Friends List Read online

  Lexa lowered her head in ignorant confusion.

  Maybe Cross was wrong. Maybe we are all just islands to ourselves. Maybe we have to be.

  “How can we ever be sure we know a person?” Lexa asked. “I mean really know them?”

  Without a trace of self-consciousness or embarrassment, Bastian let loose a loud, scotch-laced belch. “Beats me. I’m having a hard enough time just getting to know myself. How ’bout you?”

  “How about me what?”

  “You know yourself yet?”

  Lexa didn’t respond. She cast her eyes down to the faded concrete beneath her.

  Do I know myself? No, not yet. But I feel that I will soon.

  And there was nothing that frightened her more than the thought of finally coming face to face with herself.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CASSIE

  Sitting in her darkened off-campus apartment, Cassie scanned her phone bill with her mobile phone’s KNFB Reader. “Balance due, one hundred twenty dollars and forty-three cents,” it announced.

  The faint glow of her laptop screen exposed her puzzled look. How could it be so high when hardly anybody ever called except for her mom?

  A banging sound came through the computer’s speakers. She snickered and sang, “Somebody’s knockin’.” She reached for her keypad to check her Roommates homepage, hesitating for a fleeting moment. Should she let them in? Shaking off her worry, she typed on her keyboard. A female computerized voice spoke her typewritten words aloud:

  “Who’s there?”

  An instant message icon appeared upon the screen, and a male computerized voice read:

  “There’s a package outside your door. You should go get it.”

  “What the fu…?” Cassie typed, and her computer said:

  “Who is this?”

  No reply from the sender.

  Cassie typed again and the computer read:

  “Please tell me who this is.”

  Still no reply.

  Fear crept up on Cassie, a gut-wrenching, dread-laden fear, which those with sight would never understand.

  Cassie picked up the phone and started dialing.

  ***

  The shrill whistle from a kettle on the stovetop of apartment #106 drew the attention of the wheelchair bound tenant residing within. While wheeling his twisted body toward the kitchen, he brimmed with anticipation at the thought of his first sip of herbal tea. Just as he reached for the boiling kettle, the phone rang from the other side of the room.

  Every fuckin’ time.

  The young disabled man wheeled himself over to the phone and picked it up. “Hello?”

  “Hi, I’m sorry to bother you. I’m your neighbor in 105,” Cassie said over the phone.

  “105?”

  “Yes, the blind girl.”

  “Oh, hi. Is there something I can do for you?”

  “Yes, please. I was hoping you wouldn’t mind looking outside to see if there’s a package by my door, and if there’s anyone out there?”

  “Sure, hold on a sec.” The young man wheeled over to the front door, cracked it open, and peeked out. A large package was sitting in the empty hallway next to the door of apartment #105. “I don’t see anyone, but there’s a package in the hallway to the left of your door,” he said into the phone. “Do you want me to roll out and get it for you?”

  ***

  Cassie hesitated in the darkness. Why not let him get it? He did offer, after all. Didn’t he?

  Come on, Cass. You’ve come too far to start backsliding now.

  “No, that’s okay. Thank you for your help.” She hung up the phone.

  Building her resolve, Cassie picked up her white cane and started toward the door. She listened for a few moments, then unlocked and opened it.

  She stuck her head out of her apartment door. “Hello? Hello?” She listened for a moment, then tentatively exited her apartment. A package was sitting about four feet from her door. She moved her cane along the wall until it struck the box, picked it up, and hurried back into her apartment.

  She sat down in her desk chair with the package in her lap. A message immediately appeared on the screen, followed by the male computerized voice:

  “Well, aren’t you going to open it?”

  Cassie placed the package on her desk and typed:

  “Who are you? And how do you know I have a package?”

  The on-screen/voice response came right away.

  “To answer question number one, I’m the person who killed Kimber and Paige. And Palmer.”

  The pupils of Cassie’s blind eyes dilated to their limit as she cried, “Oh my God!”

  De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine.

  As she reached out toward the phone on her desk, the reflection of the hooded figure’s silhouette rose up and filled her laptop’s monitor.

  The on-screen/voice response continued:

  “As for question number two, I’m standing right behind you.”

  Weeping for forgiveness of her sins, Cassie realized in that very moment she was already dead.

  Domine, exaudi orationem meam.

  Her fight-or-flight instinct kicked in and she reached out for her phone. The instant she picked it up, the hooded figure put a large hunting knife against her throat, and hissed in a long, sinister whisper, “Shush…”

  Cassie’s blood iced over. The hooded figure’s free hand picked up the phone and hurled it across the room. Then the hooded figure took out a smartphone and typed on its keypad. A message displayed on the blind girl’s computer monitor, read aloud through the speakers:

  “We’re going to play a game, one you should be good at—Blind Man’s Bluff. You’ll have sixty seconds to find the front door. If you win, I’ll let you go. If you lose, I’ll cut off your arms and legs.”

