by Mia Archer
Well then. That explained why she looked familiar. My roommate, Carrie, was on the squad. We’d been an odd couple as roomies, but we mostly got along. Even if we weren’t exactly BFFs.
I scanned the article. This Kirsten girl had been carrying, and she’d shot the shooter.
I scrolled down to the comments and saw the usual debate from the usual sides taking the usual stances on the whole gun control thing amped up to eleven because this was a college campus. I was about to close the window when a comment talking about a monster caught my eye.
My body went cold and I started to shiver. Someone was claiming there hadn’t been a shooting. That there’d been a monster ripping people to shreds.
I licked my lips. I suddenly felt like I was falling, only I was right here in my chair.
I was supposed to be safe, but I felt anything but safe as I scrolled looking for more comments about monsters.
As I started scrolling the first comment disappeared. Apparently someone at the campus newspaper was working overtime to make sure the comment section was kept clean of any mention of monsters, but my curiosity had been piqued.
So I pulled out my phone and went to one of the numerous anonymous gossip boards for campus. Maybe there was someone on the campus newspaper deleting stuff, but they couldn’t do the same for all the anonymous boards where people gleefully shared misinformation.
Hell, there were times when I thought the only reason the campus newspaper managed to get the occasional scoop was because they lurked on those anonymous boards and followed up on enough wild stories that some of them turned out to be true.
When I opened the app there were multiple threads about the shooting, which was to be expected.
Mostly it was people talking about how they couldn’t believe something like that had happened here. There were people having the usual gun control debates, and it might as well be bots having the conversation since they were parroting the usual talking points. Hell, it might actually be bots having those conversations with the way the Internet worked these days.
I wasn’t interested in any of that bullshit, though. No, I was searching for any mention of a monster. It took some scrolling, but eventually I found what I was looking for. I went cold all over again as I stared at my phone screen.
There were people claiming they’d been in the theater last night and a werewolf had been attacking people. One person had even posted a grainy video that was hard to make out aside from a brief shot of Gary Busey’s face followed by something that might’ve been a werewolf, or it might’ve been someone in a costume.
I kept scrolling until I got to someone describing what they’d seen. It was during the scene where the sheriff was about to get his head bashed in with a baseball bat by a werewolf, I knew exactly what scene they were talking about, and a guy had stood and started laughing. Then he started undergoing a transformation that was pretty similar to what was going on up on the screen.
People were going on about how they thought it was part of the show. That the theater was known for putting together stunts like that to keep people coming, but then the thing had started laying into people all around them and the laughs turned to horror as people realized it was all too real.
More scrolling revealed grainy pictures of something that might or might not be a werewolf. There were plenty of other people saying the anonymous posters were full of shit and doing bad Photoshop jobs. There were people claiming that making light of a shooting wasn’t funny, but I knew, deep down, that the people sharing those pictures and stories were telling the truth.
The attack last night hadn’t been a gunman. It’d been a werewolf killing people in that theater, and for some reason the cops weren’t letting that information out.
Which only reinforced my notion that going to the cops about what’d happened in the nature preserve last night would be a really bad idea.
I was on the verge of tears. This was all so fucked up. That thing had killed those assholes in the woods, and then it had chased me, only to go out to the theater to…
But no. I looked to the article in the campus paper about the shooting. It’d happened at around the same time Griffin and Jack were getting eviscerated.
If the attack at the theater had happened at around the same time as the attack out in the woods then that meant it hadn’t been the same werewolf. There was more than one lurking around campus, which was terrifying.
That also meant the werewolf that’d been chasing me the night before hadn’t been killed in that movie theater. The thing was still out there. It still knew who I was and where I lived.
Any brief moment of comfort I might’ve taken from knowing a werewolf had been killed in the theater was gone in an instant.
“Son of a bitch,” I muttered.
The door swung open and banged against the wall. I turned and screamed, thinking it must be the werewolf coming for me. Which had Carrie screaming and jumping as well. I could hear doors opening out in the hall. No doubt people were popping their heads out to see where the fire was.
I put a hand to my chest and took a couple of deep breaths.
“What the hell, Cara?” she asked.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “You just startled me, and…
“No, there’s no emergency out here,” she said, talking to someone out in the hall.
I blushed. What an idiot. The sun was up. No werewolf was going to use a key and turn the knob when it was stepping into a dorm room. No, if I got a visit from one of those things it’d just bash the door in before it killed me.
And now I felt like a first-class dumbass for screaming like that in front of my roommate. Dammit. I was going to have to transfer away from this college if life was going to be like this, looking over my shoulder and jumping at any potential trouble, for the rest of my college career.
11
Cara
“So do you want to tell me what the hell the problem is?” Carrie asked as she slammed the door shut behind her.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m on edge with the stuff that’s happened around campus.”
