Renfaire Fantasy 2: Chloe's Escape (Patreon)

As the evening light dimmed and night began to fall, Brian found he was withdrawing into himself more and engaging in the heated discussions less and less. The argument exchanged back and forth across the campfire ceaselessly, the same beasts morphing into slightly different phrasings for renewed attacks or working to chip away at trivial aspects of the opponent’s rationalizations for this or that. Influencing Chloe with the charm robbed her of her free will and was wrong. Letting her free meant she would bring down terrible things upon them. The meat of the matter did not change, and as Brian gazed into the fire with gritted teeth he realized that they were deadlocked. Each side’s reasoning resonated with him somewhat but failed to fully sway him, no magic solution or perfect argument or be-all and end-all epiphany seemed forthcoming that would lift them out of the miserable moral quandary.

I’m gonna have to just decide what to do, Brian thought. And, it’s gonna have to be something I can live with. The thing is—I REALLY just… don’t want Chloe to be my problem anymore. Yet, nothing seems dumber than just naively trusting she could keep her word and leave us alone. But also, it’s not like we can just kill her.

“If you can’t convince me you’re not a threat to us, you’re going nowhere,” Kelly’s voice remained firm. “Not if there’s any chance you throw in with the Masters.”

“You’ve never even met the Masters, and if you had, you’d know I would never go along with them, no matter what,” Chloe ridiculed them. “Are you fucking serious?”

“Bad things happened to Steph in one of the previous timelines,” Kelly glared. “I won’t allow that to happen. I’m not letting you keep up your psychotic pursuit of Brian, either, and—”

“Oh, puh-lease,” Chloe laughed.

“Uh, no? You’ve been completely fucking psychotic!” Emily retorted. “Think about everything you’ve done. The whole convention weekend. The pregnancy scare bullshit. The false accusations. Stalking Brian, stealing his phone. Lying to Stephanie to try to separate them—do you fucking realize what almost happened just with that?!”

“I was trying to help her,” Chloe snapped. “To keep her from making my mistakes, from suffering the way I—”

“So, we can just kill her, right?” Emily interrupted. “I’m done. I’m so done. With this bullshit. Let’s just kill her. I’m so for real. If—”

“Chloe—” Even Stephanie’s voice had run cold, and Brian hated to think what everyone’s heightened emotions were doing to her. “Chloe, what almost happened to you, in that alleyway—is what almost happened to me. If it hadn’t been for Emily and Rebecca—”

“Yeah, okay,” Chloe let out a scoff in retort. “Sure, I bet. You hear my fucking story and then just try to co-opt what happened to me as if it happened to you. Real fucking convincing. Except—”

“Kill her,” Emily hissed out again.

“This isn’t getting anywhere,” Brian said, rising to his feet.

Everyone went silent at that, and though everyone’s eyes turned his way he scanned off into the treeline where the scattered bits of visible sky had become difficult to make out. It felt as though the girls were all expecting him to deliver a decision, but he simply didn’t have one. Kelly, Stephanie, and Emily would probably support whatever choice he made, and realizing that seemed to undermine whatever call was made, because rather than a majority rule it would be charm influence. He couldn’t brush off the affect the charm had on them while also hoping to use it to change Chloe into someone who was more agreeable and easier to live with. That very hypocrisy was what kept poisoning the somewhat more sensible rationales thrown back and forth in their argument—it was exactly the moral quagmire Brian would have the most difficulty grappling with, and he hated it.

“It’s getting dark. We should get the tent set up,” Brian said. “The sleeping bags. This… isn’t getting anywhere.”

“Because you know you have to let me go,” Chloe’s tone was so smug it almost pushed him into an immediate angry decision, and he had to take a deep breath and steady his nerves to bring his thinking back into balance.

“If you kill me, you’re a murderer,” Chloe stated the obvious. “If you change me, you’re a rapist, you’re the same as the Masters. If you let me go, I will go to the police, obviously, yes, but you’ll be given court dates and a fair trial and serve out your prison time. All of you. Or, are you going to rape or murder me just to avoid taking responsibility for everything you’ve done? Hah ha ha… wouldn’t that be just like you?”

