Prologue- Wanna Play a Game?

On first glance, there was less Stacy looking back at her than there’d been lately. Progress, she decided.

She hummed softly, twining a lock of hair around her finger as she idly scrolled her socials. It was a habit she’d been working to wean herself from, but the nightly ablution remained tempting as ever.

And, in it’s own weird way, rewarding. It wasn’t so long ago that every other blip on her timeline was some snide comment from a false friend, or a friend of a friend. Cruel rumors and catty speculation, the casual circulation of stale gossip.

But that was before. She was beginning to believe, piece by piece and step by step, that things were getting better. That high school may really be a new beginning, a clean slate, the way people said it was.

Idly hearting a collage of a girl in her Algebra class with her dog, Stacy switched gears, closing Instagram to open YouTube, in the process turning in bed to lay on her side.

She had no particular agenda in mind…just funny animals or one of those videos with the guy who made fun of people’s grammar. Something mindless, to kill time until…

She checked the time in the corner of her phone display: 6:45. Not late at all, but it felt like midnight. Resolving not to make any moves until at least 7:00, Stacy scanned the videos at the top of her ‘suggested’ feed, looking for something suitably inoffensive to while away the…

Her finger hovered over a thumbnail: a grainy view, as of something filmed from a phone with the camera zoomed in. She could see two figures, backs to the viewer.

The title, in big, blaring capital letters: ‘LAKEWOOD LEZZIES CAUGHT IN 4K!’. A helpful note beneath the thumbnail informed Stacy that this video was “Popular in Your Area”.

Stacy stared at the thumbnail for she didn’t know how long, the poppy beats of her Spotify playlist fading into a soft vibrato of background noise. It wasn’t a stretch to say she recognized the car in the thumbnail. Popular in her area inde…

Her phone vibrated in her hand, sharply and suddenly enough that she let out a short cry, pressing her other hand to her mouth.

Sighing self-deprecatingly, Stacy smiled at the name on her display and took the call.

“There you are,” she greeted lightly, swinging her legs over the side of the bed.

“Here and getting there,” Brock sounded out of breath, but in his usual good spirits, “Sorry. I got away as soon as I could.”

She giggled, bouncing her ankle up and down, “You make it sound like you escaped. I’m not gonna get you in trouble, am I?”

“Why do you sound excited about that?”

She shrugged, “Nobody’s ever gotten in trouble for me before.”

“Well, then I’ll have to be your first,” he sounded almost embarrassed as he said it. She saw his sheepish smile in her mind’s eye and felt her heart skip a beat as she wondered, yet again, how she’d gotten to be so lucky.

“I’ll pull up Netflix,” she said lightly, not wanting to get him even more flustered before he’d even shown up, “My pick, right?”

“With great power comes great responsibility.”

“So Pitch Perfect is good?”

A short, awkward silence, “…I love you.”

She giggled delightedly, “Love you too,” and hung up the phone before it had really sunk in what he’d just said.

“Oh my God,” she breathed, a slow, delectable smile spreading across her face, “Oh my God…” she paced from the foot of her bed to her desk, where her laptop was idling. She spotted her face reflected in the screen and laughed anew at the bright, easy happiness she saw there.

Brock loved her, in his own words. The boy she’d mooned over all through eighth grade, aimlessly doodling his profile in the margins of her notebook. He’d seemed like some unattainable privilege. Charming, funny, popular and athletic. Girls like her…acne-ridden, chubby late bloomers still in braces…weren’t supposed to be with guys like him. Girls like her weren’t meant to be at all: to exist in the background, part of an amorphous muddle if they were lucky, and the butt of an inexhaustible font of punchlines if they weren’t.

Without entirely thinking about it, she clicked on the video, narrowing her eyes at the grainy outlines of the two girls in the front of that vaguely familiar car. The uploader had added a soundtrack: a peppy pop beat, offensively inoffensive.

