Ringer

(A/N: Alrighty then, I'm doing something that I haven't done in quite a long time. I'm dipping my toes in the horror pool. Truth is, I'm actually a pretty big fan of horror movies, even if haven't really written many horror stories, so I decided to give it a go. And yeah, I know, as good as The Ring franchise is, or at least the first one, it doesn't really have much relevancy right now. The fanfic for it certainly isn't in high demand anyway. But, the truth is, I've actually had this story in mine for a long time now. I think I first thought of it, oh geez, back in 2018 or 2019 if I remember correctly. I planned on writing it much sooner, but then I completely forgot about it for several years. That is, until I recently watched another horror movie that suddenly reminded me of this story idea. So I decided to write it now before I forgot again. I won't tell you what the movie was that reminded me of my idea for this story right now, because I don't want to risk doing so to ruin or spoil anything that happens in this story, but I'll mention it in the Author's Note at the end. For now though, enjoy.)

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

 

"RINGER"

College may not have been everything it had been hyped up to be, but there were certainly a lot of good things about it. And, currently, Aidan Keller was certainly enjoying one of them. While they may have been exaggerated in TV and movies, frat parties were still a thing. While not a part of frat house himself, having been living on campus for a few years now while getting his degree, he was friends with some people who were, and thus had been invited to their party.

One of the best things about college was the freedom it granted. True, there were still classes, and he did have to work a part-time job a few days a week to pay tuition, but other than that, he was a free man, having gotten a dorm after moving out of his mother’s house. A mother who, to this date, he still called by her first name.

It wasn’t for any particular reason. He’d simply always called her Rachel, just like he’d always called his father Noah. Sadly, his mother was all he had left after his father had died nearly fourteen years ago. Or, rather, after he had been murdered, if one could call the effects of a curse murder. Aidan certainly considered it as such.

He shook such morbid thoughts from his head. He hadn’t thought about that in a while, and had no desire to do so now. In fact, he wished he could forget about it completely, but some things just never left you, and every now and then, the memories would creep back up like they were now. Getting haunted and possessed by an evil ghost child was one of them. Not that he didn’t try. And, all things considered, he thought he had done a pretty good job, managing to live a somewhat normal, mundane life over the years.

Which brought him to where he was at in life now. College life. What could be more normal than that? He was at a school of his choosing, living away from home, had his own room with no roommates, and was currently enjoying the benefits of a college party for his night off of work.

Which included the booze that were being supplied. Of course, Rachel wouldn’t approve if she found out how much he was drinking tonight, but he was twenty-three years old now, he could drink as much as he wanted. And part of the beauty of the freedom of college was that you didn’t have your parents breathing down your neck, telling you how you should be focusing on your studies instead of wasting your time partying. But so what if he indulged a bit. Getting a nice buzz going wasn’t going to hurt anything. It wasn’t like he was doing drugs.

This wasn’t the first frat party he’d been to, nor was it the first time he’d drunk so much. While not fun, he had experienced hangovers before. They weren’t exactly fun, but he wasn’t worrying about that right now. In fact, he was going to get a refill. And so, he made his way through the crowd of people to do just that. He might be a little tipsy right now, but a few more drinks would be fine. It wasn’t like he was going to end up passed out drunk. And even if he did end up getting completely wasted, his dorm wasn’t that far of a walk. Or he could just spend the night here if it came to that.

Plastic cup in hand, he bent over the keg to refill it. But as he did so, he began to get the feeling of being watched. He frowned at the feeling as he finished refilling his drink and took a look around. There were quite a number of people present, either standing around talking, dancing, making-out, just plain wandering around. It made it hard to pinpoint who was looking at him, if anyone even was.

Taking a sip, he decided to put the feeling out of mind. And that’s when he saw her. There, standing at the other side of the room. A young woman. At least he thought it was, as long dark hair hung down her front, obstructing most of her face. A face that was as pale as death and rotten, like a waterlogged corpse that had been left underwater for several days. And as if to back that up, she was soaking wet, water dripping off her body.

But the most noticeable about her was her form itself. It was static-y and seemed to glow, like something from out of an old movie with low quality and almost no color. She stared at him from behind her curtain of dark hair, a blank expression on her rotten face.

Or maybe not. He only caught sight of her for a split second before someone walked by, blocking her for a moment. And when they walked past and he saw her again, she had completely changed. No longer looking like a drowned corpse, she now appeared to be an ordinary young woman. Even her appearance was completely different, looking like a pretty girl with light brown hair in a white dress, just another face in the crowd.

She was still looking at him though, watching him really. And as he looked back at her, her blank expression shifted into the smallest of smiles before she turned away and disappeared into the crowd of partygoers.

“Dude, your drink!”

The speaker startled Aidan, making jump. He turned to the man who had spoken though, who was motioning to Aidan’s hand, and he looked down to see that he had crushed the plastic cup he had been holding in his grip, spilling its contents all over the floor.

“Oh, shit, I’m sorry!” he exclaimed, having not even noticed. “I’ll clean it up.”

And he quickly went to get some paper towels to do just that. All the while, his heart was racing in his chest, and he’d broken out in a nervous sweat. And as he cleaned up his spilled drink, he assured himself over and over again that it was ok, that he was ok.

It hadn’t been her. Samara couldn’t be here. It was impossible. He had been seeing things. Yes, it had just been his imagination. He was just more buzzed than he thought. And when she had popped up in his head before, it had triggered some PTSD in him that had made him think he saw her, but he hadn’t. Samara wasn’t even an adult, she was a ghost child, and the version he had thought he’d seen had been much older. That was just further indication that he had just been seeing things.

But still, seeing her again, even if it was just in his mind, ended up bringing back old memories. Memories from his childhood that he’d spent years trying to bury. And now they were surfacing, still as fresh as the day they had happened.

Samara Morgan. There was still so much mystery about her, but she was seemingly born wicked, supposedly due to some force or entity from another world affecting her during her conception. But whatever it was, it had resulted in her being born with supernatural abilities, where she could seemingly project images into people’s minds, making them see and hear things, driving them mad or even to their deaths. Animals sensed it within her, and even people could tell something was off about her, beyond her sociopathic nature and desire to hurt others.

