Vicky closed her eyes tightly, attempting to stave off a massive headache as she tried to register what her uncle was saying to her. “What?” She sat up, completely oblivious to her wig sagging precariously off to the side of her head and her strategically placed tape on her chest no longer holding the fabric of her dress in place. Jack was dead? Was this some kind of sick joke? She repeated, “What?”
”His uncle called. He was found last night.”
Uncle. Found. Her uncle continued to speak, telling her that his parents phoned him this morning and revealed that Jack had been found by the police last night. Her mind wandered to the night before. What had happened? She had been drinking with Mike at the bar until she had ultimately been shown the door by a more responsible employee and was forced to find her own fun. She remembered texts to Jack going unanswered and being annoyed about it, and then suddenly... there was a massive gap in her memory. Did she ever end up meeting up with Jack? Hearing from him at all?
”Vicky? Vicky, are you still there? Talk to me.”
She nodded slightly. “Yeah,” she croaked when she realized he wouldn’t be able to hear a nod. Jack is dead. Jack is dead. Jack is dead. The words kept swimming in her mind, pounding at her with every throb of her head. “He’s dead? He can’t...”
”I’m sorry Vic--”
“He can’t!” She yelled, interrupting her uncle’s condolences. “He’s not! Shut up, shut up, shut up!” He began to speak but she hung up before he could say anything of substance. Vicky stared down at her phone, her chest tight as she accessed her messages and texts. Jack was fine. He’d be fine. He probably sent her a text while she was passed out.
There was nothing. No texts, no voice messages, nothing. That didn’t mean anything though. Maybe they had met up and didn’t need texts or calls or anything. Maybe Maybe. She scrolled through her contacts, finding Mike’s number, and quickly pressing on it. He would know. Mike would know it was all some kind of stupid joke. Jack was probably passed out at his place even now. Yeah.
Mike felt like he should be crying. He was sitting in the kitchen with Terry when his phone rang and for a fleeting moment he hoped it was Jack and that it had all been a misunderstanding. Terry was squeezing his arm and giving him a worried look and Mike just felt ridiculous and weird. Jack was dead. He'd only just found out after Jack's uncle had called Terry who had woken him up gently and told him they needed to talk. Here they were. Not talking.
Mike was still trying to process the news and what he remembered from the night before and it was all a jumble of crazy. He initially decided to ignore the call but still checked to see who it was and realized he couldn't not pick up because it was Vicky and maybe she knew by now. Not that he wanted to talk to her - or anyone - because what the fuck. Jack was dead. Jack had been murdered. His aunt Julie was inconsolable so her husband had called people and it all felt like a dumb prank.
"I gotta-" Mike started as he got up from the table with his phone in hand, barely noticing Terry nodding in understanding. He answered as he walked back to his room, feeling like a zombie and about as steady as one. "Hey," he said quietly and braced himself either for hysteria or for having to be the one to break the news. The former was more likely because Vicky would never call him this early after a night out otherwise. _
“Is Jack with you?” No greeting. Now wasn’t the time for something so pointless. Vicky needed to know that her friend was okay. That this was all just an elaborate joke they somehow got her uncle in on. How they had managed that she didn’t know considering how adverse he was to such things, but it was easier for her mind to jump to stupid reasons to explain that than admit Jack was dead. “Because my uncle called and I don’t know how you guys did it but he said Jack was dead.” Her voice cracked with each word, her eyes beginning to well up with tears. “And I fucking swear I’m gonna beat your asses because this isn’t funny. Harhar the joke is over now. Fucking stop, okay?” She roughly wiped the tears from her eyes. Her voice lowered to a whisper, begging. “Just… put Jack on, please?”
Mike stopped in the doorway of his room, listening to her and trying to think of any words that would work on her at the moment. He wished he could tell her it was a joke that Jack just had a twisted sense of humor har har but no. "His uncle called my dad," he mumbled. "It's..." God he felt tired. At this point he didn't know where his grief stopped and the perfectly normal hangover after the night he'd had took over. "I don't know what happened, Vicks. I don't..." He took those last few steps to his bed and sat down and the whole damn room was spinning now. "He's not here." Saying that out loud broke something in him and he could feel the tears welling up in his eyes, adding to that pressure in his head that had been Too Much already.
“Bullshit!” This was ridiculous. They were found out so why was everyone continuing to lie? Unless they weren’t lying but she didn’t want to believe that. Believing it meant that it was true. “This really isn’t funny,” she said angrily, mumbling slightly. “This isn’t funny at all.” And then she hung up the phone.
