another one says. “Look at her chest. That’s Teagan fucking Townsend. Get the camera!”
“No!” Jackson says. “She heard us; we can’t record her. We’ll have to take care of her, too.”
I laugh. “Take care of me, Jackson,” I mock in a high-pitched voice. “No, really. What are you going to do? I’m curious. Tell me all about it.”
“Jason, grab her arms,” he says.
Men.
It turns out they’re almost all like menone of them ever learned to run in the other direction when they found themselves face-to-face with real monsters, either.
“Jason, don’t!” Nate says.
But he puts the phone back in his pocket and comes at me from my left side while Jackson walks toward me head-on, his hands working his belt buckle. I spot Bone Saw in my periphery just as he grabs one of the men, jerking him backward, and pulls out a knife.
Huh. Maybe he is real.
And I laugh.
“What’s so fucking funny?”
“There’s something bigger and scarier behind you,” I tell him. “I think you’re going to die.”
He turns just in time to see a man in a gold mask drag a knife across his friend’s throat. At the same time, I turn and drive the shard of glass into Jason’s stomach. When I can’t push any further, I drag it upward, letting the glass dig through the skin on my palms and fingers just to feel it tear at the flesh a little more.
It’s better than I remember. Every cell in my body hums to life. My pussy clenches.
When I pull it out, he drops to the ground, a dark river of crimson running from his abdomen toward my Chucks.
Shit. I quickly jump to the side. I like these shoes.
When I turn back, Bone Saw has Jackson pinned against him, a knife at his throat.
“I guess you are real,” I say.
Bone Saw nods slightly, and I watch a dark stain form at the crotch of Jackson’s light blue jeans before running down his right leg.
“Ew.”
He pissed himself. What a baby.
“I always want to play monsters,” Bone Saw says, extending the knife to me. “There was something scary in front of you, too,” he tells Jackson. “You were just too stupid to see it.”
I slice his shirt open firstnot carefully from the inside but from the outside, letting the blade pierce his skin the whole way down. Jackson screams, sobbing once I pull the knife away.
“I didn’t like your joke,” I say to him.
“I’m s-s-sorry,” he sobs. “I’m s-s-so s-s-sorry. P-p-please don’t”
“Don’t what? Kill you? Should he rape you first like you were going to do to me?”
“I-I-I have a f-f-family.”
“I don’t care.”
I jam the blade into his throat, pulling it back out and watching the blood gush from the wound.
Bone Saw releases him and he drops to his knees, clutching at his throat with his hands. I kneel beside him, driving the knife into his stomach over and over and over again until finally, he drops and stops moving.
“Is the other one gone?” I ask, catching my breath.
“Nah, he’s behind the dumpster.”
New Book: Returned To Make Them Pay
On her wedding anniversary, Alicia is drugged and stumbles into the wrong room—straight into the arms of the powerful Caden Ward, a man rumored never to touch women. Their night of passion shocks even him, especially when he discovers she’s still a virgin after two years of marriage to Joshua Yates.