No Exit by Taylor Adams 2

had lost its menace. It had become a prop. She wasn’t afraid of
it anymore.
Lars aimed — but he’d been aiming it this entire time;
how do you get more threatening than that? He tried to cock it
with his thumb, like they do in the movies, but the hammer
was already cocked. It was already in single-action, because it
had already been fired tonight. At her. Five times.
Darby kept staring at him, making his guts coil.
Something about her eyes. Something had changed. Slowly,
slowly, she slid forward, hunched her knees together, and
stood up, her mangled hand twisting behind her back. Her hair
stuck to her face in black tangles as she rose, like a scary
movie he’d seen where a dripping Japanese ghost emerged
from the floor.
He wavered, looking back at the door. “Ashley,” he
shouted outside into the night. “I … did you, ah, find the keys
yet?”
No answer.
His older brother was too far away to hear. He considered
moving to the men’s restroom, maybe, and shouting through
that busted window, but that would require turning his back on
them.
“Ashley,” he shouted again, backing up, bumping into the
cracked vending machine. “Something … ah, something
changed. She’s looking at me.”
He wanted to move to the front doorway, but that would
also require him to turn his back on Darby. He was afraid to.
She was clearly trapped there, helpless, with her fingers locked
in a door, but somehow he couldn’t dare to lose sight of her.
With her unhurt hand, she was now reaching for something —
a little plastic panel on the wall, to which he hadn’t paid any
attention to all night, up until this moment—
The light switch, he realized, as the room went black.
“Ashley.” A tremor in his voice now.