Final destination 3, p.11
Final Destination 3, page 11
part #1 of Final Destination Series
From the angle that the picture was taken, the looping track of Devil's Flight seemed to go right through Jason's head, and at the moment she had snapped it, the train appeared to be about to smash into his temple. Considering how he had died, it was a gruesome and unfortunate joke. She shrugged and wrapped her arms around her body. It was only a coincidence. Just like her vision had been. Enough of this morbid nonsense, she thought, and selected all the thumbnails again.
As she made to drag them to the trash, Wendy paused once again. Another of the thumbnails had caught her eye. It was the sixth or seventh shot she had taken that night, the one where she had tried to catch Jason and Kevin on the High Dive, but which had been ruined when the ride had dropped just as she pressed the button.
She double clicked on it. The picture opened and she felt a thin wire of nausea coiling in her throat. It was very dark, and the bottom of the picture was a bunch of blurry streaks: the gondola dropping out of frame. The High Dive sign, glowing brightly in front of the night sky, took up most of the picture. Except it didn't say High Dive. The "V" was unlit. It said: "HIGH DI E." Wendy tried to shake off the chilly dread that gripped her, but it wouldn't go. Was every picture some sort of grisly joke? One spooky picture was a coincidence. Two was unnerving. She was afraid to look at the other pictures, but she couldn't resist.
Holding her breath with trepidation, she selected all the thumbnails and double-clicked on them. They flashed open in quick succession, layering on top of each other until they were all open. The picture on top was the photo Kevin had taken up Stacey Kobayashi's skirt. Wendy leaned in, the lewdness of the picture not even registering as she searched the frame, looking for clues. Most of the picture was taken up by Stacey's legs, ass and skirt, with the vast white triangle formed by the crotch of her skimpy thong right in the center, but a quarter of the frame was background, looking up at the ceiling. There was someone walking by under the ceiling fans of the covered dining area where Kevin, Jason, Wendy and Carrie had been sitting. The shot was so skewed that it was hard to tell who it was, but then she noticed a glint of light off that silver, mud-flap girl medallion and realized it was Frank Cheek. Frank had got off the coaster before the crash had happened, and Stacey hadn't ridden it at all, so there was obviously nothing of real significance in that photo.
The next photo was of Lewis at the ring-the-bell game, caught, head down below his shoulders, at the end of his swing, with the weight rising up the rail behind him. Lewis too had survived, so there couldn't be anything there either. She clicked the photo closed. The one below it was another of Frank, looking scared and off balance on the Whacky Ladder. She clicked past it quickly. The next one was Erin and Ian at the shooting gallery. Like typical rebellious outsiders, they hadn't wanted their picture in the yearbook and had held up their hands in front of their faces, their black nails out of focus in the foreground. Erin held the air rifle in her other hand. Ian was behind her, standing under a row of pointed tan banners.
Wendy shrugged. Her eerie theory was rapidly falling apart. Most of the pictures seemed to be of the survivors. She hadn't any pictures of the kids who had died –except Jason of course. She started to click through the pictures faster, not bothering now to examine them in detail, just confirming that there were no more photos of Jason. She was wrong. There was one more, another shot that Kevin had taken, one of the first on the disk. This photo was totally mundane, nothing scary or weird about it. She and Jason stood side by side, smiling against a dark background. His arm was around her and she looked happy and untroubled. There was nothing in it to creep her out, but it still hurt to look at. She clicked it away.
Beneath was the picture of Julie giving her the double bird, and beneath that, she came upon the picture of Ashley and Ashlyn, surrounded by drooling boys at the clown shoot. She was about to close that one too, but at that moment her desk lamp flickered, and the impossible wind she had felt before returned. She looked at the lamp. It was fine now, but the chill from the wind remained. She looked at her window. Still closed. She frowned and returned her attention to her monitor, moving the mouse to close the picture of the two blonde girls, but something made her pause.