Stacy wasn’t sure about ‘4k’, but for something filmed on a phone, it sure got some good close-ups. She grimaced, scrolling down just to avoid being subjected to more of the tongue tournament.

The comments were a familiar mire of undistilled nastiness: “Get a room!”, “Put a shock collar on that *dog emoji*!!!!”, “Yo, she’s even wearing a Catholic schoolgirl uniform!”

Stacy scrolled past the comments, watching the little numbers beneath each one’s attendant thumbs-up ratcheting onward and upward like a slot machine. Her stomach contracted unpleasantly. This wasn’t good for her; there was no reason for her to be paying this nastiness any attention…

“I know gay shit’s legal now, but bestiality too?” some local luminary got his dig in, approximately 15 minutes ago. Stacy was inured enough by now to pay this one no mind, were it not for a reply to it: nothing substantial, just three ~cry-laughing~ faces, sent by BROCKMIKEY2000 approximately five minutes ago.

The image shook before her eyes. It didn’t immediately register with Stacy that this was because her hands were shaking.

It didn’t have to be a big deal, she reminded herself. She could just let it go. Things were good now, they were going well and, really, she didn’t even know those girls, not really, not more than anybody knew anybody else in this town.

Better count ‘powers of persuasion’ as another of her deficiencies. She was really racking them up.

She took a quick screencap of the comment and sent it on, guiltily appending the message ‘Really?’ which was enough to have her set her phone down on the dresser like it had gone radioactive.

Wasn’t it already? Oh crap. Oh shit. Maybe she shouldn’t have poked the bear, why was it so hard for her to just let good things happen to her? Why couldn’t she just…

Her playlist was interrupted by an insistent-yet-melodic beeping. For the first few rings, Stacy eyed her phone anxiously, the name at the top of the screen readable from her distant vantage, just as clear as the picture displaying beneath it, of a curly-haired boy flashing deuces at her from across a cafeteria table.

Taking a tiny breath for fortitude, Stacy walked the mammoth two paces back to her dresser and answered the call, even as all her planned greetings withered on her lips.

Brock was faster anyway: “I’m sorry, Stace.”

She tensed, painfully aware of how tightly she was gripping her phone, “Oh. Well. That’s…” she paused, “That’s good.”

“I wasn’t thinking. It was stupid. The comment, the guy I was talking to, it’s Joel from the team, you know Joel…”

“Yeah,” she nodded, “Yeah, I know Joel…and I’m not surprised by him, Brock. And I don’t want to sound crazy or…” she realized how quickly she was speaking, how hot her face was heating up, and pressed her eyes shut, “It’s just…I’ve been there, you know? I’ve been the girl who wakes up famous for all the wrong reasons and it isn’t fun.”

There was a short silence, “Right. Shit. Stacy, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking…”

“It’s okay.”

“No it’s not. I know what you went through. I should be better. I wasn’t even thinking…”

“Probably most of them aren’t,” she shrugged, “In the comments.”

“I’ll tell Joel to delete his,” Brock assured her. She let out a short gasp, “Brock, you don’t have to…”

“I do.”

“I don’t want to get you grief on the team…”

“Those chuckleclucks?” the hearty, self-assured chuckle she knew so well, “I can handle them, Stace. Don’t worry,” the faint creaks of his bike’s axles working, “See you soon, okay?”

She smiled, “Make it sooner.”

“That pitch won’t perfect itself, huh?”

“About that…” she lilted teasingly, “You get to pick.”

“I do?”

“Just make sure you show up with a movie in mind. We don’t have all night,” she met her own eyes in the mirror, “Love you.”

“Love you, Stace.”

She set her phone down, letting out a breathy, dreamy laugh as she stepped away from the dresser, spontaneously pirouetting around the foot of the bed.

Sure, some people…her mother, for starters…would think it the bare minimum that Brock was going to talk to his friend. But Stacy wasn’t the type of girl people cared about pleasing.