Carrie’s face softened. She glanced to my laptop where I still had the articles about the shooting up.
“Were you there last night?” she asked.
I glanced at the screen. I’d experienced the same horror as the people in that movie theater, but I couldn’t tell her about that without her thinking I’d lost it.
So I kept my big fucking mouth shut.
“I wasn’t,” I said. “It’s just…”
“I know what you mean,” Carrie said. “Thinking something like that can happen on our nice quiet campus…”
She shivered. At least she sort of understood how I was feeling, even if she had no idea what I was feeling.
I thought of that girl. Then I looked Carrie up and down. She was in a pair of tight shorts and a sports bra. Basically the uniform she wore whenever she was going to or from cheerleading practice.
It was an outfit I’d always enjoyed watching her in, for all that I kept things strictly business between us.
She’d not-so-subtly made it clear she was only interested in the gentlemen, and I respected that. I’d gone out of my way to make her feel comfortable rooming with me. Which included not checking her out too much.
At least not when she was looking.
“Earth to Cara,” Carrie said.
I jumped. I’d been staring while I was lost in thought, and I realized it looked like I was staring directly at her chest.
“Sorry,” I said. “I got lost in thought.”
“I understand,” she said. “What happened at that theater last night is a lot to process? I mean I’ve been there before!”
“Right,” I said, glancing at the article that included the picture of that pretty blonde girl who’d supposedly killed the thing last night.
I stared into her eyes looking out from a low resolution picture that’d obviously been taken from her social media. I wondered what those eyes had se
en last night. I wondered how she’d managed to take that thing out.
“Checking out Kirsten?” Carrie asked.
“I wouldn’t say I’m checking her out,” I said. “More interested in what happened last night, you know?”
I glanced up at her. I tried to sound very casual as I said this next bit.
“So did you happen to hear anything about what happened?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” Carrie asked.
“I mean I know she’s a cheerleader. Did she say anything about what happened last night?”
Carrie sighed. “She didn’t want to talk about it.”
I muttered something that I hoped she’d take for agreement. I could understand why someone wouldn’t want to talk about what’d happened in the theater. Especially if there was a cover-up going on.
“Damn,” I muttered.
“Right? It totally sucks to know someone who was right there in the middle of the biggest story to hit this campus in years, and she doesn’t want to talk about it!”
I decided to pick my next words carefully. After all, I didn’t want to say something that would make Carrie think I’d lost it.
That was something that had always annoyed me in the horror movies that my brothers had forced on me. The people who saw the big scary monster early in the movie always let the world know about it, and nobody ever believed them.
I didn’t want to wind up a horror movie crazy nobody believed.
“So she didn’t say anything about what really happened?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” Carrie asked. “I just told you. She wasn’t saying anything. It’s really unfair.”
I laughed like I was making a joke. At least I hoped it seemed like I was making a joke and totally not taking anything that I was reading on the campus newspaper comments section seriously.
“It’s just that there was some crazy stuff I was reading in the paper and on the anonymous comment boards,” I said.
“Oh?” Carrie asked, flopping down on her bed. “Like what?”
“Like crazy people saying it wasn’t actually a shooting,” I said.
Carrie raised an eyebrow. “If it wasn’t a shooting then what the hell else would it be?” she asked.
I sighed. I knew I was going to seriously regret this, but it had to be said. If Carrie knew anything about what’d really happened then I needed to get it out of her. Maybe she had learned something from this Kirsten girl and was trying to cover for her friend.
“Some comments were saying there was a werewolf in that theater last night,” I said.
Carrie stared at me like she was trying to decide if I’d gone crazy. Or maybe she was trying to figure out how much I actually knew, and whether or not she should tell me the real story.
Then the corner of her mouth quirked up in a smile. A moment later she was rolling on her bed laughing and wiping tears from her eyes.
Okay then. I suppose that was one of the better responses I could’ve hoped for. At least she was laughing like she thought I was making a joke, and not looking at me like I’d lost it.
“That’s funny,” she said. “You actually had me going there for a minute. I didn’t know you could joke around like that!”
“Yeah,” I said. “How about that?”
“People will say the craziest things after stuff like this happens,” she said. “And that’s, like, totally distasteful. You know?”
“Totally,” I said, my mouth dry as I looked at the news article. “Who makes up stuff like that?”
“Exactly,” Carrie said.
Carrie stood and started pacing back and forth. She glanced at my computer a couple of times, then back to me.
“So did it say anything about why she was at the theater?” Carrie asked.
“Why she was at the theater? No.”
“Interesting,” Carrie said, still pacing and glancing between me and screen.
“Am I missing something?” I asked.
“Not really,” Carrie said. “Let’s just say you and Kirsten might get along, if you catch my drift.”
We’d get along? What the hell was she talking about?