She looked at the photo again. There was nothing obvious about it that should have made her uneasy. No roller coaster racing toward their heads, but something in their expressions was odd. They were laughing, mouths wide, but it almost looked like they were screaming, and the red glare from the One Eighty ride's flashing police light washed them with a fiery orange glow. They almost looked like they were covered in flames and writhing in agony.
Wendy chewed her lip, thoughtful. The girls had gotten off the ride. In fact, they had been the first to leave. They were survivors, just like she was. The photo couldn't be predicting their deaths, because they weren't dead. She shook her head and again made to close the photo, but then the stupid story Kevin had told her that afternoon came back to her –that lame, urban legend bullshit about the plane, and the kid who had a vision and got off with his friends before it crashed, and how they had all died horribly over the next few months. She snorted. Like Death was some kind of accountant, who had to kill the ones he missed to keep the books straight. It was a dumb story, but if there was even the tiniest grain of truth to it, then maybe the pictures did predict the deaths of their subjects –the deaths that were yet to come.
She looked again at the photo of Ashley and Ashlyn. Was it really likely the girls were going to die by being burned to death? Murdered by a psychopathic pin-up photographer, maybe, but not burned to death. Then she remembered her conversation with them that afternoon. They had invited her to the tanning salon to tan with them. It was hard to imagine a fire starting in a place like that, but maybe they were going to be tanned to death. The red of their skin might be a terrible sunburn. That sounded so silly that she almost laughed, but why was her hair rising on the back of her neck, and why did she have a sick, knotted feeling in her stomach?
Wendy remembered that Ashlyn had given her a cell phone number when they had invited her. She looked around her desk. Where had she put it? Now she remembered. She had thrown it away, of course. She was getting ready to leave for Yale. She had no reason to call the high school bimbos. She grabbed the wastebasket beside her desk, put it between her knees, and started digging through it. There it was, all scrunched up beneath last month's issue of The New Yorker.
She grabbed it and pulled it out, uncrumpling it and smoothing it down on her desk. She picked up her phone and looked at the note.
Behind her, the door opened.
"Hey, Wendy. Camera ready?"
Wendy looked up. Julie was standing in the door, dressed in a slim gray dress and black pumps, looking very chic, except for the large, fruity wad of gum she was chewing like a cud.
"Um, just a minute," said Wendy. "I got, uh, kinda caught up, looking at them. I'll dump 'em off in a sec, okay?"
"Perry and Amber are going to be here any second," Julie whined.
"I know. I know, but…" She held up the phone. "I… I just need a minute, you know, like, in private."
Julie pouted, but then shrugged and backed out the door. "Whatever," she said. "But hurry up, okay?"
She closed the door a little harder than was necessary.
Wendy looked at Ashlyn's note again and dialed the number. It rang once, twice, three times, then…
"Hello?" said Ashlyn.
Wendy breathed a sigh of relief. She was amazed how nervous she had become over such a silly theory.
"Ashlyn, this is Wendy," she said into the telephone. "Have you guys gone to the tanning…"
There was a girlish laugh on the other end of the phone.
"Psych!" Ashlyn voice said. "Leave a message. Ha ha!"
Wendy's face tightened with worry and frustration. Maybe her theory wasn't so silly after all. Why wasn't Ashlyn answering her phone? She always had it on her. She had even been talking on it in line for the roller coaster. It was as much a part of her as her spleen. The message tone beeped.
"Hi, Ashlyn, it's Wendy. I was hoping to catch you guys before you went to the tanning salon, but I guess I missed you. Uh, give me a call when you're done, and thanks for the invite."
She moved to put the handset back on the cradle, but then paused and brought it back to her ear.
"Um, sorry I was too late," she said.
Still uneasy, she hung up the phone. Just as it touched the cradle, her desk lamp flickered again and the bulb exploded with a loud pop. Wendy jumped. The room was plunged into rainy afternoon shadow. Wendy stared at the lamp. Her face was bathed in the orange glow of her monitor, which still showed the picture of Ashley and Ashlyn, their skin a bright, lurid devil red. Thunder rumbled overhead.
