Beastly (The Ever After Collection)

by Noelle Marie

  Emma released an unladylike snort. “Right,” she quipped, turning to leave, but he quickly maneuvered himself so that he was standing in front of her again.

  “To apologize for being such a jerk,” he added. Caught by surprise, Emma froze. She stared at Gunther, truly curious about what he had to say in probably the first time ever. “I should never have asked you to prom in front of everyone like that,” he continued hurriedly, sensing he finally had her attention. “I know how shy you can be. I should have been more discrete.”

  Emma waited, thinking for some asinine reason that there would be more. Like, an “I’m sorry for taking advantage of you when you were drunk” or “I’m sorry for attempting to molest you”, for instance.

  But it didn’t take her long to realize that there would be no such apology forthcoming.

  What he had apologized for by comparison was positively ludicrous, but if it would get him away from her, she’d gladly accept his lame attempt at contrition.

  “Awesome, I accept your apology. Now move. Please.”

  When he didn’t, Emma rolled her eyes. She attempted to go around him, but he quickly sidestepped her, an oddly self-satisfied grin glued to his face considering the circumstance. “So you’ll go to prom with me, then?”

  What?

  “What?”

  Emma didn’t even care that her brain to mouth filter was short-circuiting. After all, that’s what tended to happen when people were confronted with one absurdity after another. She was honestly flabbergasted.

  How in the world did accepting his stupid apology somehow equate to her going to prom with him in his demented mind?

  Not only was she already going to the dance with Heath, Gunther had his own date: Maribeth.

  But when had the asshole ever cared for anybody else’s feelings but his own?

  “You’re going to the prom with me,” Gunther repeated, like she was the one being purposely obtuse.

  “No-o,” Emma said slowly like she was talking to a particularly dense toddler. “I already have a date.”

  Gunther stared at her like her rejection of him simply didn’t compute. “With who? That Heath kid?” He sounded incredulous.

  “Yes, that Heath kid,” Emma snapped. “You know, my boyfriend.”

  “Why would you want him when you could have me?” He seemed honestly confused, and quite frankly, Emma had had enough of the socially inept, egotistical asshole in front of her.

  “I don’t know, Gunther,” she said, her words dripping with sarcasm, “Maybe it’s the fact that Heath is sweet, smart, kind and a barrage of other awesome things, and you’re just a simpleminded bully who’s too busy basking in his own supposedly good looks to rub his two remaining brain cells together and form a basic understanding of the word no!”

  Gunther’s face reddened with every word that escaped Emma’s mouth until it was an impressive shade of purple. His jaw clenched tightly, causing the veins to bulge out of his thick neck. Somehow, however, the natural high of finally telling Gunther off blinded Emma to the signs of impending danger. “And another thing-”

  She couldn't ignore it, however, when his hands suddenly shot forward and seized both of her wrists in a crushing grip, using his hold on them to pull her close.

  “Ow! Hey, stop!”

  But Gunther didn’t listen. His face was so near Emma’s that his breath tickled her nose as his dark eyes drilled holes into her brown ones. "I think I’ve been too lenient with you, Emma, so let me be perfectly clear. You can either go to prom with me or not go at all.”

  Cold fear and hot anger clashed within her at his words, battling each other for dominance. Anger won.

  “I’d like to see you try to stop me,” she hissed before yanking her arms away. Or attempting to, anyway. This time, Gunther refused to let her go.

  His eyes flashed wildly as he dragged her even closer to him, covering her mouth with his. He released her wrists so he could squeeze at her waist instead. Emma tried to push him away, but he was like a statue. A statue with a probing tongue and roaming hands.

  She was enraged when one of said hands groped the underside of her butt, the other slinking up under her shirt and trailing over the soft skin of her belly. Terror joined her rage when the same hand attempted to wedge itself up under the underwire of her bra.

  Thinking fast, Emma bit down hard on Gunther’s tongue.

