Through Eyes Half Closed

[Frozen Smoke]

[England, Spring 2018. Tyler Merriman's House. 11:30 PM.]

The room was filled with a sickeningly white-blue light that made his eyes ache as he grabbed another handful of popcorn from the bowl protectively placed atop his crossed legs and pressed it into his mouth lazily. His back kinda hurt too, actually. Turns out that the arm of a couch wasn't the most comfortable spot in the room. Who knew? He rolled his shoulder to ease some of the tension out of it and took his eyes away from the flatscreen and to the motley crew around him.

Eyrun was looking in the direction of the screen, sitting about 2 inches away from it as she moved the mouse around the screen, trying to work some sort of techno-sorcery as she always did. Her ginger hair looked even more wispy than usual with the backdrop, and her eyes were hidden by the glare of the TV's light reflecting off the glasses that perched atop her freckled nose. He thought she looked kinda cute like this, to be honest. Not that he was like, into his friend or anything. That'd be weird.

The rest of them were as bored as he was though, waiting for this fucking thing to start. Normally Eyrun would have it done in like, two seconds, so the wait was a bit of a change of pace. He stifled a yawn of his own as Terrence yawned loudly next to him. Fuck, it was really late wasn't it? But, eh, no-one was talking about sleeping just yet. Everyone knew you didn't fuckin' sleep at a sleepover. That'd be lame. You stayed up all night and watched movies. Hell yeah.

And when it got this late you even got to watch movies Mum and Dad would tell him off for watching, as long as you kept quiet and didn't wake them up. It was pretty great. Everyone knew the big red 18 on the box basically just meant 'Good film that we don't want kids to have fun watching', which was super fucking lame of them to be honest. Thankfully, you didn't need an ID to do whatever Eyrun was doing on the screen. Lots of text though, stuff about "Leeches" and "Seeds" and big progress bars stacked on top of other progress bars. It made his head hurt trying to figure it out, and quite frankly, Eyrun could deal with it.

They'd been doing this for about a year though, ever since she'd figured it out initially. They'd watched The Hangover, and man that film was funny as shit. He didn't even know why they'd made it an 18, wasn't like anyone got like, messed up or something. Just some sex stuff that adults seemed to think was dirty. He didn't get that, to be honest. Sex Ed was just a funny class, to be honest. A lot of talking about dicks and tits and making sure you wore a condom. Good excuse to draw dicks in other people's textbooks, basically. Adults were fucking weird man, locking the best films behind an age limit and thinking sex was scary.

Eventually they'd started watching horror movies, and those were great. He remembered Eyrun snuggling up to him as they'd watched Friday the 13th for the first time. Hell yeah. He wasn't afraid of no hockey masked motherfucker. The whole film was awesome, tonnes of fighting and people jumping out of bushes. Got your heart going hella fast, like running around except you were still sitting still, and didn't get out of breath. He liked that. Wasn't scared of course, only a pussy would be scared. Thinking of that, he looked over at Terrence, who looked like he might just walk out of this one. Man, what a scaredy-cat.

This time was a bit different though, he supposed. Eyrun said that she'd figured out how to find some of the SOTF stuff, and she'd done that whole "oh my gosh im so smart" thing that she always did when she figured something out, and no-one could really say no to that. He didn't really know much about "Survival of the Fittest", except that it was another one of those things Adults didn't want you to watch or do. There'd been an assembly about it a year or so back, all the kids had been made to get in a room and had been told that it had happened again, and not to worry - after all it was only Americans who got caught in it. He'd thought it was a bit stupid, to be honest. Why did they need to know, then? Why did the teacher who'd been telling them look so sad about it? Not like it mattered. It was kinda like the whole getting snatched by pedophiles thing they warned you about. It basically was never going to happen to them, so it didn't matter. Adults just did it so they could feel Adult, he figured.

He shrugged off the thought and crunched down on the popcorn. It was sweet and salted mix, his favourite. The contrast just made the sweet all the more sweet, and he just loved that crunch as he brought his teeth together. Popcorn was probably the best part about movies, to be honest.

"How much longer, I'm bored." came a drawling voice to his right. He flicked his eyes across to catch Dan stretching his arms out as he asked. It was his turn on the couch this time, lucky twat.

