Survive the Night by Riley Sager
INT. GRAND AM—NIGHT
Charlie’s eyes open on their own. A willful snap.
In front of her, sprawled sideways in the driver’s seat, is Josh. His head is propped against the window, which has become fogged by his pained grunts. When he spasms, his hair makes a jellyfish pattern in the glass.
The knife remains in his side, poking out like a meat thermometer. Josh stares at it, wild-eyed and sweaty, the fingers of his left hand reaching for it.
“Charlie,” he grunts. “Help me.”
She stays frozen, save for her eyelids, which she rapidly blinks, hoping that doing so will jolt her out of this nightmarish movie in her mind. Because that’s all it is.
A movie.
It has to be.
This can’t be real.
Even though it looks that way. Blood has started to seep into Josh’s sweatshirt. A wet bloom around the knife that’s darker than the fake blood used in movies. Almost black. Like it’s not really blood at all but some kind of primordial ooze.
Seeing it makes Charlie back against the passenger door. She fumbles for the handle, finds it, pulls. The door swings open, and the Grand Am’s dome light flicks on, casting a brutal glow over the inside of the car. No longer dark, the blood now looks Technicolor bright in the dome light’s glare.
Charlie resumes blinking. Faster now. Her eyelids working in a way that makes everything flicker like a projector not running at full speed. She slides out of the car backward, dropping through the door, landing on the road with a burst of pain in her lower back.
She crawls away from the car, scuttling backward like a crab. She doesn’t want to be here. She wants to be anywhere else. Any time else. She wants to wake and find herself in a whole other existence. One without Josh and that car and that blood.
When thinking about stabbing Josh, she didn’t know how she’d feel if she actually went through with it. Victorious, maybe. Or sated. Or proud.
Instead, she just feels scared.
But it’s a strange kind of fear.
She’s no longer scared about what might happen to her. She’s scared about what she’s done.
Charlie climbs to her feet.
She takes one last look at the Grand Am.
Then she begins to run.
