Read Online Terrorscape by Nenia Campbell - Free Book Online Page A

can in the sink and planned to dispose of it
when—when what? She couldn't remember.
    God , thought Val, What's wrong with me? A heartbeat later she smiled bitterly. What wasn't?
    But sane people didn't stand off to one side of the
room, smiling to themselves after hurling half-empty
beer cans, and Val checked around to make sure
nobody was watching her.
I'm losing my mind.
    The Otoño residents had outdone themselves on
such a minimal budget. Even Val had to admit this.
Each dorm room was a miniature party in and of
itself, with the exception of a few abstainers.
    Val wasn't brave enough to venture into the
dorms down the hall where things sounded more
than a little noisy and wild, but somebody had set up
a strobe here, in her and Mary's common room. She
could see the shadowy figures bobbing in the light,
changing poses with the stupefyingly jerky motions
of a phantasmagoria.
    All around her, music blared. Hard rock, dubstep, rap, and pop all came together to form a
discordant roar that soon had Val's ears ringing.
    Beneath the dimmed lights she felt blind, deaf,
raw and exposed: a tenuously connected bundle of
nerve endings capable of flying apart at any moment.
    The whole
scene
had a surreal nightmarish
quality. As she poured herself some punch from an
orange keg, she half-expected to see him standing
there, watching her from the shadows.
    It was with a scream that she dropped her cup of
punch—at least, she hoped it was just punch—when
some drunken boy brushed past her on his way to the
bathroom, startling both of them and eliciting a curse.
    “The fuck is your problem?” he muttered, already
in the process of unbuckling his pants as he slammed
the bathroom door behind him.
    Val leaned against the wall to steady herself. The
lights blurred before her eyes. Her chest hurt. Her
head hurt. There was a ringing in her ears that
wouldn't go away. You're acting crazy .
Everyone seemed to be looking back at her,
watching her like some sort of communal Eye. Nobody's watching you. It's all in your head .
She had told herself the same thing at Gavin's
party—and look where that had gotten her.
    How does that saying go? Insanity is doing the same
thing over and over again and expecting different results?
She let out her breath and stumbled to the buffet.
The food was about what she had expected on a
college salary. Chips and sodas of all brands and
varieties, store-bought cookies on clearance, cheap
pizza from a local greasy spoon. There was a cooler
she didn't recognize, which one of Mary's friends
must have brought, and when she opened the lid she
found it stuffed full of ice and beer. Val let the lid fall
closed just as a burly athlete shoved past her to grab
two Heinekens.
Val looked longingly at her bed. She could say she
drank too much and got tipsy—that was normal,
right? Needing to lie down after a long night?
Except it hasn't been a long night . It's not even 10
p.m. And she was pretty sure Mary knew she didn't
drink because Mary had spent most of the night with
one eye fixed on her like a hawk.
Somebody tapped her on the shoulder. She spun
around to see a smiling red-haired guy looking down
at her. Mary's friend, James.
No, not James .
The color drained from Val's face as the room
tilted and rocked in the unsteady light of the strobe,
and the ringing in her ears grew to a pulsing roar. Oh James, oh God, oh God oh God oh God.
    Jade—that was his name, not Jude or James or
any other derivation, but Jade like the stone—moved
his lips silently. It took her a moment to realize he was
speaking. Not that she could hear him over the
throbbing baseline of Mary's mix CD.
“What?”
    He cupped his hand over his mouth like a
megaphone and presumably repeated whatever it
was that he had said before. Val shook her head and
watched, amused in spite of the grief threatening to
overtake her heart, as he pantomimed dancing with
one hand and made his other hand dance alongside it.
    Jade bowed, with theatrical flair, and