And after her adoptive mother attempted to kill her, casting her into a well, where she had survived for seven days before finally perishing, her cursed video tape had appeared, where anyone who watched it, even a portion of it, would be cursed. And after haunting them for seven days, Samara’s ghost would then appear to them and kill them.

It was easy to identify her kill victims. They always looked the same. Eyes blank white, expressions twisted with horror, faces rotten and waterlogged, mouths practically torn open with dislocated jaws, as if a scream too big to escape them had forced its way out, breaking theirs jaws in the process. Yes, there was truly no mistaking one of Samara’s victims.

It had been the fate that had befallen his father, and nearly him and his mother too. Fortunately, Rachel had found a way to lift the curse by passing it on to someone else. All that was required was to make a copy of the video and then show it to someone else. As long as the cycle was repeated, there would be no more victims, no one else who would have to die.

At least that’s what Aidan and Rachel has assumed. But as it turned out, there was one other thing Samara wanted other than to hurt and kill people. What she wanted was a mother. And for some reason, she had taken a liking to Rachel. Perhaps it had been because she had been the first to discover how to escape the curse, or maybe it was because she had discovered Samara’s corpse in the well. Whatever the case, six months after they had passed on the curse, she had tried to get Rachel to be her mother by possessing Aidan.

It hadn’t lasted, obviously. They had managed to exorcise her from him. But she had tried again, this time dragging Rachel into her world. But fortune had once again favored them, as Rachel had managed to seal Samara in her well, shutting her out of both of their lives once and for all before returning to reality.

That had been the last time either of them had ever been tormented by the ghost girl. Thirteen years of peace, apart from the memories that still haunted them both. So she couldn’t possibly be here now. He hadn’t even done anything to draw her to him. And he certainly hadn’t watched any cursed videos. Although the same couldn’t be said for others.

While Samara may have been shut out of his and Rachel’s lives, others who still watched her video were still susceptible to her curse, with every video essentially being a new way out of her well to get to them, despite Rachel closing the one for their curse. And a few months ago, there had been an incident at another college, where several dozen people had fallen prey to her curse all at once.

At least that had presumably been the case due to the state all the bodies had been in; all of them Samara’s M.O. Aidan remembered reading about it, and he recognized the deaths for what they had been. The police, however, had deemed it some kind of unexplainable chemical-based terrorist attack, even though there had been no such traces of any chemicals or pathogens found in any of the bodies.

Good God, that wasn’t happening at this college now too, was it? No, that didn’t make sense. There had been no video that had been mass shared with everyone. And even if there had been, Aidan shouldn’t be seeing anything. Because, again, Rachel had shut Samara out of their lives. Ok, yes, he had always been sensitive when it came to supernatural activity when it came to her, even before he watched her tape for the first time, but he hadn’t watched any cursed videos recently, so he should be fine.

So him seeing things was the only explanation. Yes, he was just drunk, and thinking about her made him hallucinate her for a moment, and now he was just being paranoid about it. That was the only explanation. There was nothing for him to worry about. He was fine. Everything was fine.

He told himself that over and over again until he believed it. The alcohol helped too, allowing him to drown out his concerns. He was definitely going to be hungover tomorrow, so he better enjoy things while they lasted. He knew he shouldn’t have had so much, that he should only be drinking to have fun, not to calm his nerves, but he’d done so anyway, just wanting to forget the horrors of his past.

Well, it worked. After several more drinks, he forgot all about having seen Samara and was back to having a good time. He blended in with the crowd, chatting, dancing, just plain having fun, like any college student should be doing when they had free time.

Apparently though, despite how much he drank, it still wasn’t enough to completely purge Samara from his mind. At one point while he had been dancing, he heard a voice clear over the music. A whisper that was also loud, seemingly spoken right in his ear, if not in his actual head.

“I found you.”

Samara! It was her! He’d recognize that voice anywhere. And he whirled around in the direction the voice had come from. Only there was no one there, just a bunch of other students dancing. He looked around some more, trying to locate her. He thought he caught a glimpse of her at one point, but when he looked again, she was gone.

No, not gone, she had never been there at all. He was imagining things again. He needed another drink. That would do the trick. Just drown out those memories. True, he was already pretty drunk, but clearly not drunk enough if his PTSD had been triggered so badly that he was still imagining her.

Returning to the keg for the… he lost track of how many times, he bent down and began to refill his cup. As he was doing so, he became aware that someone was suddenly standing over him, and he slowly looked up. There, standing right in front of him, was a girl around his age, maybe a year or two younger. She was staring down at him with a blank look on her face.

He blinked a few times and slowly got to his feet. The girl just continued to look at him with zero expression on her face. It made him feel awkward. No, more like uneasy. But why? What was there to feel uneasy about? It was just awkwardness from her staring and whatever he was feeling from his PTSD being triggered. That had to be it.

“Hi,” he said, somewhat surprised his speech hadn’t been slurred from how much he’d had. He motioned to the keg. “Did you… want a refill?”

She cocked her head to the side before glancing at the keg, then she looked back at him. “No.”

He noticed then that she wasn’t even holding a cup. So then did that mean she had come over here to see him? Did he know her? He didn’t think so. Though he thought he may have seen her somewhere before. In passing at the party?

Suddenly, it clicked. She was the girl who had been watching him earlier, the one he saw just after hallucinating Samara. Had she taken notice of him and thought he was cute? Maybe she had been working up the nerve to approach him and had finally done so.

He held out his hand to her. “My name’s Aidan.”

She glanced down at his hand, but did not take it. For several long moments, she just stared at it, but then she slowly reached out for it. She didn’t shake it though, Instead, she carefully fiddled around with it, as if she were studying it. Strangely, the palm of her right hand as she ran it over his felt cold and clammy, unlike the rest of her that felt warm and… not clammy.

He looked back up at her and jumped slightly. For a split second, he thought he saw Samara again in all her rotten grotesqueness, but as he blinked, she was gone again, and all he saw was… he didn’t know her name.

