Fades To Black

“This year’s, Spring Fling will be awesome!” Emma squealed. There was a bounce in her step as she strut out of the changing room. She admired herself in the mirror. “HAH! And it only took two tries to find the perfect dress.” Emma’s dress was as black as the night sky, and as shiny as a new car.

Sam slowly walked out of her own changing room, self conscious. She glared at Emma before looking at herself in the mirror. She grunted angrily. “Arug, I hate this one too!” And in a second, she was back in the change room. Emma sighed, fixing her hair in the mirror.

It was Saturday evening. The skies were dark and heavy with rain. We were shopping at the downtown mall, specifically looking for Spring Fling outfits. It was frustrating, really, how many store clerks asked us if we were wearing matching our outfits. When we asked what they meant, they would suggest that we were…couples!

Sam, Emma, Nicholas and I are strictly friends. There’s nothing ‘going on’ in our relationship. So no, we did not want to match dress colour to tie colour.

“Well, Sam, now we have to come back tomorrow. Why do you have to be so picky?” Emma said, but not in a mean way. Sam didn’t reply. She emerged in her normal clothes just as Emma was disappearing into the change room. I heard a woman begin speaking over the intercom: “Attention all shoppers, the mall is about to close. Please exit at the nearest door and we thank you for choosing the Marshal Mather Mall.” We were soon walking down the halls towards the exit that would lead us to Sam’s car. When we passed by each store, I gazed into each of the windows. I liked seeing what each of them had to sell, what each of them thought that we wanted to buy. I wished that the mall wasn’t closing; there were so many more stores I wanted to go to. We finally arrived at the east exit, and I reached for the handle to open it. My arm felt like it was about to tear off when I jerked and the door did not budge.

“Uh-Maybe you’re trying to open the ‘enter’ door.” Nicholas commented smartly. Emma laughed.

“No, I did not.” I replied, and to show him up, I tried to open the other door. It still did not budge.

“Maybe there’s another exit, or maybe we’ll run into a guard.” Sam suggested.

“Pfft. Yeah. But if we run into a guard, there’s a chance we’ll be shot at first.” I said with a roll of my eyes. We started walking around the mall, keeping out eyes peeled for security officers. We saw none. When we arrived at the southern exit, it was locked as well. We went to each of the exits, and each one was locked. Nicholas frowned, “Do you know what this means?”

“Obviously,” I said staring at him as if it was the stupidest question anyone could ask if they were in this situation. “It means, were locked inside this mall.”

“So… What are we going to do?” Emma said.

“Ugh,” Sam said looking at her cell phone, “We get no reception in this dang place.” It was true. I pulled out my cell phone and opened it. I had no bars and that meant that we couldn’t call anyone asking if they could let us out.

“What are we gonna do now?” I said.

“Well we’re going to have to stay here for the night, I suppose. There’s nothing else we can do!” Sam replied.

“That’s crazy!” Emma commented. “I mean, we can’t just walk around until they open the mall in the morning! Besides, there has to be someone else here, like a mall cop, or someone! I mean, someone had to lock the doors in the first place.” We all thought in silence for a few minutes.

“Well.” Nicholas said breaking the silence. “I’m so hungry, I feel like I could eat a elephant. Who wants some Burger King?” So we headed to the Food Court, not knowing what was in store for us.

We were almost at The Food Court when we saw something laying on the floor. As we got closer we found out that it wasn’t just one thing, but it was many things.

“What the hell is that?” I asked, extremely confused. As we got closer I began to realize what it was. I couldn’t believe it. I thought I was going to throw up. It was a security guard, but in multiple pieces. Blood was all over the floor like someone had spilt fruit punch.

“Well, so much for getting one of them to unlock the door for us” Emma said as if she saw dead cops all the time and it was completely normal.

“Ugh, you’re so stupid sometimes!” Sam yelled, frustrated. Her face was as white as freshly fallen snow. “We are going to have to search them to see if they have the keys on them.” We stared at each other.

“So, who wants to do it?” Emma asked, shrugging. When no one offered, Sam whined and started walking towards the mess. After a while of her searching, I decided to help her rummage through the innards to find the keys to the mall doors. It seemed like hours that we spent searching, but it had only been ten minutes.

“Ugh, I can’t find anything.” Sam said throwing a pair of hand cuffs on the ground. She was covered in blood while the rest of us were still clean. “What are we going to do?”