“Brian, if you can’t, then just like, take Steph down to the car,” Emily said in a dangerous voice. “Kelly and I will finish up here, then we’ll be along to join you, and then we all drive away and you just don’t ask about what happened to Chloe. How’s that sound? Whatever happens doesn’t gotta be on your conscience—yeah, just don’t even worry about it.”

“Steph, walk Brian down to the car,” Kelly instructed.

“No,” Brian shook his head. “No. Guys—grab the sleeping bags and start on the tent, I guess. I want to talk to Chloe, alone.”

“Brian…” Emily warned.

“I can set up my big tent, too,” Rebecca offered. “There’s space.”

“Emily, no—they do need to talk alone,” Kelly decided. “Stephanie?”

“I—uh,” Stephanie blew out a long breath. “I do think I need, um, need some air. Some space from this, a break.”

“Fine,” Emily huffed. “Fine.”

“Can I get this shit off of me, now?” Chloe lifted her bound wrists. “Please?”

Stephanie gave Brian’s shoulders a squeeze from behind before withdrawing, following Kelly who was ushering a fuming Emily down the steep slope back towards the road. They had honestly probably waited too long to make camp for the night, the sun was mostly set and at this point the campfire was doing more to illuminate faces across the fire than ambient light from above.

“Brian?” Rebecca checked with him. “I’m going to unbind her the rest of the way.”

“Yeah, go for it,” Brian waved her on.

Brian watched on with a grim look as Rebecca carefully unwound tape from the medical braces and then unlatched the velcro releases to free Chloe’s hands.

His ex-girlfriend had always possessed a slender figure, but those forearms were even more frail now. Delicate wrists were discolored with bruises, and Chloe seemed to have difficulty with her fingers. Rebecca made her hold them out in the firelight and flex them, which Chloe did, slowly. The thin trembling digits didn’t seem to be able to clench into a fist the whole way right now, and Rebecca stood there with patience and assisted Chloe through closing and opening her hands before Chloe shooed her away with a scowl.

“I’m fine,” Chloe snapped, taking the first opportunity unbound hands offered and indulging her favorite habit—crossing her arms in front of her in a show of disapproval. “Fuck off.”

“Okay,” Rebecca sighed. “I’m going to go help.”

They remained silent as Rebecca left them and started to pick her way down the path after the others—Chloe stared at Brian with a look of defiance, while Brian simply felt tired and fed up with all of this.

“So,” Brian cleared his throat to address her. “The pregnancy thing. What was that about?”

“Hah,” Chloe smirked. “You know what it was about. I was trying to fucking save our relationship.”

“No, I mean,” Brian let out a dry laugh. “How? Why? Since when was my commitment to us the issue?”

“I hope you’re kidding,” Chloe laughed in return. “I seriously, honestly hope that was a joke.”

“Commitment isn’t just me bowing down to whatever you say,” Brian felt a flash of anger at finally saying those words. “When you—”

“Oh, of course, so, commitment is me bowing down to whatever you say,” Chloe retorted. “Because you’re the man, right? You wear the pants! And, I’m supposed to just be your little submissive beaten housewife and go along with—”

“So, instead you lied,” Brian shot back. “Because; you’re obviously not pregnant. We both know why it’s not possible for you to be pregnant by me.”

“Proud you’re so impotent, is that it?” Chloe mocked him. “Did you have trouble getting off your little teeny weeny dick, so you want to blame me? Or, does it only work if you’re whacking off to sicko porn, is that it? Oh, that’s right, Brian. I know you were cheating on me by watching porn. Sicko degenerate pornography.”

“Yeah, I watched porn,” Brian’s eyebrows rose. “Why wouldn’t I? I have my own needs. You had zero interest in sex or any kind of, uh, intimacy with me, outside of whether or not it was some kind of leverage you had over me, or some kind of stupid power trip bullshit.”

“It’s still infidelity,” Chloe refused to let it go. “Perversion. Beating your pathetic little noodle weiner to sicko rape fantasy pornography. Rape videos and pedophile pornogra—”

“Whoa whoa whoa, what?” Brian held up his hands. “Since when did I ever—”

“You thought I wouldn’t have ways of finding out?” Chloe shot him a triumphant look of absolute disgust. “Latina teen videos? ‘Petite latinas?’ Those are obvious pedo dogwhistles for groomer content, Brian.”