“And… you are?” he asked.

She looked up at him, cocking her head to the side slightly, as if she were still studying him. Then she reached up with her hand and cupped his cheek, almost stroking it, which he found to be rather strange since they had just met and the gesture was rather forward of her. It was with her right hand, and just like before, he felt the cold clamminess of her palm. Why did its temperature and texture feel so different from the rest of her?

“For now,” she suddenly spoke in an emotionless near-whisper, “you may call me… Julia.”

“Julia” he repeated. He didn’t know anyone named Julia. For some reason though, he felt like he knew her from somewhere. Had they met at a previous party and he had just forgot? This wasn’t his first time attending one of these parties, nor was it the first time he had gotten pretty drunk. So maybe they had met and he just didn’t remember while she did.

But why did he feel so uneasy? It wasn’t nervousness from talking to a pretty girl; he didn’t really get that. No, rather, he was picking up more of a creepy, unpleasantness from her, though he couldn’t figure out why. And also, what did she mean that he could call her that “for now”?

He internally shook his head. He told himself he was being stupid. Ok, so she was a little odd and came across as shy and socially awkward, but there was no reason he should feel uneasy around her like this when he didn’t even know her. It was his memories of Samara, that had to be it. They were affecting him, hitting him harder in his drunken state; perhaps trying to drown out those memories of her with alcohol hadn’t been a good idea. But he would not let her rule over his life, he refused.

“Ok then, Julia,” he said, attempting to be friendly. “Would you like to go sit and talk?”

She just looked at him for several long moments before removing her hand from his cheek. He couldn’t help glancing at it really quick, and he saw that the palm of her hand was a pale grayish color, almost looking like the skin was dead. Was it a rash? No, it didn’t look like it. A birth mark perhaps? A scar? Or maybe she’d burned herself and had gotten replacement skin graphed onto the spot or something. Could that affect the skin’s texture and temperature? He didn’t know, but he didn’t want to be rude by bringing it up.

“We may sit,” she said at last in answer to his question.

He blinked. “Um, right. Ok. Uh, let’s go.”

She let him lead the way, and he made his way over to the couch, taking a seat. She slowly followed after him, taking a seat next to him. She said nothing and simply stared at him. It made Aidan feel a little awkward, but he pushed the feeling aside and attempted to strike up a conversation with her.

She wasn’t much of a talker, and when she spoke, she did so slowly, rather emotionlessly, and with few words, and always in a whispered voice that he was always somehow able to hear despite the booming music. She also only spoke in response to what he said to her, never attempting to converse herself. It almost felt like she was biding her time, waiting for something. Had she not been entirely focused on him, he would have thought that she wasn’t actually interested in him, yet all her attention was solely on him.

He got up to refill his drink a few times. She followed him the first time, but declined wanting anything when he asked. She made to follow him the second time, but he told her he’d be back and she didn’t need to follow him, so she waited for him the next two times he refilled, but watched him like a hawk the entire time he was away from her.

He eventually concluded that she was just a shy, socially awkward, heavily introverted girl. As an introvert himself, he could relate, and so tried to be understanding of her strange demeanor. The only time she showed any real emotion was when one of his friends, the one who had invited him to the party, sat down on her other side, asking him who his new friend was. She just turned to him, and though Aidan couldn’t see her face when she said it, her quiet demand for him to “Leave” was full of a cold fury that almost sounded threatening.

His friend had all but bolted after that, looking rather pale. Aidan too had felt uneasy, but when she turned back to him, her expression was a stoic, blank mask of calmness once more, and he somewhat relaxed again, figuring she just hadn’t appreciated the interruption. But his friend wasn’t the only one who had stayed away after that. It seemed that everyone around them had put some distance between Julia and themselves, and no one seemed willing to approach. Was she giving off some kind of vibes that silently told others to stay away that he was too drunk to pick up on?

He put the thought out of mind as he continued to hold a conversation with her. Or tried to anyway. She only really took her own initiative to converse with him on her own once when she asked him a question. “How are things with your parents?”

He blinked, surprised by the out of the blue question, because it had nothing to do with anything they had been talking about. “Oh, um, well, they’re good. I mean, Noah, my father, he… died several years ago. But Rachel, that’s my mom, I address her by name, things are good with us.” He gave her an uncertain look. “Um, how are things with your parents?”

She stared at him for several long moments before looking away. “They’re dead.”

He internally winced at that. Maybe that’s why she was so awkward and socially distant. “Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” she told him, and when she looked at him again, it may have just been his imagination, but he could have sworn her lips were slightly curved upward at the sides. “They were bad parents. Especially Daddy. He didn’t love me.”

“Ok…” he muttered uncertainly, not knowing what to say to that. Maybe her parents had been abusive. That could also explain why she seemed so reserved.

The night continued to drag on. And while it didn’t seem like he was making any headway with Julia, she was still here with him. And while he still felt somewhat uneasy in her presence, he also couldn’t help but find her… interesting. Maybe that was why he was still sitting here talking to her instead of going off to socialize with anyone else.

But then things took a sudden turn. He had just finished his drink and had been about to get up for another refill when her hand shot out, grasping his arm tightly. He glanced down at it in drunken confusion before looking at her to find her staring at him intensely.

“You ok?” he asked.

She gave no reaction and simply said, “Let’s go back to your room.”

Aidan’s eyes widened, shocked to his core. He was currently single and found her attractive, despite the uneasy vibes he was getting from her, and so had attempted to flirt with her while they sat and talked, but she hadn’t responded to any of his flirting. So it came as a real surprise when she suddenly made such a request.

“To… my room?” he repeated, wanting to make sure he understood her correctly. “You mean, you want to…?”

She just stared at him, then simply replied with, “I want you.”

Well, holy shit. Maybe she had been more interested than he thought and he’d just been too drunk to pick up on her interest with her being as socially awkward as she was.

“I… That’s… Wow, ok,” he said stupidly. “It’s just… are you sure? I mean, we don’t really know each other.”

