An aspiring eighteen-year-old author realizes she is a character in an unwritten horror novel and must use her storytelling knowledge to survive.
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Eighteen-year-old romance writer, I...
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The dense fog was all we could see when looking out of the cracked and splintered car windows. And no matter how much Atem insisted we read more of the text in the notebook, I refused.
"Look at me." I gestured to my nose and my blood-soaked shirt, remembering the massive headache I endured while reading. "Opening that notebook will only open the floodgates again."
"Then let me read it." Atem extended his hand. "I can skim it pretty fast."
I shook my head. "When you read it a while ago, there was a pressure in my temple. I don't know what that means, and I don't want to risk it."
The cloth Felicity held against the gash on her head sopped with blood, so much so it seeped through the fabric to stain her hand. Her quietness in the last thirty minutes concerned me.
Zeke fixed his wide, round eyes on each of us. "We have to do something. Felicity is bleeding pretty bad, and we can't just sit around and wait for her to bleed out."
"I got it!" Atem reached inside of the dashboard's glove box and pulled out a sharpened pencil. "We never tried writing our own ending." His eyes were wide, and the corners of his mouth curved with the possibilities.
"You know," I slowly nodded, reaching for the pencil. "That's not a bad idea."
He mimicked my nod and tapped his temple. "Told ya. Brains."
I rolled my eyes and opened the notebook to a blank page toward the end of the outline, being careful not to read any of the written words. I thought about what to write, and Atem must've understood why I hesitated. "Uh."
"Write that the group walked down the road to see the highway, which allowed them to return home," he suggested.
"How do we return home, magic?" I scoffed. "It needs to make sense."
Zeke crossed his arms over his shoulder. "Felicity needs help now, you guys. We don't have time for this."
Atem raised a finger with another eureka moment. "Write that we find the highway pretty quickly and just as we step foot onto the asphalt, an ambulance shows up to help."
"Too convenient," I shook my head, doubting it would be satisfying enough.
"If that's how you write, no wonder your films suck," Felicity managed.
He huffed, ignoring our criticism. "Just try it. Go on. It might work."
I pressed the pencil to the paper to write the first word, and the pencil snapped in two. "What?!" I cried out in disbelief. "I didn't even press it that hard."
Atem immediately dug around inside the glove department again, looking for another writing tool. "Here. A pen. Use this."
I took the pen and ran it across the page. No ink came out. "It's dry. It's not gonna work."
