Van Helsing

A day before the Rising

Liquid alcohol runs through her veins, causing an adrenaline rush to spike and all the air to surround her head to where she feels faint and stops twirling like a ballroom dancer with her friends.

Eden falls to her knees and blinks away tears.

"Are you alright, girl?" Daisy sits down beside her, clearly the only one half sober.

Eden picks up the small ice bucket and gives the other girls a weak smile. "Getting ice. I'll be back." She exits the sauna-like hotel room and darts toward the ice machine just as a figure in a black trench coat squeezes past her. "Creep." A shiver runs down her spine and her breath gets caught in her throat.

She turns tail back to the hotel room and slams the door, surprising every drunk girl, minus Daisy.

Daisy glances up from her phone and notices Eden's expression.

"What happened? You seem really freaked out."

"Just this...." Eden now couldn't even say the words. Would they scare the girls? "Never mind. It doesn't really matter."

"Eden, tell me." Daisy insists.

"Some guy in a black hood brushed past me. He just gave me the ultimate creeps."

"Thanks for letting us know, babe." Daisy kisses her forehead in thanks.

"Uh huh." She shivers involuntarily, the alcohol still giving her a high. "I think I'll call it a night." She waves goodnight to the other girls and makes a beeline for her bedroom in the three bed hotel room.

Eden's bedroom smells heavily of weed as soon as she steps inside and she sprays her body mist. "I don't know who smoked in my room, but don't do it again. Second hand smoke isn't good for anyone. Our coach wouldn't appreciate it."

"Relax, Eden." Alyson says from outside the door. "Hannah just had one-too-many anxiety pills and I wanted to help take the edge off."

"Seriously? Coach will kill us when she finds out we got drunk, not to mention that some of you snuck weed on the bus." Eden complains.

"Alright, alright. We'll tone it down some and air out the room tomorrow." Daisy shouts through the closed door.

Eden didn't feel drunk anymore when her head hit the pillow and her eyes closed. The smell of weed gave her unwanted nostalgia of her ex-boyfriend's toxicity in their relationship. She didn't fight the sleep that took over her mind as the music bounced against the wall on the other side and her friends downed the liquor like it was water in a desert.

~W~

The next morning, Eden woke with a splitting headache. The light was too bright when she stepped into the outside world.

Her cheap sunglasses went on and she felt somewhat better than what she did five seconds ago.

"God, I regret doing all that drinking last night." Alyson groans as she sits on her case.

"Look alive. Coach at 12 o'clock." Eden mutters to her girlfriends.

The coach approaches her top athletes with a stern expression. "Staying up till 2am, underage drinking, what else am I gonna have to deal with? I'm disappointed in you, girls."

All four groan at the tone of her voice, like nails on a chalkboard. Everything echoes in their mind and rattles around their brains.

"It won't happen again, coach." Daisy smiles.

"You got that right. If it does, you're all off varsity." The coach walks away as a scream rings out from across the street.

"Did....anyone hear that?" Alyson looks to everyone.

"That woman's being attacked." Daisy points out as their coach stumbles backward. "We need to help Coach Burke! She's being attacked by whatever the fuck that is!" Daisy hisses and rushes to sling Burke over her shoulder, motioning for Eden to copy with the other side.

Coach Burke stumbles and growls at the unlikely pair, diving for Eden in a fit of hunger.

"Get her off me!" She calls for help, but everyone remains shell-shocked as the world goes to shit before their eyes. Eden finally wrestles the animal-like human to the ground and stabs it with a pocketknife from her backpack, wedging it between the cranial cavity until she finds everything too disturbing and follows after her best friends who deserted her in a time of need. "Thanks a lot, ladies." Eden sighs.

By the time Eden makes it up to their hotel room, the door is leaning against the frame and there's no sign of the girls. She searches inside and finds two bodies, one being the quiet girl in her group, what was her name? And the other, a corpse of the crazies from outside. She finds everything turned upside down and reads a note left on the dresser. Her girls were safe at the police station.