Not that he was opposed to one-night stands with rando hookups, because many people his age were, especially college students. Hell, maybe that had been the whole reason she had come to this party. Maybe she had come here intending to get laid and had picked him out from the beginning and was now simply dropping all pretenses. But that was fine, he could go with that. He didn’t even mind if it turned out that she was just planning on using him for sex and then had no intention of ever seeing him again.

In response to what he said, she simply stood up. “I said I want you.” Then she turned and began to walk away, clearly expecting him to follow her. “Let’s go.”

Aidan blinked again. This was rather forward of her. But then he got up to follow after her. She may have been strange, but he wasn’t about to turn down an open invitation for sex. She led the way out of the door and outside, then turned to wait for him, cocking her head to the side expectantly.

“Right,” he said, realizing that she wouldn’t know where his dorm was. “Um, it’s this way. Follow me.”

She did, without saying a word, and he led her out of the frat house, down the road to his dorm, and up to his room. He walked inside, closing the door behind them and turning on the light. She took a brief look around, then seemed to lose interest.

He took a look around too. It was a simple single person room, with just enough space for his bed and a small work area containing a desk with a TV, computer, and an Xbox. A closet was on one side of the room, and on the other side, a small bathroom was attached. Overall, it wasn’t that impressive, but it covered all his basic needs.

“Yes, well, this is my on-campus home,” he casually remarked. “I was lucky enough to get an attached bathroom. And I–”

There was suddenly the loud sound of glass breaking, making him jump. He whirled around to see that the mirror he’d had hanging on the wall had suddenly shattered, a pile of broken glass lying on the floor beneath it. The sight of it completely baffled Aidan. Nothing had struck it, so how the hell had that happened?

“Shit, what was that!?” he mumbled. He looked back at Julia with an apologetic look. “Sorry about that. Just let me clean up this mess real fast.”

“No,” she said, her tone as emotionless as ever. He just stared at her as she began hiking up her dress. “I want you, now.”

Aidan blinked as he watched her pull her dress up and over her head, letting it drop to the floor. Much to his surprise, he saw that she wasn’t wearing either a bra or any underwear. In fact, he suddenly realized for the first time, that she wasn’t even wearing any socks or shoes. Had she not been wearing any the entire time, even at the party, and he just hadn’t noticed? Her feet looked dirty enough for that to be the case, but why wasn’t she wearing shoes? Some kind of hippie or activist lifestyle choice?

But then he was sufficiently distracted by her naked body, and he completely forgot about her lack of footwear. She had a beautiful body, definitely not that of a rotten, drowned corpse. He’d definitely been seeing things when she had briefly appeared as a grownup Samara. Too many drinks and his PTSD he assured himself.

“Clothes off,” she told him in a hushed tone that left no room for argument. “Right now.”

Well, shit, he wasn’t going to say no when a beautiful, naked girl in his room told him that. “Um, yeah, sure.”

Kicking off his shoes, he began stripping out of his clothes. She watched him the entire time, her gaze studying, calculating. And once he removed his last article of clothing, she didn’t hesitate before she slowly began walking towards him.

She hadn’t taken more than a few steps though before the light bulb suddenly burst, sending glass flying and leaving them with only the light of the moon shining through the window to illuminate the room.

“What the hell was–” he began, but was suddenly cut off as Julia reached out with one hand and shoved him backwards. Actually, it felt less like a shove and more like some kind of force had simply thrown him backwards the moment she touched him, practically sending him flying with enough force to almost knock him off his feet, and he landed on the bed. Sitting up, he gave her a surprised look. “Wow, you’re really strong.”

His brow immediately furrowed in confusion as he looked her over. Here in the dark, she almost appeared to be… glowing? Yes, she seemed to have this electric-like aura around her. Sure, he was drunk enough that his vision was rather fuzzy, but it definitely looked like she was surrounded by some kind of glow. It reminded him of the type of glow emitted from a TV screen when all the lights were off. Was it a trick of the light shining on her through the window? Maybe she had on some kind of skin care lotion that was causing it to look like her skin glowed when the light hit her a certain way.

As she approached, her suddenly began to feel intimidated, like he was prey being cornered by some kind of predator moving in for the kill. And between blinks, he thought he saw Samara approaching him again. He shoved both the vision and his feeling of unease aside, determine to not let that damn ghost girl effect any more of his life. He’d shown time and time again that he was stronger than his memories of her. He wouldn’t backtrack now; he wouldn’t let her ruin this for him.

He scooted further back on the mattress as she approached, and when she reached the foot of the bed, she began to climb up on it and crawled up his body, moving in an almost unnatural way. She came up to him until they were eyelevel, and suddenly, the TV turned on. Aidan glanced at it as white noise static filled the screen, providing an electric ambience in the background. Had he or she accidentally pressed down on the remote?

“Hold on,” he told her as she loomed over him.

He began feeling around the mattress, and his hand found the remote. Strange, it didn’t seem like it was in range for one of them to have pressed down on it. All the same, he pointed it at the TV and attempted to turn it off, but nothing happened. He frowned and tried again, but still nothing. Wondering if it was the batteries, he slid open the back, and was rather surprised to see that they had burst, with battery acid leaking out of them. What had caused that to happen? And was that the cause for the TV turning on? Could that even happen?

Deciding he’d worry about it later, he tossed the remote aside and shifted to get up. “Let me just turn that off,” he said, in reference to the TV.

Before he could get up though, she placed a hand on his shoulder, pushing him to lay back down. “Leave it.”

He blinked up at her. “Um, ok. Then just let me grab a condom.”

He kept them in the drawer in the nightstand right next to his bed, and he made to reach for them. However, she once again pushed down on him, keeping him where he was, and he gave her a confused look.

“No condoms,” she told him simply. “You won’t need them.”

He blinked again. No condoms? He’d always used condoms. Rachel had been very insistent that he practice safe sex until he was married. Perhaps Julia was on the pill and that’s why she said he didn’t need them. He knew there were many who preferred such a contraption method over condoms as their choice of protection so as not to reduce sensation and intimacy. If that was the case, he was more than happy to go bareback for the first time.

“If you insist,” he replied.