“The fuck?” Brian made a face. “No? They’re all over eighteen, so—”

“Oh, please,” Chloe barked out a laugh. “And you’re twenty three. Almost twenty four. It’s disgusting. Let me guess—you were just visualizing your sweet little underage friend Emily in those, weren’t you? It was some twisted sadistic fap fuel for you to fantasize about your friend, and she would have been disgusted to—”

“Emily is twenty-three,” Brian refuted, unsure if Chloe was being serious or not. “Underage? We’re the same fucking age—legal, consenting fucking adults. Having an occasional preference for teen Latinas in my searches is not a fucking crime, Chloe. Half of what I looked up was like, big Brazilian asses, MILF, or like, random hentai doujins.”

“Isn’t that even worse?” Chloe still looked as though she had caught him. “It’s still all infidelity, because you were with me. In a relationship with me. How do you go about—”

“Did we have some kind of agreement there I wasn’t aware of?” Brian shook his head. “Hah. Aside from me like, trying to throw out an olive branch now and then and going down on you, we were on a ten month dry spell, weren’t we? Or wait—no, eleven months. Eleven months. Almost a whole year, just about half of our time together. I had assumed we were both looking at porn and just… addressing our own individual needs?”

“Yeah, right, then what about the rape videos, Brian?” Chloe smirked. “What excuses do you have ready to tell me for those?”

“Rape videos, what rape videos?” Brian gave her an incredulous look.

“The Japanese ones,” Chloe reminded him with a sneer. “Like the one on the train or subway or whatever.”

“Japanese?” Brian’s brow screwed up for a moment and then relaxed as he laughed, remembering what title she must be referring to. “Hah, holy fuck—are you talking about Mouth to Mouth Aphrodisiac and Lesbian Molestation? Because first of all, that’s a goddamn work of art, and second of all—not real rape, literally no one would ever think that wasn’t staged. Obviously staged. Yeah, like the crowded train car full of salarymen dudes all around them doesn’t notice the two girls stripping and moaning and squirting everywhere, just because they’re all turned the other way. How polite of them! Truly Japanese. If—”

“So that justifies it?!” Chloe spat. “Are you fucking serious?! You literally watch a video glorifying rape, and—”

“I don’t have to justify it,” Brian argued, shaking his head. “It’s fantasy. I’m completely capable of separating fantasy from reality, Chloe. And, in the first place—how the fuck did you even find any of that? I always browsed privately when I looked at that stuff, so none of the links or search terms or—”

“‘Browse privately,’ right, okay,” Chloe swore. “You hid it from me—which is wrong in the first place—because you knew what you were doing was something to be ashamed of. You knew it was wrong.”

“That’s discretion, not shame,” Brian refuted her. “What I get off to doesn’t need to be in your face reminders every time you type something in and see the autocomplete pop up. I’m not proud that we were obviously going separate ways with all that and tending to our own needs, instead of—”

“Brian—I know everything you looked up,” Chloe wore that victorious look of hers. “Everything. I installed a fucking keylogger. Okay? So, just stop. I know everything. If the others knew the sick shit you were into—”

“Like what?” Brian shook his head in disbelief. “Chloe—I’m comparatively vanilla in my tastes, to everyone I know. Hell, did you know Michael and Tanya uploaded amateur sex vids of them doing stuff, last year? Will and Mark both get into—you know what, I’m not even gonna tell you the weird stuff they’re into, you wouldn’t believe me. Balloon animals, fursonas, futanari stuff. Blueberries, clowns. Handholding.

“My own stuff I’m into is downright basic, Emily would gleefully one-up everything on my own list, and Kelly would be down with all of it. Stephanie would be—I don’t know, interested or curious, and that’s about it. Nothing I’m into is much of anything anyone but you would get judgemental over.”

