The Night They Came For Lacy

Lacy rounds a corner and steps into the cemetery, wrecked. She pauses at three graves, her eyes glassing over the names—Joanna Angel, Katrina Jade, Aaron Hands. She whispers something quick, then the scene rips back to one year earlier. Headlights cut the night. Lacy’s behind the wheel, Aaron beside her, the girls loud in the back. Joanna and Katrina want the night to keep rolling; Aaron’s done and tells Lacy to drive him home. Music thumps, voices pile on each other. Lacy sneaks a glance from the road, the car lurches, metal screams. Flash to now: nothing left but twisted steel and three empty stares. Back in her room, grief sits on her chest like a rock. A whisper slithers through the walls, a candle flickers out on its own. She tries to sleep, hears a scrape under the bed. She reaches, fingers closing around Aaron’s necklace. She storms to the cemetery, chucks the chain onto the dirt, cursing. A hand shoots up, snatches the metal. Two more burst through the soil—then Joanna, Katrina, and Aaron claw their way out. Same faces, wrong eyes. They’re not finished with her yet.