With the static-filled TV casting a glow over them, she leaned down and kissed him. Aidan kissed her back, but immediately picked up on a type of… amateurism to her kissing, like she was a complete novice at it. That was strange, considering how open and comfortable she was about her sexuality. Maybe she was just a bad kisser. Honestly though, he was too drunk to care.

They kissed for several long moments, then Julia broke it and rose up over him. She stared down at him for a few seconds before suddenly rolling off him and lying on her back next to him. She held out a hand, beckoning him to her.

“Come to me,” she told him. “Make me yours.”

Aidan found it strange how… mechanical she was about this, but then pushed the thought aside. He was too drunk and too hard to worry about it. And so he rolled over so he was on top of her.

Leaning down, he began kissing and caressing her. She responded, her hands sliding over him as well. But then he began to move away from her lips, going down to her neck and breasts and starting to move lower, fully intending to go down on her. However, she stopped him, taking hold of his head and urging him back up her body.

“No foreplay,” she said simply, and spread her legs for him, hooking her arms around his neck. “Take me now. Become mine.”

He just stared at her. No foreplay? That was a first for him. Who didn’t enjoy foreplay? He certainly did. Was she that desperate for him? Her behavior didn’t indicate as much. But then, she had behaved strangely all night. Maybe she was just interested in having a quickie. Well, if that was what she wanted. And so, he got himself into position.

For some reason, he felt warning bells go off in his head, as if he were forgetting something important, or maybe not realizing something he should take notice of, but he was too drunk to remember or think straight enough to figure it out. But then she curled a leg around his hip and he pushed such feelings aside.

Staring down at her, he sank into her. Her lips slightly parted in a small exhale and he let out groan. Strangely, bizarrely, it was cold inside her, like she wasn’t producing any body heat. It still felt really good inside her, but this didn’t seem right. Had she used some kind of lube that was making her insides cold? He hadn’t notice her using any. God, how drunk was he?

But then she drew him down and their lips met again, wrapping her legs around his waist and hugging him to her. Aidan stopped thinking about what he deemed to be stupid and unimportant things and focused on her instead as he began moving within her.

For reasons he couldn’t explain, he did a very poor job of getting Samara out of his head. He kept having flashbacks to her haunting him. He saw horrific sights she had showed him when he had been afflicted with her curse before he’d passed it on. He saw the events that had happened afterwards, such as the attacking deer, his possession, Rachel getting dragged into the TV.

Not to mention the countless nightmares he’d had over the years. He was getting flashes of them now, almost as if he were dreaming while he was awake. And a few times, he could have sworn that he was even having sex with an older Samara. But every time he double-checked, it was still actually Julia he was with. And numerous times, he found his attention drawn to the static of the TV, staring at it for several long moments before tearing his eyes from it, only to be drawn back to it again a minute or two later.

He tried desperately to push all this aside and just focus on her. He kissed her and buried his face in her neck, trying to distract himself from these horrific images. His performance became progressively more aggressive as he tried to get lost in her, almost feeling like a veteran trying to fuck the war out of himself, desperately trying to escape his trauma through the pleasure she offered.

If he was honest, it was pretty lousy sex, and not just because he was so drunk. While she wasn’t completely unresponsive, she gave little participation, as if she wasn’t really that interested in the actual sex and was simply going through the motions just to complete the act, showing hardly any enthusiasm. He wasn’t even sure if she came before he eventually spilled himself into her.

He collapsed on top of her afterwards, his mind feeling like it was in total chaos. Even now, the memories and visions wouldn’t stop assaulting him. Actually, they now seemed even more intense. Drinking so much while his PTSD had been triggered had been a big mistake, he realized that now, and deeply regretted it. He hadn’t felt this tormented and vulnerable since he’d been a child.

Once he regained enough strength, he began to roll of Julia. He hoped he hadn’t hurt her with his aggression or performed poorly. As bland as a lover as she had been, he at least wanted her to have enjoyed it. But as he began to move off her, she suddenly grabbed him and rolled them both over. The next thing he knew, he was on his back and she was suddenly on top, straddling him. And just like she had all night, she wore an expressional mask on her face.

“Now I shall take you,” she said in a whispered tone.

Aidan was so drunk and out of it from his PTSD that he wasn’t even sure he would be able to perform a second time. But Julia set to work on restoring his arousal. And when she got the responses she wanted, she took him back inside her, this time with her on top.

Aidan hoped it would be better this time, but it wasn’t. It was worse. Not the sex, that remained bland, but the visions. They assaulted him even worse than before, to the point where whimpers and moans that had nothing to do with pleasure began escaping him. Even more often than before, he got flashes of Samara riding him, and he constantly shook his head to clear it of such hallucinations.

With her on top, she was much more proactive. As he watched her though, he couldn’t help but notice that some of her movements seemed… unnatural. It was the way she moved, the way she held herself, the motions of her limbs, it all just came across as… so wrong.

But the effects of the alcohol were reaching the point where he was crashing, and he was pretty sure he was on the verge of passing out. God, he hoped not. While the sex wasn’t that great and the visions were so horrific that he desperately wanted to fall into unconsciousness to escape them, he didn’t want to go and pass out on Julia while having sex with her. That would be a really shitty thing to do.

Suddenly, she grasped his face, turning it to the side, and he found himself staring at the static of the TV. She kept her hand, her cold palm hand, pressed against his face, mashing it into the pillow, forcing him to keep watching the screen; he really wished he’d turned it off, despite her telling him to leave it.

He closed his eyes instead, but the screen’s brightness seemed to penetrate straight through his eyelids, and the sound of the static just seemed to get louder and louder until it was almost deafening. What more, closing his eyes only seemed to make the visions he was receiving worse, and so, more often than not, he opened them to have them be filled with the static.

This time, he was certain Julia had climaxed. He knew because it triggered his own release. Her body went slack on him, her hand falling away from his face, but she remained upright for several long moments, her hair obstructing her face, before finally lowering herself down to lay on him. She rolled them over again so he was on top once more, and snaked her arms and legs around him, the two of them still intimately joined.

They stayed like that for a minute or two, and when Aidan felt himself beginning to nod off, he made to lift off her, only for her limbs to tighten around him, preventing him from doing so.

