The Homecoming Scream

Friends are only as good as their intentions...

    Sometimes I wish that silly crown had never crossed my path, maybe then we wouldn’t be dead… But what am I talking about? I deserved it fair and square, but that little, spoiled brat just had to-
    You don’t know anything I’m talking about, do you? Oh don’t worry about it too much, there’s plenty of time for me to tell you what happened.
    After all, I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.

~★~✪~★~

    If all this had to start somewhere, I guess it would have to be the day of the Homecoming Dance. My best friend and I had spent all day getting ready, but just the usual things mind you.
    “I insist that you simply must look your best darling,” Lottie had said while she shoved me into the salon that morning. “You can’t possibly hope to win Homecoming Queen looking as you do now!”
    You see, although she knew that people found her annoying, Lottie Blackson couldn’t help but try to “fix” people and their problems. Some called her generous to a fault, others just called her nosy. But all the same, Annie was one of my closest friends and telling her no would’ve been catastrophic, especially on that day. But like most people she helped, however, I didn’t really understand what she was trying to fix. I mean, you couldn’t really do anything with my hair except straighten it; anything else would just come undone an hour later. Really the only she could’ve done to alter my appearance was slap some makeup on my face and call it a day!
    “Lottie you know I don’t like these fancy kind of things…” I reminded her as a woman touched up my nails.
    “Oh don’t be such a fuddy-duddy Margo,” She tried reassuring me as if I had said something rather stupid as an insult to myself. “It’s going to be fun!”
    “I don’t know..”
    “Please? You know running for queen won’t be the same without you with me.”
    “...Alright, but only for you.”
    She had squealed with when I had said yes, that much I could remember about the hours that passed from that moment until crowning came. Getting our dresses on, being picked up by the limo, dancing with our friends…
    Everything else had been a huge blur, but when my name had been called for Queen, everything came rushing back to me all at once. I couldn’t help but look to Lottie on my way to the stage, my heart already knew what I would see. Sure enough, her dark chocolate eyes were twinkling with tears as they ran down her face with her makeup and her curled hair had lost its bounce of enthusiasm. She’d always wanted to be Queen, ever since we were little girls she’d dreamed of being Homecoming Queen. But with one quick call of my name all those dreams had been shattered, and worse yet, they had shattered at the hands of her best friends.
    I had tried to give her the crown after I was allowed off the stage, I even asked the officials to recount the votes, but none of it mattered. I couldn’t get rid of that crown and sash even if I had burned them at that point…
    Why she wouldn’t take it willingly I can only guess was because of her pride and the fact that she wouldn’t have felt like she had really won it, a small glare given when I started speaking of giving it to her because she wanted it more than I had. Eventually, I just gave up on her and the sour attitude she had gained from losing, the dance seemingly more fun than arguing with her at the moment. Every now and then I would see her out of the corner of my eye while I was dancing or talking, the festivities keeping me up and moving. She would look at me, turn to talk to her boyfriend, look back at me, and then turn back to him. Her eyes were like daggers and the crude frown she wore made it look like she was… Jealous.
    No, wait a minute, not jealous… Hateful, for a better word.
    It was silly that one dinky little plastic crown would make her flat out hate me; after all, I wasn’t the one who elected me as Queen. If she had a problem with it that was fine by me, it wasn’t my problem to deal with because I had won fair and square.
    After a few hours of dancing and talking with my other friends I had decided that it was probably time to head home, my parents undoubtedly waiting for me to get back before it got too late. Unfortunately, because everything had been such a blur I’d forgotten that the limo was only to take Lottie there, not to bring her home with me. Had I remembered that earlier than when I did perhaps I would’ve been able to avoid being out as late as it became waiting for her to come out from the gymnasium…
    But I did end up remembering it eventually, and soon I was on my way home in the back of the limo by myself. My dress had become flat from being partied out and as I had predicted my hair was back to its usually stylish flat appearance, the crown sitting slightly sideways on my head and my sash a little too big for me to wear properly. 
    All in all, it was a good night, I thought resting my head back on the seat, a short yawn escaping my mouth as I thought of the dream that would visit that night.
    Suddenly mid-yawn the limo jerked to the side, my teeth chomping down on my tongue in surprise. In the midst of my tears from trying to stop the crimson that was now oozing from my tongue the limo again jerked to the side, my head being smashed into the window with a sharp crack as more blood seeped from the gash that had just formed. I barely had time to think about what was happening when the final blow was delivered, my body turning completely upside down as the limo began to flip into the ditch. In that moment everything seemed to be moving in slow motion, I don’t remember if I had screamed or not. There was a few cracks and squishing noises, and then it all went black.
    I don’t think I was out too long when the truck pulled up a few minutes later, the blood was still freshly trickling across my skin yet. I wish I could’ve been dead then, maybe I wouldn’t have felt so enraged when it came time to go.
    Why is that you ask? Because guess who came strolling up to the limo out of the truck to check if I was dead? That’s right, Ms. “Fix em’ All” Lottie Blackson herself.
    “Guess you won’t be stealing anything else now will you?” She said with a voice dripping with rage.
    “L-Lottie…?” I rasped straining my head to get a better look at her.
    Through my blurred vision, I could see her standing above me with a smirk, the colors and shapes tinted with red but still recognizable. In all the time that I’ve been gone, I still can’t forget her pleasure filled face and how horrified I felt to have once called her my friend. I wanted to ask why, why would she even begin to think of doing that to me?
    But I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe… And yet, I could hearthem speaking of my untimely demise.
    “Oh my God,” I could hear her boyfriend begin to shriek upon realizing what they had just done. “Oh my God Lottie, she’s dead!”
    “So what?! It’s not like anyone’s going to know it was us!”
    “B-But-”
    “If we go back to the dance and act like we never left no one will ever know we did it, they’ll think we were there and it was a shock to find out just as it’ll be for them. Okay?”
    “...O-Okay..”
    “Good. Now let’s get out her before anyone notices we’re gone…”
    But it wasn’t okay. I knew what she had done, and I was not going to let her get away with it. Not even if it meant that I had to drag her to the grave with me…