"Dunno. Waiting for someone to finish seeding the last bit. Don't want to start it up and have it buffer for like, 2 hours, right?" came Eyrun's reply, her mouth twisting into a frown as she stared at the only source of light in the room. Then the sound system rattled into live, a deep chime echoing from the big speakers. He jerked in his position, trying to figure out what the fuck was going on, which was then quickly followed by another voice. "YO! Turn it down, if you wake Dad up, I'm gonna be in BIG TROUBLE". Dutifully, the volume bar on the TV went from 60 to 10, just a slither above muted. No-one wanted to make Tyler's Dad mad. He was pretty cool with them doing anything, just as long as they didn't wake him up or get in his way.

After a moment's hesitation, Eyrun revealed what the hell that chime had been about, double clicking on the little notification thing like you got on Youtube in the bottom right hand corner of the TV. It opened up a file folder with one file in it. 63.wav. It didn't mean anything to him, and there was no thumbnail. He hoped that it wasn't going to be some sorta joke someone was playing on them. He still remembered the time they'd been expecting to watch Silent Hill and just as it was getting kinda good, it had turned into Shrek. Funny, for sure, but they'd all just decided to go home rather than rewatch something else.

The file was highlighted, and opened. It popped up the Windows Movie Player window, the borders of the movie small. Ugh. Low quality. Lame. It was quickly blown up to real size though, filling the big ass screen in the living room, and dulling that white-blue light that made his eyes strain. It might be a little pixelated, but it wasn't garbo tier. Looked like camcorder footage maybe? Kinda like the Blair Witch Project. He'd liked that one a lot, though he'd stayed awake for the whole night after. Not cos he was scared, of course, he just wanted to be prepared incase something like that happened. Yeah.

After another pause, with Eyrun looking to make sure everyone was paying attention, she pressed the play button. She stayed close to the keyboard, just in case something techy went wrong probably. Eyrun didn't like things going wrong.

The weirdest thing was that there were no like, intro cards and shit for this thing. He guessed that was because it was 'real', but he'd expected like, the terrorists to put a "produced by terrorist studios" and have a flashy logo or something beforehand. I mean, that just made sense, right? But no, instead it was just a sorta-grainy view at a weird angle of the outside. Bushes, trees, boulders, stuff like that. Kinda shit you saw in the countryside.

Someone walked into frame. Looked like an adult, basically, but a youngish one. Had some beard stuff on his face too. He wanted to get a beard when he grew up. They looked awesome, and let everyone know how manly you were. The person on the screen was a bit chubby too, which was oddly disconcerting. You didn't see many chubby people in movies, so seeing one here just seemed weird.

The lack of dialogue was weird too. This kid was just looking through stuff. Checking around the bushes. He wasn't sure what he was looking for, and there was no voiceover to help him. But he could see it coming, as he moved towards the bush in the shadow. This was sooooo obvious. There's a monster in those bushes, who'd jump out at him, and he'd get killed in some brutally over the top fashion. Yawn. Classic horror movie stuff, just with real people. This was already lame.

He looked over at Terrence. It seemed like every molecule of colour that his already pale face had once held was gone. Maybe that was just the darkness though, the footage was pretty dark to begin with. He watched as Terrence opened his mouth, like a big dummy.

"I th-think we should stop watching this." he offered meekly, his voice quiet, trembling.

"Oh my god nothing's happened, stop being such a fucking baby" came back Tyler, boisterous and full of bravado as he eyed him out of the corner of his eye, smiling to show that there was no hard feelings but that he was ruining it for everyone else. Terrence shut his mouth quickly, and looked down at the floor. A rustle of noise from the screen brought his attention back to the screen.

Oh yeah, here it comes.

...

Huh.

Nothing happened.

Wait no, there was something behind him, coming from the boulder. The victim saw it. Another man, holding a pipe. Charging at him. His heart was racing now, sickeningly fast. There was something different about this.

The victim didn't look at the man. He saw him trying to react, the flash of terror in his eyes, but the man was too fast. All of a sudden the man was on top of him, swinging the pipe down. There wasn't a scream of terror, or begging for mercy, or anguished cries at god for forsaking him.