“No,” she said, her tone suddenly harsh. “Stay with me.”

He settled back down, hesitantly resting his full weight on top of her. “I’m not crushing you?”

In response, she brought her lips to his ear. “Sleep.”

She said it like a command. Aidan was on the verge of doing so anyway. Well, more like passing out. The hangover he was sure to have tomorrow was not something he was looking forward to. Nothing he could do about it now though, so he rested his head down on the pillow next to her.

As he slowly drifted off, the static of the TV continued to illuminate his face, but it wasn’t enough to keep him from the lull of sleep. But just before he fell into unconsciousness, he could have sworn he heard Julia whisper to him, “You’re mine now, Aidan Keller. Forever.”

At least he thought he heard her say that, but it could have just been his imagination, especially when she sounded just like Samara. But that was clearly just his PTSD at work again. He didn’t get to think about it further though, because a moment later, he was asleep.

And it was not a pleasant sleep. He was plagued by horrific nightmares the entire time. Truly disturbing dreams, ones that could drive a sane man mad. And, unsurprisingly, they were all related to Samara.

He saw death. So much death. Terrifying sights of her victims in their last moments, their faces twisting into grotesque masks of horror as they were subjected to her death stare. Just flash after flash of one death after another, like a movie reel. Including Noah’s, his own father’s. But amongst them all, there was one that his mind focused on the most that was more than a brief flash. It was a whole series of different scenes that played out rather than being a broken, disjointed mess.

Julia was in it. Only she was different, nothing like the shy, introverted girl he had met at the party, but lively and full of life and character. He saw as she watched Samara’s video. Not the tape, but a video file on the computer. He saw her answer the phone as it rang shortly after, heard Samara’s voice tell her “Seven days”, and watched as her hand was suddenly burned, somehow feeling the pain on his own palm, despite it not happening to him and despite this being a dream.

It wasn’t a normal burn though. There were markings on it, a series of dots going across the inside of her hand. Not randomly arranged though, not seemingly placed in an intentional pattern, making the burn seem more like a brand.

More distorted images followed involving her. Searching. Discovering. A hidden grave. Bones. A struggle with a blind man. Death. Fire. Remains being burned. Then water raining down. A shower. Julia standing under it as she stared at her burned hand, peeling the dead skin away, revealing dead gray skin underneath.

Then her standing in front of a fog-filled mirror, reaching up to wipe away the fog, revealing her reflection. Only it wasn’t her face looking back at her. It was Samara’s. Older now, but still as rotten and grotesque as ever. It was the version of her he had been hallucinating ever since the party.

Then a computer. A man sitting at it in a panic as a video file, Samara’s video file, was mass emailed to everyone in his contacts. On another open tap, he was translating brail, the same markings that had been on Julia’s hand. And as the computer seemed to glitch out of control, the word he was translating from brail flickered on screen.

REBIRTH.

As the panicking man tried in vain to stop the emails from being sent out, a figure slowly approached him from behind. Julia. Only now she was much more akin to what she was like at the party, her movements slow and almost mechanical. She came to a stop behind the man and spoke in a slow, desperate, pleading voice, as if she were fighting against something,

“Don’t. Turn. Around.”

But he did, and then it was too late. Just another victim of Samara. It was soon followed by several dozen more deaths just like it in several more flashes. And then, there it was. The ring. A white circle of light standing out against blackness. It had been the last thing Samara had seen at the bottom of the well before she died, before she had become something else, something more.

Then the dream changed. No longer a dream, but a memory. It was Samara’s video. It played through Aidan’s mind as clearly as if he were watching it. But it was different. There were extra scenes. Scenes that hadn’t been in the original video he had watched. He knew this for a fact, because, to this day, Aidan still remembered every second of that video, as if it had been permanently burned into his memory. And it wasn’t the first time he saw it play out in his sleep.

It was the same for Rachel. He knew this because he had asked her about it before. She too remembered every last scene of the video, and she too dreamed about it. This was how he knew there were additional scenes, somehow knowing that they were the extra scenes from the version of the video Julia had seen. But just like in the original, the final scene was that of Samara’s well. Only this time, the lid was secured over it, sealing off her way out.

At least it was. All at once, the lid suddenly went flying off, soaring several dozen feet in the air, as if an explosion had gone off within the well, leaving the way open for her once more. And with that, the memory of the video came to an end. This was instantly followed by a flash of Samara’s face. And with it came a powerful declaration from her.

“MINE!!!”

At her cry, he woke with a start, and immediately wished he hadn’t. His hangover hit him hard, just like he knew it would, and his hand flew to his head. He swore silently, the morning light penetrating through his eyelids. He weakly blinked them open, wincing at the flash of pain that ran through his head and the wave of nausea that hit him.

He let out a groan, rubbing his hand over his face. Yes, it had most had definitely been a mistake to drink so much last night. But then he suddenly became aware that he wasn’t alone, and he looked down. There was a girl in bed with him. Naked, just like him, her arms and legs still coiled around him as he laid on top of her. And suddenly, he remembered. Julia. He’d met her at the party. They’d talked, sort of, and then she’d wanted to come back to his room. So they had.

He didn’t remember everything from last night, no doubt a result of how much he had drunk, but he remembered enough. It had… definitely been the strangest hookup of his life, and also the most unpleasant, considering all the drunken PTSD hallucinations he’d experienced during it. It made him wonder if he hadn’t just been drunk, but if someone had actually spiked the drinks, maybe slipping something into the keg. Rachel had warned him that things like that could happen at college parties, but this was the first time he had experienced it.

He slowly became aware of a fuzzy sound, and he turned to see the still static screen of his TV. No doubt that had contributed to his horrific nightmares. But as he stared at the screen, he began getting flashes of last night, particularly the hallucinations he’d had of him having sex with an adult Samara but still rotten Samara rather than Julia. That had so many uncomfortable and unpleasant implications, even if she had appeared as an adult.

