"She Just Wanted to be Heard Days 10-11," PG-13, The Ring/Supernatural
She Just Wanted to Be Heard
Day 10: TelePhone
Part of Story Arc 1: Counterclockwise
A "The Ring/Ringu" Fanfic
by Laurel (Sailorhathor)
Chapters: 10 of 100
Rating: Overall Rating PG-13 (some elements might be too intense or scary for those under 13; includes bad language)
Dates: Begun September 2006. Some material is based on previously written stories from 2003-2005.
Word Count: 4,293
Summary: Quinn and Svetlana dream of Samara's real mother. Dean Winchester comes to them to warn them what will happen if they don't join the ring. But what is the ring? Quinn's friend Gunnar takes him out for a night of distraction, but Samara crashes the party.
Warning: Contains spoilers for the entire Ringu and The Ring series.
Beta Thanks: Beta'ed by Meredevachon.
Fanfic Challenges: Fits 50_darkfics prompt #10 Tortured and coclaim100 prompt #10 Awakening.
Author's Notes: The conversation between Lisa and Quinn is based on a scene originally written in 2003 in a played-by-email roleplaying game. That scene was written using completely different characters. One character was played by me, and the other by my roleplay partner, K-kitty, who has granted her permission for what she brought to the story to be used. (She wrote for the woman in the scene.) I rewrote most of this, although I used some of my own dialogue for Quinn.
Dean Winchester is a character from the TV show "Supernatural."
Quinn slept a great deal that Saturday. So much, that Jodie worried about him. He was probably just catching up on all the sleep he'd lost the last two nights, she told herself. Or, maybe he was getting sick.
Svetlana did not come back for a couple of days. At least, not physically.
That night, Quinn dreamed of Evelyn.
He saw flashes, snatches of images. A brick building with an iron gate. Women walking down the sidewalk, wearing prim outfits and those black and white nun's hats. A sign that said St. Mary Magdalen Women's Shelter. The images he was being shown settled on a young woman, younger than Quinn, bouncing a baby in her arms. She had long, dark hair and seemed happy about the child. The rosary she held confirmed for Quinn that she was as Catholic as the shelter in which she stayed. Or maybe she'd just been raised as one.
Evelyn. Her name was Evelyn.
And I'm dreaming about you because...?
Evelyn, looking down at the baby, slowly took on an expression of confusion, that changed to distress, and then to horror. She put the child back into her bassinette and backed away. Evelyn covered her ears, shaking her head in disbelief.
"Evelyn's remembering a dream the baby sent her," informed a familiar voice to one side of Quinn. He turned to where the blond with the shotgun stood next to him on the brick plaza in front of one of the garden areas of St. Mary Magdalen's. The blond rested the gun against his shoulder. "Just like she's sending these dreams to you."
Quinn leaned out and looked over to the blond's right side. Just as he expected, Svetlana leaned around him too and gazed back at Quinn. "I should have known you'd be here. Even when we're not sleeping in the same bed, we're still dreaming the same thing," he said.
The blond looked at Quinn, then at Svetlana, and shook his head with a small laugh. The action had tsk, tsk, tsk written all over it. "Dude, I'm a bit slutty. But what you two are doing? Even I try to avoid it."
Quinn rolled his eyes and Svetlana ducked her head with embarrassment. Changing the subject, Quinn said, "Who are you? Why do you keep appearing in these dreams? Are you some kind of symbol?"
"Nah, I'm no symbol." He watched as Evelyn began to cry, and eventually started to scream in anguish as the nuns put their arms around her and led her away. "I'm sorry I can't just tell you my name. I might be able to save you two if you knew how to contact me. But I have no control over these nightmares. These are Samara's game. I'm not even supposed to be here." The blond looked at Quinn. "I'm here because Mysteria put me here. She's trying to help."
Quinn didn't know who "Mysteria" was, or the blond guy, but they had to be good guys if they were in opposition to Samara. "Help, how?"
He shrugged. "Just hoping it will make a difference somewhere."
Evelyn interrupted their conversation by wailing out, "Samara told me to kill her! I couldn't believe it either, but I dreamed of it every night. I saw Samara when she's older. She walked to the side of her own crib, her baby self's crib, and told me to drown her." Evelyn pointed to the fountain in the garden. "That's why I tried to kill her. That's all. She said it would save her."
Looking at the child in the bassinette, Svetlana surmised, "So that's Samara in the cradle? Then... you must be..."
Anna Morgan, looking fairly happy and vibrant, crossed the plaza to the side of the bassinette and gazed down at the baby. She cooed with love, rubbing the child's cheeks.
Evelyn shook her head. "You have to let me finish it." The nuns grasped her arms firmly and continued to pull her away. "Samara told me it was the only way to save her!" The girl seemed to address Anna directly. "Don't let them stop you! You have to finish it!"
With a serene expression, Anna looked up at Evelyn and replied, "I won't let them stop me. I'll finish it." She gave both Quinn and Svet a short glance. "It won't stop."
They both shuddered, knowing what Anna meant when she said she would "finish it." She was the one who finally did Samara in.
The other side of Anna, the older, haggard ghost who floated near the well in most of their dreams, entered the scene, wearing the long dress, but walking the ground this time. She looked upon her younger, happier self with sad eyes. "How young and idealistic I was. I thought adopting a baby would solve all the problems we'd been having with conceiving, that we could finally be a complete family. People even said that Samara looked like me." With a bitter, tight smile, Anna choked back tears. "I don't think anyone knew they were handing me a monster, do you?"
Quinn shrugged at her and shook his head. He had no idea what to say.
Anna crossed to the other side of the bassinette to also gaze down at baby Samara. Her contented other half seemed unaware of her. "Samara said she loved me. She always wanted to spend time with me. Her 'Mommy.' So why couldn't she let me be happy?" Anna looked up at the sky and started to weep. "Why did she attack me with her powers? All I wanted was to be a champion horse breeder and Samara's mommy. Everything I loved, she took away from me. I just want to understand why." Anna's body shook with sobs, and she covered her mouth to forestall the scream that threatened to come out.
"I get it." Svetlana pointed to the building into which Evelyn had been taken. "She's Samara's real mother."
"No shit, Sherlock," the blond joked.
"What does all this mean?" Frustrated, Quinn turned to the blond man for answers. But he didn't look much older than Quinn himself. "Why are we being shown this? These people are dead. There's nothing we can do to help. Anna Morgan finished off Samara, and she came back stronger than ever, as a vengeful ghost. Now both her mothers are tortured over what they did to her and she did to them. Great, wonderful, I get it. Now how do we make it end?!"
The blond took a look around, as if checking to see who might be listening, then grasped Quinn and Svetlana each by one arm and led them away from St. Mary Magdalen's. They went through a door and were back in Quinn and Jodie's apartment. Only in dreams could location be shifted so swiftly.
Dean addressed them in a commanding voice and spoke as quickly as he could. "I don't have long, so pay attention. Samara already knows I'm here. She'll try to wake you up before I can inform you of anything useful. You gotta tell Jodie and Danica that they can trust me. I'm a friend, and my dad's a friend too. We're the good guys, okay? Tell them."
Quinn nodded dutifully. "Okay."
"Second thing." Dean took the gun out from under his arm. "It's a catch-22. But I can't just sit back and let it happen." The videotape that had been left for Quinn sat on his bed. Shoving at it with the tip of the shotgun, Dean said, "You gotta keep it going."
This was not the time for cryptic dream talk. Quinn could feel that Samara was coming. Time did nothing but tick away. "What?"
"The ring. Join it. It has to keep going."
"I don't get it either," Svetlana said, confused.
Water began to run under the closed door of Quinn's bedroom, staining the carpet, soaking through, moving toward Dean's feet. Water colored black with dirt.
His voice urgent, angry, Dean said, "There's something you have to do! If you don't do it, you'll die!"
Quinn came awake with a gasp. It was still dark outside. The phone soon rang anyway.
He answered it. "Svet? I knew it was you."
They discussed the dream in detail. "I got the distinct impression that his name start with a D," she said, "and he knows stuff. The kind of stuff we really need to know to survive."
"We already knew that his name started with a D. What we need to figure out is... God... I know it's just a dream, but this guy is right. I have a very strong feeling that there is something we're supposed to do. We've got to figure out what it is before our seven days are up."
Quinn looked at the clock. 3:44AM. Sleep would not visit him again, so he got out of bed to have a smoke and give it some thought. Certain images wouldn't leave his head. Spirals. Circles. Black rings.
The ring.
It has to keep going.
For the rest of the night, Quinn did not sleep - he got out Svetlana's drawing pad and a pencil. And he drew.
*****
Jodie awakened in the morning to find the apartment relatively silent. She knocked on Quinn's door to see if he was awake, and peeked into the room. What she saw confused her so much she couldn't help but stand with the door open and just stare for a while.