  Barely able to think, let alone speak, Cassie whimpered a desperate plea, “Please, please don’t kill me…”

  The hooded figure pressed the knife against Cassie’s lips, then typed as the voice read through the speakers:

  “No talking allowed, you sightless bitch. If you speak to me again, I’ll bite off your tongue. If you scream for help, I’ll rip off your jaw. Do you understand?”

  Cassie timidly tendered her surrender.

  The hooded figure knelt and removed Cassie’s shoes and socks, then sheathed the knife and turned on all the lights.

  Cassie sat in private darkness in her now brightly-lit apartment. Trembling uncontrollably, she listened to the hooded figure rowdily rearranging the furniture. Eventually the noise stopped, and the hooded figure walked up and stood still and silent in front of Cassie, staring into her hollow eyes.

  Seconds seemed like hours as Cassie strained to hear any noise that could give her a clue as to the hooded figure’s whereabouts, but no such noise was afforded. After several minutes of dread-filled silence, the sound of a zipper opening sliced across Cassie’s eardrums. Several more minutes filled with mysterious sounds passed by.

  Without warning the hooded figure grabbed Cassie’s arms and yanked her up out of her chair, binding her wrists together with duct tape, her hands folded in front of her chest as if in prayer.

  Images of Cassie’s life, childhood images prior to the accident that claimed her sight, flashed behind her eyes, and then only feelings adrift in blackness from that time until this very moment.

  The hooded figure took out a mini-tape recorder, leading Cassie to the center of the room. She struggled to keep her balance as the hooded figure spun her around and around. The hooded figure released the barefooted Cassie and typed on the smartphone keypad.

  The voice from the computer’s speakers’ recited:

  “Remember, sixty seconds.”

  The figure pressed the play button on the recorder and a synthesized voice started the countdown:

  “Sixty…fifty-nine…fifty-eight…”

  Cassie steadied her balance, stretched out her arms, and slowly moved forward.

  “Fifty-three…fifty-two…fifty-one
…”

  Cassie took a few steps forward and screamed when she stepped onto a cluster of thumbtacks. When she dropped to the floor, several more tacks stuck into her hands and legs. Whimpering, Cassie inched backward and pulled out the tacks.

  “Forty-two…forty-one…forty…”

  She stood up and stumbled into her desk.

  Why, Lord? Why me?

  “Thirty-five…thirty-four…thirty-three…”

  She moved along the edge of the desk, screaming when a butcher’s knife taped to one of the desk’s legs sliced her hip. Sobbing, Cassie staggered back and pressed the heel of her hand upon her gushing wound.

  “Twenty-seven…twenty-six…twenty-five…”

  She turned one-hundred and eighty degrees and headed toward her rear, taking hold of the crucifix hanging from a chain around her neck. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He leads me…”

  “Twenty-two…twenty-one…twenty…”

  Cassie cried out when she stepped on a large mousetrap. She fell forward into several more traps strewn about the floor.

  Please, God, I don’t want to die.

  “Seventeen…sixteen…fifteen…”

  She shook the traps off her hands and crawled toward her right.

  Goddammit, help me!

  “Twelve…eleven…ten…”

  Desperate and facing the end of the fatal countdown, Cassie leaped forward with blind faith and crashed head-first into her front door.

  Thank you, Lord!

  She desperately scrambled for the doorknob. “Thank y—” Her prayer of thanks was interrupted by her screams of agony as she closed her hand around the razor-blade covered front doorknob.

  “Seven…six…five…”

  Fueled with unimaginable desperation to escape, Cassie tightened her grip on the doorknob, crying out in anguish when the razors cut deep into her hands, and desperately attempted to turn the knob.

  “Two…one. Game over.”

  A defeated and bloodied Cassie sat weeping on the floor with her hands still grasping the razor-covered doorknob.

  The hooded figure walked over to Cassie, knelt, and wrapped a long piece of duct tape about her head, covering her mouth several times. The hooded figure gripped her right bicep tightly, and with a hunting knife, carved into her arm just below the shoulder. Cassie’s muffled screams echoed behind her apartment door.

  ***

  In a filthy, fully lit room the hooded figure sat. Countless pictures of Lexa lined the walls from floor to ceiling. The monitor’s skull cursor moved over Cassie’s profile picture, and with a single click of the mouse, was replaced with a photograph of her blood-soaked, dismembered corpse.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-ONE

  FRIENDS LIST

  Lexa’s delicate hands spread soapy lather over her supple body, pulsating jets of water raining down from the shower nozzle like cleansing tears. White suds of shampoo streaked the dark pall draped over her head, washing down and cascading across a veneer of wet, tanned skin. Lexa had always enjoyed taking long showers, since that was the one place where she could be truly alone with herself. The calming sensation of hot jetting water helped soothe the pain seething behind her brow. She became aware of a building urge to open her eyes, and after a few moments of resistance, she did. Much to her dismay, the colorless streams of heated water started to spiral, and she lost herself once more, her essence retreating into the universe of her own mind.