Just a crunch as metal impacted flesh. He saw the victim's shoulder deform. Crumple, like the bumper of a car in an accident. The sound was horrible, even as quiet as it was. It was like a tackle in Football, but magnified, and deep. It was bone rattling deep. His hand stirred around in the popcorn bowl mechanically, but he didn't really feel hungry anymore.

The victim lay there for a moment, writhing in agony. Again, no talking. Horrible, aching silence that filled him with dread far worse than anything he'd ever seen before. The man stood there now, in view of the camera. He was fitter, shorter, and had a thicker beard. Why was he shorter? How was the shorter person winning? He didn't look scary. The monsters eyes flicked around nervously. It reminded of a nature documentary. It was on Hyenas, he remembered. The same look was on that monster's face now, scanning for someone who might take wounded prey away from him. It was a look he somehow knew to be afraid of, deep down. Then the monster's eyes went back down to the victim.

The pipe came down again, and he wanted to look away. He knew how this ended. Brain splattered across grass. But then things didn't happen again. The victim rolled, desperately trying to avoid the man's blow. The sound of the pipe slamming into the ground - another, more dull thud this time - was the only thing in the room. Everyone was staring at this now. He couldn't even hear anyone breathing. The only thing he could hear was his heart pumping, the rush of blood in his ears sickening him. The victim wanted to live. Wanted to fight back.

He found himself cheering for him. He NEVER cheered for the good guy in horror movies. They were boring. This person wasn't boring. He wished he knew his name. Even rolling looked like it hurt him though. He was pale, and his arm flopped uselessly around him as he rolled, and it bent.

But the good guy got up, he stumbled to his feet. Another thing he didn't expect, but he was getting pretty fucking numb to his expectations at this point. He just wanted him to be okay.

"No..." came a voice to his right. He couldn't tell who it was. Didn't care. He just agreed. No. Don't do this. Run.

He ran in the wrong direction. At the monster. He almost felt like cheering when the good guy punched him, right in the chest. Yeah, fuck yeah. There was sound again, a cry of pain from the monster. Well, a gasp of pain, more like.

Then the monster swung again. This sound was different. It sounded like a Cricket bat hitting for 6. A short, sharp crack. Right to the side of his head. There was a cry of shock, but it wasn't from the video. It was someone else in the room.

His body fell to the floor, rendered lifeless in a moment. The way he fell was sickening, all the tension gone in his body as it just toppled to the floor, like a marionette with its strings cut, crumpling into a pile. The angle of the camera only magnified the horror, as his head rolled to the side, showing the dent in the side of his head, the blood trickling from his nose and down his cheek, his lifeless eyes gazing wide up at the monster.

There was no speech. No funny quip or something to tell him why the monster was doing this. What this boy had done to deserve it. He just walked over and wiped the blood off his pipe. He felt ill. He heard hurried footsteps as someone got up, and looked just in time to see Terrence leaving the room, followed by sickening retching. He felt the urge to go and join him. He hadn't eaten anything but pizza and popcorn, and suddenly it wasn't sitting too well.

He looked back at the screen, to see that it was the end of the video. It was a simple black screen, with an arrow turned in on itself and the words "Play Again?" there in bold white text. He felt like it was mocking him.

Eyrun was hugging her knees, burying her face in them. He didn't really know what to say, but he wanted to say something - just couldn't put the pieces together. He felt like he'd lost everything in his head. He felt hot too, real hot. Like he had a fever. And yet he was shaking. He looked down at his hands, and watched them shudder. He felt tears welling in his eyes, for some reason. He wasn't sure what this was, and it was scaring him more than anything he'd ever felt before. He tried to force them down, be Adult about it. His eyes flicked over to the other two left in the room. Tyler was getting up, turning on the lights in the room. Movie night was over. It was well over. No-one needed to say that.

Shaun was just sitting there. His expression was unreadable, jaw slack. He wondered if he was feeling the same horrible things he was. He didn't know. He didn't know anything now.

Well, he knew one thing.

He wasn't going to be getting very much sleep tonight. Not when there were monsters like that around.