“They’d only be okay with it because you fucking magic mind-controlled them into being your sex slaves!” Chloe erupted. “No one, and I mean no one would ever go along with your pathetic pornographic weirdo shit otherwise. And you know that. Well—guess what, Brian? I’m not letting that happen to me. I’m not letting that happen to me!!”

Before he could react, Chloe lurched to her feet across from him—and turned and dashed off into the woods. Brian rose from the log as she hurried away but didn’t give chase. It was darker out but not night yet, and she wasn’t managing to run all that fast—a slight jog would bring him to her in a matter of seconds. He watched her go with an impassive expression, because the sight didn’t make him feel anything at all.

There wasn’t a sense of urgency that made him feel she was going to escape, and he didn’t feel compelled to run after her and beg out an apology or try to placate her like he had so many times in the past year when they were together. Brian felt nothing but annoyance, and as he watched her crunch through the leaves and ferns he patted at his pockets just to remember he didn’t have his phone for a flashlight anymore.

Great, so now I’ll have to go traipsing across the goddamn mountain after her, and then what—drag her back? Talk her down?

“Brian?” Rebecca called from the road below. “What was that?”

“Chloe took off and ran,” Brian reported in a yell, blowing out a heavy sigh and shaking his head. “I’ll get her.”

“She what?!” Emily squealed in panic.

“It’s alright,” Brian shouted back. “Uhh. Bring a light, though?”

Car doors slammed and he saw Rebecca immediately running back up the path, but Brian wasn’t too concerned. Chloe was still in sight, and she wasn’t heading up the mountain away from them or even downwards towards the road—the young woman was just hurrying across laterally from them so as not to fight any inclines, and her hurrying speed wasn’t something that would actually ever take her too far away.

Until a moment later, when to Brian’s surprise the fleeing form of Chloe’s back abruptly vanished, dropping down completely out of sight with a bone-piercing shriek.

What the—

He was rushing forward after her in confusion even before he realized he’d started moving, dodging small trees and ducking around branches as he tried to see what the hell had happened. She hadn’t simply fallen down, she had disappeared, leaving not even a prone figure for him to see. Which shouldn’t have been possible. Chloe was just gone.

“Well, shoot,” Rebecca panted, almost having caught up to his pace as they parted the growth of ferns and swatted aside greenery to run their way forward. “I—I guess that’s ironic?”

“Ironic?” Brian demanded. “Where’d she—?”

“So, um,” Rebecca let out an embarrassed laugh. “Well, I did dig out a grave. I thought it was far enough away from the camp area that I wouldn’t have to warn you guys about it?”

The mouth of the rectangular pit in the ground wasn’t apparent until Brian was almost falling into it himself, and for a gut-wrenching moment he was forced to pinwheel his arms for balance and almost double over just to prevent the momentum of his run from delivering him right down into the hole. Rebecca caught up and steadied him a second later, and together they peered down at Chloe’s fallen figure. She was still moving, but in the tumble down had collapsed part of the far wall of the grave and brought down a crumbling mess of dirt over herself. The thing was deep, extending down six feet or maybe even more—the depth looked to be greater than his standing height.

“You okay?!” Brian hunkered down beside the excavation, appraising it in shock. “Chloe?”

More surprising than the effort simply put into digging down that far were the dozens upon dozens of rough, circular stubs that littered each of the surfaces. These were the cut-off cords of tree roots that had spread throughout the forest ground here; Rebecca had apparently cut and sawed her way down just as much as she had shoveled, and many of the root ends visible were as thick as his wrist. In the waning light it had been difficult to tell, but now that he was close enough he saw that the mound free of ferns across the trench from them was actually a pile of loose earth jumbled up with discarded root sections.

How long was Rebecca working on this? I’ve helped Micheal remove tree stumps before over at Aunt Mattie’s place, and hacking your way through this kind of root system is no fucking joke.

Below them, Chloe took a deep breath and then let out a sputtering, muffled sob—the fall looked to have knocked the wind out of her, and she was just now coming to her senses. A car door was still slamming in the distance, so at least one of the girls was still all the way over by the road, but the telltale snap of sticks and crunch of leaves told him two of the others were dashing their way through the forest towards them. Rebecca dropped down beside him as if to sit at the edge of the grave and then slide down in to check on Chloe, but he motioned for her to stop.

