Scream 4

Chapter 23

Thick, dreamless darkness, halfway between death and sleep.

Consciousness ebbed slowly in from a mile away, light leaching in through the cracks between your eyelids. You rolled your eyes around, left, and right, then pried one of them open.

An instant jolt of regret hit you as a pang of intense pain made itself known in your temples and behind your eyes, throbbing with such intensity it was as if it blocked your ability to process anything else.

You screwed them shut again.

Directionless thoughts drifted through your mind like dandelion seeds in a gentle breeze. Everything around you felt hard. Your limbs were cinderblocks, anchored to the surface of a rock solid mattress.

You let out a long, low moan and fuck did your throat feel dry, like it was sticking to itself on the inside. Licking your lips, a bitter and chemical taste coated the inside of your mouth, almost making you gag.

Your thoughts unspooled all at once, snapshot memories from the past week flickering on and off in your head; the gigantic skyscrapers of New York towering over you, the feel of rain droplets touching your skin as you walked, the call...

Part of you didn't want to be roused from your dreamless state-to start back up into your waking nightmare. But it's not like you had any choice in the matter.

Turning to your side made the light somewhat more bearable and this time, you could pry your eyes open. For a split second you didn't know where you were, but the bright white walls and beeping monitors told you that you were in the hospital.

It had only been the third day in a row of residing in a small hospital room, and already you were nearly driving yourself crazy. The persistent beeping in the background pestered you out of your dreamless sleep, not to mention the pain spreading through your whole body. It felt like you had toppled down a cliff, which wouldn't be too impossible with your clumsiness. Emma could attest to that.

So could Sidney and Tate, but... Er... They couldn't even breathe, much less testify.

With your vision finally coming into focus, you spotted the cover of your diary laying on the metal cart next to the mattress, and you grew confused. How did that end up here?

And then, after a few moments of thinking, it occured to you. How could you forget? Yesterday, the kind yet slightly annoying nurse, Alex, checked if you had any relatives she could notify about your situation. You didn't, but you did tell her about Emma, who was at your side with everything you asked for not even an hour later, the whites of her eyes bloodshot red.

She apologized to you until her vocal chords turned raw, and you felt bad for her. She blamed herself for what happened to you because she'd promised she'd stay by your side until Ghostface was caught.

Not once did you tell her it was her fault. Sure, the killer may have waited for you to be alone, but you doubted that her presence would have stopped him if he wanted to get to you badly enough.

Hours came and went unbearably slow. It was safe to say that you had imagined this chapter in your life to go in a different direction that it actually had. Besides writing, the only thing you could do in this place was think. Think about Ghostface, and think about Billy and Stu.

Why?

It had you give yourself yet another throbbing head ache. There was only one logical answer, but not a single part of you wanted to consider Billy and Stu being the Woodsboro killers.

Despite your denial, so many things that you didn't see before started to make sense when you really gave it a good thinking.

You couldn't even properly wake up when...