Dare You

by Rebecca Cuthbert

 

They had told Jade that accepting the dare would make her cool; that it would impress them, so she said yes, and that’s how she found herself—after dark on the Friday night that marked the official start of winter break—treading the dusty floorboards of the abandoned Slater house on the far side of town.

Jade’s town, but not always. She and her mom had moved there just three weeks before. The junior high was smaller than her old one, with cliques established since elementary school. But this friend group—Kaylee, Beth and Margo; Franky and Tim—were going to let her join.

As long as she could prove herself first.

It was as cold inside the Slater house as it was out. Most of the windows were broken, and frosty air moaned in through the empty casements. Jade’s snow boots were too heavy for tip-toeing, but she tried to walk carefully. Some of the floorboards were swollen with rainwater, and here and there, they’d rotted through.

Her friends had let her bring a flashlight but not her phone. “No calling for your mommy, wuss,” Margo had said, and the others laughed.

Jade hadn’t wanted to hand over her phone, but what could she do? She’d already accepted the dare.

She made it across the space that was probably a dining room, then through the living room—wallpaper hanging down from the walls like shed skin, twin chandeliers dangling low at strange angles—and to the base of the wooden staircase.

Now she had to go up.

She tested the first step. It creaked but held. She heard giggling outside—the others probably thought she wouldn’t do it. That she wouldn’t climb the stairs to the second story and go to the master bedroom, where Old Man Slater killed his wife and then himself, then lean out the window and wave.

Jade knew what she’d say when she did it. She’d yell down, “Take that, chicken-shits!” And she’d laugh at them, then swagger back outside and tell them it was no big deal. She’d even practiced her shrug.

She said it to herself, quietly, as her other foot left the floor for the second step. “No big deal.” Another step. Creak. “No big deal.” The beam of her flashlight picked out cobwebs, shards of glass, a pile of newspapers on the landing in front of her where the stairs turned. She took another step and then another.

She was doing it.

She reached the landing when the pile of newspapers moved.

A rat the size of her snow boot skittered out from the yellowed pages, its high-pitched squeal deafening in that echoey space.

Jade jumped back.

Her boot broke through the warped wooden step where she landed. She sank to her bleeding thigh, leg dangling in the empty space below the staircase. She screamed, dropped her flashlight to scrabble for the rail, but she wasn’t fast enough. The weight of her body was too much for the ruined steps.

She fell.

On the way down, she cracked her chin. The impact snapped her head back, gashing it open on the splintered wood.

Her heavy winter coat didn’t do much to cushion her landing on the packed earth of the basement floor. She wanted to call for help, but her voice didn’t work. She didn’t know if her eyes were open or closed. She couldn’t hear the wind anymore.

She couldn’t hear the others talking or laughing, either; she couldn’t have known that they were already gone, that they’d dropped her phone and run away as soon as her scream had ripped from the guts of that dilapidated old house.

Jade felt very tired, but not very cold.

She spent her last conscious moment wondering if she’d get another chance at the dare, or if this was it. If she’d blown her only shot at having friends.

Then, quiet as the snow falling outside, she drifted off.

 
 

Rebecca Cuthbert writes speculative, slipstream, and dark fiction and poetry. Her poem "Still Love" was recently published in Nocturne Magazine, and her sonnet, "No Rest Nor Relief For You With Me Dead," will be part of the Shakespeare Unleashed anthology (Monstrous Books and Crystal Lake Publishing). For more, visit rebeccacuthbert.com

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