And Brock especially, who once upon a time wouldn’t have known her for anything but set dressing. Handsome, charismatic, popular Brock, with his 1,000 watt smile and his strong arms and that beautiful, confident laugh. Someone like him wasn’t supposed to care what someone like Stacy wanted. A girl like her sure as hell wasn’t supposed to make him change his mind about things.

But those things were true before. Now…now, her life was different.

It was different because she had made it so.

Three beeps. Stacy turned back to her dresser, crossing to it quickly this time, expecting something from Brock, maybe telling her he was down the street. It wasn’t that long from his place to hers, and less on wheels.

The text wasn’t from Brock. Or from anyone, at least not anyone she knew. The unknown caller had sent a one line message: ‘Hey, girl, hey.’

Stacy had enough time for a bemused half-smile before a second message populated beneath the first: ‘Wanna play a game?’

She scoffed, deleting both messages. As far as spam went, it was novel, but not quirky enough to have her talking to strange…

Three beeps, just before her finger could descend on the ‘block’ button. She was so startled, she answered the call without even processing it was from the same mysterious number until it was too late.

“Hello?”

“Is this Stacy?” the voice wasn’t one she knew: cool and low, with a vaguely amused lilt, as if talking through a smirk.

Her shoulders relaxed despite herself, “It is.”

“That’s a relief. I was worried I had the wrong number.”

“I think you might,” she pointed out, “Who is this?”

“A friend.”

“I’m not sure we’ve met.”

“Well, a friend of a friend. Sort of a six degrees of Kevin Bacon?”

“The guy from X-Men?”

“…sure. Among other things.”

“I’m not a big film buff,” she crossed the room, “I know, my boyfriend’s always bugging me about it.”

“Sweet humble brag.”

“It wasn’t a brag,” she laughed, “God, are you one of those cretins from the team? Is this some sort of dude-ish hazing thing? Is that the ‘game’?”

“Right! The game. I was having such fun shooting the schnozz…”

“The schnozz?”

“Gotta keep it PG, right?” he laughed softly, “PG-13 maybe, but ‘R’ is on diminishing returns and everyone knows the ‘G’ rating’s where box office goes to die.”

“You like movies, huh?” she sat on her bed, crossing her legs and idly checking the time on her laptop display.

“They pass the time.”

“Is that the game? Movie trivia? Because, I’ve gotta warn you, I’ll lose.”

“Nope. This is something much more personal. You, my new friend, have been nominated…”

“By my friend who’s also your friend?”

“…to receive a special prize!”

“What kind of prize?”

“That depends how you do. First question, and it’s an easy one.”

“Is it?”

“So easy, only you can answer!” a put-upon dramatic pause; Stacy thought she could hear hands slapping a hard surface, as if to create an illusory, if tuneless drum roll, “Who is the most special person in your life?”

Stacy laughed, rolling her eyes, “Ah.”

“Is that an initial or a prefix?”

“Are you sure this isn’t hazing?”

“Hazing is a heteronormative ritual that reinforces toxic patriarchal constructs. I’m not a fan.”

“So if I answer honestly, you aren’t…for example…going to use my answer to embarrass my…er, answer?”

“Why should anybody be embarrassed of being special to a bright young lady like yourself?”

Unthinkingly, her free hand found the soft pudge at her right side. Not as pudgy as it had been even a few months ago, yet somehow she couldn’t bring herself to care whether it was twice as much or not at all.

“That is a very good question,” she nodded, “Alright, I’ll answer: it’s my boyfriend, Brock.”

“Boyfriend Brock!” her friend of a friend cheered, “Congratulations, Stacy, and thanks for playing. Your prize is en route.”

“My prize?” she repeated bemusedly, “Wait, that’s it? What’s my…”

No answer but the dial tone. Sighing, Stacy set her phone down, letting out with an uneasy cough of laughter. Silly of her to entertain that nonsense for so long. She must be riding the high of that last conversation.

Speaking of which, where was…?