10
California Sun Tanning Salon
Thunder rolled overhead as Ashley shouldered into the tanning room and flicked on the lights. Ashlyn pushed in behind her and the girls crossed to a low bench next to a wooden coat rack with a circular top. The room was long and narrow, lit by soft, amber wall sconces. It was decorated in a tropical style to match the lobby. Another photomural of a serene island beach covered the entire back wall, while the other three were paneled in strips of bamboo. A plastic palm tree, gracefully curved by "trade winds," stood in the corner opposite the coat rack.
The tropical mood was somewhat marred by a metal air conditioning duct that poked out of the ceiling, and by the tanning beds themselves, huge, seven foot long, three foot wide, chrome and steel pods that lay along the left and right walls with about three feet between them. Their interiors glowed an eerie, unnatural blue. They looked like they belonged in a science fiction film rather than a beach party movie.
The girls began stripping off their raincoats and backpacks. Ashley dropped her stuff on the bench and crossed to the beds, slurping on her Big Gulp. On top of the light tubes of both beds were plastic placards that read: "This bed has been cleaned and is ready for tanning. Are you?" She removed them both and put them on a table by the door.
"Come on, Lee," said Ashlyn as she hung her raincoat and backpack on the coat rack. "Yuri said no drinks. What if you spill it like last time? He'll make us clean that shit up."
The weight of the backpack was too much for the coat rack. It started to tip over. Ashlyn caught it and took the backpack off. She set it on one of the rack's legs to steady it.
Ashley glared at Ashlyn and took a long, defiant fuck you slurp on her straw, before holding it up and shaking it to show her that there was nothing but ice left.
"Happy, bee-yotch?" she asked. "Nothing to spill."
She put the empty cup on the table between the tanning beds and crossed to the wall-mounted control panel that operated the beds.
Ashlyn sneered and dropped into a mock kung fu pose.
"Except your blood," she snarled. "Watch it or I'll go all Kill Bill on your ass."
The girls laughed. Below the table with the empty cup was a gray electrical box –the buck booster, which monitored and increased the electrical output for the beds. Thick electrical cables led into it from the socket in the wall, and out of it to the beds. An LCD display on the buck booster read: 230 VAC. A yellow and black warning label next to the display read: "Warning –This device should never be set above 250 VAC."
Ashley leaned in to the control panel on the wall. She set the timer to fifteen minutes.
Behind her, Ashlyn moved to the electronic thermostat. "Yuri keeps the rooms too cold," she said.
"Maybe it's supposed to be colder for the machines, or whatever," Ashley replied.
"Maybe it's because Yuri is from fucking Siberia and he wants to feel at home," Ashlyn countered, shrugging as she tapped a button on the thermostat's LCD display, setting the room temperature to seventy-three degrees. "What's a couple of degrees gonna do, right?"
Ashley pulled off her shirt and then unhooked her bra, revealing the body and the breasts that every teenaged boy in a fifty-mile radius –and truth be told, a fair number of older men as well- had fantasized about ever since the girls had hit puberty. As all those sweaty minds had suspected, her body was flawless, her breasts plump and perfectly shaped.
Ashlyn rummaged through her backpack, and slumped her shoulders.
"Oh shit," she groaned. "I forgot my iPod. I can't believe this."
Ashley laughed and tossed her hair, pulling out her own iPod. "Ha ha," she said. "Sucks to you, bitch."
She pointed to a three-foot shelf mounted over the other tanning bed that held a half dozen dusty jewel boxes.
"Looks like they have some CDs at least," Ashley said. "It's that or the sound of the tanning bed fans."
Ashlyn sighed, as if it was almost too much to bear, then stood and shuffled over to the shelf. She stood on tiptoes to look through the meager selection, holding on to the shelf with one hand for balance.
"Celine Dion? Britney Spears? Kenny G? Huey Lewis?" She rolled her eyes in disgust. "Jeez, are we, like, the only cool people who come here, or what?"