“The person who killed him…or her must have taken the keys.” Emma said after giving it a bit of thought.

“But that means he knows we’re here,” I said, standing up from my spot near the torso, “Which means he’s going kill us too.” I was trying not to make everyone else panic but I knew that I could only hold my fear in for so long.

“No.” Nicholas said bluntly. “It just means we have to look out for each other and make sure that some crazy person doesn’t attack and try to kill us.”

“What we need to do first,” Sam cut in, “is to find me new clothes. But after that, what do we do?”

“Well its not like we can call anyone,” I said simply, “We can’t really do anything about it until the mall opens in the morning.” We headed into the nearest shop that would have clothes that would fit Sam and myself and we pried open the gate. She grabbed a T-shirt and a pair of shorts and changed quickly while I tried to find something that suited my taste. After we were both changed, we left the store and proceeded to step around the dead officer and continue to the food court, though non of us were hungry. No one talked as this happened, we didn’t know what to do or what to say. We were just kids! We were halfway to our destination before the silence was broken.

“Wait,” I said after thinking for a while, “This mall has a whole bunch of cameras in it. So that means that this man who killed the cops could be watching us right now.”

“We just have to be careful,” Nick said continuing to reassure us. If this guy could kill a weightlifting twenty year old man, he wouldn’t have any trouble killing four teenagers. “So,” he continued, “how about we go get those burgers.” Even though Nicholas’ reassuring words weren’t doing much to calm us down, we knew that we look out for each other. All we could hope was that things would end up okay.

Chapter 3: When Death Calls

When we got to the Food Court we easily found Burger King and one by one we hopped over the counter. I found the manual and, after a bit of reading, we got the frier working. We were able to make ourselves slightly burnt burgers. We sat at a clean table, but no one started eating. After fifteen minutes of sitting there, staring at our food, we heard something.

“What was that?” I asked, looking in the direction of where the noises came from.

“It was probably the guy who killed those cops” Emma muttered, also looking in the direction I was looking. Her eyes were wide, “Cashe Clothe” She paused. “I don’t know about you guys, but I want to check this out.”

“Emma,” Sam said with a stern tone in her voice, “I don’t think you should go in there. You know what he did to those cops. God knows what he could do to you. We should just avoid him. In fact, I think it would be smartest to get the hell outta here!.”

“Well if we take some kind of… weapon we could kill this guy,” Emma said. Sam was obviously not getting through to her. “Then we wouldn’t have to worry about him a all” She got up, jumped over the counter of the Burger King and got a knife. She started making her way toward the Cashe Clothe.

Sam’s mouth was wide, “Are you kidding me? We just go in there and kill him? He ripped that guy to shreds! You’re, what, five feet? He would have no problem killing you!” She looked at me and Nicholas for help, but we were already running after Emma. The brunette was already pulling back the gate of the store to reveal a mess. Clothes were everywhere, mannequin were toppled over, and jewelry was strewn about. Just as we passed the cash register, we heard slow footsteps coming our way. Nick, Sam and I started to run up the stairs to the second floor, which was closer to us than the exit was. From there we could leave the Cashe Clothe on the second floor entrance and make our way to the other side of the mall. When we got to the entrance we started to hear screams. We started running faster, making it to the exit. Sam yanked the door open and held it open. Her eyes widened.

“Where’s Emma!?” I grabbed the door out of her hands, yanking it shut again. I grabbed Sam’s arm and pulled her roughly along; She seemed to be in a trance. We rounded a few corners and knelt behind a garbage can.

Sam started crying hysterically. We knew the screams were Emma’s. She was dead and we would never see her again. “Why did we have to come here!? Today of all days! Just to get some stupid dress for some stupid dance.”

“This is none of our faults,” Nick said putting his arm around Sam, but she shoved him away, her tears of grief turning to tears of anger and hatred. “We never knew this was going to happen to us.”

“But if we would have left when we were supposed to Emma would still be alive. If I had not tried on that ugly dress right before closing, this would have never happened, and we would be back at my house drinking hot chocolate!”

“Listen,” I said slowly, as calm as I could, we have to leave here. This psycho can come here and kill the rest of us, and then we wouldn’t be able to get him behind bars in the morning…” We started to make our way down to the other end of the mall. I glanced at Sam as we walked and I could see that she was still crying. All this anger was gathering in my body. All I can think of is that I want the man who killed my friend to pay for what he did. He would know how all the other people he killed would feel. It would just take time.