  The tangy taste of blood flooded her mouth. Despite how disgusting the coppery liquid was, it was worth it when Gunther immediately shoved her away. She stumbled, but managed to keep her balance.

  “Stupid bitch!” he yelled, spitting out a glob of salvia that Emma was ridiculously pleased to see was tinged red.

  And then he backhanded her

  Emma didn’t see the hit coming.

  The force of the blow, paired with the unexpectedness of it, sent Emma flying. Her head ricocheted off the wall and she landed hard on the floor. She lay there in shock for a minute before, just as abruptly as he’d hit her, Gunther was yanking her to her feet by an unyielding grip on her bicep.

  He threw her into the dark prop room like she was a rag doll, her hands and knees colliding harshly with the hard cement of the floor. Emma blinked hard, fighting off the dizziness and sudden nausea the jarring motion had caused.

  “Maybe you’ll be feeling more cooperative after spending the night in here,” Gunther spat, forcing Emma to focus on him instead of the blackness threatening to encroach upon the edges of her vision. She was oddly entranced by the red blood showing through the lines of his teeth.

  Her attention was soon caught by something else, however. Gunther held a phone up in his hand. Her phone, to be more precise. He must have grabbed it while he was groping her, she realized dazedly. “Don’t worry, I’ll let your boyfriend know you won’t be able to make it to prom after all.”

  Before Emma could clear her head enough to articulate a reply, Gunther had slammed the door to the prop room shut, and with the quiet click of a lock, she was cast into darkness.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Gunther,” Emma managed to wheeze when she could get her mouth and brain to work together. “Gunther!” she called more loudly, pulling herself off the floor and rushing to the door as fast as her throbbing head would allow her.

  Surely he wouldn’t really lock her in here. The sound of the bolt lock sliding into place was just her imagination playing tricks on her. But when she tried the door knob, twisting it both ways before jiggling it as hard as she could, what felt like a hard lump of pure dread began forming in the pit of her stomach.

  “Gunther, you can’t do this!” she bellowed, smacking her hand as hard as she could against the door. “Gunther!”

  But no one replied.

  And then the hallway light shining through the cracks of the door was suddenly gone and the already dark room became pitch black.

  Feeling the beginnings of panic threatening to rise, Emma hastily stomped down the useless emotion as best as she could. Instead of focusing on the fact that she was stuck in a dark, cramped room with no food or water for the foreseeable future, she closed her eyes, took a deep breath and slowly counted to ten.

  When she was done she felt slightly calmer and quietly took stock of her injuries.

  Although Emma couldn't see them in the dark, her palms and knees were burning and she assumed they’d been scraped up pretty badly when she’d used them to catch her fall against the cement floor. The right side of her face, where Gunther had struck her, was on fire too. Upon careful examination with her fingers, her cheek felt hot and swollen to the touch. She also discovered blood dribbling down her fat, bottom lip. The worst pain by far, however, was the pounding of her head, so Emma tentatively reached up a hand to examine her scalp. Her fingers came across a small lump already forming where the intense throbbing was originating from, but she didn’t feel any blood matted in her hair so she took that to be a good sign at least.

  Overall, her body was sore and the injuries she’d sustained
hurt, but the pain was tolerable and she hadn't found anything life threatening.

  Emma’s mind inevitably drifted back to the predicament she found herself in: namely, being trapped in a closet-like room in the basically abandoned part of the school. She didn’t even think the janitor made a point of trekking down here often, judging by the layer of dust she’d seen covering most everything when she was looking around for lights earlier.

  Don’t forget the cobwebs, her traitorous mind reminded her and Emma firmly banished the thought of spiders from her mind.

  She had better things to worry about after all. Like being stuck down here for hours. Or even days.

  Surely someone would notice she was missing, Emma attempted to reassure herself. Her father, or Heath, or one of her friends. After all, her backpack was lying unattended in the gym and her truck was still sitting in the school parking lot.