Quinn sat near the head of his bed, indian style, with the drawing pad on his lap. Oblivious of Jodie, he was drawing a view of Samara's well as if one was looking down into it. The drawing was just a dark circle with vague outlines of brick. Quinn scribbled furiously to fill it in, as black as he could make it. His forearms were covered with smudges of grey pencil lead.
scribba scribba scribba scribba
Jodie gaped at the pile of drawings that covered the rest of the bed. He had drawn the well over and over. Other drawings featured the horses from the videotape, Anna Morgan, Anna and Samara in the mirror, a girl holding a baby, and many things that Jodie wasn't even sure she could make out, because Quinn had scribbled words all over them. Sometimes, the same words repeatedly.
ring ring ring Ring ring the ring a ring the ring What does it mean? ring ring ring ring ring ring ring
there is Something you must do to save yourself
join the ring it has to keep going Everyone will suffer it won't stop
it's like a game of TelePhone
Quinn continued to color in the blackness of the well like he was possessed. Crossing the room, Jodie worriedly leaned down and put her hand over his in an attempt to still his frantic scribbling. "Quinn? What are you doing?"
His hand slowed down and the pencil sputtered across the page, then he looked up at her. "Jodie? Hey, Jodes." Quinn blinked, like a man coming out of a dream. "Did you have any dreams last night?"
"Nothing of note." Jodie again surveyed all the drawings he'd done. The drawing pad was almost spent. "What are you up to?"
Looking down, Quinn started once more to color. "I'm trying to figure out the dreams Svet and I have been having. There's something important we have to do."
Jodie watched him for several seconds before asking, "How is this going to help you figure things out?"
"I'm not sure. I just feel like drawing," was Quinn's brief response, before all of his attention was once again captured by the work before him.
Jodie opened her mouth to say something else, but the phone rang. She sprinted into the living room to answer it. Svetlana's dorm mate was on the other end.
"Hey, Jodie, tell me something, and please be honest," Darcy said in a strained, pleading tone.
"Sure, Darce; what's up?"
"Are Quinn and Svet doing drugs over there or something?"
Jodie thought she knew where this was going. "Not that I know of. Why?"
"Because Svet's acting really weird." Darcy looked over at her roommate and felt like panicking all over again. Svetlana was on her bed all hunched over another drawing pad she owned, sketching the blond man with the shotgun. Fanned out on the bed were nearly fifty drawings of this man in every pose one could imagine. Many of them had words scribbled around and on top of them. "It's like she's in some sort of trance."
Jodie had Darcy describe what sort of things Svetlana had been drawing. It wasn't a great surprise to her that Svet chose to draw the man; she had seemed fixated on him from the very beginning. "What else is she sketching?"
"People with their faces scribbled out."
Like the girl in the videotape, with her hair covering her face. Or maybe like the photos of people who had watched the tape, their faces warped. "Have you asked her what she's doing?"
Darcy tried to keep her voice down. "Yeah. She said she's trying to figure out who this guy is. Jodie, who the hell is Svet drawing?"
"I'm not sure. It's a really long story, Darcy, one I'm not sure you want to get involved in. Just tell me, what kind of things is Svetlana writing on the pages?"
Carefully, Darcy picked up a few pieces of paper, trying not to disturb the oblivious Svetlana, and leafed through them. "I'm warning you, it doesn't make any sense. 'Savior he is savior he will save us, He will get here in time. His name start with a D. D D D D D D Deeeeeeee. N.' I swear, there's just a big N there by itself. What the hell does that mean? 'Good guy trying to help. Mysteria put him there. Mysteria mysteria mysteria. He will get here in time. Five days left.' Then she wrote fives all over the rest of the page.
"This next one just says 'the ring the ring the ring the ring' all over it."
Jodie, taking a deep breath, tried to think of what to say. "Darce, they've both been acting strange, okay? I don't think they've been sleeping enough. Maybe taking pep pills to stay awake for cram sessions. Mid-terms are coming up. Try to get Svet to take a nap, alright? Tell her if she sleeps, she can dream, and dreaming will help her figure it all out."
Darcy shrugged. "Okay. Hold on." Putting the phone down, she did as Jodie instructed, and it seemed to work. Darcy came back to the phone. "Okay, Svet's going to sleep. What the heck should I do when she wakes up?"
"If she's still being weird, just send her over here, okay? Like I said, it's a long, complicated story," Jodie sighed.
"In other words, they're into something fucked up," Darcy added, summing it up.
She had to laugh. "Yeah, you could say that."
"Fucking college and its tendency to make you experiment. I'm not in any danger here, am I? Svet's not going to go nutso cuckoo on me?" asked Darcy. She watched Svetlana drift off to sleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow.
"I wouldn't worry about it. Just call me if anything else happens."
Jodie tried to do the same for Quinn. "Quinn, don't you think you should sleep now? You look really tired."
Without looking up at her, he just shook his head. "I gotta figure it out. Only five days left. What is the ring?"
Jodie gently stilled his hands again and started to take the paper from him. Slowly. "You'll probably have better luck figuring it out through the dreams. Why don't you get some sleep, and see what Samara shows you next?"
After a pause, Quinn nodded, hardly noticing that Jodie took the pad of paper away. She started clearing the other drawings off the bed so he could lie down. "Yeah. Yeah, the dreams tell us a lot. We learn more every time. Maybe the D guy will come again, and tell us what we're supposed to do."
Jodie wasn't sure who "the D guy" was; could he mean the blond with the shotgun? They did think his name was Dan or something... she nodded in agreement. "Maybe he will. Sleep, Quinn."
After he'd drifted into a fitful slumber, tossing and turning in his sleep, Jodie called one of Quinn's closest friends, Gunnar Taylor. It wasn't a surprise that she caught him in the middle of lifting weights, as it was something he did often. "Do you want me to call you back?"
"No, babe, it's okay," Gunnar replied. Every few words, he let out a hard breath. "I'm doing arm curls. Just working on one at a time right now; I got a hand free."
"Alright. Um, Gunns, can you do me a favor later? Can you come over here and take Quinn out somewhere? He really needs to get out of the house," explained Jodie. "Take him to a strip club or a basketball game or something. Some place he'll be really distracted. Preoccupied. I want all of his attention on whatever you take him to do."
"Sure, no problem. What's going on over there?" Gunnar asked a bit warily. "What do you want him distracted from?"
Ah, the hard questions she'd been expecting. Jodie decided the best thing to do was lie. She wasn't even sure how to explain the truth to people at this point. Jodie told him the same fib she'd told Darcy - about the speed pills and lack of sleep and how strange Quinn and Svetlana had been acting. "He needs something to get his mind off school."
Gunnar bought it. "Sounds like it. Tell him I'll be there around... oh..." He let out another of those heavy breaths.
"Gunnar, stop that! You sound like..." Her face flushed with embarrassment. "It's just distracting."
He chuckled deeply in response. "You know it, baby," Gunnar teased.
Jodie could have died. Why did all of Quinn's friends have to be so good looking?
Letting her off the hook, he finished his sentence. "8 o'clock sound good?"
*****
When she came in at two to start her shift, Lisa Barrister had never expected it to come to this.
She expected men to stare. She knew there'd be snickering and whistling and male camaraderie. She could even overlook the occasional smack on the ass if it had a big tip behind it. That was just life as a waitress at Hooters.
But Lisa could never have foreseen one of her customers doing what Quinn Kirkland did that night, less than a week before she saw his picture in the newspaper.
He and his friend were both pretty hot. Lisa turned on the giggle machine, tossing her long dark brown hair around and smiling a lot as she brought them beer and chicken wings. The tight orange short-shorts and snug white t-shirt hugging her breasts spoke for themselves. Lisa wouldn't mind going out with either of them, especially if they tipped well.
The two men sat at a high round table on stools. All the skimpily dressed waitresses were doing the job Jodie had wanted them to do - Quinn was definitely distracted. "Our waitress is making eyes at you," Gunnar commented with a smirk.
Quinn grinned back. "I was about to say that it's you she's interested in."
"Hey man, maybe she wants us both. We haven't done that in a while."
Quinn had a hearty laugh over that. "I don't think you should ask her; you got slapped last time you suggested a double team."
Gunnar chuckled darkly. "It'd almost be worth it."
As Quinn's friend, Gunnar hoped that acting like an absolute pig with him would loosen him up, because the bags under Quinn's eyes were quite worrisome. He understood now why Jodie was freaking out. "Jodie said you and Svet were up to something. That you hadn't been sleeping. You okay, buddy?"
Scrubbing at the back of his neck, Quinn didn't know how to answer that. Oh, it's really quite simple. We watched this videotape left in my mailbox and it gave us nightmares. Some little girl was murdered by her mother. Now her ghost comes after you if you watch her tape. We're obsessed with it, really. In fact, we're starting to fear for our lives. It's all very real, you know.
Sure. That's exactly what he should say. In another universe.
"I'm fine. Just stressed from studying." Quinn put on a smile he didn't feel. "Thanks for taking me out, Gunns. This is exactly what I needed."
Lisa, a little extra bounce in her step, brought them two fresh beers. "There you go."
Quinn immediately tore into his, taking a long swig off the bottle.