Chapter 4: Only Time Will Tell

“So where are we going now?” Sam said. Her voice was kind of nasally. She was still crying a little, but Nick and I were trying to ignore it.

“Well we need a place where we can hide out till the morning comes.” I said. “Like a Tim Hortons, or a Chapters”

“I think there’s a Chapters over there,” Nick said pointing in the direction where he thought it was, “we could hide out there and read.” So we started walking in the direction Nicholas had pointed. When we found the Chapters book store, we each grabbed a book from the same section. We grabbed a chair and brought them to the farthest corner of the store, behind a bookshelf, and started to read. You could tell that Sam wasn’t reading, but I couldn’t tell if Nicholas was or not. I wondered if he realised the danger we were in. I was still processing what had happened to Emma.

“What if she’s not dead?” Sam whisphered. Her tears had dried. “What if he still has her alive somewhere, and he’s just playing with our heads?” No one replied to her suggestion. I looked at my cellphone to check the time. It was 4:30 in the morning. It had been three ours since Emma had screamed in Cashe Clothe. The mall was going to open in an hour and a half; We just had to sit tight.

“I think I’m going to grab a drink from the Tim Hortons, I could drink a whole lake.” Sam said slowly, getting up from her chair.

“Don’t you think we should go with you, you know, so nothing happens?” I said worried. I had lost one friend and I didn’t want to loose another.

“I’ll be fine,” Sam said, walking away, “it’s just over there…” She was right. I could see the glowing coffee cup from where I was sitting.

“Hmmmf,” I grumbled, sitting back down. As she disappeared around the corner to the coffee makers, I glanced back down at my novel. When I had looked at my cell phone again, it had been fifteen minutes since Sam had left.

“Where the hell is Sam?” I asked looking back at the time. “We have to go find her. It doesn’t take that long to make coffee.”

Nicholas nodded. We put our books down and made our way to the cafe. She wasn’t outside, so we opened the door to the backroom slowly. Maybe she had gone back there to find some coffee beans…

I yelled, “SAM! Are you okay!?” I heard no response. My twin and I exchanged worried looks.

“Should we go in?” Nicholas asked in a shaky voice. I gazed through the door. I didn’t hear any footsteps…

“Maybe only one of us should. If he is in there, there’s no use both of us dying.” I said, trying to add humour to the situation. It didn’t work.

“You go then, man.” Nicholas said. “I’ll stay right here.”

“If you hear ANYTHING,” I said immediately, looking straight at my brother, “Run.”

“Same for you.” Nicholas returned. I took a breath and walked through the door, “Sam? SAAAAMMM?” There was no reply. I slowly walked down the ails, looking down each one. Then I started hearing small splashes. I looked down, and I was sure that I was going to throw up. The splashes were being created by myself walking in liquid…Red liquid. I took a breath, trying to get my head to stop spinning, but the room smelt like a type of metal. I started running to the aisle that the blood was originating from. “NO!” Near the end of the aisle was a wall, and against the wall was something that I never thought that I would see. At eye level, Sam’s decapitated head was stuck to the wall. The blood escaping from the wound was littering the floor and soaking through the wall. Through her forehead was a long, object that looked like a nail. My vision was blurry, but I could see that there was a piece of paper stuck to the wall above her head. I grabbed it quickly, I needed to get out. In an attempt to run away from the scene, I tripped over something. Sam’s body was sprawled out, her fingers stuck in a position that told me that she was fighting to get away, that she was scrapping the floor in an attempt to pull herself away from her killer. I got up, the note clutched in my hand, and ran back for where I left my brother. Tears were rolling down my face. Sam was my best friend, and that creep had killed her too. I flew out of the room, crashing into a table and chair set. I fell over.

All I could think about was the blood; The blood that now covered every inch of my clothes. Nicholas ran to my side, he was talking to me, but I couldn’t hear him. I was breathing hard, my head was spinning, and my ears were ringing. I started to bawl. Would I soon be dead, too? Would I suffer the same gruesome fate that Sam and Emma just did? What would happen to my twin brother? How would our families react? I started to cry harder. Sam and Emma had younger siblings, how would they feel being told that their sister had been decapitated in a Tim Hortons?! Only time would tell.