  But the lump of dread in her stomach only grew larger as she thought of her father’s intense, overnight work schedule. She’d texted him earlier that she was staying after school to help set up for prom. He’d already taken off for work that evening and probably thought nothing of her absence when he left. And Heath was working tonight too. Not to mention the fact that Gunther had her phone. He could easily pretend to be her and text Heath that she was perfectly fine. Text him anything, really. Same with her friends.

  She supposed Gunther might come back to his senses and let her out. He’d said something along the lines of her being more cooperative after spending the night in here. Maybe he’d be back tomorrow morning or afternoon before prom began.

  But Emma wouldn’t count on it.

  Someone would find her eventually, she knew, but there was no telling how long that eventually would take.

  The thought of spending not just one night down here, but possibly multiple nights caused that feeling of panic to return, and Emma dug the palms of her hands as hard as she could into her eye sockets, desperately trying to hold back tears.

  The persistent pressure of her bladder didn’t help matters.

  Resolutely ignoring the urge to pee, Emma attempted to reclaim her composure. She wasn’t one to play the part of damsel in distress, after all. If no one was around to save her or even realize that she needed saving, she’d just have to save herself. With that uplifting thought firmly in place, Emma wrestled back her tears and began the near impossible task of searching through the dark room for something she could use to escape.

  It was difficult to see in the black of the room, but eventually the stark white pages of an abandoned script caught her attention. She grabbed it, and after plucking a few pages free to make it the right thickness, she slid it between the crack of the door and the wall, trying to somehow lift the latched bolt.

  She attempted this for what had to have been close to an hour, using as many different techniques as she could think of and growing more and more frustrated as each minute passed.

  Her hope that she could somehow free herself was quickly vanishing, replaced with self-pity and despair. Eventually Emma grew so upset that she threw the script across the room in a fit of rage, sinking to the floor in defeat and resting her head against her knees.

  No longer able to hold her bladder, she sat there for only a few minutes before crawling across the floor, feeling for the drain she’d seen earlier. When she found it, she relieved herself.

  The indignity – inhumanity – of it triggered a fresh avalanche of emotions. Anger. Helplessness. And very real fear at the thought of being stuck down here all weekend with no food or water or even company to distract her from the suffocating blackness that surrounded her.

  The bombardment of sudden emotions was overwhelming, and despite the fact that she chokingly tried to swallow them back, tears were soon running down her face. She hastily wiped them away with her trembling hands, but the salty rivulets kept coming. The shaking in her hands soon traveled to the rest of her body until even her swollen bottom lip was shivering. Emma physically couldn't hold the suppressed panic back anymore, and after dragging herself to the nearest corner of the room, she collapsed to the floor.

  She pulled her knees up to her chest and cried into the denim of her jeans until they were soaked. Her cries weren’t the silent, almost-pretty falling of tears either, they were loud, ugly wails that caused the throbbing in her head to escalate to near unbearable levels. But she didn't know what else to do, and once she’d started, Emma couldn't bring herself to stop. Despite the way her brain seemed to be hammering itself against her scalp, it was therapeutic in a way.

  Sometime during her sobbing stint Emma managed to curl herself up into a ball as best as her sore body would allow, and somehow, despite the barrage of emotions threatening to do her in, she managed to do the unthinkable and cry herself to sleep.

  * * *

  The effort it took to crack open her swollen eyes was immense. It felt like weights had attached themselves to her eyelids overnight, and the room she woke in was so black that it took a moment for her to realize that she even had managed to open them.

  It was disorienting to wake in the same dark that sleep provided her and Emma didn’t immediately remember where she was. When she did remember, she could feel her entire body tense in near panic and quickly fought to combat it. The fact that she had no real concept of how much time had passed since she’d been locked in the small room didn’t help matters, but after a few minutes of deep breathing, Emma managed to calm her racing heart and force her limbs to relax.

