Page 78 of Survive the Night

The tilting continues. The diner doesn’t spin so much as fade, the walls, the floor, the ceiling all turning to mist. The jukebox is the last to go. Its colored lights flare like a match just before it’s blown out.

Then it, too, is gone.

ONE A.M.

INT. DORM ROOM—DAY

Charlie wakes up in bed.

Herbed.

The one in her dorm room at Olyphant. She knows this without even opening her eyes because of the way it sags in the center like a hammock, which always helped her sleep better even though it meant she’d wake with her lower back throbbing.

There’s no throb now, though. She feels like she’s floating. Not in the bed but slightly above it, hovering like Linda Blair inThe Exorcist.

Someone else is there. Standing by the bed. Smelling like cigarette smoke and Chanel No. 5.

Maddy.

“Wakey wakey,” she says.

Charlie’s eyes flutter open as she takes in the welcome sight of her friend. Maddy’s wearing a Chanel suit. A classic. The kind Jackie Kennedy wore in Dallas, only hers is lime green and the fabric on the sleeve is pilled. In one white-gloved hand is a glass of champagne. The other holds a plate topped with a slice of cake.

“Happy birthday, Charlie.”

Maddy smiles.

Wide.

Her red lips curdle into a grimace that reveals a dark space where one of her canine teeth should be. It’s still bleeding—a steady trickle that overflows Maddy’s bottom lip and spills down her chin before dripping onto the cake in crimson dollops.

INT. DINER—NIGHT

Charlie wakes with a start.

Not in bed. Not in her dorm room.

She’s in a wooden chair. Creaky. Uncomfortable. Its ramrod-straight back forces her to sit unnaturally upright, her spine pinched from the effort. She tries to slouch but can’t. It’s as if she’s been glued to the chair.

It isn’t until she tries to move her arms that she notices they’ve been strapped down with ropes. They wind around her wrists and the chair’s arms, binding them together, the ropes so tight they dig into her skin and cut off the circulation in her hands. Her fingers have turned white. She wiggles them but feels nothing.

It’s the same with her toes, thanks to rope around her ankles, lashing her legs to the chair.

More rope winds around her upper body in two spots—just under her rib cage and again at the base of her neck. It’s so tight that she struggles to breath. Panic fills her like water, threatening to drown her.

“Help!” she yells, her voice gurgling, like there really is water in her lungs. “Someone please help me!”

Marge speaks in the darkness, her voice husky, hushed.

“No one can hear you, sweetie. No one but me.”

A light is switched on. A single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling that casts a bright, unsparing light on her surroundings.

A small room.

Perfectly square.

Along the walls, shelves stretch from floor to ceiling. Filling them are cans and boxes and cartons and bins. Marge leans against one of the shelves, watching her.

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