Lisa asked, "Is there anything else I can get for you gentlemen?"
Gunnar smirked at her, looking her up and down. "Yeah, you can show me where the gentlemen are, 'cause I don't see 'em."
Quinn started to laugh with a throat full of beer. He immediately sputtered and coughed, like the liquid had gone down the wrong pipe.
Lisa, eyes widening, handed him a napkin and went to pat him on the back. "You okay?"
That's when the wave of nausea hit him. Quinn tried not to slam the beer down, but suddenly, there was something obstructing his throat. He coughed, trying to clear it, and took the napkin. But he couldn't speak, to tell her it was okay. The choking sensation quickly became unbearable. Quinn began to make full-on choking sounds.
"Oh my God, are you okay?" Lisa asked, slapping him on the back now.
"Quinn?" What was he choking on? He had nothing in his mouth but beer.
Although it felt much longer, it was just seconds after the choking started that a loop of silver chain emerged from his mouth. Quinn looked down at it, taking hold of the chain, and started to pull it out with wide eyes. No one could have looked more startled than him if they had tried, though Lisa and Gunnar came close. He continued to make the unpleasant choking noises as he yanked out more of the offending object. Even though his eyes were watering, Quinn could still see that he was removing a string of small wine-colored beads from his throat.
"Jesus Christ!" Lisa cried in horror. She looked to Gunnar for explanation. "What did he swallow?!"
Gunnar appeared just as mystified and shocked as she was. "Quinn, don't pull too hard. Just... slow..." He wanted to scream "What the fuck!" himself.
It took less than ten seconds for Quinn to get it all out. The end of the chain finally emerged from his mouth - it was a miniature silver crucifix.
A rosary. He'd just coughed up a rosary.
Quinn threw it down on the table with a horrified, disgusted look, gasping for breath. He jumped up and stared at the odd item that had just emerged from his person, absently rubbing at the wrist that had the bandanna tied around it. How the hell did that get in his throat? How the hell did a necklace get into his throat when he had no memory of swallowing it?
Lisa stared at the rosary, then at Quinn. He obviously had no idea how the necklace had gotten in there. "Are you alright?"
Quinn barely heard her. He just panted and stared at that rosary, wondering if it was real.
It was the same one Evelyn held in the dream.
it won't stop
She Just Wanted to Be Heard
Day 11: Rattling the Cage
Part of Story Arc 1: Counterclockwise
A "The Ring/Ringu" Fanfic
by Laurel (Sailorhathor)
Chapters: 11 of 100
Rating: Overall Rating PG-13 (some elements might be too intense or scary for those under 13; includes bad language)
Dates: Begun September 2006. Some material is based on previously written stories from 2003-2005.
Word Count: 3,283
Summary: Lisa and Gunnar question Quinn about why he coughed up a necklace belonging to Samara's mother. He tells them what's been going on the last few days.
Warning: Contains spoilers for the entire Ringu and The Ring series.
Beta Thanks: Beta'ed by Meredevachon.
Fanfic Challenges: Fits 50_darkfics prompt #11 Weapon and coclaim100 prompt #11 Messenger.
Author's Notes: The conversation between Lisa and Quinn is based on a scene originally written in 2003 in a played-by-email roleplaying game. That scene was written using completely different characters. One character was played by me, and the other by my roleplay partner, K-kitty, who has granted her permission for what she brought to the story to be used. (She wrote for the woman in the scene.) I rewrote the scene quite a bit, though I used some of my original dialogue.
Also, this chapter contains spoilers for the movie When a Stranger Calls.
"Was that in his sandwich?" one of the nearby patrons asked anyone who might be listening.
Lisa's mind was reeling, but she still heard what the other customers were saying about the rosary that this guy had just coughed up. They thought the necklace had been in his food. Of course they would think that; it made the most sense. But Lisa knew that was impossible, because this guy (Had his friend said his name was Quinn?) had eaten nothing but chicken wings and beer. A rosary couldn't get into a fucking chicken wing.
But they just went right on speaking in hushed tones, building the hysteria.
"Did he order the Flappertizer? 'Cause I ordered the Flappertizer..." a man said to one of the other waitresses.
That waitress, Danielle, hurried over to Lisa. "What the fuck happened?"
Lisa pointed to the rosary. "He just coughed that up!"
Giving her shoulder a push, Danielle quietly said, "Take him into the break room and see if he needs an ambulance. I'll get Scott."
Lisa took Quinn's arm. "Come with me. You should lie down." What Danielle suggested was for the best. The customers would calm down once they couldn't see the guy anymore. She surmised that there could be all kinds of ways that necklace had gotten into his stomach... maybe he even swallowed it on purpose so he could try for one of those suing scams. Although, something told her this wasn't an act. The guy just seemed too shocked.
Perhaps he'd been in the hospital, and someone in the surgical team prayed over the rosary and thought it would help better if they actually put it inside him. Some religious fanatic. Or maybe he was like that guy who went on all the talk shows and swallowed lightbulbs and other objects and brought them back up undamaged. Surely the talk show guy wasn't the only one who could do that.
There had to be some rational explanation.
Quinn did not fight her. He just allowed himself to be pulled toward the back of the restaurant. As they went, Quinn kept staring at the rosary, coiled up on the table; it got smaller and smaller as he got further from it, but he would never forget how it looked, sitting there. How the holy living hell had that gotten in his throat?!
Lisa took him through a door marked Employees Only and into a break room with a couch and table, among other things. Gunnar followed them in; he certainly wasn't going to stay out by the table and twiddle his thumbs after what had just happened. "Quinn, are you okay?!" he asked, nearly pouncing on his friend before the door was even closed.
Quinn plopped down on the couch. He looked shell-shocked. "Uh, I guess."
"We should call you an ambulance," Lisa suggested. "Were you in the hospital recently?"
He shook his head.
"Then how did that thing get in your stomach?" she asked.
Gunnar added, "Does this have anything to do with what you and Svetlana are into?"
Looking up sharply, Quinn sighed and then covered his face with his hands. "I don't need an ambulance, okay? It's nothing they can help with. I'll be alright."
A man with a "Manager: Scott" nametag on entered the room. He carried on a tense but polite conversation with Quinn and Gunnar. Quinn repeatedly refused the idea of calling an ambulance. The manager offered to pay for their meal, which they accepted. They knew it was his way of doing damage control, but only Quinn knew that the gesture was unnecessary. The rosary had not come from his food, no matter how much that made better sense than the real explanation.
When Scott had left, Gunnar turned to Quinn again. "So? What really happened? When did you swallow that thing?"
As Quinn began to talk, Lisa brought him a bottle of water. "Thanks," he said as he took it. "This is going to sound crazy, but I never swallowed the necklace. It's like it just... appeared in my throat. I have no idea where it came from."
They listened, and stared in disbelief. "What do you mean, it appeared in your throat?"
"I mean, one second, it wasn't there, and the next, I felt it, like it just... materialized. Like a magic trick or something."
Lisa and Gunnar were stunned into silence for several moments. Gunnar finally said, "Quinn, that's crazy."
"Told you." He opened the bottle and drank from it, bracing should some other bizarre object come up. None did. When he brought the bottle to his lips again, he saw that his hand was shaking.
"Better?" Lisa asked.
Quinn nodded.
Gunnar asked again, "Does this have anything to do with whatever you and Svet have gotten into?"
Quinn, taking a deep breath, thought about the whole situation for a few seconds before answering. He gave them the usual disclaimer that he was having to adopt with this bizarre story. "If I tell you what I think is going on, do you promise not to think I'm totally nuts? Because it's all going to sound insane."
Gunnar shrugged. "I already know you're insane," he joked.
After a pause to think it over, Lisa nodded her encouragement. "I'm willing to listen." She didn't know these guys, but after you watched someone cough up a rosary that came out of thin air, you wanted to know the full story.
Quinn looked at both of them, then began, "I swear to you, this is all true. You heard me speak when you brought the beers to our table; you know I couldn't have put that thing in my mouth and faked that."
Lisa agreed with him. "Yeah, I heard you talking to your friend when I walked up. I don't think that you faked it. You're too freaked out."
Relieved, Quinn grinned slightly and continued. "I haven't tied one on for weeks, so there's no chance I could have swallowed the rosary while I was drunk. I really have no clue how it got there.
"Except... I do have a clue, but... it's crazy. Stuff like this simply isn't supposed to be real."
"What isn't supposed to be real?" asked Gunnar, crossing his arms.
"You've heard all the nutty stories kids tell in school, right? All the stuff about Bloody Mary appearing in the mirror and the escaped mental patient with a hook for a hand? What do you think of stories like that?"
Gunnar shrugged again. "They're just stories. Stuff you tell around the campfire in Boy Scouts."
"Have you ever thought one of them might be true?"
Lisa and Gunnar briefly fell silent. "What?" Gunnar said in an incredulous tone.
Lisa touched Quinn's arm. "One of my friends from high school swears that thing about the psycho calling the babysitter happened to her cousin's college roommate. You know, like what happened in that movie. He kept asking her when she was going to check on the children."