  She lifted a hand to check on the lump on the back of her head. Although it was the same size as the night before – roughly the dimensions of a dollar coin – she took stock in the fact that her head itself was feeling better. Although it no longer felt like a wrecking ball had careened into her skull, a sharp ache centered between her eyes was still present. She rubbed the spot, hoping to somehow chase the hurt away, and realized that her forehead was slick was sweat.

  The room was hot.

  The temperature wasn’t unbearable, but it certainly wasn’t comfortable either. If Emma were to guess, she’d say it was about eighty degrees in the small, cramped room. She assumed the presence of such heat was largely due to the fact that it was located across from the boiler room.

  She lifted her long-sleeved shirt above her head and used the fabric to wipe away the little beads of sweat that had gathered on her forehead, upper lip, and the back of her neck. She abandoned the shirt on the floor afterwards, hardly caring that its absence left her only in a white camisole. It wasn’t like there was anyone around to see.

  She licked her lips and swallowed, attempting to soothe her parched throat. She was thirsty. And the unfriendly reminder that she didn’t have any water to drink down here was enough for her to drag her tired limbs off the hard floor. Even though her eyes hadn’t adjusted any better to the dark than they had the night before, she was intent on searching the room again for some sort of tool to aid in an escape.

  Before Emma had even begun her search of the room, however, the quiet was suddenly interrupted by the soft sound of footsteps and a scraping noise – like something being dragged across the floor. The floor above her. Hope blossomed in her chest.

  Emma had no idea who the footsteps could belong to. A teacher coming in on a Saturday morning to get some extra work done? Maybe even the photographer or chaperones for prom if enough time had passed since she’d fallen asleep. It could even be Gunther, realizing what a mistake he’d made the night before and coming back to get her.

  “Hello?” she yelled enthusiastically up at the ceiling. “Hello? Can you hear me?”

  There was more shuffling, but no voiced reply.

  “Hey!” Emma called more loudly. “Down here! Can you hear me? I need help!”

  There still wasn’t a response and growing desperate, Emma hurriedly stumbled across the room, her knees banging against what had to have been a large piece of a set twice, as her hands searched for something – anything – in the dark that she could throw up a
t the ceiling and create some sort of ruckus. They brushed over what felt like a large wicker basket and she chucked it at the ceiling without a second thought. It made a loud thump as it connected with the sheet rock.

  “Hey! Down here! Help!”

  No answer. Not even the sounds of more footsteps. Her hands fingered what felt like a framed painting of some sort and she threw that up at the ceiling too. Thwack.

  “Help me! Help!”

  She waited.

  Nothing.

  “He-elp!” she yelled, choking on the word halfway as panic once again threatened to set in. “Please,” she whispered desperately, burying her face in her hands.

  But whoever it was upstairs hadn’t heard her.

  No one was coming.

  The realization caused a rage to build up so suddenly in her chest that before she could second guess the urge, Emma was launching herself at the prop room door. “Let me out!” she yelled, pounding at the wooden door with her fists. “Just open up! Open up, damn you!” And even though Emma knew deep down that it was pointless, she backed up a few steps and attempted to kick down the door.

  It didn’t budge.

  Unfazed, she pulled back her leg to kick at it again. When her foot connected with the door this time, however, she felt her ankle twist in a way that really shouldn’t have been possible. With a pained gasp, she lost her balance and fell to the floor. She pulled her injured ankle up to her body and clasped it between her hands.

  The pain radiating from the limb, however, did nothing to dampen Emma’s anger. In fact, it stoked the fire of her rage until it was burning even more brightly.

  “Screw you!” she yelled furiously at the unfazed door before pushing up off the floor in order to get to her feet. She hobbled around the room, throwing random props as she came across them. A small end table at the wall. A decorative pillow at the door.

  “I hate you!” she yelled, not talking to the room so much anymore as the person who’d locked her in the room. “I hate the way you stare! I hate the feel of your hands on my skin! I hate how entitled you are and the way you think you deserve to have everything – everyone—you want, even if they don’t want you! I hope you burn in hell!”