I try to locate it in the dim light.
Should I run from her? What is going on?
“Sunday, this isn’t the first time you have been here,” Luna tells me. She straightens, making her way to the wall the bulb is on, she cranes her neck all the way up towards it. The light ignites her. The purple thread tangles around her several times, it pulsates and breathes. But underneath it is another thread.
Red.
As the purple moves, I can see it. A crimson cloak that shrouds her.
Dread wells inside of me.
I don’t know what the red means exactly.
But it isn’t good.
“Several months ago. Years? A decade? However you want to say it. There was a falling star. And I made a wish.”
My heart pounds into my throat.
“When I was little, my momma promised me that no matter what happened if I was ever in trouble she would come for me. She promised me, Sunday. And why wouldn’t I believe her? She was larger than life. An FBI agent.” Luna spins on her heel. “And so, when I was taken out of this cage, when I was given my first fresh air in months, when I was hurt in a way I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, when I was lying on my back, staring up and wanting to be anywhere else, I saw the shooting star. And I madea wish. I wished for us to be reunited. I wished to return to her. I wished with all my might. To escape this hell.”
Luna opens her hand to reveal the razor. I tense.
She flips it over and over in her palms. “I kept them from touching you. Whenever you made it here, which was more and more as time progressed, I kept you safe.”
Tears well up, blurring my vision. My mind races.
“You…you remember everything, don’t you?” I ask.
Luna narrows her eyes, she squares her shoulders. “They couldn’t kill me, Sunday. But there are worse things than death. I remember every time they came for me. And then the timeline would restart, but it didn’t mean anything. I couldn’t change anything. I just had to wait and wait and wait andknow. Know that it would happen over and over again. It didn’t take long to find out your death triggered the restarts. It wouldn’t be immediate but usually within a day of it.” Luna’s voice is eerily steady as she continues.
I don’t know what to do. What to say. And so I listen to her pain, her suffering.
“Sunday, I have been stuck in this hell in this horrible prison foryears.I have done everything I could to help you remember. To be rescued. Anything I could fucking do. But I am a girl stuck in a cage in the pits of an inescapable nightmare. All because I followed a boy I loved to a party.” Luna tightens her hold on the razor blade.
I want to go to her, to hug her, to reassure her.
But if I were Luna. I wouldhate me.
Despisethat I wasn’t trapped here, that I was making her go through this over and over again.
“You found me the first time pretty early on in these loops, and it made me realize what would restart them.Your death.But I don’t want to restartthem anymore Sunday. I’m tired. I want to finally end this. I want to fulfill my wish. I want to reunite with my mother.”
“She never stopped looking for you.” I make my way to my feet. “We can leave. We can escape and never return here. We can end this.”
A red thread wraps around the razor blade, it reaches out to Luna, spreads across her skin, a sinister crimson netting that covers the purple entirely now.
“We can’t,” Luna attests. “My mother is dead. And I’ve decided, I don’t want to keep trying. I don’t want to go through another loop. Another possibility.”
Understanding hits me.
The boys carried out the plan early, they must have. That must be where everyone went, why this place is a ghost town.
At what Luna must think.
At what she is going to do.
I need to stop her. I need to stop all of this.
