Teen Idols And Happy Meals

Salt And Wounds

Nikki’s POV

There’s always this scene in horror movies. The heroine has just narrowly escaped the dangerous psychopath and now she’s running for her life, but everybody knows she won’t get far. The woods are dark and menacing around her, branches tear at her face like claws, every shadow is a demon in disguise. And everybody knows, everybody knows she’s going to die.

Everyone but her that is. She still, foolishly, fatalistically thinks she has a chance. Even though it’s twenty degrees below zero out and she’d been running so long she can barely breathe. She still thinks she has a chance even though the odds are all against her. I’d always felt bad for that character, the one who fights and fights but can never win. I’d always sympathized with her.

 I just never thought I’d be her.

Of course, I’d never considered my life a horror movie before, but the similarities were starting to become overwhelming. Psychopaths and evil plots and fear. Fear so potent it pollutes your blood, makes it hard to breathe. The cold air entering my lungs had nothing on the fear.

“Hold on,” I gasped, coming to a stop at the top of a snow padded hill. Up above, the sky was ash black, the air ice cold. Branches twisted around us like malicious hands, reaching like monsters out of the night.

“Are you okay?” Jacen asked, coming to an abrupt halt at my words. He looked like hell – dirt and sweat staining his face, a flush on his cheeks, and fever in his cerulean blue eyes. Still, he looked better than most people on their best day. But that was just Jacen.

“I’m alright,” I promised through my pants. “I just – we’ve been running for so long. We don’t even know where we’re going.”

“Any where’s better than back there, don’t you think?” he replied, putting a hand on my shoulder. Snow flakes, so heavy that they were starting to resemble small cotton balls, were getting caught in his dark hair. His teeth were chattering.

“Not if we freeze to death,” I responded. The cold had soaked through my skin, forming icicles around my bones. With every beat of my heart more icy blood filled my veins, igniting freezing pain all throughout my body.

“Well our only chance now is to keep running,” he said. “We can’t go back – it’s not like we could even find it.” He leaned back against a heavy tree, his chest rising and falling rapidly. He was more in shape than I could ever be, but he’d gone through a lot in that cabin; sickness and drugs and starvation. In theory, he shouldn’t have been able to even stay on his feet after all that, but he fought on.

“I’ll tell you what we should’ve done,” he muttered after a moment. His eyes glowed eerily in the frozen blackness. “Stuffed Eleanor in a closet and called 911. Why didn’t we do that?”

It was an excellent point. “I don’t know Jacen,” I returned in an exasperated hiss. “Why didn’t we do that?”

“Running seemed like a good idea at the time,” he mumbled, “But I didn’t know this place was in the middle of fucking nowhere! You could’ve told me!”

“Well I’m sorry!” I exclaimed. “But I felt it was rather obvious! Most criminal masterminds don’t have their evil lairs in condominiums!”

“Well I’m the one who got us out of there in the first place,” he argued, seeming agitated. He had to be cold, and hungry, and tired – but he didn’t mention any of that. “The least you could’ve done was -,”

“Enough!” I cut him off, coming forward. It took some effort, seeing as the snow was up to my thighs. I placed my numb fingers against his chest, locking eyes with him. “Fighting won’t get us anywhere. We have to focus on getting out of here.”