  ***

  Naked and still covered with soap from the shower, Lexa finds herself standing in front of her parents’ burning cabin. Although the heat emanating from the flames gradually starts to ignite the soapy lather covering her nude body, even as her body begins to blister and blacken, Lexa stands still and silent, oblivious to the fire searing her flesh. After a few moments, her naked twin brother Alex enters her peripheral vision. He stands beside his sister and takes her hand. When she turns her head toward him, he smiles and points up to the sky. When Lexa looks upward, a cloudburst of rain pelts down upon her, her brother, and the cabin. The rain turns to blood, gradually dousing the fire burning Lexa and the cabin.

  ***

  The ringing phone shut down Lexa’s dark illusion and thrust her back into reality. Wrapped in a towel and still dripping wet, she hurried out of the bathroom toward her desk and picked up the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Thank God. Are you okay?” Alex asked frantically.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  What the hell? Now I can’t even take a shower without you trying to climb in there with me?

  She sighed. “What’s the matter, Alex?”

  “What’s the ma…when’s the last time you checked your room?”

  Lexa snickered and said, “I’m standing in it right now.”

  “No, your Roommates room.”

  “I don’t know, a few days maybe. Where’ve you been all day?”

  “Following a hunch. I’ll fill you in later. Right now I need you to log on to your Roommates page.”

  “Okay, just give me a few minutes to finish my shower.”

  “Now goddammit!”

  “Okay!” Lexa plopped down on her bed, put down the phone, opened her laptop, and logged onto the Roommates website. The Roommates homepage displayed on the monitor. A door appeared with the name plate “LEXA’S ROOM.” The door opened to reveal Lexa’s avatar. The avatar gave a welcoming wave and headed into the middle of the virtual room. Lexa picked her phone back up. “I’m in. Now what?”

  “Look at your friends list,” Alex said urgently.

  Lexa moved her fingertip across the laptop’s touchpad. She clicked the “BEST MATES” icon page and a new page opened full-screen on the monitor. The page listed Lexa’s best friends, with their corresponding photographs, in numeric order.

  “Oh my God…”

  She dropped the phone. The number one spot was ominously blank with the words “PHOTO PENDING” labeled above. After being moved down a notch from number one, Kimber now held the number two spot on the list and her photo showed her decapitated head lying in her lap. Paige followed in the number three spot, with a picture of her hanging from the Queensbay Bridge. Palmer’s burned remains ranked number four on the list. Cassie’s dismembered corpse showed up fifth on the list. The page still showed the original photos of CK sixth, Bastian seventh, Dr. Cross eighth, Senator Storm ninth, Simms tenth…

  As Lexa stared at the screen, it burst into flames. The laptop melted down into the bed as the sounds of knocking and indistinct voices grew in the background. Lexa sat in silence, large patches of flesh blistering and smoldering over her body. Boiling blood gushed from her wounds, her body caught fire and blackened. The flames spread quickly to the walls and scurried toward the ceiling. The flames engulfed the bedroom and then abruptly extinguished.

  Lexa found herself physically undamaged and sitting in front of her laptop inside her unspoiled bedroom. Still half in shock from the vision, she saw her bedroom door swing open in the reflection of her laptop’s monitor. Exhausted and reeling from the assaults on her psyche, she slid off the bed and landed on the floor as Captain Styles rushed in with her gun drawn.

  “Are you all right?” Styles shouted while scanning the room for signs of danger.

  No, I am not fucking all right. Would you be?

  “I-I don’t know,” Lexa said.

  Aunt Amanda rushed into the doorway and screamed when she saw the post-mortem pictures of Kimber, Paige, Palmer, and Cassie on the computer screen.

  Styles holstered her gun. “Get dressed, you’re coming with me.”

  Lexa snatched her clothes off the bed, ran into the bathroom, and shut the door.

  ***

  Lexa threw her clothes down on the vanity and stood half in shock in front of her bathroom mirror. With tears raining down her face, her mind blurred from her prescriptions, she took off the towel draped around her. Without warning, her reflection changed her eye color from sea-green to dead orange and said in a siniste
r tone of voice, “Lexa…time to learn who you really are.”

  Lexa dropped her towel to the floor and stood naked facing her mirror image.

  No, she’s not really there.

  She closed her eyes tightly.

  One…two…three…

  Lexa’s reflection laughed. “You think counting will make me go away? I couldn’t leave if I wanted to. I’m you!”

  With her eyes still shut, Lexa continued her count. Five…six…

  “It’s your fault, you know,” said Lexa’s reflection. “It’s your fault they’re all dead!”

  Eight…nine…ten.

  Lexa opened her eyes to find herself encircled by her deceased friends. Kimber’s decapitated body sat on the toilet with its fried head resting in its lap; Paige’s lifeless remains hung by a noose swinging from the ceiling; Palmer’s incinerated carcass lay smoldering in the bathtub; and Cassie’s cut up corpse lay limp in front of the bathroom door. The gruesome sight of mutilated friends sent her shrinking down to the floor.

  “They’d still be alive if it wasn’t for you,” Lexa’s mirror image taunted.

  While she cowered in the middle of all this madness, time seemed to slow down and then stop altogether.

  This must be insanity. What else could it be?

  After realizing these visions weren’t going away anytime soon, she resolved to get dressed, even if she had to do it amidst all this horror around her.