"Where it turns out the calls from the psycho are coming from inside the house?"
"Yeah," Lisa replied.
"Pfft," Gunnar scoffed. "That's just a story. Never happened to anybody."
Frowning, Quinn said, "Gunns, can you be a little more open-minded? This is a pretty crazy story I'm about to tell you..."
"I can try," Gunnar shrugged. "Lay it on us."
Quinn let out a heavy sigh. "Well... have you ever heard the story about the videotape with the curse on it, that once you watch it, something really bad happens to you seven days later? I think... well, the more weird stuff that happens, the more I think... this is crazy, it's crazy." He scrubbed tiredly at one of his eyes. "I think I may have watched it."
There was a pause before Gunnar burst out in mocking laughter. "Oh, Quinn, you really had me going there for a second. Cursed videotape..." He laughed some more.
Quinn hadn't expected to be taken seriously at first, at least not by the realist, Gunnar. But Lisa was looking at him with wide eyes. "I don't know if I believe in stuff like that."
"But you've heard the story?"
"Yes."
It felt good to tell this to someone outside the situation, a stranger. Spilling your guts to a person who didn't know you was sometimes the best thing you could do to feel at least a little better. "I thought it was a bunch of hooey too, until that tape appeared in my mailbox."
"Did someone mail it to you?" asked Lisa.
Quinn told her how the videotape wound up in his possession. "...Jolene put the tape on and we watched it. It was just a bunch of random, weird images. They all seemed to be about some girl with black hair who kept it brushed over her face, so you never got a look at her. Some of it was gross, some of it was creepy, but it wasn't that bad. There kind of seemed to be a narrative there... like, something really bad happened to this family, and the mother jumped off a cliff, and the girl wound up dead down inside a well. The tape ends with a shot of this well. Then, just static." Quinn's eyes were getting bigger and his hands were shaking more and more as he spilled out the story.
"Svetlana and I started having dreams. Nightmares. They always center around the well, and the girl is still down there, but she's, like, adopted the place as her fortress. And... it's like she wants to pull you down there with her."
Lisa instantly believed he was telling the truth. Quinn's face was too serious, too stressed, his eyes too frightened.
"Jolene, she's been seeing things. Hallucinating."
That got Gunnar's attention; Quinn was his friend, but he was still just a college student. People their age sometimes indulged in the wacky tobacky a little too much and saw freaky shit. But, Jolene, with her partying and trampy ways, was still an adult. Almost 40. She was seeing things too?
Quinn continued. "We did some research. Turns out the girl in the tape is real. Her name is Samara Morgan, and she was alive during the 1970's. Samara's adoptive mother murdered her. Bashed her head in, and threw her in the well. I don't know the whole story, but I think Samara made this video somehow. That she has powers."
"Powers?" Gunnar said.
"Yeah. There was this guy in some of the dreams who said that Samara was sending them to us. She seems to be able to use her mind as a weapon.
"The tape is her way of getting revenge, or something. Maybe she wants justice. I don't know, I don't even know her! God, I should have known this wouldn't just go away after the mark." Quinn saw them looking at him expectantly. He started to remove the bandanna tied around his wrist. "I had a dream the other day that I leaned on the rim of the well, and the girl reached up and grabbed my wrist. When I woke up..."
Quinn showed them the wrist with the burn on it in the shape of a slim, female hand: Fingers, thumb, and most of the palm.
Both Gunnar and Lisa goggled at it. Gunnar felt the marks, as if he thought they might rub off. "Christ... that's a welt."
Lisa did not say anything; her eyes spoke for how disturbing she found the burn on Quinn's wrist.
"Let me get this straight. This girl, who's dead, came to you in a dream and grabbed your wrist, and you woke up with this mark on you?" Gunnar asked, amazed.
Quinn nodded.
"Then Jodie lied to me. She said you were stressed over mid-terms." He paused, thinking about it. "I can see now why she didn't tell me the truth."
"I know, Gunns. When I tell myself this story in my head, I say, 'Quinn, you're fucking crazy.' Dead girls don't crawl up out of wells and grab you and leave marks on your skin, and then give you the kind of nightmares that could scare someone who's hardly been afraid in all of his life."
Looking at the handprint again, Lisa made a connection. "This mark on your wrist, it's similar to what just happened to you out there. You coughed up a rosary, a physical object. The stuff that happens to you in the nightmares is so real that is has physical effects on your waking life."
Gunnar couldn't resist. "Wow, that's pretty intellectual for a waitress at Hooters."
Scowling, Lisa replied, "Hey, screw you, buddy. This is just a job. I'm a Psych major."
He snickered. "Sorry."
She rolled her eyes, then turned back to Quinn. "What's the rosary mean? Do you know?"
He explained about Evelyn, how he and Svetlana had dreamed of her the night before. "I think this is Samara's way of reminding me that there are only a few days left until... whatever's supposed to happen. That the clock is ticking. It's like there's something I'm supposed to do. But I don't know what. And this thing about seven days... I think I've figured that out. I think that this all ends in seven days, that she lets you go. That'll be Thursday night. At least, I hope that's what it means. The legends have a few different endings, though... that once your days are up, you go insane, or you get absorbed into the tape and become a part of the narrative, or you die. But this is real life, right? That bitch isn't gonna come up here and drag me away..." Quinn looked at Lisa with the most childlike, frightened look in his eyes, as if he'd decreased in age right before her eyes. "...is she?"
Lisa could understand why this guy was so shaken. What he described concerning Samara, and what he had experienced, it all tapped into typical childhood fears. Fear of small spaces. Fear of the dark. Fear of monsters and people with spooky powers. Fear of death. She touched his arm again, trying to be reassuring. "Of course not. People don't die that way." Lisa laughed a little. "I'm not even sure my friend was telling the truth about the psycho and the babysitter."
Although Quinn appreciated her trying to make him feel better, he still let out a deep sigh. "I just wish I knew why this girl was doing this to us. There seems to be a message there, in the tape. Maybe she just wants us to listen and understand her pain. But what can we do for her?
"I'm not usually this easily shaken, but it's rattled me. I admit it. Do you hear that Samara? I admit it, you rattled my cage." He spoke to the ceiling. "Now go bother somebody else."
Gunnar added, "This is why I brought Quinn here tonight, to get his mind off whatever was troubling him. Jodie thought all the hot bods would be a good distraction. Now I see what from."
"Jodie's my roommate," explained Quinn.
Lisa just nodded to that. "Well, Quinn, I'll tell you, that has got to be the craziest story I've ever heard. But I've seen enough to believe it. You know what you're going to do?"
"What?"
"You and your girlfriend and whoever else has watched this videotape are simply going to wait out your seven days. If there is something you're supposed to do, I bet Samara will tell you what it is someday soon, maybe on the seventh day. It sounds like this girl enjoys playing with your head."
"That's what Jodie said, that it was someone's idea of a mindfuck," nodded Quinn.
"Right. You're going to wait out your seven days, and you'll see that there's nothing to fear. It'll all be over then." Lisa patted his knee. "Then you and Svetlana are going to come here for dinner on Friday night, and I'll give you drinks on the house, okay? We'll have a good laugh over it."
Although it was a tentative smile, Quinn's grin did contain some hope. "That sounds like the best idea I've heard all week."
When Lisa escorted them back out to their table, they discovered the rosary was gone. Danielle gave them a guilty look as she passed them by with a loaded tray.
"Lisa, can you do me a favor?"
"What, Quinn?"
"Can you get that rosary back from your friend? I know this sounds weird, but I sort of want to keep it. For proof."
She shrugged. "I'll see what I can do. We don't even know that Danielle took it."
Gunnar chuckled. "For a Psych major, you don't read people too well, do ya?"
With another scowl, Lisa flipped him off. Gunnar grinned and laughed heartily. She ignored him, turning back to Quinn. "I'll ask Danielle what happened to it, okay? And if she has it, I can give it back to you on Friday." Lisa added a reassuring smile.
Quinn smiled back, bigger this time. "Yeah. Friday."
As the two men prepared to go, Gunnar smirked and tried one last ditch effort to flirt. "You wouldn't have any interest in accompanying me home, would you, Lisa? Help me check under my bed for monsters?"
Lisa leaned toward him, putting her hand on his arm. "I think you're old enough to do that yourself, buddy boy."
She waved as they went out the door, then spent the rest of her shift distracted, trying to make sense in her head of the whole crazy story.
It was the last time Lisa saw Quinn Kirkland alive.
it won't stop
The Ringu series is (c) 1998 The Ring/The Spiral Production Group. It is based on the novels by Koji Suzuki.
The motion picture The Ring is (c) 2002 DreamWorks Pictures. The title "She Just Wanted to Be Heard" comes from a line of dialogue spoken by Rachel Keller in this movie. The motion picture The Ring Two is (c) 2005 DreamWorks Pictures.
I do not know if the prequel, The Ring 3, will have any bearing on this story or not until I see it.
Supernatural is (c) 2005 Kripke Enterprises, Wonderland, & Warner Brothers/The CW Television.
