Sshh, Be Quiet.

Saturday morning came after another restful night of sleep. That feeling soon disappeared as Matt woke everybody up.

“Something big is going to happen tonight if we’re not careful.”

“Why?” Lisa asked, grabbing Matt’s phone that he held towards her. She read the message. So sedated as they medicate your brain and while you slowly go insane. Then she handed the phone around the room. “He’s right. We haven’t seen the worst of this.”

No sooner did she stop talking, five phones simultaneously began to vibrate on the coffee table. Each person grabbed their phone and read the message. A murmur rose as they looked at each other’s phones.

“What?” Matt asked.

Five hands held five phones towards Matt. All reading the same message. Your tragic fate is looking so clear.

“We don’t let anyone out of anyone’s sight,” Brian said. “Nobody goes anywhere alone. Understood?”

“I have to pee,” Steph said.

“I’ll go with you,” Jenna said.

The two of them walked out of the room, and Lisa looked towards Matt. She caught the most worried, scared look she’d ever seen on anybody. “Matt?”

“Hm?”

“You alright?”

He took a deep breath and exhaled. “Of course not.”

“It’ll be okay,” Zacky said.

“You better be right,” he said, almost threateningly.

Matt once again seemed very edgy and irritable. Even Zacky and Brian were unsure of how to approach him, and they were his best friends. Lisa sighed before looking at the bandages around her wounded leg. They were still white, showing that she hadn’t bled throughout the night. She glanced back at Matt, wanting to talk to him one on one again. She knew she was able to get through to him and get him to open up even a little bit. Groaning, she pulled herself to her feet.

“Matt, can you and I talk in private please?”

“Umm, okay. In the kitchen?”

“Yeah.” She limped into the kitchen, sitting near him at the table. After making sure the other four weren’t spying, she started talking quietly. “The reason I wanted to talk to you alone is because you seem to open up to me.”

“It’s a chick thing. I’m like this with my wife.”

“You’re trying not to breakdown in front of the guys right?”

“Pretty much.”

“Well in some cases you just might have to. Four people are dead, I’m injured, and we are not completely sure we’re going to get out of here alive.”

“What are we going to do if we can’t get out of here though?”

“I have no idea. I really don’t, and I don’t think anybody else does either. We’re all scared, we’re all freaking out, but we’re all trying to stay sane. Remember when I explained my theory yesterday?”

“Of course.”

“You need to stay strong. Clearly by these messages, whatever is in here is trying to take over your mind. Of course we don’t know if it already has or not, but if it hasn’t, you need to stay strong. If your mind starts breaking down, that’s when it’s going to happen. It’s almost like a parasite, and when it finds an opening to get in your head, it’s going to, and it’s going to latch on, and all six of us are going to die.”

“You don’t think I’m trying to stay calm?”

“Look, I don’t know you on a personal level, but just going by what I’ve observed over the past six days, you prove that you can control your emotions well. I know it’s not easy losing two of your best friends, but you’re doing fine.”

“I get it, I get it. What we need to worry about is how we’re going to get out of here. Nothing is working. It’s like whatever is in here is blocking any attempt for us to leave.”

“We all know this, and we’ll figure that out. Escaping and not dying are the two priorities. In order for us to stay alive, we need you to be strong, and that could help lead to us escaping with our lives.”

He nodded in agreement. Lisa knew he had the ability to keep his mind strong. For all she knew though, her theory could go right out the window and something completely different could be going on. For her sake, and for the sake of everyone else, she prayed that the possession theory was true. He helped her limp back to the living room and lay back down on the couch. Nobody asked questions as to what they were talking about.

The day slowly drew by uneventfully. Uneasiness covered everyone like a steel blanket. The six did anything they could think of to pass time, to stay distracted, to stay sane. Night began to slowly fall. The slight warmth that was in the room slowly began to get cold, and tension gripped everybody even more than it had. Periodically, Matt would be checking his phone, and everybody noticed, but never called him out on it.

“Matt, why do you keep checking your phone?” Zack asked after about the tenth time.

“Maybe hoping for a signal to appear,” he said, looking at the floor.

“Bullshit,” Lisa said. “We’re all hoping for it, but nobody’s gonna get it.”

“Hey, what did I say about fucking swearing at me?” he growled at Lisa.

“Then don’t fucking swear at me,” she snapped back.

“I swear to God…” Matt stood up in a threatening manner. Lisa did the same, standing her ground, showing she wasn’t scared.

“Guys! Knock it off,” Brian said. “Matt, sit the fuck down, she has a point. Lisa, you sit the fuck down too before you start to bleed again.”

Both defeated, they sat back in their respective spots. Lisa knew Matt was lying, and wouldn’t stop glaring at him.

“Oh for fucks sake,” Matt growled again. “I kept getting messages, okay? You happy?” he asked, looking at Lisa. “You told me to keep my mind strong and to not have a mental breakdown, so I’ve been ignoring the messages. I didn’t want to scare anybody. Right now, my phone is the thing that’s possessed.” He tossed it on the table. “There’s a bunch of them, I didn’t read them though, that’s probably why they keep coming.”

Brian grabbed Matt’s phone, pulled up the messages and began reading them to himself. Life’s so reckless, tragedy endless, welcome to the family.