She reached for the last CD on the shelf, putting weight on her steadying hand. The shelf dropped a quarter inch as the anchor screws drilled through the metal L braces that supported the shelf, were pulled a little way out of the drywall. Ashlyn looked at the last CD, scowling skeptically at the psychedelic colors of the cover.
"Have a Nice Decade," she read. "Greatest Hits of the Seventies." She shrugged. "Better than that other shit, I guess."
"Come on, admit it, Lyn," Ashley said. "You really are a closet Huey fan."
"Yeah, right."
She put the CD case in the hand that rested against the shelf and opened it with her free hand. Once again, the screws in the L braces pulled out a little from the wall. Ashlyn didn't notice. She stuck her finger through the hole of the CD and threw the jewel box back on the shelf as Ashley fired up the tanning beds. The tubes began to glow more brightly. The fan motors started whirring.
Ashlyn popped the disk into a wall-mounted CD Walkman, then pulled off her T-shirt too. Her tits were a little smaller, and her body was not quite as lean and ripped as Ashley's, who had been working out with her fitness freak parents since before she was born, but so far Ashlyn had no complaints. Besides, together they were devastating, far more than the sum of their parts.
-----
Outside, Yuri continued the endlessly spiraling argument with his girlfriend. The irony of this whole, mad business was that Tanya was the only woman in his life to whom he had ever been completely faithful, yet she was insanely jealous, utterly convinced that he had a line of women around the block the moment her back was turned. At first, it was almost flattering that she thought he was so desirable that women could not possibly resist him, when in truth, it was she who could have any lover she chose. Tanya was without a doubt the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on. She was tall and regal with fierce Mongol cheekbones and a body that took no prisoners, but at this point she was starting to become far more trouble than she was worth. Yuri's closest drinking buddy, a sardonic American named Spence, had once said that no matter how hot a chick might look, somebody, somewhere was sick of putting up with her shit. At the time, Yuri thought that was ridiculous, but now, buffeted by Tanya's non-stop interrogation, he was starting to understand the wisdom in that simple statement. Still, he knew he would not break it off with Tanya. How could he? When he got home, he knew that her jealous rage would transform into a kind of wild passion that would leave him raw, exhausted and totally happy. This was just the price he paid for that kind of happiness.
"Détka," he said again. "Baby, you know you are the only one…"
Behind him the tanning cream was still oozing out of the tube and spilling into an oily puddle below the door. A lot of cream had squeezed out of the tube, which was getting so thin that the door was edging closed.
-----
In the tanning room, Ashley sat on the edge of the tanning bed, wearing nothing but a miniscule black thong. She pulled the goggles on, adjusted them, and placed the headphones of her iPod over her ears. Ashlyn, already lying on her bed and wearing absolutely nothing at all, looked up at her quizzically. She lifted her head and pulled aside one of the earphones of the built-in CD player.
"Lee," she said. "You're wearing underwear?"
Ashley nodded as she lay down and made herself comfortable.
"Steinmetz says he gets off on tan lines," she replied.
Ashlyn curled her lip. "Steinmetz is a freak."
"Yeah," said Ashley. "But he's a rich freak. Anyway you're just jealous."
Ashlyn was really less than thrilled about Ashley's dawdling with that creepy guy. For one thing, he was so old, like almost thirty. And yeah, maybe he had lots of money and all, but he was into weird stuff, like having Ashley step on him with her shoes on, and smelling her feet after she'd been on the treadmill. He had bought her over fifty pairs of shoes. Most of all, he was the first guy that Ashley had played around with more than once. She spent way too much time with him. Ashlyn didn't want some skuzzy weirdo from the gym spending more time with Lee than she did. She shrugged. Maybe she was jealous, not of her but of him.
"Look," Ashley said, seeming to sense Ashlyn's discomfort. "Tell you what. Next time I go over to his place, why don't you come with? We wear the same size shoes. I think he would cream his jeans if we both stood on him at the same time."