“No, I’d better do it,” Brian said. “This is all my problem in the first place, anyways.”

Rebecca regarded him for a moment as if trying to decide whether or not to argue, but then simply offered him her hand.

“Then—here,” Rebecca said. “Careful.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Brian took the help, clasping her hand.

He eased down into the pit one foot first, scraping his work boot down one wall and feeling jagged protrusions of exposed root rake up across his leg. Then, as his body dropped the whole way beneath the ground, he arrested his movement by pressing one hand into the opposite wall to prevent himself from accidentally landing right upon Chloe’s prone figure. She was mostly sitting up now but still seemed stunned—her shaking fingers were weakly grasping towards one of her ankles.

“Chloe, are you alri—”

“NO I’M NOT FUCKING ALRIGHT YOU STUPID FUCKING FAGGOT PIECE OF SHIT—!!” Chloe’s piercing shriek was deafening in these close quarters.  “YOU—YOU’RE ALL REALLY TRYING TO KILL ME!! ARGGHHHHHH-HHH—RRRHHHHHH!!!”

Recoiling back into one of the walls was the only thing that prevented him from immediately being kicked in the face, because this time it was a full on kicking and screaming tantrum, her limbs thrashing in out of control rage and her body contorting as she wailed and cried. The frenzy of movement displaced even more dirt all around them, forcing Brian to squint an eye shut and spit out some that had gotten into his mouth. For a moment there was the very real fear that this psychotic bitch was trying to bury them both, but aside from bits sloughing off the walls here and there it was quickly clear that there were just too many roots threaded through everything for much of a big collapse.

“Chloe, stop—fucking stop,” Brian insisted, trying to grab her legs.

“AHHH—AHHHHHHH—!!” Chloe’s voice was already hoarse from the volume of the howls. “AHHHHHH!!!!”

It was even darker down here than it was up above, but Brian could still see that falling dirt had blinded her and she was simply on an unhinged rampage attacking everything around her with her fists and feet.

“Chloe, don’t—” Rebecca called down, but whatever else she said was cut off by another of Chloe’s screams.

“AHHH—AHHHH—AHHHHHHHHHH—!!”

“Brian?!” Stephanie’s voice was full of alarm as she arrived.

“Chloe, Chloe stop,” Brian warned, finally managing to catch one of her shins and trap it against his body. “Chloe—”

Still shrieking, she attempted to twist her body and free her leg, but he pressed in, pinning her lower half in against the bottom of the grave. Instead, her hands scrabbled against him, clawing and scratching, and he was forced to raise one arm to fend off her panicked blows. Bright LED light began to shine down from above like a spotlight, turning every detail and shadow into a relief map that shook with the unsteady hand of whoever was holding out their phone up there. Chloe’s sweats were all covered in dirt now, her hair was a messy tangle, her eyes were clenched shut but tears and dirt were smeared across a wailing mask of hysteria.

“Chloe, calm down, calm down—” Rebecca was saying.

“Chloe—stop. Stop,” Brian repeated, trying to quickly clear the dirt from his eyes and mouth with the shoulder sleeve of his upraised arm. “Stop. Are you hurt? Chloe.”

His captive attempted to suck in breath to scream again, but it instead devolved into sobs as she lost all control. Bits of crumbling earth still trickled down over the top of his head, and Brian sagged against the side of the grave with Chloe, blowing out a breath and letting some of the tension wick away. His ex-girlfriend seemed to have expended all of her energy all at once and only now remembered the weakened state of her body and how much pain she was in. Chloe cradled frail hands that she couldn’t quite close up against her chest as she wept to herself, and the strength she’d been trying to apply to force her leg free of him disappeared.

“Is she okay?” Rebecca asked.

“No,” Brian said.

He didn’t mean to sound so brusque, but he was pissed off and tired of all of this. It was getting late, the campfire discussion itself had been emotionally draining in that uncomfortably personal way, Chloe was throwing fits, because of course she was, and now he was going to have to figure out how to get her up out of here. Sure, a grave this deep was impressive as hell, especially in the middle of the woods like this, but honestly—how the hell were they going to pull Chloe up out of here, especially if her wrists were already fucked up from before?