~★~✪~★~

    Margo deserved that, Lottie thought reassuringly as she slipped back into the gymnasium. She deserved to pay for taking my crow, right? I mean, she could’ve dropped out of the ballot if she thought she would win…
    But no matter how many times she thought about it, she couldn't find a reasonable motive for her to have killed her now ex-best friend. Glancing over to where her boyfriend sat alone in the corner of the room her face turned sour, his fidgeting catching nearly everyone’s eye as the dance went on. If she knew he would’ve been so nervous about being caught she would’ve made him go home.
    So much for getting away with it…
    Suddenly from the front of the room, a loud crashing of the front doors caught everyone’s eyes as screams of shock and terror rang out, a dainty girl right in front of them collapsing to the ground with fright. Lottie’s blood ran cold.
    There glaring through the crowd directly towards her, was the corpse she had left on the side of the road. But much to her horror, Margo was far from a corpse any longer.
    Her limbs were bent and twisted in ways a human body should never move in, her skin pulled to the point it had begun tearing in certain spots.     Her hair was caked with blood and in one spot it even looked like she had lost a piece of her skull, shards of bone emerging from within her meat to ooze more of her crimson blood down her dress and remaining skin. But what terrified Lottie the most about Margo's new appearance, was the lifelessness and rage within her once gentle icy cerulean eyes
    “M-Margo…?” Lottie whispered holding back the scream she longed to release.
    “You know what you did…” Margo growled in a demonic, dark tone.
    “I-I didn’t mean it, Margo, it was an accident, I swear!”
    “It’s too late to say sorry Lottie…”
    Lottie had been too busy trying to think of a way to convince Margo that it hadn’t been intentional to realize the corpse had made her way over and was now standing in front of her, her lifeless eyes seemingly glaring into her soul. All Lottie could muster as a form of speech was a few child-like whimpers and whines, her cheeks soaked with tears.
    “So you wanted to be Queen, huh?” Margo sadistically teased as Lottie let out a sob, the corpse starting to remove her sash and crown to place them on her, the scene too real to believe.
    “Well if you’re really going to be the Queen like me… You have to be dead like me.”
    Lottie let out a bloodcurdling scream as Margo snatched her by the hair and smashed her into the ground, her skull making a sickening crack as it made contact. Lottie’s now limp lead heavy body twitched and spasmed as a thick pool of red began to slowly trickle out of her mouth and nose. Kneeling down beside her victim Margo dipped two fingers in the blood and licked them clean before standing to address the crowd, her smile psychotic in every way.
    “Long live the Queen!” Margo’s voice boomed before her body hit the floor next to Lottie’s, her revenge for the injustice done to her completed.

~★~✪~★~

    So now here we both are, dead and gone in Hell wishing that crown had never existed. Sometimes she blames me for all this, sometimes I blame her. But there’s one thing we can both agree on after all these years.
    Lottie Blackson can never fix what happened.

Author's Note

This was written sophomore year as a narrative prompt to test our knowledge with writing fiction.