scream queen
WHO: Santana Lopez, Ted (NPC) and a few unnamed NPCs. WHEN: August 18th. NOTES: Paranoia, teenage boys, a blackout, and pranks, makes a very terrified Tana.
Santana was well into an hour of the blackout. The moment the power flashed off, the bottle super glued itself to her lips. She was well into the blackout, and the wine bottle.
She was scared and drunk. Talking herself into blacking out so she could stop thinking about what could be her immediate death. That bluetooth could possible controlling the weather, or is possibly God (or some serious connects with him?) to create a blackout to further torture them. They were getting comfortable. Santana was sure as long as they weren’t together, nothing bad could happen. Ya right. She took another sip, and another paranoid thought popped into her head.
She wondered if they would use the photo of her for her abuelo’s seventy-second birthday present. A photo of all his favorite grand kids. She looked angelic; with her shiny smile, and a sparkle in her eye. Delicate, clean, and just light enough to care about. Her story would be interesting enough to spark interest, and give a compassionate podcaster a thrilling third season. Maybe she should make a note on which directors, journalist, and ID Network shows were allowed to cover her case, and which were warranted to get someone haunted.
Her fingers were in a fury across her screen as she researched. The dull light of her phone reflected off of her dilated eyes. Putting a spotlight on her doe eyes that sparked with a rapid fire of emotions. It was like a flip book dedicated to the crumbling mind of Santana Lopez.
Deflection, guilt, and fear poured into the appropriate apps. Deflection was matched with Google; her notes app became the setting for her guilt that was stylized in confessions and apologies; then a slurred voicemail on her mother’s phone, that was cut short by the blaring ring of her phone in her airpods.
Santana tore them out of her ears, like they tore her out of her bubble of heightened emotions. The noise rattled her to the point she didn’t bother to check who was calling before she picked it up, just wanting it to not wake the monsters lurking in the corner.
“Mom,” she said relieved.
The response was silence. It was unsettling; because it was the type of silence that effected anything in a twenty mile radius. Every noise in the world was clipped at the vocal chords, but her beating heart, and the unsettling breathing on the other end. Then, ‘it’ laughed, and she hung up.
“What the fuck?” she murmured to herself.
She rejected the fear that was beginning to physically manifest as knots in her stomach with anger. ‘Freak,’ she scoffed, irritated as she threw her phone on her lap and crossed her arms. She was pouting, and shooting death glares at the mobile device. “stupid,” she kept muttering. “Idiots’, because that’s whatever that was, nothing creepy, no, just stupid idiots that could possibly be behind whatever the fuck had been going on for the last year. A something she didn’t know whose reasoning and end goals were. A something that had her creating monsters out of shadows like she was a child again.
Then it rang a third time. Santana recoiled into the wall, trying to camouflage herself in to it as the phone rang. She had barely inched her shoulders down in relief when it silenced, before it was ringing again. This time she answered, beginning to talk before it was to her ear,
“look -”,
but she was cut off by the question, “are you still alone?”
She went still with fright. “f-fuck you,” she choked out through clenched teeth. she slammed her phone down, flipping it upside down so she couldn’t see what may come.She huddled back into the shadows, trying to hide within them from the phone and every other threat she was creating in her head.
She was scared, again; and this time she was raising her white flag to the crippling terror without a fight. It was bluetooth, it was the boogeyman, it was karma -
No, it was her brother’s stupid friend, Ted, prank calling her.
Ted and a few of his friends wanted some prey that night with their toilet paper rolls and beer accompanying them. A seductive post Santana had posted a couple hours before popped into Ted’s mind. Then, her burning his ego (so that it was still heavily bruised two weeks later) when she rejected him in the DMs. And that was enough for them to become their entertainment.
He smirked as he told his friend to make a U-turn and head for the Sheriff’s house, as he sat back and picked up the phone, ‘Santana’s first up for the prank calls,’ he announced to his boys. Spurred by alcohol, and his friends mutual appetite for trouble, they fell silent as he made the call.
What was suppose to be trivial doubechery, was dressed up by anxiety and paranoia as a serious threat. Which caused Santana’s petrified reaction; something that spurred the boys to want more of a reaction.
The stupid prank was beginning to escalate when they rolled into Santana’s driveway. Adrenaline beckoned them out of the car. The beer pumping through a couple of them put a fire under their tail so they beelined it for her window. Hooting and hollering, calling her name as they stumbled around the yard. One of them, the driver, followed a few steps behind, just enough so his whisper, yell, carried over to them, ‘come on guys, let’s go back. We can make the calls from the car.”
They ignored him. Although, the mention of calls, Ted picked up his phone.
This time it took three rings before she picked up. A ‘fuck off’, greeting him, then a click.
He called again.
The band of boys stood outside of her home, while the lone wolf wilted away in a shadow. Crocodile tears wobbled on her trembling cheeks; her body shaking, her feelings shaken. She was a mess, while they were bubbling with triumph and giddiness.
By the second round rings, she picked up again, and he didn’t give her a chance to talk. “Is the back door open?” he purposely made his voice sinister, until he had to cut himself off by backing away from the phone as he peeled over in laughter with his friends.
Santana’s head shot up at the question. “No!” She said instantly, but the doubt crawled through as the word tapered out.
He laughed again - smug and cocky. He cleared his voice in his elbow then bent down to pick something up. He raised the phone back to his mouth, his voice deeper and scratchier, “are you sure?”
The splash of glass shattering into the kitchen followed the menacing question.
Was it locked? Would they truly answer that question on their own? “Stop!” She screamed into the receiver, bolting for her bathroom. She locked the doors and scrambled into the tub. The phone had been hung up. She didn’t notice in the scuffle, and they didn’t in their rush to get back to their car.
They took it too far, and they weren’t willing to stick around for those consequences.
And Santana was scrolling through her phone, clicking on the first name that was visible through her tears, ‘Mason’, she needed someone to help her get out of his tub, and the hell out of her house.