“Brian,” Kelly’s voice sounded from above. “Come up out of there. Chloe made her bed, now let’s let her sleep in it.”

“Very funny,” Brian muttered.

“Brian?” Kelly said. “I know you won’t like it… but I’m being completely serious.”

“Kelly…” Stephanie murmured.

“I can help lift her out,” Rebecca offered. “Is she okay?”

“No,” Brian answered again.

“She made her choice when she tried to run,” Kelly continued. “We can’t trust her, you don’t want to kill her, and you don’t want to charm her. Leave her there. What’s it going to take for you to stop feeling responsible for her?”

Chloe continued to gasp for breath between sobs, and Brian tried to look up to see the rest of them at the top of the pit. With the light shining down, he couldn’t make out any of their faces. Kelly’s question was a lot more than he wanted to chew right now, because the point hit home hard. He couldn’t see a way out of things for Chloe, anymore. If they decided her fate, it would be heavy on his conscience for the rest of his days, but even if they let her free she would just continue to find ways to entrap or antagonize them, or worse—she would really go to the Masters.

I don’t even see her meeting the Masters going well for her, Brian grit his teeth. Fuck, Chloe. You just can’t leave it alone. You can’t leave US alone, you can’t leave the Masters alone, and SOMETHING bad is gonna happen, no matter what. Some sort of terrible end. Because you’re obsessed with—I don’t even know WHAT your fucking obsession is, anymore. Is it me, personally? Do you just hate me? Is it just some sort of revenge against men thing? Issues with her dad that just warped her, somehow? I don’t see a way out of this.

“Brian?!” Emily was huffing and puffing when she arrived. “What the—what the fuck? Rebecca you made Vietnamese pit traps?!”

“I… dug a grave,” Rebecca admitted, not sounding proud of it. “For… for just in case.”

“It’s Chloe’s grave,” Kelly said. “And, she hopped right on in herself. Like it was meant to be.”

“Good, we can just leave her there,” Emily paused. “Wait, are we really just leaving her down there? Brian? Because, I brought the—”

“Steph?” Brian called.

“I’m here!” Stephanie responded, and with a rustle and shake of the light it was apparent she was clambering down onto her hands and knees beside the edge of the pit. “I’m here.”

“Steph, I…” Brian let his head rest against the dirt beside him and he stared across the grave towards nothing. “I have no idea how I feel about any of this, anymore. Can you—can you tell how I feel? Can you tell me?”

“You’re sick of all this bullshit,” Kelly suggested. “You’re done with Chloe, you’re gonna wash your hands of all of this and come up out of there. Chloe decided to run off, Chloe fell in there all on her own! Let her figure how to get out on her own.”

“Yeah,” Emily agreed. “Like—Chloe, where did you even think you were gonna run off to? Where were you gonna go?”

“If you can help push her up a bit, I can pull her out,” Rebecca offered an alternative. “I can—I can take care of her here. I’ve been taking care of her all this time! We can figure something out later, um—when everyone’s not all worked up about things. When tensions aren’t so high. How does that sound?”

“Brian, y-you’re feeling—” Stephanie stammered out. “I don’t know. You’re feeling a lot. I don’t know how to describe it, it’s, um, it’s a lot of things at once. All at once. I’m sorry.”

“Just leave her down there,” Emily’s voice was cold. “Sorry not sorry.”

“Emily,” Rebecca scolded.

“How about this,” Kelly sounded like she was trying to compromise for him. “We leave her down there for tonight, and we’ll pull her up in the morning. Yeah? Give her a night to think about where she would rather be.”

“I think that sounds… reasonable?” Stephanie didn’t sound very sure of herself. “Brian?”

“Chloe?” Brian braced himself against the walls of the excavation, trying to bring himself over her without blocking the LED light from above or stepping on Chloe. “Chloe, look at me.”

Chloe had by now drawn her knees up and curled herself into a ball as she cried, and could barely see through her own tears. Her breathing was in short, sharp little gasps as if she was hyperventilating, and her face was frozen in distraught disbelief.