Everything else is (c) Demented Stuff.
Day 10: TelePhone
Part of Story Arc 1: Counterclockwise
A "The Ring/Ringu" Fanfic
by Laurel (Sailorhathor)
Chapters: 10 of 100
Rating: Overall Rating PG-13 (some elements might be too intense or scary for those under 13; includes bad language)
Dates: Begun September 2006. Some material is based on previously written stories from 2003-2005.
Word Count: 4,293
Summary: Quinn and Svetlana dream of Samara's real mother. Dean Winchester comes to them to warn them what will happen if they don't join the ring. But what is the ring? Quinn's friend Gunnar takes him out for a night of distraction, but Samara crashes the party.
Warning: Contains spoilers for the entire Ringu and The Ring series.
Beta Thanks: Beta'ed by Meredevachon.
Fanfic Challenges: Fits 50_darkfics prompt #10 Tortured and coclaim100 prompt #10 Awakening.
Author's Notes: The conversation between Lisa and Quinn is based on a scene originally written in 2003 in a played-by-email roleplaying game. That scene was written using completely different characters. One character was played by me, and the other by my roleplay partner, K-kitty, who has granted her permission for what she brought to the story to be used. (She wrote for the woman in the scene.) I rewrote most of this, although I used some of my own dialogue for Quinn.
Dean Winchester is a character from the TV show "Supernatural."
Quinn slept a great deal that Saturday. So much, that Jodie worried about him. He was probably just catching up on all the sleep he'd lost the last two nights, she told herself. Or, maybe he was getting sick.
Svetlana did not come back for a couple of days. At least, not physically.
That night, Quinn dreamed of Evelyn.
He saw flashes, snatches of images. A brick building with an iron gate. Women walking down the sidewalk, wearing prim outfits and those black and white nun's hats. A sign that said St. Mary Magdalen Women's Shelter. The images he was being shown settled on a young woman, younger than Quinn, bouncing a baby in her arms. She had long, dark hair and seemed happy about the child. The rosary she held confirmed for Quinn that she was as Catholic as the shelter in which she stayed. Or maybe she'd just been raised as one.
Evelyn. Her name was Evelyn.
And I'm dreaming about you because...?
Evelyn, looking down at the baby, slowly took on an expression of confusion, that changed to distress, and then to horror. She put the child back into her bassinette and backed away. Evelyn covered her ears, shaking her head in disbelief.
"Evelyn's remembering a dream the baby sent her," informed a familiar voice to one side of Quinn. He turned to where the blond with the shotgun stood next to him on the brick plaza in front of one of the garden areas of St. Mary Magdalen's. The blond rested the gun against his shoulder. "Just like she's sending these dreams to you."
Quinn leaned out and looked over to the blond's right side. Just as he expected, Svetlana leaned around him too and gazed back at Quinn. "I should have known you'd be here. Even when we're not sleeping in the same bed, we're still dreaming the same thing," he said.
The blond looked at Quinn, then at Svetlana, and shook his head with a small laugh. The action had tsk, tsk, tsk written all over it. "Dude, I'm a bit slutty. But what you two are doing? Even I try to avoid it."
Quinn rolled his eyes and Svetlana ducked her head with embarrassment. Changing the subject, Quinn said, "Who are you? Why do you keep appearing in these dreams? Are you some kind of symbol?"
"Nah, I'm no symbol." He watched as Evelyn began to cry, and eventually started to scream in anguish as the nuns put their arms around her and led her away. "I'm sorry I can't just tell you my name. I might be able to save you two if you knew how to contact me. But I have no control over these nightmares. These are Samara's game. I'm not even supposed to be here." The blond looked at Quinn. "I'm here because Mysteria put me here. She's trying to help."
Quinn didn't know who "Mysteria" was, or the blond guy, but they had to be good guys if they were in opposition to Samara. "Help, how?"
He shrugged. "Just hoping it will make a difference somewhere."
Evelyn interrupted their conversation by wailing out, "Samara told me to kill her! I couldn't believe it either, but I dreamed of it every night. I saw Samara when she's older. She walked to the side of her own crib, her baby self's crib, and told me to drown her." Evelyn pointed to the fountain in the garden. "That's why I tried to kill her. That's all. She said it would save her."
Looking at the child in the bassinette, Svetlana surmised, "So that's Samara in the cradle? Then... you must be..."
Anna Morgan, looking fairly happy and vibrant, crossed the plaza to the side of the bassinette and gazed down at the baby. She cooed with love, rubbing the child's cheeks.
Evelyn shook her head. "You have to let me finish it." The nuns grasped her arms firmly and continued to pull her away. "Samara told me it was the only way to save her!" The girl seemed to address Anna directly. "Don't let them stop you! You have to finish it!"
With a serene expression, Anna looked up at Evelyn and replied, "I won't let them stop me. I'll finish it." She gave both Quinn and Svet a short glance. "It won't stop."
They both shuddered, knowing what Anna meant when she said she would "finish it." She was the one who finally did Samara in.
The other side of Anna, the older, haggard ghost who floated near the well in most of their dreams, entered the scene, wearing the long dress, but walking the ground this time. She looked upon her younger, happier self with sad eyes. "How young and idealistic I was. I thought adopting a baby would solve all the problems we'd been having with conceiving, that we could finally be a complete family. People even said that Samara looked like me." With a bitter, tight smile, Anna choked back tears. "I don't think anyone knew they were handing me a monster, do you?"
Quinn shrugged at her and shook his head. He had no idea what to say.
Anna crossed to the other side of the bassinette to also gaze down at baby Samara. Her contented other half seemed unaware of her. "Samara said she loved me. She always wanted to spend time with me. Her 'Mommy.' So why couldn't she let me be happy?" Anna looked up at the sky and started to weep. "Why did she attack me with her powers? All I wanted was to be a champion horse breeder and Samara's mommy. Everything I loved, she took away from me. I just want to understand why." Anna's body shook with sobs, and she covered her mouth to forestall the scream that threatened to come out.
"I get it." Svetlana pointed to the building into which Evelyn had been taken. "She's Samara's real mother."
"No shit, Sherlock," the blond joked.
"What does all this mean?" Frustrated, Quinn turned to the blond man for answers. But he didn't look much older than Quinn himself. "Why are we being shown this? These people are dead. There's nothing we can do to help. Anna Morgan finished off Samara, and she came back stronger than ever, as a vengeful ghost. Now both her mothers are tortured over what they did to her and she did to them. Great, wonderful, I get it. Now how do we make it end?!"
The blond took a look around, as if checking to see who might be listening, then grasped Quinn and Svetlana each by one arm and led them away from St. Mary Magdalen's. They went through a door and were back in Quinn and Jodie's apartment. Only in dreams could location be shifted so swiftly.
Dean addressed them in a commanding voice and spoke as quickly as he could. "I don't have long, so pay attention. Samara already knows I'm here. She'll try to wake you up before I can inform you of anything useful. You gotta tell Jodie and Danica that they can trust me. I'm a friend, and my dad's a friend too. We're the good guys, okay? Tell them."
Quinn nodded dutifully. "Okay."
"Second thing." Dean took the gun out from under his arm. "It's a catch-22. But I can't just sit back and let it happen." The videotape that had been left for Quinn sat on his bed. Shoving at it with the tip of the shotgun, Dean said, "You gotta keep it going."
This was not the time for cryptic dream talk. Quinn could feel that Samara was coming. Time did nothing but tick away. "What?"
"The ring. Join it. It has to keep going."
"I don't get it either," Svetlana said, confused.
Water began to run under the closed door of Quinn's bedroom, staining the carpet, soaking through, moving toward Dean's feet. Water colored black with dirt.
His voice urgent, angry, Dean said, "There's something you have to do! If you don't do it, you'll die!"
Quinn came awake with a gasp. It was still dark outside. The phone soon rang anyway.
He answered it. "Svet? I knew it was you."
They discussed the dream in detail. "I got the distinct impression that his name start with a D," she said, "and he knows stuff. The kind of stuff we really need to know to survive."
"We already knew that his name started with a D. What we need to figure out is... God... I know it's just a dream, but this guy is right. I have a very strong feeling that there is something we're supposed to do. We've got to figure out what it is before our seven days are up."
Quinn looked at the clock. 3:44AM. Sleep would not visit him again, so he got out of bed to have a smoke and give it some thought. Certain images wouldn't leave his head. Spirals. Circles. Black rings.
The ring.
It has to keep going.
For the rest of the night, Quinn did not sleep - he got out Svetlana's drawing pad and a pencil. And he drew.
*****
Jodie awakened in the morning to find the apartment relatively silent. She knocked on Quinn's door to see if he was awake, and peeked into the room. What she saw confused her so much she couldn't help but stand with the door open and just stare for a while.