Three beeps: but this time she recognized the name. Smiling, she held up her phone, the words superimposed over Brock’s forehead informing her he was sending her a video call.

“Brock, you’re not gonna believe…” she began, taking the call and watching as the frozen image of her smiling boyfriend was replaced by a moving one.

Brock wasn’t smiling now.

“Hi, again, Stacy-shake!” the familiar voice intoned from somewhere behind the phone camera, now noticeably crackly, but still forceful enough to overpower the panicked whimpers and grunts from the boy on the grass.

Brock was lying on his side, his wrists and ankles bound with black ties, his mouth gagged with a strip of gray tape. His thick brown curls hung in his face, not quite obscuring his wide, terrified eyes.

The air left Stacy’s lungs in a harsh, painful gasp; she recoiled as though shocked, yet somehow her fingers remained vice-tight around the phone.

“Brock?” she breathed, barely hearing her own voice, “Brock! What…what did…”

“I appreciate your enthusiasm, girl, but save your questions for your host.”

“What did you do to him?” she demanded, “Who the hell are you?”

“Not those questions.”

“I’m calling the cops!”

“Oh, but we haven’t broken any rules! You picked your prize, Stacy, and now you’ve got to play for him.”

With her free hand, Stacy reached tentatively for her laptop.

“I wouldn’t make any rash decisions, Stacy. Wouldn’t want to forfeit your winnings. Between you and me, he’s good stock. Maybe a bit out of your league, but that just makes it more special, doesn’t it?”

“Go to hell.”

“Next question!”

Brock stared into the camera, shaking his head vigorously. The camera lens was grungy, maybe cracked in whatever scuffle had gotten him into this predicament, so she couldn’t divine if his mouth was moving behind the gag, if he was begging or pleading…

“The question,” she urged, her throat tightening, eyes burning with tears, “Ask the question. Come on.”

“There’s the enthusiasm we like to see!” a soft, assured chuckle, “Who’s always got your back when the chips are down?”

Her friend hung up before she could so much as breathe. Stacy stood so quickly she swooned and needed to grab onto the nightstand to steady herself. She was shaking like a threadbare leaf, her breath coming in and out in erratic hiccups.

She ran to her window and looked out at the street. No sign of anything unusual. Dammit, she should’ve paid closer attention to the background of the video. If she could tell where Brock was, she’d have a better idea so she could tell…

Tell. She had to tell someone. She had to get help. She…

No rash decisions.

He wouldn’t know. If she called the cops, how would he have any idea until it was too late? Slowly, she turned to her laptop, where Netflix was passive-aggressively asking whether she’d like to keep watching Sense8.

She hadn’t turned her webcam on. Yet there it was, the pinprick of white light bright as a homing beacon despite its size.

With a shudder of revulsion, she reached forward to slam the laptop shut, but stopped herself.

If she was being watched (And how? How could somebody…why would somebody…), anything she did to stop her watchers from watching would just let the watchers know she was cheating the game.

“Chips,” she whispered, pressing her phone to her heart, struggling to clear her thoughts, “Chips are down…poker chips,” she nodded, but paused, “No. Idiot. It’s a figure of speech. Who’s got your back…”

She paused in the doorway, seized by mixed hope and terror.

Keeping her back to her laptop, she pulled up her contacts and dialed the one succinctly labeled ‘Mom’, pressing the phone to her ear.

Three beeps. Stacy stifled a scream with one hand. A new text, from Brock…or Brock’s phone: ‘Two for two! You’re on a roll.’

‘We’re sorry,’ an automated voice informed her as the phone stopping ringing, ‘The person you are trying to reach has a voicemail box that is not set up yet. Please try your call again later. Good…’

“Dammit, Mom!” she let out an anguished cry, aborting the call.

Two beeps. Not her phone: louder, but from farther away, and accompanied by a mechanical rumbling.

The garage door.

