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Contact the guy who took your virginity and beg him to marry you.

Seated on an armchair at the balcony of her bedroom, with the stars, gracing the night sky over her middle-class neighborhood in the city of San Jonas, Zee’s cobalt eyes surrounded by heavy dark eye shadow seemed to have doubled in size, her mouth agape as she took in the strange SMS. Only, the SMS had no sender. The words were in black typeface font over a white background.

With her heart slamming against her chest, she tentatively tapped her black painted short-nailed forefinger on the back button on her phone, trying to dismiss the message. It did not budge.

Her tapping became rapid. Still, the message remained. Instead, the words began to transform into a drippy handwritten bloodshot font. Another set of words appeared beneath the first.

They were in the same bloody handwritten font and read- THE LAST DARE WILL NO LONGER WAIT in capitalized alphabets.

A gasp of horror escaped her lips and she sat up, awake on her bed inside her cozy bedroom.

Realizing it was a dream, her palm flew to her chest on a calming mission, her dark painted nails barely visible in the semi-darkness of her bedroom. She quickly reached for a button beside her on the wall and pressed upon it, illuminating the room as the room lights came on.

Her rapid breaths slowly began to normalize and she let out a sigh of relief. Her phone alarm came on, the beeping sound, letting her know it was 5:30 am.

Memories of the strange SMS flashed before her eyes. Damn! She thought. It looked like the game she played months before, had begun to haunt her. But why? She didn’t want to believe it. She didn’t even want to imagine contacting Michael Ray and begging him to marry her. That thought was a nightmare of its own.

Deciding to forget the troubling dream, she reached for a can of beer, popped it open, and emptied its contents into her system. Beer always helped her find sleep easily. Having drained its contents, she flung the empty can away, letting it land on the fur rug covering her bedroom floor. The housekeeper would take care of it. She always did.

Next, Elizabeth turned off the lights, plunging the room back into semi-darkness. Then she fell back against her pillows, allowing the beer to help her escape the reality she couldn’t bring herself to accept as she went back to sleep.