“I’m not going to leave you down here,” Brian promised. “But, I will need you to cooperate to help get you out. Okay? So, you’re gonna hold onto me, and then I’m gonna climb us both up out of here. Okay? Chloe?”

She wiped at her tears with shaking hands and blinked away wetness and dirt, and she stared at him with strange, intense eyes—Brian couldn’t tell if she was trying to smile, or if she was baring her teeth at him. It was an altogether foreign expression that he had no idea how to read.

“You’re not going to help me,” Chloe said with unnatural calm. “Because, because Brian—I’m going to kill you.”

When she lunged in at him, it was with such speed that Brian had to suspect her bawling and whimpering from before had been feigned. Even though he pulled back away from her right away, there really wasn’t anywhere for him to go. Chloe reared up and clawed at his face—her fingernails scratched a painful trail down his cheek and then the side of his neck as he tried to turn, and when he brought both arms up to shield himself, it was like witnessing a zombie attack in a horror movie. Because Chloe immediately pushed herself upon him and bit down upon his left forearm, and the sharp stinging sensation and then the wet feeling of drawn blood was immediately evident.

He reacted without even thinking and punched her so hard that her head rocked back and rebounded against the far wall of the grave.

“Fuck,” Brian swore, flicking blood from his bitten arm in an angry motion. “Chloe—are you fucking serious?!”

“Uddgebrlukhh—” Chloe made an unintelligible sound as she reeled from his punch, and a torrent began to gush from her nose to join the blood on her lips. “Idg. Idge dgonna kill dgou!”

“Brian?!” Stephanie yelled.

“Kill her,” Emily shouted. “Brian out of the way! Gonna drop this whole fuckin’ jar on her head and—”

“Emily, no!”

Fuck, Brian dabbed at his bleeding arm in the shaking light from Stephanie’s phone up above. That REALLY fucking hurts. Seriously considering just all out punching her again. Chloe—what the FUCK?

“Ddoing djo killl dgou!!” Chloe squealed, her words hard to make out around what might have been a broken nose. She brought her shaky fingers to her lips, smacking and tasting them in confusion. “Kill dgou! Why idgn’t it working?!!”

Why isn’t WHAT working?

“Brian back away from her!” Kelly screamed with urgency. “She’s trying to go vampire on you—let Emily smash her with the jar!”

“Brian, move!” Emily called.

“Wait, wait—” Rebecca interjected.

Everyone froze with sudden tension and watched for Chloe’s nose to heal, waited for silver to creep across Chloe’s swath of filthy hair—but, nothing happened. There was no rush of power as blood magic activated, no dramatic transformation. Instead, the LED light from Stephanie’s phone swept across just the bedraggled and completely unchanged figure of Chloe, who stood with heaving shoulders at the bottom of the deep trench across from Brian.

“WHY IDGN’T IT WORKING?!!” Chloe wailed, smearing blood onto her fingertips and trying to dab it back into her mouth. “WHY?!!”

“It’s okay,” Brian found his tone was cold. “It, uh. It looks like the blood magic doesn’t work, not without her touching the charm again first. I guess… I guess the jar wouldn’t do anything either, then.”

So—is that it? Did she think if she just got blood again, she would turn? Have crazy power again? Was that her big plan? That she could maybe kill me quickly enough that she wouldn’t be weighed down by all of the ‘Christine’ or whatever? She was just gambling it all on that surge of ‘Chloe’ insanity being enough to actually murder me before morality kicked in? I think I’m done. I’m just so done.

“Idge going djo kill dgou!!” Chloe tried to advance on Brian again, mouth frothing with blood and eyes wide and wild—

He punched her in the face again.

“Did she really motherfucking just try to—” Emily hissed out.

Chloe went down in a spinning mess of limbs, crashing into one dirt wall and then crumpling into a heap. For a moment from the force with which he’d knocked back her head he was afraid he killed her—but then the sniffling and uncontrolled sobs started again, as Chloe began to wail in pain. He stood over her with fists clenched in the narrow confines of the grave for a long moment, just trying to calm himself down. They’d never come to violence before—Brian didn’t like himself, he didn’t like feeling the things he was feeling right now, because they were dark and unbelievably angry and no part of him regretted hitting her.

