POV: Avery
The rain slammed against the windshield with an almost animal fury, hammering the metal and glass like enraged drums. The wipers trembled, fighting the storm, but the water kept coming back stronger, slick and icy, drowning the road. The headlights pierced the darkness in brief flashes—white streaks that vanished instantly, swallowed by the night.
A short breath. A hand clenched around the wheel. Knuckles turning white.
A stifled scream—the voice of a young girl—lost itself in the thunder.
Then, chaos.
A burst of backlight. The shriek of tires.
Metal screamed, windows shattered into razor rain, and the world flipped, swallowed by water and fire.
A name tore through the cacophony:
"Avery!"
And the night closed its hand around everything—brutal and silent.
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I jolted upright, as if ripped from drowning. My heart pounded against my ribs, beating so hard I could hear it echoing in my ears. My breathing was fast, ragged, yet the air still felt too thick, almost viscous. The sweat-soaked sheets clung to my skin, and I tasted the salt burning my lips. The acrid scent of my own fear lingered in the room.
Silence. No rain, no thunder, no impact. Just the distant creak of a loose shutter and the smell of warm grass drifting in through the night. But something pressed down on the room. An invisible weight. A tension clinging to every corner, as if the darkness still held the echo of that scream.
That scream.
The same one as last night.
The same one as… that day.
I pressed a trembling hand to my mouth to stop the sob rising in my throat. My fingers were shaking, cold despite the humid heat of the room. A shiver slid down my spine—slow, merciless.
The images hit me all at once: the party, the pounding bass, the flickering string lights. Serena, her words sharp as blades. Derrick, that sticky laugh, that look that made my skin crawl. Calvin getting close again, and Jackson finally managing to say a few words. Then the stairs, the bathroom, the mirror… and the forest. The fog. The body. The scream.
The scream that had shattered my life.
The same scream I had heard the day my father died.
My hands trembled harder. My heartbeat refused to settle. How could I explain this? How do you give words to something that shouldn't exist?
My father…
The memories came back—sharp, bright, like broken glass: the car, the storm, the blinding headlights, and the scream that had torn through me before the crash even happened. I remembered hearing it in a dream, days before.
A dream that had been a warning.
I wanted to believe it was coincidence. But last night, the scream returned—identical, like a wound ripped open. And something in me knew it wasn't random.
I stood up, my legs unsteady. The warm wood of the floor surprised me under my bare feet. I stumbled toward the window. The air hit me—heavy, suffocating, smelling of crushed grass and warm dust. A dog barked somewhere far off, and my body jerked like the sound had exploded inside my chest.
"Calm down. Breathe."
One breath… two… three…
By the fourth, my shoulders finally dropped.
But the questions kept rushing in, raw and relentless.
What was happening to me? Why me?
Why that scream, out of nowhere? Why these dreams drenched in death?
I wished I were normal. Like Claire, who could laugh at anything. Like Rose, soft and understanding. Or even like Serena, cruel but confident in herself. But me… all I had was chaos, like an inheritance.
I pressed my forehead to the window frame. The warm wood pulsed under my skin. A single word rose inside me—simple, brutal:
Dad.
Saying it out loud cut through me. I closed my eyes, letting the pain slice through, steady and deep. The accident. In a dream. A dream filled with rain and metal twisted together. A warning.
I pushed away from the window. The room swayed. My nightstand clipped my thigh, shooting a sharp, real pain up my leg. I grabbed the warm bottle beside my bed and drank in big gulps, the metallic taste spreading over my tongue.
My phone, black and silent, sat on the table like a threat. Messages, nervous emojis, a "you okay?" from Calvin typed, erased, rewritten… I wasn't ready to face any of it. Not them. Not myself.
I sat on the edge of my bed. My toes searched for something solid on the rug. My hands, covered in tiny cuts, reminded me of the shattered mirror. The forest… how would I explain the forest? The damp clinging to my clothes, the moss under my knees, the cold weight of a body, the hand I recognized before my brain accepted it. The fog, the whisper: "Run…"
I had heard it.
I had heard it.
I closed my eyes to see more clearly. Every detail returned—earth, sap, blood, and that strange note, soft, familiar, out of place—like a scent stolen from a bathroom. Shower gel? Aftershave? Too precise to be a hallucination.
What if I told someone?
Claire would ask a thousand questions.
Calvin… would worry without showing it.
Jackson… we barely spoke, but he read me like an open book.
No.
I wasn't ready.
I never had been.
The room paled; dawn hesitated. I pulled open my desk drawer. My journal, buried under movie tickets and a bent photo of Dad carrying me on his shoulders, waited for me. My trembling fingers brushed the cardboard cover.
Pen in hand, I sat again.
"The voice."
"The scream."
Fragments, not sentences. Textures, sounds, colors.
"Sweet smell over the smell of blood."
The writing rushed out, like I had to trap the memory before it escaped.
I set the pen down. My heartbeat was still loud, but lower now, farther.
I had gathered pieces of a puzzle I had abandoned.
I lay back on the bed, arms spread, staring at the ceiling. A crack stretched like a thin branch above me. I couldn't pretend anymore. That scream wasn't random. It meant something. It was calling to me. Warning me.
If I didn't understand it, someone else could die.
The thought hit me.
I wrote it down:
"If I don't figure this out, someone might die."
I closed the journal. My fingers stayed on it—a silent vow.
And I would keep it.
So I never lose someone again.
Never.
Ever.
Again.
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