Vicky crawled out of bed, pausing for a brief moment to steady herself before going into her apartment’s small kitchen. “This is just stupid,” she continued to mumble as she rummaged through her cabinets, finally finding the bottle of painkillers to help with her throbbing headache. She popped it into her mouth and washed it down with an unfinished bottle of beer that had been left on the counter. Then she leaned up against the counter, silent for a long moment as she stared down at her phone. This was a joke. A joke. A complete and utter joke. She kept telling herself over and over again, but the more she repeated it, the less she believed it. It didn’t make sense, nothing made sense.
She dialed Mike’s number again. “I’m… I’m sorry…,” A pause. “I want this to be a joke,” she whispered into the phone. It was evident in her voice that she had finally come to accept that fact that it wasn’t. “I don’t want this to be real.”
Mike was used to Vicky being dramatic and this time she had every right to be. When the phone went eerily silent he looked at the screen and realized she'd gone offline. He closed his eyes and gingerly moved to lie down but it didn't help his hangover any. There was a little bottle on his night stand with a cute little 'drink me' note. It would have made him laugh before he knew about Jack because hey, Alice in Wonderland bottle for the Mad Hatter. Right now it just hit him hard and he answered as soon as the phone rang again.
He didn't say anything to start with, just listened and nodded softly, as if she could see him. "I'm still waiting for a punch line," he said quietly. "Last night was crazy, maybe it's a... misunderstanding." He had no idea where Vicky had ended up, if she'd really thought she was Elvira or if she was one of the people who got weirded out and left. It didn't seem important right now.
“Yeah… yeah, maybe.” It was a nice thought but likely not the case. How could someone misunderstand a murder? A murder… god, her friend had been murdered. Or maybe it was all just a misunderstanding. Last night had been strange - or at least she believed so since she only remembered part of it - so maybe there was a chance Jack had run off somewhere and everyone was freaking out over nothing. “It could have been someone else and Jack is somewhere sleeping off a hangover,” she added with a mirthless chuckle, trying desperately to lighten her mood even a tiny bit. It wasn’t really working.
"I don't know why he would have been up here in Overlook," he said quietly. "It happened just down the street. So yeah, maybe." He didn't believe it for a second. The cops wouldn't have notified next of kin unless they were sure, right? It was just too surreal to think about it though, that Jack had been there one moment and gone the next. If it had been Jack, Mike had driven past the crime scene with Nate. The thought gave him chills.
“Just down the street? Fuck.” Vicky pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes, a couple tears escaping down her cheek. Even if it wasn’t Jack, it was always unnerving when something like a murder happened near you. And if it was him… well then, it was even worse. “Do you… want to come over?” She didn’t really want to be alone.
That was probably what good friends did. They met up and they cried together and hugged and shit. Mike didn't feel like a good friend. He felt like, well, exactly like he'd expected after a night of mixing drinks and sitting on tables like a goddamned lunatic. "Not now," he said quietly, eyeing the little bottle on the nightstand. He and Nate had talked about some weird shit in the car and he remembered that a little too clearly. Most importantly he remembered how sure Nate was that his little hangover remedy worked. "I just, I had a really weird night and I drank way too much I- I need to lie down." He eyed that bottle again. His dad had put a cute little note on it. Drink me. Like Alice in Wonderland, because he'd been a Hatter. It would have been hilarious and cute if everything wasn't so bleak today.
"We all had a weird fucking night," Vicky replied flatly. His refusal to come over had struck a nerve and the anger that had been repressed by shock was finally starting to emerge. That was how she was - anger first, sadness after. It was why she was always so quick to lash out during stressful situations. And this situation was pretty damn stressful and only amplified by her massive headache. "Whatever. Stay up there, asshole. Like I want to see you're fucking face anyway. Already have too much of a headache to deal with you." With that, she hung up the phone and threw it across the kitchen, landing hard onto the living room carpet. She had lost so many cell phones that way.
Then the tantrum came and anything unlucky to be on the counter was thrown to the floor. Some glass shattered, her keurig was likely going to have to be replace, among other things, but it didn't matter. All that mattered was taking out her anger on something until her headache and fatigued finally caught up with her. "Fuck," she muttered as she slid down to the floor, bringing her knees up to her chest and resting her head on her arms as tears escaped her eyes. "Fuck."
Mike sighed when she hung up on him but he knew her well enough to know it for what it was, she's always had a temper and this was one of the worst things that had ever happened to her and that was saying a lot. He was too tired to deal with it and he'd never been one to chase her when she snapped. With a little sigh he turned off his phone because at this point he just couldn't deal with the outside world anymore.