Super Trouper ｡ Steve Harrington

5 : Take On Me

     She was running. And the shadows were thicker in her dreamscape than they were in the slumbering world of Hawkins, Indiana. The shadows were long and burning, so scorching in the summer night. Tall trees bordered her, looming over her as they blocked out the sky. Bugs buzzed around her head, drawn in by the blood on her hands drip, drip, dripping. Jesse Fontana was back at Camp Jacaranda.

     There wasn't much air in her lungs, and she felt like she was breathing in fire when she sucked in a sharp inhale of balmy air. Her legs were groaning and with each rushed step, Jesse wanted to buckle, wanted to give up. But she couldn't. No, she couldn't stop for there was one shadow that was following her with the prettiest smile—the smile of a devil.

     Jesse didn't know who the blood on her hands belonged to, she wasn't sure she even wanted to know. Was it her mother's blood? Was it Charlotte Winlock's blood? Maybe her own, dripping like rain from her fingers into the compacted dirt of the forest the encased the summer camp? There was just so much of it, dressing her up with sleek crimson gloves. The blood seeped into her pores, sinking into the valleys of her fingerprints, and slid between her knuckles, smoother than silk, hotter than water streaming from a shower tap.

     The tears that prickled at her eyes didn't fall, couldn't for because Jesse wouldn't let them. Once the tears fell, sobs were come leaping over her teeth and shuttering over her trembling lips. She couldn't allow herself to make a single sound; he was already so close.

     His laughter rippled through the darkness that was almost complete. In the distance, Jesse could just spy the glow of the fire from the fire pit between the dense trees. The light called to her like a moth to flame, but Jesse was smart enough not to chase that light source. As much she loathed the idea of staying in the shadows of the California forest, the shadows were both simultaneously her friend and her enemy. His laughter turned into a growl, humorous still but hungry, so hungry. It ricocheted off tree trucks and echoed in Jesse's ears. It was a particular laugh, the laugh of a manic angel waking up on the hard ground to realise he's glorious wings were missing, realising that if he wanted wings again, he'd have to take them from a bat instead of a bird.

     Jesse didn't dare chance a glance over her shoulder, tunnelling her vision and her focus into running, into not crashing into a tree. She choked on a pant when she spotted something else moving in the tress she passed, a monstrous silhouette dashing between the towering trees. It didn't even look human, not with protruding long limbs.

     In the next second, the silhouette was gone, lost in the shadows, or finding a home in the complete darkness. Either way, it made Jesse stumble and she crumpled to the ground, jarring her knees on the summer-baked earth. Dirt met her face, smudging against her nose as she accidentally breathed it into her lungs as she winced. Dirt mixed with the blood on her hands, like baking flour dusting damp hands. She pushed herself up, adrenaline screaming in her blood, pounding against her blood cells. She couldn't stay here, couldn't crawl into herself and weep. Even though that was the only thing she wanted to do. She wanted to escape this nightmarish hell, and if the only escape was her death, she'd take it gladly. No, you've been here before, her unconscious self insisted. You've survived this before, this isn't real. His death is the escape, his death is the key. Jesse pushed herself up, bones shrieking in protest, legs unsteady as she searched the forest decorated in shadows. His laugh was still barrelling around, thick like mist. She looked down the horrible mixture of blood and dirt on her hands, her makeshift and gruesome gloves suddenly brighter—the same colour of fresh blood siphoned from the vein. But you've already killed him. The blood on her hands wasn't her mother's, wasn't Charlotte Winlock's and wasn't her own. It was his, it was always his.

     "You can't run from me, angel face," Mr Devil whispered in her ear suddenly, his breath stifling against her neck. "I'm always with you now." Jesse spun around to face Mr Devil—the serial killer that had massacred a whole summer camp over a year ago, leaving her as the sole saviour, the final girl. He wasn't physical before her in this nightmare, but a combination of shadow and mist. Yet his smile remained like a crevice in the earth, a crack in a mirror. "My blood is your blood," he confessed.