“Um…”
“You know,” she said, hitting me with a significant look that I totally didn’t understand.
“I’m afraid I don’t know,” I said.
“Kirsten was there on a date,” Carrie said. “And my understanding is that date didn’t go well because of all the nastiness. Which means she’s still single.”
“And that matters to me because…”
Carrie rolled her eyes and seemed to give up on trying to be subtle.
“Because she’s a lesbian!” she said. “Why else would I be dropping all these hints?”
My eyes went wide. I looked back to the pretty girl on the screen, and suddenly I was seeing her in a totally different light.
Sure she might be the key to figuring out how to deal with my werewolf problem, but there was also that other feeling that’d hit me when I first saw her: that she was pretty cute.
I wouldn’t mind getting to know her a little better even if she didn’t have the key to saving me from the werewolves lurking on campus.
“Really?” I asked.
“Totally,” Carrie said. “Give me just a minute.”
As she headed for the bathroom I arched an eyebrow. “You didn’t shower at the gym?”
“I’m getting ready for a big party tonight,” she said.
She disappeared into the attached bathroom and I heard the sound of the shower running. Which seemed like an abrupt end to the conversation, but Carrie could be flighty like that sometimes.
So I shrugged and turned back to the computer. I tried looking up that girl on social media, but she had all the usual stuff locked down tighter than Fort Knox. Dammit.
“Why are you hiding from the world?” I muttered as I stared at her picture.
The door to the bathroom opened and Carrie stepped out in a towel which I totally didn’t look at out of the corner of my eye.
She went through her pre-party primping ritual and I split my time between reading anonymous posts about the movie theater and stealing glances when she wasn’t looking. Though eventually she caught me and let out an annoyed grunt.
I thought she was annoyed because she’d caught me checking her out, which I kind of sort of had been, but she shook her head.
“What are you waiting for?” she asked.
“Waiting for?” I asked, totally confused now.
“The party?” she asked.
“Wait, you expect me to go to this party with you?” I asked.
“Well yeah,” Carrie said. “If you’re going to meet Kirsten you’ll have to come to the party, right?”
“She’s going to a party the night after she had to deal with whatever happened at that movie theater?” I asked.
I couldn’t quite bring myself to say it’d been a shooting. Not when I had a sneaking suspicion of what’d really happened.
“Kirsten’s weird like that,” Carrie said. “She had an odd family life growing up. Her dad was really weird, and I think some of it rubbed off on her. Real gung ho on guns and self defense and all that sort of stuff, which is how she was able to take out that bastard at the theater.”
“Right,” I muttered. “And what does this have to do with me going to a party tonight?”
“Oh come on,” Carrie said. “If I’m going to set you up then you’re going to have to go to the party, right? You two might’ve gotten together a lot earlier if you’d accepted any of my invitations before.”
I frowned. I was pretty sure she’d never invited me out to any parties, but then again it was difficult to tell for sure. I wasn’t the greatest at picking up on social cues.
Though I wanted to go out tonight even less than usual. Going to a party meant going out of the dorm after dark. Which gave me a case of the shakes.
“I can’t go,” I said. “Thanks for the invite, though.”
“Oh no you don�
�t,” Carrie said. “You’re not getting away that easily.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s time for you to stop making excuses,” she said. “I held my tongue when you went out with those two dorky guys last night, but you’re fooling yourself if you think that’s what you’re into.”
All I could do was stare. I hadn’t even realized she’d been paying attention to who I was going out with.
She thought I was still half in the closet or something, despite the fact that I’d been pretty up front about the fact that I was into the ladies the first time we’d met.
“That’s not what’s going on here at all…”
“I don’t care what’s going on here,” she said, saying it with a bright and bubbly smile.
“I…”
“We’re still the same size, right?” she asked.
I bristled at the implication. We’d been the same size at the start of the semester. From the way she’d been going on at the time I got the idea she had some grand fantasy about the two of us being BFFs exchanging outfits and going out to parties on the weekends.
It’d been a shock for Carrie when she discovered I wasn’t the fashionista she’d been hoping for. No, I was a hoodie and sweats kind of girl. Sure I’d updated some of those sweats so they had the university logo on the ass, that seemed to be the popular style when it got cold enough that yoga pants were no longer practical, but they were still sweats.
“I haven’t gained any weight this year, if that’s what you’re getting at,” I said.
I spent as little time in the gym as possible. I’d also been blessed with what my mom called good genes. At least she had back before I entered into my hoodies and sweatpants fashion phase.
After that she’d simply sighed and shook her head when she looked at me. As though she thought it was a waste that I hadn’t been interested in beauty pageants, cheerleading, and being the prom queen like she had once upon a time.
“Good,” Carrie said, pulling a couple of things out of the closet and tossing them at me. “We’re going to get you made over and ready to go out and have fun tonight whether you like it or not.”