Quinn sat near the head of his bed, indian style, with the drawing pad on his lap. Oblivious of Jodie, he was drawing a view of Samara's well as if one was looking down into it. The drawing was just a dark circle with vague outlines of brick. Quinn scribbled furiously to fill it in, as black as he could make it. His forearms were covered with smudges of grey pencil lead.
scribba scribba scribba scribba
Jodie gaped at the pile of drawings that covered the rest of the bed. He had drawn the well over and over. Other drawings featured the horses from the videotape, Anna Morgan, Anna and Samara in the mirror, a girl holding a baby, and many things that Jodie wasn't even sure she could make out, because Quinn had scribbled words all over them. Sometimes, the same words repeatedly.
ring ring ring Ring ring the ring a ring the ring What does it mean? ring ring ring ring ring ring ring
there is Something you must do to save yourself
join the ring it has to keep going Everyone will suffer it won't stop
it's like a game of TelePhone
Quinn continued to color in the blackness of the well like he was possessed. Crossing the room, Jodie worriedly leaned down and put her hand over his in an attempt to still his frantic scribbling. "Quinn? What are you doing?"
His hand slowed down and the pencil sputtered across the page, then he looked up at her. "Jodie? Hey, Jodes." Quinn blinked, like a man coming out of a dream. "Did you have any dreams last night?"
"Nothing of note." Jodie again surveyed all the drawings he'd done. The drawing pad was almost spent. "What are you up to?"
Looking down, Quinn started once more to color. "I'm trying to figure out the dreams Svet and I have been having. There's something important we have to do."
Jodie watched him for several seconds before asking, "How is this going to help you figure things out?"
"I'm not sure. I just feel like drawing," was Quinn's brief response, before all of his attention was once again captured by the work before him.
Jodie opened her mouth to say something else, but the phone rang. She sprinted into the living room to answer it. Svetlana's dorm mate was on the other end.
"Hey, Jodie, tell me something, and please be honest," Darcy said in a strained, pleading tone.
"Sure, Darce; what's up?"
"Are Quinn and Svet doing drugs over there or something?"
Jodie thought she knew where this was going. "Not that I know of. Why?"
"Because Svet's acting really weird." Darcy looked over at her roommate and felt like panicking all over again. Svetlana was on her bed all hunched over another drawing pad she owned, sketching the blond man with the shotgun. Fanned out on the bed were nearly fifty drawings of this man in every pose one could imagine. Many of them had words scribbled around and on top of them. "It's like she's in some sort of trance."
Jodie had Darcy describe what sort of things Svetlana had been drawing. It wasn't a great surprise to her that Svet chose to draw the man; she had seemed fixated on him from the very beginning. "What else is she sketching?"
"People with their faces scribbled out."
Like the girl in the videotape, with her hair covering her face. Or maybe like the photos of people who had watched the tape, their faces warped. "Have you asked her what she's doing?"
Darcy tried to keep her voice down. "Yeah. She said she's trying to figure out who this guy is. Jodie, who the hell is Svet drawing?"
"I'm not sure. It's a really long story, Darcy, one I'm not sure you want to get involved in. Just tell me, what kind of things is Svetlana writing on the pages?"
Carefully, Darcy picked up a few pieces of paper, trying not to disturb the oblivious Svetlana, and leafed through them. "I'm warning you, it doesn't make any sense. 'Savior he is savior he will save us, He will get here in time. His name start with a D. D D D D D D Deeeeeeee. N.' I swear, there's just a big N there by itself. What the hell does that mean? 'Good guy trying to help. Mysteria put him there. Mysteria mysteria mysteria. He will get here in time. Five days left.' Then she wrote fives all over the rest of the page.
"This next one just says 'the ring the ring the ring the ring' all over it."
Jodie, taking a deep breath, tried to think of what to say. "Darce, they've both been acting strange, okay? I don't think they've been sleeping enough. Maybe taking pep pills to stay awake for cram sessions. Mid-terms are coming up. Try to get Svet to take a nap, alright? Tell her if she sleeps, she can dream, and dreaming will help her figure it all out."
Darcy shrugged. "Okay. Hold on." Putting the phone down, she did as Jodie instructed, and it seemed to work. Darcy came back to the phone. "Okay, Svet's going to sleep. What the heck should I do when she wakes up?"
"If she's still being weird, just send her over here, okay? Like I said, it's a long, complicated story," Jodie sighed.
"In other words, they're into something fucked up," Darcy added, summing it up.
She had to laugh. "Yeah, you could say that."
"Fucking college and its tendency to make you experiment. I'm not in any danger here, am I? Svet's not going to go nutso cuckoo on me?" asked Darcy. She watched Svetlana drift off to sleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow.
"I wouldn't worry about it. Just call me if anything else happens."
Jodie tried to do the same for Quinn. "Quinn, don't you think you should sleep now? You look really tired."
Without looking up at her, he just shook his head. "I gotta figure it out. Only five days left. What is the ring?"
Jodie gently stilled his hands again and started to take the paper from him. Slowly. "You'll probably have better luck figuring it out through the dreams. Why don't you get some sleep, and see what Samara shows you next?"
After a pause, Quinn nodded, hardly noticing that Jodie took the pad of paper away. She started clearing the other drawings off the bed so he could lie down. "Yeah. Yeah, the dreams tell us a lot. We learn more every time. Maybe the D guy will come again, and tell us what we're supposed to do."
Jodie wasn't sure who "the D guy" was; could he mean the blond with the shotgun? They did think his name was Dan or something... she nodded in agreement. "Maybe he will. Sleep, Quinn."
After he'd drifted into a fitful slumber, tossing and turning in his sleep, Jodie called one of Quinn's closest friends, Gunnar Taylor. It wasn't a surprise that she caught him in the middle of lifting weights, as it was something he did often. "Do you want me to call you back?"
"No, babe, it's okay," Gunnar replied. Every few words, he let out a hard breath. "I'm doing arm curls. Just working on one at a time right now; I got a hand free."
"Alright. Um, Gunns, can you do me a favor later? Can you come over here and take Quinn out somewhere? He really needs to get out of the house," explained Jodie. "Take him to a strip club or a basketball game or something. Some place he'll be really distracted. Preoccupied. I want all of his attention on whatever you take him to do."
"Sure, no problem. What's going on over there?" Gunnar asked a bit warily. "What do you want him distracted from?"
Ah, the hard questions she'd been expecting. Jodie decided the best thing to do was lie. She wasn't even sure how to explain the truth to people at this point. Jodie told him the same fib she'd told Darcy - about the speed pills and lack of sleep and how strange Quinn and Svetlana had been acting. "He needs something to get his mind off school."
Gunnar bought it. "Sounds like it. Tell him I'll be there around... oh..." He let out another of those heavy breaths.
"Gunnar, stop that! You sound like..." Her face flushed with embarrassment. "It's just distracting."
He chuckled deeply in response. "You know it, baby," Gunnar teased.
Jodie could have died. Why did all of Quinn's friends have to be so good looking?
Letting her off the hook, he finished his sentence. "8 o'clock sound good?"
*****
When she came in at two to start her shift, Lisa Barrister had never expected it to come to this.
She expected men to stare. She knew there'd be snickering and whistling and male camaraderie. She could even overlook the occasional smack on the ass if it had a big tip behind it. That was just life as a waitress at Hooters.
But Lisa could never have foreseen one of her customers doing what Quinn Kirkland did that night, less than a week before she saw his picture in the newspaper.
He and his friend were both pretty hot. Lisa turned on the giggle machine, tossing her long dark brown hair around and smiling a lot as she brought them beer and chicken wings. The tight orange short-shorts and snug white t-shirt hugging her breasts spoke for themselves. Lisa wouldn't mind going out with either of them, especially if they tipped well.
The two men sat at a high round table on stools. All the skimpily dressed waitresses were doing the job Jodie had wanted them to do - Quinn was definitely distracted. "Our waitress is making eyes at you," Gunnar commented with a smirk.
Quinn grinned back. "I was about to say that it's you she's interested in."
"Hey man, maybe she wants us both. We haven't done that in a while."
Quinn had a hearty laugh over that. "I don't think you should ask her; you got slapped last time you suggested a double team."
Gunnar chuckled darkly. "It'd almost be worth it."
As Quinn's friend, Gunnar hoped that acting like an absolute pig with him would loosen him up, because the bags under Quinn's eyes were quite worrisome. He understood now why Jodie was freaking out. "Jodie said you and Svet were up to something. That you hadn't been sleeping. You okay, buddy?"
Scrubbing at the back of his neck, Quinn didn't know how to answer that. Oh, it's really quite simple. We watched this videotape left in my mailbox and it gave us nightmares. Some little girl was murdered by her mother. Now her ghost comes after you if you watch her tape. We're obsessed with it, really. In fact, we're starting to fear for our lives. It's all very real, you know.
Sure. That's exactly what he should say. In another universe.
"I'm fine. Just stressed from studying." Quinn put on a smile he didn't feel. "Thanks for taking me out, Gunns. This is exactly what I needed."
Lisa, a little extra bounce in her step, brought them two fresh beers. "There you go."
Quinn immediately tore into his, taking a long swig off the bottle.
Lisa asked, "Is there anything else I can get for you gentlemen?"
