My Hockey Alpha novel Chapter 98

Nina

Minutes passed, then hours. Soon, it could’ve even been days; I had no way of knowing how long I was down there. As time ticked on, the bright fluorescent lights in my cell never faded, making me lose all sense of time. I felt myself beginning to lose my grip on reality.

I couldn’t cry or scream anymore. Not only did my tears dry up and my throat became too sore to make another sound, but also I began to realize that it was useless. No one was coming for me. Maybe Edward was right; maybe none of the people who I had come to know over the past four years were even real. Maybe it was all just a figment of my imagination…

If they were real, wouldn’t they have come to save me by now?

After an indistinguishable amount of time passed, the voices began. They were soft at first, barely even whispers.

“Nina…”

A voice called my name. I ignored it at first, but it grew stronger over time.

“Nina.”

I shook my head. “It’s not real,” I whispered to myself, my throat so raw and sore from screaming that the words hardly came out. “It’s not real…”

“Nina!!”

I jumped. I knew that voice: it was Jessica. She sounded scared, like she was screaming for help. “Jessica?” I called out, but there was no answer.

The voices stopped for quite some time. I eventually began to think that I never had really heard them to begin with. Maybe I was dreaming; somehow, I must’ve fallen asleep despite the bright fluorescent lights beaming down at me from the ceiling.

But then, they started again. And it wasn’t just a voice this time.

Jessica stood in front of my bed, clear as day. Her clothes and hair were disheveled. Her skin was bloody and bruised, and there was dirt under her fingernails. Her eyes had a whitish color to them, as if they had been glazed over with a thin coat of white paint.

“It’s your fault that I died,” she said. “It’s your fault that all of us died.”

I swallowed the knot in my throat. It hurt to even swallow. “You’re not dead,” I whispered, shaking my head. She couldn’t be dead. Surely Jessica was home right now with Lori, if they were even real…

“You’re selfish,” Jessica continued. She walked over to the side of my bed and reached out her cold, dead hand. It smelled like dirt and congealed blood. “All you ever cared about was yourself. You should die, too. Make it easier on the world.”

I pulled my head away and scrunched my eyes shut, repeating my mantra in my head.

This isn’t real… This isn’t real…

When I opened my eyes, Jessica was no longer alone. Behind her stood Lori, James, and Matt. They all reached their dirty hands for my throat. I tried to scream, but nothing came out -- so I turned my head in the other direction and waited for them to strangle me, because that was all I could do.

On the other side of the bed, however, stood my mother and my brother. My mother was holding a baby wrapped in the strangely patterned blanket from the photograph. She was bouncing it and shushing it, but it kept crying louder and louder.

“Shut up!” she screamed as she began to shake the baby violently.