A wave of nausea suddenly hit him, and his stomach lurched. It had nothing to do with what he was thinking about though and everything to do with his hangover. He lifted himself partly off Julia and realized that he was still inside her. But unlike from when they were having sex last night, it was no longer cold inside her. Rather, she felt warm and inviting, the way a woman was supposed to feel unless she was dead, not that he knew what that felt like.

She was still asleep, and he carefully removed her limbs from him. As her arms fell off him, her right hand fell open. He glanced at it, frowning in mild confusion. She still had a mark on her palm, but it looked like a normal healed burn scar, no gray dead looking skin. Had he just imagined that last night? There was also certainly no glowing about her either. He must have really been out of it.

More nausea suddenly hit him. He strained to hold in the contents of his stomach long enough to fully extract himself from Julia’s embrace and slip out of bed without disturbing her. Then it was a mad dash for the bathroom, just barely making it to the toilet in time and dropping to his knees with his head over the bowel before his stomach emptied itself. Yes, definitely too much to drink.

As a courtesy to Julia, he used his foot to push the bathroom door shut so as not to disturb her as more and more came up. And while puking was never pleasant, it began to feel painful. He felt something particularly thick and nasty working its way up, practically getting clogged in his throat. What was that about? Did he not properly chew his food yesterday or something?

Another bout of vomit came pouring out of his mouth and into the toilet, dislodging whatever clumped blockage he’d had trouble getting up. A little more puke came up after that before it seemed his stomach was finally satisfied, and he spat a few times in the bowl. The effort left him panting and covered in a cold sweat as he lifted his face out of the bowl.

Almost immediately, he noticed something unpleasant in his mouth, and no, it wasn’t the taste of vomit. He ran his tongue along his gums and the roof of his mouth, gathering it up, then stuck his tongue out to pluck it off with his fingers. He saw that it was several strands of long dark hair, and he extracted it, coughing some more as he felt it sliding up his throat as he pulled it out.

Once he got it all out, he looked at the hair pinched between his fingers in disgust. Had he been chewing on Julia’s hair in his sleep or something? That was gross. He flicked it into the toilet and then spat in it. But then as he looked down at the contents in the bowl, he frowned. There was puke in it, yes, but it also looked like he had hacked up a bunch of black sludge. That didn’t seem right. What the hell had he eaten yesterday that would make his puke look like that?

It hurt his head to think about it, not to mention gave him a sense of foreboding. So he pushed all thoughts of it aside as he flushed the toilet and forced himself to his feet. And while he still felt horrible, he also felt significantly better than when he had first woken up.

With a groan, he made his way over to the sink. A mirror ran horizontally across the length of the bathroom wall above it, and as he lifted his head, he jumped back in surprise as he saw Samara’s face in the mirror.

Or no, he didn’t. Because upon blinking, it was just his own reflection he saw. The sight of himself made him let out a sigh of relief, and he shook his head, wishing he hadn’t as the motion caused a wave of dizziness to hit him. He was still out of it, and the remnants of his nightmares were still affecting him.

Going over to the sink, the first thing he did was rinse his mouth out to wash away the taste of vomit. He then filled his cupped hands with water and washed his face, remaining hunched over as he took a few calming breaths.

He was hesitant to rise, but did so slowly, glancing at his reflection in the mirror again. There was no Samara, only his own face looking back at him, and he let out a sigh of relief, rising to his full height. He must have still been somewhat asleep, despite the unpleasant wakeup call his nightmare and hangover had brought him. He needed a nice hot shower, that would make him feel better.

He turned to do just that, but then paused. He turned to look at his reflection in the mirror again, and a frown crossed his face. He hadn’t noticed it at first, but looking at himself now, he saw that something was… off. A number of things actually. His color was the first thing he took notice of. While he had always been on the pale side, his skin now looked even paler; more like the blood had drained from his face. Perhaps ashen was the best way to put it.

But that could just be the result of his hangover. A highly unpleasant night’s sleep followed by puking his guts out could have affected him, he just didn’t know it could be to this extent. But the next thing he noticed was his hair. It looked darker than usual. And longer. Much longer than he remembered. He always wore it on the shorter side, typically getting it cut when he was able to grab hold of it in his hand.

Now it looked twice the length it would be when he got it cut, and he reached up to find that he could indeed grab more than a handful. That couldn’t be right. How had he let it get so long? He always made sure to take care of appearance, and it hadn’t been this long when he’d combed it yesterday before going to the party.

“What the hell?” he muttered as he took notice of something else.

Stepping closer so his face was right in front of the mirror, he looked at his eyes. His eyes had always been brown, but looking at them now, he saw that one looked more of a bluish color, not to mention they were both darker. It made him think back to his theory that the drinks had been drugged at the party. Could drugs affect someone’s eye color? Kind of like how they could make them become bloodshot or make one’s pupils dilate?

Maybe the drinks really had been spiked. That would actually explain a lot. It could even possibly explain his hair growth and darkening, having gone from light brown to dark. Was it something like how steroids could affect people? Maybe it was even an experimental drug. He would really need to be more careful in the future about what he ate and drank at parties.

But then he noticed yet something else. Reaching up, he touched his cheek. His completely smooth cheek. Usually, he shaved every three or four days, not allowing himself to have more than a light stubble. He remembered clearly having at least a five o’clock shadow yesterday. But now, nothing, his lower face was completely hairless.

Did he actually shave before the party and had just forgotten about it? He didn’t recall doing so at all. But maybe he had simply forgotten from how much he drank; he did have a few small gaps in his memory from the other night, so it was possible. Or if there were drugs involved, that would explain things even more. But even if that were the case, he’d never had this clean of a shave before. This was baby’s bottom smooth, as if he had never grown any facial hair at all.

Could any drugs he’d ingested have actually caused his facial hair to fall out? He didn’t know, he was no expert on the effects of drugs. But as he ran a finger over the smooth contours of his face, he briefly took note of the length of his fingernails. Like his hair, it seemed like they too were in need of a trim. They were definitely longer than he remembered them being the other night.

Putting the length of his nails out of mind for now, he looked at his face again, and his brow furrowed. Was it just his imagination, or did his facial features look a little different too, like his bone structure had shifted, making his face look softer, perhaps even somewhat feminine? No, that was just plain crazy.