Putting her rogue webcam entirely out of her mind, Stacy tore off down the stairs, nearly tripping over her own feet in her haste. She caught herself on the banister, all but hurling herself from the bottommost stair down the short passage to the connecting door that led into the garage.

The garage door was relatively new: an automatic job, powered by a tiny remote, something her father delighted showing off to the neighbors, as if this was some sort of utopian future-world innovation and not an omnipresent symptom of suburbia.

By the time Stacy reached the garage, the door was just reaching the top of its climb, the metal struts grinding harshly as the dirty yellow glow of streetlamps knifed through the yawning partition to illuminate, not the family sedan, but a familiar, if very mangled bicycle.

“No,” she breathed, running down the short flight of wooden steps into the garage proper, “No, no, no!”

Brock’s bike was a twisted mess of metal struts, lying carelessly on the concrete floor as if flung. The front wheel spun idly, like a pinwheel decoration in someone’s front garden. The rear wheel…

The rear wheel was missing.

Three beeps. Not hers. Slowly, Stacy lifted her eyes to look through the slowing spokes of the spinning wheel, out to the shape lying in the driveway.

“Brock!” his name left her in a long, low wail, “Brock!” she ran out to him, doubled over with jagged sobs, repeating his name in increasingly incomprehensible moans.

He lay there, on his back, forced into a half-upright position by the bike wheel that had been fixed to him like a collar.

“Oh my God,” she dropped to her knees beside him, “Brock, oh God, I’m so sorry…”

There were tears streaming from his eyes, mixing with blood from a dozen narrow cuts that must have been made by the spokes of the wheel as it was forced over his head. His mouth was still gagged, his limbs still bound with what Stacy could know see were zip ties.

“What did he do?” she asked herself, knowing neither of them were fit to give an answer, “God, oh my God, somebody help!”

Her call echoed up and down the block. It was a nice autumn night, pleasantly cool for this time of year, and almost impossibly quiet. It wasn’t even that late. Her parents’ dinner reservation was for 7:00, and Stacy had thought she’d be real slick squeezing in a movie date to be wrapped before 9:00.

But the thought of her parents, of Brock even, was too much.

“I’m going to get you out of this,” she told him, “I promise. Just let me.”

He tried to say something. His face, normally warm and sun-bronzed, was a ghostly gray. Steeling herself, Stacy grabbed the wheel, “I think I can…”

He cried out, squirming.

“Brock, I’m going to help you, but you have to hold still, please…” she grabbed the wheel and lifted as Brock howled, turning one way…

The wheel turned the other.

Stacy felt a hot spray against her face, blinding her, sticking in her nostrils and mouth like tar. She fell backward, scraping her palms against asphalt. Brock fell sideways, hitting the ground with a heavy, wet thump, his head lolling unnaturally to the side, blood spurting irregularly from the newly opened chasm in the soft flesh of his neck.

The chasm Stacy had opened.

She dragged herself back to him, shoulders heaving with disgust and impossible grief.

“Brock, Brock, no, please, Brock…” she took his still-warm hands in hers and busied herself with the ties there, as if by freeing his limbs, she might somehow still help him.

Around her, the block was quiet, no noise but for the soft chirring of crickets, their song alive and well despite the lateness of the season.

No human sounds. None but Stacy’s sobs and the final wet spurts of her boyfriend’s blood.

His eyes were open, staring blankly up at her, wide and stricken.

“I know what you went through,” he’d told her, “I should be better,” he’d admitted, this guy who had never had to account for himself to anyone, to her, who’d never been expected to change for anyone.

He was willing to change for her. He was changing, for her.

She’d as good as killed him.

Three beeps. With a hateful cry, Stacy reached for the blood-slick rectangle lying on the asphalt. The cracked lock screen bore a selfie of the two of them, shoulder to shoulder, across opposite ends of a cafeteria table, Brock’s free hand held aloft…deuces.

Stacy’s fingers slipped against the wet screen, but she answered the call on the third attempt, “Why are you doing this?” she demanded, trying for a scream and shocked at how low, how ragged her voice had gotten.

