Chapter Text
“Hello?”
A young woman answers her phone, bringing it up to her ear. She nudges it in between her shoulder and her head, nestling it up to her as she resumes her cooking.
“Hello,” the phone responds, a low, raspy voice. It sounded unsure, but not hesitant.
“Who is this?” she asks with a quiet chuckle, shuffling the vegetables around in the pan. A soft sizzle sounds out, but she doesn’t flinch.
“Who?” the person on the other side pauses, “Oh, I must’ve gotten a wrong number…”
The woman laughs, turning the stove down. She rolls her eyes, a soft smirk crossing her lips. “That’s just fine, buh-bye.” She grasps her phone, and hangs up. Closing it with a soft snap, she sets it on the counter near the stove.
The phone rings again.
And she scoffs playfully, answering once more with a more annoyed “Hello?”
“Oh, sorry, I must’ve rang the wrong number again..” the same voice remarks, “But I just couldn’t pass up such a pretty voice.”
The woman blushes, smiling as she resumes her meal. She laughs, “You flatter me!” she flips open a lid to some spices, “Who is this?”
The voice ponders on this question. “You tell me your name, I’ll tell you mine.”
“No sir,” the woman laughs, now, covering her pan with a glass lid to let her meal simmer. She leans against the island counter, smiling still.
“That’s fine. I’d just like to know who I’m looking at.”
Her face drops, and her head spins around. The lights in her eyes fade, as her smile is wiped off of her face…
“What did you say?” she asks breathlessly.
The voice responds immediately. “I want to know who I’m chatting with, doll,” they say, unsettlingly sweet. “Someone with a voice as sweet as yours must have a lovely name, too.”
“N.. No, you said something else. I gotta go.”
The woman promptly hangs up, much to the dismay of the voice, who quickly rushes in a ‘don’t hang up’. She ignores them, and returns to turn off her stove. Heart beating out of her chest, she takes the searing hot pan off of the stove and drags the food off of her plate into the trash can. With her makeshift weapon, she slips away into her living room.
It’s dark. Uncomfortably dark. As she inches across the carpet, her eyes dark past every dim nook and cranny. The hairs on her neck stand up as she turns her head towards a particularly dark corner. Eyes. She feels them searching her every single move. Without looking, she fumbles for the light switch, but she finds nothing, forcing her to look for it.
Rookie mistake.
Reaching for the light feels long and drawn out and terrible. Her vision tunnels directly towards the switch, she feels her world spinning, and she feels her heart suffocating her with its beats muffling her hearing. The rustle of fabric snaps her out of her panic, and her head snaps back towards the now lit corner. Nothing there. She exhales, finally letting herself relax.
Something wet drips down her back.
Her eyes widen as she comes back to reality. Her head tilts back as she turns her eyes to look over her shoulder. Suddenly, a leather gloved hand rests tightly on it. Her pan drops to the ground with a loud bang, bang bang . Behind the glove is a white mask beneath a dark hood, open mouthed and droopy eyed. The mask tilts its head, and a breathy, deep laugh echoes behind her.
They unsheath their knife from her back, pushing her to the ground. The woman lands with a loud thud, and the masked fiend raises their combat boot to press her head down all the way. Then, they fall to their knees on either side of her torso, lodging the hunting knife they carried into her back several times. To really make sure she’s dead, they stab through her neck directly. In a finale of bloodlust, they stand, fishing a camera from a hidden pocket in their cloak, and snap a picture directly in front of the fresh kill on the floor.
Danny Johnson leans back in his chair, sighing as he pulls up a fresh print of the Roseville Gazette. With a content smile and a warm chest, he promptly expects his face on the front page. That’s exactly what he gets. Ghost Face Strikes Again! the title reads, as the breaking news of poor Cassidy Wright is broadcasted to everyone who cares enough to pick up a paper in the mornings.
He rips the front page out, discarding the rest of the paper for later, and stands to pin it to his board, right next to the picture he had taken just two weeks before this, of Cassidy Wright on the ground beneath his feet. Danny tucks a lock behind his ear, and crosses his arms as he steps back to admire his work.
“Oh yeah,” he comments to no one in particular, “That’s the best one yet.”