“So you’re not going to try to kill me?”

“I can’t,” Josh says. “You already killed me.”

Charlie looks down at her hands. One grips a pair of handcuffs. The other is smeared with blood. On the other side of the car, Josh chokes out her name.

“Charlie.”

INT. GRAND AM—NIGHT

Charlie’s eyes open on their own. A willful snap.

In front of her, sprawled sideways in the driver’s seat, is Josh. His head is propped against the window, which has become fogged by his pained grunts. When he spasms, his hair makes a jellyfish pattern in the glass.

The knife remains in his side, poking out like a meat thermometer. Josh stares at it, wild-eyed and sweaty, the fingers of his left hand reaching for it.

“Charlie,” he grunts. “Help me.”

She stays frozen, save for her eyelids, which she rapidly blinks, hoping that doing so will jolt her out of this nightmarish movie in her mind. Because that’s all it is.

A movie.

It has to be.

This can’t be real.

Even though it looks that way. Blood has started to seep into Josh’s sweatshirt. A wet bloom around the knife that’s darker than the fake blood used in movies. Almost black. Like it’s not really blood at all but some kind of primordial ooze.

Seeing it makes Charlie back against the passenger door. She fumbles for the handle, finds it, pulls. The door swings open, and the Grand Am’s dome light flicks on, casting a brutal glow over the inside of the car. No longer dark, the blood now looks Technicolor bright in the dome light’s glare.

Charlie resumes blinking. Faster now. Her eyelids working in a way that makes everything flicker like a projector not running at full speed. She slides out of the car backward, dropping through the door, landing on the road with a burst of pain in her lower back.

She crawls away from the car, scuttling backward like a crab. She doesn’t want to be here. She wants to be anywhere else. Any time else. She wants to wake and find herself in a whole other existence. One without Josh and that car and that blood.

When thinking about stabbing Josh, she didn’t know how she’d feel if she actually went through with it. Victorious, maybe. Or sated. Or proud.

Instead, she just feels scared.

But it’s a strange kind of fear.

She’s no longer scared about what might happen to her. She’s scared about what she’s done.

Charlie climbs to her feet.

She takes one last look at the Grand Am.

Then she begins to run.

INT. GRAND AM—NIGHT

He removes the knife from his gut in one quick yank. Better that than trying to pull it out little by little, which hurts more than helps. And there’s plenty of pain already. The moment air hits the stab wound, a fresh bolt of agony pulses through him and there’s nothing to do but yell.

When it’s over and the boiling pain lowers to a more manageable simmer, he takes a few deep breaths and checks the damage. The first thing he notices—because it’s impossible to miss—is the blood. The side where Charlie stabbed him is crimson from hip to armpit. He doesn’t know if it’s because his sweatshirt is extra absorbent or if he’s really lost that much blood. Either way, the sight of it makes him dizzy.

It takes some effort to lift the sweatshirt to see the actual knife wound. The blood-soaked fabric sticks to his skin like glue. He considers leaving it like that. A makeshift bandage. But he’s been stabbed before, and he knows that doing nothing will lead to more blood loss, then infection, then death.

Like it or not, this bitch needs to be stitched.

So he pulls up the sweatshirt the same way he pulled out the knife—in one swift motion. Riding out another blast of pain, he looks down and sees an inch-long slice on the left side of his abdomen.

It’s good that the knife was small.

It’s bad that it was long.

The wound it left behind is deep enough to make him worry that the knife could have hit a major organ or severed some nerves, although if that were the case, he thinks he’d be in more pain. Or dead. And since he’s alive and not paralyzed in agony, he assumes he got lucky.

He reaches under the driver’s seat, his left hand fumbling for the first-aid kit he keeps there in case of emergencies. Each movement prompts a fresh wave of pain that makes him curse everything about this night.

It was supposed to be easy. Now it’s just a shitshow. And he knows exactly who to blame.

Charlie.