Worse yet, Stephanie was silent up there, surely witnessing everything he was feeling first hand, and he hated the idea of that. He hated everything about this. He hated Chloe, he hated that things came to this, he hated this situation, pure, raw hate just seemed to course through all of his veins on adrenaline, and he hated it. He hated it.

“Rebecca,” Brian finally said. “Go get the charm from the lockbox.”

“I… can do that, yeah,” Rebecca sounded resigned, but he heard her turn and leave, trotting off into the forest back towards the vehicles.

“She doesn’t even deserve it,” Emily spat. “Pttui—!”

Emily actually spat—Brian saw the glob of spit fly down and land on Chloe’s shoulder.

“Emily, chill,” Kelly said. “Brian—are you okay?”

“No,” Brian said, still glaring down past his bleeding arm at Chloe. “Is Stephanie…?”

The light shining down shifted to one side and then disappeared as Kelly wrestled the phone serving as their flashlight from what must have been Stephanie’s clenched hands. Several long moments passed as they presumably examined her, but Brian already knew what had happened—he had seen her lock up with rage before once, back during the final day of the convention. This time, it was completely his fault.

“She’s… not okay,” Kelly confessed. “At all. Can you climb up out of there, now? Please?”

“Least we have a whole fucking jar this time,” Emily muttered to herself. “Brian, come on up. I seriously don’t like you being down in there with that… with that thing.”

“No, we need to just… finish this,” Brian said with a scowl. “Finish this for good. I just, I wish…”

“I know,” Kelly tried to comfort him. “I know. We know. Yeah, I think right now—Chloe will not be leaving that grave, she dies here tonight. One way or another. But, maybe if we can still manage to save a little bit of Christine, then this trip will have been for something, at least?”

“I guess,” Brian said, staring down at the weeping figure of Chloe. “I guess we’ll see.”

“Dgou can’t” Chloe sobbed out. “Dgou can’t kill bme. Dgou can’t. Dgou can’t.”

“Well—what the fuck am I supposed to do, Chloe?” Brian retorted, shaking his head. “I never wanted to kill you. I never wanted to hurt you—but, what the fuck am I supposed to do? You wouldn’t leave us alone. We can’t trust you. We can’t talk things through. You… fuck, you just bit me.”

“Dgou can’t,” Chloe stammered, shaking her head back and forth as blood continued to flow from her nose down her face. “Dgou can’t kill bme blease. Blease dgon’t kibb bme blease.”

“Brian, I’ll do it,” Emily insisted. “I have the jar—and, like, fuck. I don’t want you ever having to feel guilty about this later. Alright? Climb up out of there. I’ll zap her with the charm and dump this magic stuff down her pie-hole, no problemo. And if Chloe dies and Christine comes out, then cool. Great. I won’t feel fucking guilty at all. About anything. Again, sorry not sorry.”

“Let us take care of it,” Kelly said. “Brian, come out of there. You’re—you’re making Steph mad, alright? So, just come up.”

“Yeah, you don’t want to make Steph any madder than she is,” Emily joined in. “Come on up. Steph’s scary when she’s mad.”

“No, I’m gonna see this through,” Brian said, setting his jaw. “No jar, nobody else doing the dirty work. If there’s a chance we can find Christine in all of this, we need to make sure I do it right.

“I’m going to kiss her, and I’m going to—fuck, I don’t know. Hahh, wish real hard for the Chloe she used to be back when we first met, I guess? Because—I did love her. I thought she loved me, and maybe, maybe there’s some of that in there, somewhere. I have no idea, anymore. Scared to find out. I—Chloe, I really did love you. Maybe you never did? Was it all just your mind games and gaslighting and need for control, or whatever? I don’t know, and—I hate that it’s come to this, but… I guess we’ll find out.”

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/// ONE more RF section after this, then I'm switching back to writing RE:TT. Because these ones here feel like they're putting me through the wringer, and I need something a bit lighter to work on for a while.

As best girl would say, sorry not sorry!