Chapter 5: Lonely Boy

When I got out of the Tim Hortons I fell face first on the floor. I just wanted to die. My two best friends were dead. The note was still clutched in my hand. I didn’t care, I didn’t want to read it. My life was over. I lifted my head. I knew I had to read it. I slowly peeled apart the paper, which I had crumpled into a small ball. Written in Sam’s blood were two, large words…

I got up and looked around. Where was Nick? He was supposed to be waiting here! I had to find him. I started to run as fast as I could towards the exit of the store, which was open now. I knew that we had closed it when we came in. Then I saw it. I couldn’t believe how stupid we were. There was an axe that was supposed to use in case of a fire. I smashed the glass that contained it. I started to bleed. Pain swept through my body but I ignored it. I gripped the axe harder and ran.

“Nick!…Nick!” I called his name while running through the halls of the mall. BOOM! BOOM! I heard the gun shots. I new what was going on. I ran to were the I heard the noises. Then I saw my worst fear. Nick was lying on the floor. My twin brother was dead.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a figure retreating. There was a gun in his hand. It was the killer, I knew it. He was wearing a dark hoddie with the hood up, a pair of bloodied jeans and work boots. I raised the axe and ran straight at him, screaming, tears were in my eyes again. When we collided, he tried to grab my arm and swing the axe at my face. I kicked his leg in and he let go of me, groaning in pain, grabbing his leg. I took the axe and swung it. It landed in the middle of his back. The entire head of the axe was buried in his flesh. Immediately, his sweater was soaked. His blood began to drip to the floor, and he fell with a sickening thud.

Everything in my mind was blank, I pulled the axe up and started chopping into him over and over. He had hurt all of my friends. I was all alone in the world. I was out of breath, his blood was all over me and the ground like it had been poured. I threw the axe. I ran to Nick. To my relief, he was alive. His chest was rising and falling barely.

“NICK!” I cried out in relief. “It’s okay, buddy! Just hang in there! He’s gone, he’s dead! The mall should be opening soon! We’ll go to the cottage as soon as this is all over, just don’t leave!”Tears fell onto his wounds as I tried to pull him up and towards the nearest door.

Nicholas moaned in pain, pushing me away. “Drew, shut up. I’m not going to make it okay?” He coughed up blood, I knelt next to him.

“You were brave.” He forced out a laugh. “Emma would be proud.” His voice was slipping away from me. It sounded like he was walking further and further away.

“Can you tell…Everyone…Mom, Dad…Olivia…That I love them?”

I couldn’t speak. I simply sobbed.

“You’re a good brother, Drew.”

“Don’t talk like that!” I stuttered, “Everything will be fine!” But he didn’t reply. I sobbed even louder. I sobbed until I couldn’t anymore. I fell next to him, his blood slowly made it’s way to my clothes. I closed my eyes. Everything faded to black.

Chapter 6: Epilogue

Time seemed to crawl by. Days passed. Then months. Then years. Every night was filled with nightmares about the man in the black hoddie. I woke up, my hair fell into my face. It needed a trim; It was too long for my taste. It took me a minute to register where I was; It was like this after every time that I fell asleep. I couldn’t move at all. I looked down at my body. Belt straps were placed horizontally across my body; Strapping my to the bed. They were uncomfortable. The room that I was in was completely white. Every piece of furniture was white, too. I screamed, trying to get out of my bed. No one came to help me. Then everything came back to me. The mall, the death, the blood all over my clothes… Then I remembered the paramedics rushing around me, picking me up and putting me onto a stretcher. My parents were there, and my sister. They were all crying. As they wheeled me into the ambulance, I saw body bags. Sam’s parents were there, but her sisters were not. Her mother was on her knees, crying hysterically with Emma’s mother. I opened my eyes, two white men in white scrubs were walking into the white room. One took out a needle as the other grabbed my hair and held it steady. I continued to thrash around, trying to break free of the straps that were confining me. The brown haired man stuck the needle into my arm. I felt sick. I slowly stopped moving, and everything went dark again. I realised that I was going to be here forever. My life as I knew it was over.

I would like to thank my Best Friend Samantha for helping me on this amazing story. This would be shit without her. I also got a 4+ on this so Thank You. Leave your comments on what you think