He wasn’t lying when he said he liked talking to her. He can’t remember the last time he enjoyed being in someone’s company. People, generally speaking, suck. It’s why he does what he does. Most human beings can’t stop being selfish, greedy, piggish assholes. And it’s his job to make sure they pay for that.

But Charlie’s different. So weird and wounded and, as he now knows, secretly fierce. It made him lower his guard. He told her things he’d never told anyone else, ever. All it got him in return was a knife to the gut.

Beneath the seat, his fingers brush smooth plastic. The first-aid kit. Finally. He picks it up, drops it on the side of his stomach that doesn’t have a stab wound, and clicks it open. He rifles through it, finding a small bottle of rubbing alcohol, a gauze pad, some medical tape, a needle, and a tiny spool of thread. Everything he needs for a little amateur surgery.

Now comes the hard part. The thing he doesn’t want to do but knows he has to do if he’s going to catch up to Charlie. And he needs that to happen.

He’s not done with her just yet.

Steeling himself with a ragged breath, he pours the alcohol onto the wound and screams through the pain. His hands tremble so much it takes four tries before he’s able to thread the needle. And when that’s done, he grunts, grits his teeth, and begins to stitch.

EXT. DINER PARKING LOT—NIGHT

The diner is dark by the time Charlie reaches it. So dark that she almost misses it in her mad sprint down the road. She’d been looking for its light, not its shape. The neon and pink and blue around the entrance. The gaudy brightness of its sign. The warm glow spilling through the wide windows. All of it is now gone, replaced by an unnerving blackness.

It’s closed.

There’s no one here.

But then she spots a lone car still in the parking lot. The powder-blue Cadillac she’d noticed when they first arrived. She hopes it means someone’s still there.

Charlie moves to the door, her legs heavy and her chest tight. She ran for at least half an hour. The longest she’s ever run in her life.

Despite the cold, her body is soaked with sweat. Charlie feels it underneath the coat. A damp stickiness that makes her shirt cling to her skin. She places a hand on her heart and realizes that she’s still holding the handcuffs. Her grip is so tight around them that she has to force her fingers loose.

Not knowing what else to do, she shoves the cuffs into the front pocket of her jeans. A good idea. They’ll serve as evidence. Proof that Josh had tried to use them on her and that she had killed him in self-defense.

The thought knocks the air out of her.

She just killed someone.

No, she didn’t see Josh die. She couldn’t bring herself to stick around for that. But she knows he’s dead. A fact that makes her look down at her blood-caked hands. She uses the coat to wipe them clean, knowing deep down that it’s pointless. It doesn’t matter that she killed a killer. Her hands will be forever stained.

Charlie tries the diner’s front door. Although the blinds have been lowered over the windows and the sign on the door has been turned to read closed, the handle still gives when she pushes on it.

Opening the door a crack, she looks inside. The only lights she sees come from the dessert case, the pies within still aglow, still spinning, and the jukebox. All the booths are empty. Chairs have been placed upside down on the counter. Under her feet, the floor glistens with moisture. It’s just been mopped.

“Hello?”

Charlie pauses, hoping for a response. When none comes, she steps inside and says, “Please. I need help.”

She turns to the booth she and Josh occupied a mere hour ago, shocked by how much can change in that short span of time. Sixty minutes ago, she was just a scared college student. Now she’s a killer.

Charlie hears a noise from the rear of the diner, just behind the door to the kitchen. She whirls around to see the door swinging open as Marge pushes through it, still in her uniform. In her hand is a wet rag. She sees Charlie and stops just beyond the door, surprised.

“Charlie?” she says. “Sweetie, what happened?”

Charlie can only imagine how she looks to the waitress.

Panting.

Sweaty.

Bloody.

“Josh,” she says. “He attacked me. And I—I stabbed him.”

A bony hand flies to Marge’s mouth. “Are you okay?”

Charlie’s body answers for her. Her legs, numb from shock and fear and all that running, buckle. The rest of her sways. At first a little, then a lot. A sudden, shocking tilt during which she manages to blurt out a complete sentence.

“I think we should call the police.”