Gunnar smirked at her, looking her up and down. "Yeah, you can show me where the gentlemen are, 'cause I don't see 'em."
Quinn started to laugh with a throat full of beer. He immediately sputtered and coughed, like the liquid had gone down the wrong pipe.
Lisa, eyes widening, handed him a napkin and went to pat him on the back. "You okay?"
That's when the wave of nausea hit him. Quinn tried not to slam the beer down, but suddenly, there was something obstructing his throat. He coughed, trying to clear it, and took the napkin. But he couldn't speak, to tell her it was okay. The choking sensation quickly became unbearable. Quinn began to make full-on choking sounds.
"Oh my God, are you okay?" Lisa asked, slapping him on the back now.
"Quinn?" What was he choking on? He had nothing in his mouth but beer.
Although it felt much longer, it was just seconds after the choking started that a loop of silver chain emerged from his mouth. Quinn looked down at it, taking hold of the chain, and started to pull it out with wide eyes. No one could have looked more startled than him if they had tried, though Lisa and Gunnar came close. He continued to make the unpleasant choking noises as he yanked out more of the offending object. Even though his eyes were watering, Quinn could still see that he was removing a string of small wine-colored beads from his throat.
"Jesus Christ!" Lisa cried in horror. She looked to Gunnar for explanation. "What did he swallow?!"
Gunnar appeared just as mystified and shocked as she was. "Quinn, don't pull too hard. Just... slow..." He wanted to scream "What the fuck!" himself.
It took less than ten seconds for Quinn to get it all out. The end of the chain finally emerged from his mouth - it was a miniature silver crucifix.
A rosary. He'd just coughed up a rosary.
Quinn threw it down on the table with a horrified, disgusted look, gasping for breath. He jumped up and stared at the odd item that had just emerged from his person, absently rubbing at the wrist that had the bandanna tied around it. How the hell did that get in his throat? How the hell did a necklace get into his throat when he had no memory of swallowing it?
Lisa stared at the rosary, then at Quinn. He obviously had no idea how the necklace had gotten in there. "Are you alright?"
Quinn barely heard her. He just panted and stared at that rosary, wondering if it was real.
It was the same one Evelyn held in the dream.
it won't stop
She Just Wanted to Be Heard
Day 11: Rattling the Cage
Part of Story Arc 1: Counterclockwise
A "The Ring/Ringu" Fanfic
by Laurel (Sailorhathor)
Chapters: 11 of 100
Rating: Overall Rating PG-13 (some elements might be too intense or scary for those under 13; includes bad language)
Dates: Begun September 2006. Some material is based on previously written stories from 2003-2005.
Word Count: 3,283
Summary: Lisa and Gunnar question Quinn about why he coughed up a necklace belonging to Samara's mother. He tells them what's been going on the last few days.
Warning: Contains spoilers for the entire Ringu and The Ring series.
Beta Thanks: Beta'ed by Meredevachon.
Fanfic Challenges: Fits 50_darkfics prompt #11 Weapon and coclaim100 prompt #11 Messenger.
Author's Notes: The conversation between Lisa and Quinn is based on a scene originally written in 2003 in a played-by-email roleplaying game. That scene was written using completely different characters. One character was played by me, and the other by my roleplay partner, K-kitty, who has granted her permission for what she brought to the story to be used. (She wrote for the woman in the scene.) I rewrote the scene quite a bit, though I used some of my original dialogue.
Also, this chapter contains spoilers for the movie When a Stranger Calls.
"Was that in his sandwich?" one of the nearby patrons asked anyone who might be listening.
Lisa's mind was reeling, but she still heard what the other customers were saying about the rosary that this guy had just coughed up. They thought the necklace had been in his food. Of course they would think that; it made the most sense. But Lisa knew that was impossible, because this guy (Had his friend said his name was Quinn?) had eaten nothing but chicken wings and beer. A rosary couldn't get into a fucking chicken wing.
But they just went right on speaking in hushed tones, building the hysteria.
"Did he order the Flappertizer? 'Cause I ordered the Flappertizer..." a man said to one of the other waitresses.
That waitress, Danielle, hurried over to Lisa. "What the fuck happened?"
Lisa pointed to the rosary. "He just coughed that up!"
Giving her shoulder a push, Danielle quietly said, "Take him into the break room and see if he needs an ambulance. I'll get Scott."
Lisa took Quinn's arm. "Come with me. You should lie down." What Danielle suggested was for the best. The customers would calm down once they couldn't see the guy anymore. She surmised that there could be all kinds of ways that necklace had gotten into his stomach... maybe he even swallowed it on purpose so he could try for one of those suing scams. Although, something told her this wasn't an act. The guy just seemed too shocked.
Perhaps he'd been in the hospital, and someone in the surgical team prayed over the rosary and thought it would help better if they actually put it inside him. Some religious fanatic. Or maybe he was like that guy who went on all the talk shows and swallowed lightbulbs and other objects and brought them back up undamaged. Surely the talk show guy wasn't the only one who could do that.
There had to be some rational explanation.
Quinn did not fight her. He just allowed himself to be pulled toward the back of the restaurant. As they went, Quinn kept staring at the rosary, coiled up on the table; it got smaller and smaller as he got further from it, but he would never forget how it looked, sitting there. How the holy living hell had that gotten in his throat?!
Lisa took him through a door marked Employees Only and into a break room with a couch and table, among other things. Gunnar followed them in; he certainly wasn't going to stay out by the table and twiddle his thumbs after what had just happened. "Quinn, are you okay?!" he asked, nearly pouncing on his friend before the door was even closed.
Quinn plopped down on the couch. He looked shell-shocked. "Uh, I guess."
"We should call you an ambulance," Lisa suggested. "Were you in the hospital recently?"
He shook his head.
"Then how did that thing get in your stomach?" she asked.
Gunnar added, "Does this have anything to do with what you and Svetlana are into?"
Looking up sharply, Quinn sighed and then covered his face with his hands. "I don't need an ambulance, okay? It's nothing they can help with. I'll be alright."
A man with a "Manager: Scott" nametag on entered the room. He carried on a tense but polite conversation with Quinn and Gunnar. Quinn repeatedly refused the idea of calling an ambulance. The manager offered to pay for their meal, which they accepted. They knew it was his way of doing damage control, but only Quinn knew that the gesture was unnecessary. The rosary had not come from his food, no matter how much that made better sense than the real explanation.
When Scott had left, Gunnar turned to Quinn again. "So? What really happened? When did you swallow that thing?"
As Quinn began to talk, Lisa brought him a bottle of water. "Thanks," he said as he took it. "This is going to sound crazy, but I never swallowed the necklace. It's like it just... appeared in my throat. I have no idea where it came from."
They listened, and stared in disbelief. "What do you mean, it appeared in your throat?"
"I mean, one second, it wasn't there, and the next, I felt it, like it just... materialized. Like a magic trick or something."
Lisa and Gunnar were stunned into silence for several moments. Gunnar finally said, "Quinn, that's crazy."
"Told you." He opened the bottle and drank from it, bracing should some other bizarre object come up. None did. When he brought the bottle to his lips again, he saw that his hand was shaking.
"Better?" Lisa asked.
Quinn nodded.
Gunnar asked again, "Does this have anything to do with whatever you and Svet have gotten into?"
Quinn, taking a deep breath, thought about the whole situation for a few seconds before answering. He gave them the usual disclaimer that he was having to adopt with this bizarre story. "If I tell you what I think is going on, do you promise not to think I'm totally nuts? Because it's all going to sound insane."
Gunnar shrugged. "I already know you're insane," he joked.
After a pause to think it over, Lisa nodded her encouragement. "I'm willing to listen." She didn't know these guys, but after you watched someone cough up a rosary that came out of thin air, you wanted to know the full story.
Quinn looked at both of them, then began, "I swear to you, this is all true. You heard me speak when you brought the beers to our table; you know I couldn't have put that thing in my mouth and faked that."
Lisa agreed with him. "Yeah, I heard you talking to your friend when I walked up. I don't think that you faked it. You're too freaked out."
Relieved, Quinn grinned slightly and continued. "I haven't tied one on for weeks, so there's no chance I could have swallowed the rosary while I was drunk. I really have no clue how it got there.
"Except... I do have a clue, but... it's crazy. Stuff like this simply isn't supposed to be real."
"What isn't supposed to be real?" asked Gunnar, crossing his arms.
"You've heard all the nutty stories kids tell in school, right? All the stuff about Bloody Mary appearing in the mirror and the escaped mental patient with a hook for a hand? What do you think of stories like that?"
Gunnar shrugged again. "They're just stories. Stuff you tell around the campfire in Boy Scouts."
"Have you ever thought one of them might be true?"
Lisa and Gunnar briefly fell silent. "What?" Gunnar said in an incredulous tone.
Lisa touched Quinn's arm. "One of my friends from high school swears that thing about the psycho calling the babysitter happened to her cousin's college roommate. You know, like what happened in that movie. He kept asking her when she was going to check on the children."
"Where it turns out the calls from the psycho are coming from inside the house?"