“I was gonna ask you the same question,” her friend of a friend sounded genuinely disappointed, “You were supposed to pick up his phone the first time you heard it. Now, you’ve gone and spoiled your prize.”

“Fuck you!”

“Now, I can understand strong feelings, but there’s no reason to resort to language. You being such a nice, all-around type of gal. You may have ruined your prize, but you still earned him fair and square. I’m not above giving you another shot.”

“He never did anything,” she insisted, not even caring about the game or the rules or whatever nonsense, “He was good, you son of a bitch! Even when the rest of them made my life hell, he looked at me and he saw something.”

“And I’m sure he feels real great about that decision now. Seriously, girl? Moving the bladed implement deeper into his squishy bits?”

She screamed: a long, anguished howl, tempered by exhaustion and despair.

“Bonus round, then,” her friend continued, “Not a brain teaser: purely logic based. If I have the remote that opens the garage, what else am I likely to have?”

Stacy’s grip slackened. She’d almost forgotten the garage and, of course, the text she’d gotten just before the door opened, coinciding with her failed call to her mother…congratulating her for being right.

She got jerkily to her feet, turning back to the house, and the front door, which was hanging open, letting a warm light she hadn’t turned on out onto the walkway.

“Good hunch,” her friend congratulates her, “One follow-up question: why would I need to get into the house when I have everything I need right here?”

It didn’t immediately occur to Stacy that she’d dropped Brock’s phone when she got up, and yet could still hear the voice perfectly clearly. Realizing belatedly, she turned around and felt something cold and perfectly sharp plunge into her.

Her scream came out soft and starved, more of a sob, or a gasp, stunned by the sight of her attacker’s face: bone white, with misshapen eyes and mouth liked yawning black holes. A gloved hand held the hilt of a hunting knife, wrenching it in her gut. Stacy forced herself to look down to the blood spurting up around the blade.

There was pain, but somehow it didn’t register. The knife hadn’t gone in as deeply as it could’ve.

Still pudgy enough where it counted.

Raising her eyes back to the fathomless, empty pits of her boyfriend’s murderer, Stacy pulled herself back. The force shook her on her feet, and she half-fell backward, into the street, but the knife came loose all the same.

There was a sickly squelching sound, a spurt she knew now to signal a rush of blood. Pressing her hand to the open wound, Stacy staggered on, into the street, looking desperately over her shoulder at the person who’d carved her life to bits.

He just stood there, at the mouth of the driveway: the eerie white mask the sole pop of brightness in a black coat, like a cheaply done-up Halloween costume. There was something vaguely familiar about the mask, but she couldn’t place it, she didn’t want to, she only…

A horn bleated from up the street. There was a car coming, barreling up the block. Stacy held up one hand, leaving the other pressed to her wound, desperately waving to flag down the driver.

The car didn’t slow. Stacy stood, a deer in headlights, until the last minute, summoning every lick of strength that remained of her to throw herself to the opposite end of the street as the car sped past. She thought she could hear a woman’s voice barking, “Watch where you’re going!” as it went.

Groaning softly, she pulled herself up onto the curb, her weakening fingers scrabbling for purchase in the grass of someone’s lawn. There was a slick wetness beneath her…she was trailing blood.

Another logic problem solved: if she was trailing blood, she was dying.

Brock was dead. The way her ‘friend’ had acted, about getting the remote and the keys, it stood to reason her parents were dead.

How did this happen? Why?

Everything had been going well. Everything had been going right, for the first time. It wasn’t fair.

But then, Stacy knew very well from past experience…life wasn’t fair.

She pulled herself, inch by inch, up the walkway, trying to raise her voice, to call for help, to say something, anything…

The porch light turned on, a shadow passing past the window, “Holy shiitake mushrooms, this noise. It’s like someone’s being killed out…” the door opened, and a woman Stacy barely knew let out the scream she could not.