I'm not the only one in my reflection.

Part twelve

The former redhead raised her hand to her face when one eye abruptly stopped seeing clearly. It was blood that started flowing from the opened wound above the eyebrow.

— It's time for you to go to the closet, baby. — Amber giggled, walking over to her ex, who was leaning back against the door and seemed ready to pass out. Her blue eyes were half-lidded, her lips parted, letting out heavy, ragged exhalations. She smiled, roughly sealing Katherine's mouth with a piece of gray duct tape.

Freeman grabbed Murphy by the shoulders and, without any special effort, turned her around with her back to him. She grabbed the ex-girlfriend's wrists and tied them up as well, this time with a longer piece of duct tape.

Amber closed her eyes for a few seconds, enjoying the sight of Katherine, so broken and bound, and then roughly grabbed her by the wrists fastened together and dragged her to the closet. — Sit here for now. All the fun will start soon and I will come for you. — She giggled, pushing the weakened girl inside the closet, then slammed the door.

Murphy's head tilted to her right shoulder, her eyelids fluttering as she fought to stay conscious. With every drop of blood flowing out of her body, this struggle seemed more and more pointless to the former redhead.

She was really thinking with every minute she spent tied up in the closet, why would she try to escape, why would she try to free herself from the closet when Amber was waiting for her outside. The girl she loved, and who plunged a knife into her stomach without the slightest hesitation.

— And now I'm back in the closet. — Katherine giggled tiredly, bracing her bound hands against the closet doors, she gave them a little push and realized that they hadn't even moved. Either she had no strength left at all, or Freeman had propped them up with something on the other side.

Only now, being in such a deplorable state, the former redhead allowed herself to cry. Because Amber turned out to be a damn traitor, because their relationship was probably insincere from the very beginning, at least on Freeman's part. Because of what could happen to her and what would happen next.

Will Murphy kill Amber? Will it be a quick, painless death, or a slow, cruel and bloody one? Or maybe at the last moment, like a hero in a moronic suit with a cape fluttering behind, Sidney Prescott will appear and save her goddaughter.

The brunette even forced a smile when she imagined Samantha Carpenter rushing into the house like a hurricane and saving the day by finding her, her old friend who had become her lover, tied up and locked in a closet. Maybe Sam will even wear a Ghostface costume for a bigger wow effect.

But in fact, Katherine was just glad that neither Sam nor Tara was in the house at that moment. Both of the Carpenter sisters, one of whom was her... her lover, and the other her best friend, were out of the city of Woodsboro right now, and they kept going as far away as possible.

Neither Amber nor her partner, if there is one, and whoever he is, will get to, one might say, the two most important girls in Murphy's life.

Sidney was dear to the brunette on a different, deeper level than the Carpenter sisters. Prescott, though not always present in her goddaughter's life, was loved by her more than her own biological mother.

She was a parental figure, someone Katherine could look up to, someone she could look up to, and someone she had admired since childhood.

So were Tatum, Gale and Dewey. They were kind of Murphy's relatives, too, but more like kind aunts and uncles than a parent like Sidney. All three of them, when they weren't busy with the Ghostfaces that kept reappearing, spent time with the brunette with Prescott.

Katherine was grateful to them for this, as she had no other relatives besides her sister and brother, who were not very good at their duties. Leslie's parents committed suicide a couple of months after Stu and Billy staged the 1996 massacre. They could not bear the bullying and harassment that was inflicted on them not only by the residents of Woodsboro themselves, but also by people from all over the country who heard the story.

God, were Liv, Mindy, and Chad okay, the ones Murphy had seen before her ex-girlfriend had persistently taken her upstairs to her bedroom? Did Amber attack them individually?

Has Freeman already started a massacre downstairs, and the brunette, tied up and locked in a closet, just doesn't hear it because of the weakness caused by a deep knife wound? Had her ex-girlfriend and her possible partner already managed to kill Katherine's friends while she was slowly dying alone?

She even seemed to hear the music turn off downstairs and the screams of drunken teenagers stop, but she couldn't be sure if she was hearing correctly, and all because of the pulse drumming in her ears.

Murphy let out a strangled groan as she had to move to reach into the back pocket of her jeans with her bound hands and pull out her brother's Swiss Army knife, which she had brought with her just in case. She fumbled blindly and pulled the hook, and a small blade came out. This action alone cost her a lot of energy, which was already very little left.

The girl was breathing heavily and quickly through her nose, gathering her strength for a new breakthrough. She began to slowly run the sharp blade over the adhesive tape material, periodically taking a second break just to take a deep breath.

The shot, which sounded so loud that it even reached the ears of the brunette, who had previously heard everything as if she were under a ton of water, cheered her up and made her try to free herself faster. After all, the fact that her closest people are not in the house does not mean that she should not at least try to help her friends - Mindy, Chad and Liv.

Even if all she can do in her condition is become a human shield for them, which will be able to take on all the blows of a knife or pistol shots.

— Come on, you can do it. — Stu appeared next to Katherine in a sitting position, legs crossed in front of him. He stared at his niece with a serious expression that she couldn't get used to.It's just that almost always, when he appeared, Macher made faces, stuck out his tongue, which, as Tatum told her wife's goddaughter a few years ago, he did almost constantly while he was alive. And then he stared with furrowed brows at the panting girl, convincing her that she would be able to free herself.

With a muffled grunt, Murphy leaned forward, starting to cut the duct tape wrapped around her bare ankles as soon as she felt her hands abruptly free instead of being pinned in one position. She took a deep breath through her mouth as soon as she pulled off the piece of duct tape.

Stu got up after the brunette, but remained silent, not offering her any information on how to act at the moment, although in other critical and dangerous situations he suggested a plan of action.

Katherine put her hands on the cabinet doors and tried to push them, they moved a little, but did not open.

— Of course. — Stu rolled his eyes and stood next to his niece, assuming the same position as she was, resting his palms on the wooden cabinet doors.

And although, as Murphy knew, he would not help in any way, even if he pressed with all his might, because he was the fruit of her sick, dying mind, a simple hallucination, it gave her strength and she was able to open one door.

The brunette fell out of the closet into Amber's bedroom and turned around, but her uncle was no longer inside the closet. Then she briefly thought that she had "called" him only in order to give herself the strength to free herself from a kind of imprisonment, but she did not dwell on this thought, but went to the door, hearing some scuffling behind her, and then a shot again, very close.

Opening the door, Katherine saw her godmother, Sidney, who was fighting with a Ghostface, holding a gun in one hand.

The question «what is she doing here», which was never asked, froze on Murphy's lips, who did not think twice and, rushing forward, grabbed the man in the suit, judging by the height, Amber in the Halloween ghost costume, by the shoulders and pushed both herself and her down the stairs. Unfortunately, Freeman managed to hook Prescott and drag them into a fall to the first floor, leaning over the railing.

The brunette opened her mouth in a scream that froze somewhere in her throat, because she could not utter a single squeak from the pain that instantly pierced her entire body with a fiery wave at once. She landed so badly on the hard floor with her side still healing, in which she was wounded by the Ghostface, Amber?, back when the very first attack on her and Tara took place.

Katherine screamed, clutching the floor with her fingers and rolled over on her back, seeing Sidney trying to crawl to the gun. The white veil fell from her eyes and she saw the worried face of Samantha, who bent over her, ignoring both the gun and the Ghostface, and Sidney Prescott, preferring only her, Katherine Murphy.