"Yeah," Lisa replied.
"Pfft," Gunnar scoffed. "That's just a story. Never happened to anybody."
Frowning, Quinn said, "Gunns, can you be a little more open-minded? This is a pretty crazy story I'm about to tell you..."
"I can try," Gunnar shrugged. "Lay it on us."
Quinn let out a heavy sigh. "Well... have you ever heard the story about the videotape with the curse on it, that once you watch it, something really bad happens to you seven days later? I think... well, the more weird stuff that happens, the more I think... this is crazy, it's crazy." He scrubbed tiredly at one of his eyes. "I think I may have watched it."
There was a pause before Gunnar burst out in mocking laughter. "Oh, Quinn, you really had me going there for a second. Cursed videotape..." He laughed some more.
Quinn hadn't expected to be taken seriously at first, at least not by the realist, Gunnar. But Lisa was looking at him with wide eyes. "I don't know if I believe in stuff like that."
"But you've heard the story?"
"Yes."
It felt good to tell this to someone outside the situation, a stranger. Spilling your guts to a person who didn't know you was sometimes the best thing you could do to feel at least a little better. "I thought it was a bunch of hooey too, until that tape appeared in my mailbox."
"Did someone mail it to you?" asked Lisa.
Quinn told her how the videotape wound up in his possession. "...Jolene put the tape on and we watched it. It was just a bunch of random, weird images. They all seemed to be about some girl with black hair who kept it brushed over her face, so you never got a look at her. Some of it was gross, some of it was creepy, but it wasn't that bad. There kind of seemed to be a narrative there... like, something really bad happened to this family, and the mother jumped off a cliff, and the girl wound up dead down inside a well. The tape ends with a shot of this well. Then, just static." Quinn's eyes were getting bigger and his hands were shaking more and more as he spilled out the story.
"Svetlana and I started having dreams. Nightmares. They always center around the well, and the girl is still down there, but she's, like, adopted the place as her fortress. And... it's like she wants to pull you down there with her."
Lisa instantly believed he was telling the truth. Quinn's face was too serious, too stressed, his eyes too frightened.
"Jolene, she's been seeing things. Hallucinating."
That got Gunnar's attention; Quinn was his friend, but he was still just a college student. People their age sometimes indulged in the wacky tobacky a little too much and saw freaky shit. But, Jolene, with her partying and trampy ways, was still an adult. Almost 40. She was seeing things too?
Quinn continued. "We did some research. Turns out the girl in the tape is real. Her name is Samara Morgan, and she was alive during the 1970's. Samara's adoptive mother murdered her. Bashed her head in, and threw her in the well. I don't know the whole story, but I think Samara made this video somehow. That she has powers."
"Powers?" Gunnar said.
"Yeah. There was this guy in some of the dreams who said that Samara was sending them to us. She seems to be able to use her mind as a weapon.
"The tape is her way of getting revenge, or something. Maybe she wants justice. I don't know, I don't even know her! God, I should have known this wouldn't just go away after the mark." Quinn saw them looking at him expectantly. He started to remove the bandanna tied around his wrist. "I had a dream the other day that I leaned on the rim of the well, and the girl reached up and grabbed my wrist. When I woke up..."
Quinn showed them the wrist with the burn on it in the shape of a slim, female hand: Fingers, thumb, and most of the palm.
Both Gunnar and Lisa goggled at it. Gunnar felt the marks, as if he thought they might rub off. "Christ... that's a welt."
Lisa did not say anything; her eyes spoke for how disturbing she found the burn on Quinn's wrist.
"Let me get this straight. This girl, who's dead, came to you in a dream and grabbed your wrist, and you woke up with this mark on you?" Gunnar asked, amazed.
Quinn nodded.
"Then Jodie lied to me. She said you were stressed over mid-terms." He paused, thinking about it. "I can see now why she didn't tell me the truth."
"I know, Gunns. When I tell myself this story in my head, I say, 'Quinn, you're fucking crazy.' Dead girls don't crawl up out of wells and grab you and leave marks on your skin, and then give you the kind of nightmares that could scare someone who's hardly been afraid in all of his life."
Looking at the handprint again, Lisa made a connection. "This mark on your wrist, it's similar to what just happened to you out there. You coughed up a rosary, a physical object. The stuff that happens to you in the nightmares is so real that is has physical effects on your waking life."
Gunnar couldn't resist. "Wow, that's pretty intellectual for a waitress at Hooters."
Scowling, Lisa replied, "Hey, screw you, buddy. This is just a job. I'm a Psych major."
He snickered. "Sorry."
She rolled her eyes, then turned back to Quinn. "What's the rosary mean? Do you know?"
He explained about Evelyn, how he and Svetlana had dreamed of her the night before. "I think this is Samara's way of reminding me that there are only a few days left until... whatever's supposed to happen. That the clock is ticking. It's like there's something I'm supposed to do. But I don't know what. And this thing about seven days... I think I've figured that out. I think that this all ends in seven days, that she lets you go. That'll be Thursday night. At least, I hope that's what it means. The legends have a few different endings, though... that once your days are up, you go insane, or you get absorbed into the tape and become a part of the narrative, or you die. But this is real life, right? That bitch isn't gonna come up here and drag me away..." Quinn looked at Lisa with the most childlike, frightened look in his eyes, as if he'd decreased in age right before her eyes. "...is she?"
Lisa could understand why this guy was so shaken. What he described concerning Samara, and what he had experienced, it all tapped into typical childhood fears. Fear of small spaces. Fear of the dark. Fear of monsters and people with spooky powers. Fear of death. She touched his arm again, trying to be reassuring. "Of course not. People don't die that way." Lisa laughed a little. "I'm not even sure my friend was telling the truth about the psycho and the babysitter."
Although Quinn appreciated her trying to make him feel better, he still let out a deep sigh. "I just wish I knew why this girl was doing this to us. There seems to be a message there, in the tape. Maybe she just wants us to listen and understand her pain. But what can we do for her?
"I'm not usually this easily shaken, but it's rattled me. I admit it. Do you hear that Samara? I admit it, you rattled my cage." He spoke to the ceiling. "Now go bother somebody else."
Gunnar added, "This is why I brought Quinn here tonight, to get his mind off whatever was troubling him. Jodie thought all the hot bods would be a good distraction. Now I see what from."
"Jodie's my roommate," explained Quinn.
Lisa just nodded to that. "Well, Quinn, I'll tell you, that has got to be the craziest story I've ever heard. But I've seen enough to believe it. You know what you're going to do?"
"What?"
"You and your girlfriend and whoever else has watched this videotape are simply going to wait out your seven days. If there is something you're supposed to do, I bet Samara will tell you what it is someday soon, maybe on the seventh day. It sounds like this girl enjoys playing with your head."
"That's what Jodie said, that it was someone's idea of a mindfuck," nodded Quinn.
"Right. You're going to wait out your seven days, and you'll see that there's nothing to fear. It'll all be over then." Lisa patted his knee. "Then you and Svetlana are going to come here for dinner on Friday night, and I'll give you drinks on the house, okay? We'll have a good laugh over it."
Although it was a tentative smile, Quinn's grin did contain some hope. "That sounds like the best idea I've heard all week."
When Lisa escorted them back out to their table, they discovered the rosary was gone. Danielle gave them a guilty look as she passed them by with a loaded tray.
"Lisa, can you do me a favor?"
"What, Quinn?"
"Can you get that rosary back from your friend? I know this sounds weird, but I sort of want to keep it. For proof."
She shrugged. "I'll see what I can do. We don't even know that Danielle took it."
Gunnar chuckled. "For a Psych major, you don't read people too well, do ya?"
With another scowl, Lisa flipped him off. Gunnar grinned and laughed heartily. She ignored him, turning back to Quinn. "I'll ask Danielle what happened to it, okay? And if she has it, I can give it back to you on Friday." Lisa added a reassuring smile.
Quinn smiled back, bigger this time. "Yeah. Friday."
As the two men prepared to go, Gunnar smirked and tried one last ditch effort to flirt. "You wouldn't have any interest in accompanying me home, would you, Lisa? Help me check under my bed for monsters?"
Lisa leaned toward him, putting her hand on his arm. "I think you're old enough to do that yourself, buddy boy."
She waved as they went out the door, then spent the rest of her shift distracted, trying to make sense in her head of the whole crazy story.
It was the last time Lisa saw Quinn Kirkland alive.
it won't stop
The Ringu series is (c) 1998 The Ring/The Spiral Production Group. It is based on the novels by Koji Suzuki.
The motion picture The Ring is (c) 2002 DreamWorks Pictures. The title "She Just Wanted to Be Heard" comes from a line of dialogue spoken by Rachel Keller in this movie. The motion picture The Ring Two is (c) 2005 DreamWorks Pictures.
I do not know if the prequel, The Ring 3, will have any bearing on this story or not until I see it.
Supernatural is (c) 2005 Kripke Enterprises, Wonderland, & Warner Brothers/The CW Television.
Everything else is (c) Demented Stuff.