Call The Poe-lice

*I'll explain after.*

Speakeasy #132

She is warned yet again through her closed bedroom door. “Ally, don’t wait until the last minute to write that paper.”

“I know, mom.” She sighs and taps her pen against her notebook.

So far all she has managed to do is write the name on the top of the page. She reaches under her bed and pulls out the walkman she stole from her brother the week before. With a shy smile she takes the mix tape Brandon made her.

“Ally, you better be doing your homework.” Her mom calls through the door again. “Don’t stay up too late.”

She rolls her eyes, and turns to the blank page as The Police serenade her with their latest and greatest hit.

Why Edgar Allen Poe Is Relevant Today by Ally Stevens

The words mock her to fill the void of the blank page. He isn’t, that’s the problem. Some old, boring guy talking about birds. Lame. Totally, lame. She doodles in the margins for good measure, another five points taken away by the terrible Ms. Thomas.

Ally writes “HE ISN’T!!!” in big letters with a smirk. She rips out the page and carefully writes the title again. She’ll step in front of the school bus if she hears “points for neatness” one more time.

The first song fades out and the second one starts. She smiles again to think that Brandon picked those songs just for her. He is the most handsome boy in the entire school, in the enire world, and he picked Ally. Tiffany will scream when she hears about it in school in the morning. Ally can’t wait to see her face, that will put that blond fake in her place. Little miss my hair is naturally crimped and aren’t these new Reeboks just rad?

Something slams in the house and she slips the headphones off. Everything is silent, her mom must have dropped something or her brother is coming home late from work. Whatever, she has this stupid paper to write.

A song starts again and she pauses to look at the walkman as though it can give her answers. She’s pretty sure this song has already played, she fast forwards to the next one, definitely the same. Why would Brandon make her a mix tape of the same song?

She sighs and figures there must be some reason, so she keeps listening. “Edgar Allen Poe is relevant today because he writes about stuff that still happens.” It doesn’t even take up two whole notebook lines and she still has the rest of the page to write.

She finds herself humming to the tune of the song, now on it’s seventh play. She figures it’s meant to be romantic, but some of the words seem a little creepy. “…every move you make, every vow you break, every smile you fake, every claim you stake, I’ll be watching you…”

The sound of glass shattering from somewhere in the house isn’t heard by Ally as she focuses on the words of the song. It starts to play again and she’s definitely creeped out. Maybe it’s because it’s pushing midnight, maybe it’s because she has to think about that weirdo Edgar Allen Poe, maybe it’s because the cutest boy in school made her a stalker’s mixtape. She pulls off the headphones and tosses the walkman onto the ground.

The lights go out.

She is keenly aware of the sound of her breathing and she’s pretty sure she heard the floorboard at the top of the stairs creak.

The door to her room opens and the lights come back on.

“Brandon?”

He smiles, the boy of her dreams dressed in black and smiling like he knows a secret. “How’s your paper going?”

Ally can’t answer, this is too strange.

He walks over to her page, reads her first sentence and adds another. “The point you missed about Poe, is that he’s all about lost love and the tragic deaths of fair maidens.” Brandon turns with a strange gleam in his eye and a large blade in his hand “Oh, can't you see, you belong to me.”

He smashes the lamp to the ground and the room is dark again.

The knife clatters to the ground and a scream pierces the night.

*so, this is a weekly writing challenge, think of it as Fiction Friday, but with no continuity and not on Friday. Click HERE for more information!