“Aidan.”

His own name suddenly rang in his head, causing him to stumble back into the wall, and it had sounded an awful lot like it had been Samara who had spoken it. But no, that was impossible. He was still imagining things. It couldn’t be her, it couldn’t. She was gone, banished from his life. As long as he didn’t watch that damn video again, he was safe from her, and her curse. And the replays of it he had in his dreams had never brought her back before, so last night’s nightmare clearly wasn’t the cause.

Taking a few deep breaths to calm himself, he looked back at his reflection again to get yet another surprise. “What the hell!?” he said again, more urgently this time.

It wasn’t just his face and head that were affected. His body was somewhat changed too. While he had never been muscular, he had been in healthy shape. But now his arms and chest had seemed to have lost some of the little muscle he did have, becoming slenderer. The hairs on his arms seemed to have noticeably decreased as well, and even the sprinkle of hair on his chest was significantly less. But perhaps most alarming of all, he seemed to be developing what he believed were called man-boobs.

He stared at his reflection, flabbergasted. Reaching up, he poked his so-called man-boobs. How the hell did he get those? He didn’t have an ounce of fat on him. True, he didn’t really work out, but due to his slender frame, he didn’t really need to. Was it possible that he had been falling out of shape without noticing?

No, surely not. Not noticing gaining a few pounds was one thing, but he would have definitely noticed something like man-boobs developing. He couldn’t possibly have gained weight that fast. And even if that were possible, with how the rest of his body seemed to be even more slender than he remembered, why would he have only gained weight in his chest area like this? They actually looked rather strange on his slim figure.

His mind suddenly went back to steroids. Wasn’t developing man-boobs a possible side effect of them? So was unnatural hair growth or hair loss, if he recalled correctly. If there were drugs in the drinks last night and they were some kind of steroids, then that would explain a few things. But did the effects really happen this fast? They had to be some kind of super steroids.

Maybe there was some new kind on the streets that had been in development or something. Maybe someone at the party was a dealer and decided to test their new product out on the partygoers by spiking the keg. He was just an unfortunate guinea pig experiencing the side effects of the drugs. That made sense and would explain a lot. It might even explain his change in eye color. Perhaps his hallucinations and nightmares were a result of it too. It might even explain why he’d puked up that black sludge.

Deciding to go to the doctor later for a drug test, he began examining the rest of his body to see if anything else had been affected. He frowned when he found that his hips appeared to be wider, and even his dick looked smaller, with his sac shriveled all up as if it were cold out, but it wasn’t. And his legs not only appeared to be slimmer too, but just like his arms and chest, there was less hair on them than he remembered.

“Mine.”

He jolted back as Samara’s voice once again echoed in his head. Damn these drugs, and damn whoever had snuck them into the keg. He hoped they were caught and arrested, maybe he could even sue them. What kind of sicko tested new drugs out at a party like that?

This was all too much to deal with right now. He would worry about this more after his shower. Perhaps getting cleaned up would leave him refreshed and awake enough to think clearer on this. And so, he shuffled over to the shower and stepped inside.

The hot water did indeed make him feel better, and even the effects of his hangover lessened. But then he suddenly realized, the effects had greatly receded already, likely when he had been distracted by the change in his appearance; he definitely needed to look into that. But one thing at a time. Freshen up first, see about Julia, then go see a doctor.

Having just finished washing his hair, which now seemed even longer than when he had seen it in the mirror, he reached for the bar of soap. As he began to lather up his hands, something red dripped on them. He paused, looking down at the red droplet, but it was quickly washed away. A few more droplets dripped down on him though, and they looked like blood.

Hesitantly, he reached up to discover that he had a nose bleed. That was strange, he didn’t get nose bleeds. Was it the drugs in his system? That had to be it. The only other time he could remember getting a nose bleed was back when–

His train of thought was suddenly cut off by a painful sensation in his eye. He stumbled forward, catching himself against the shower wall. The pain in his eye got worse. It was akin to when he got an eyelash in his eye, only worse, much worse. He furiously rubbed at it, but it didn’t help. It felt like he actually had something moving beneath it.

Bracing himself against the shower wall, he turned his face up into the spray, hoping it would clear his eye of whatever was in it. But the water splashing over it only seemed irritate it further. He instead ran his hand over his face to brush away the water and began blinking rapidly to dislodge whatever was in there.

Whatever it was, he could still feel it moving and wiggling around, and he let out a groan of discomfort. But then he finally felt it beneath his lower eyelid, and he reached up and pulled it down. Whatever was in his eye, he felt it come out. And, much to his bewilderment, he heard a buzzing sound. A moment later, a fly took flight, flying off his face and began buzzing around before landing on the shower curtain. He hesitantly reached out to touch it, unable to believe that it had actually come out of his eye, only to pause.

He looked at his hand to see that his skin had taken on an even more grayish color. And his nails, they were even longer than before. As for his hand itself, it looked even more slender, less masculine, the kind of hand he would expect a girl to have. And as he stared at it, his gaze traveled further up his arm to see that the hair on it had disappeared completely.

Suddenly, he was assaulted by a flash of horrific visions, very akin to when he had been dreaming. He stumbled about in the shower, nearly falling over, but managed to catch himself. The moment left his heart racing and his breathing almost hyperventilating. And once again, he heard her voice in his head.

“Aidan.”

Still breathing heavily, he shook his head. Surprisingly, nothing from his hangover hit him, as if it had miraculously cleared up. He had other things to worry about though. As much as he had been in denial before, not wanting to believe the truth, he could no longer pretend otherwise.

“It’s really you, isn’t it?” he asked out loud.

Her whispering voice once again echoed in his head. “Yes.”

Then this wasn’t the result of his PTSD, or even drugs and alcohol. It really was her. It was really Samara.

“It can’t be…” he said to himself, even as he acknowledged the truth.

“It is,” she hissed in confirmation.

No, this couldn’t be. His just couldn’t be. They’d beaten her. He and Rachel had beaten her. They’d broken the curse. They’d locked her out of their lives. She couldn’t be here. So how? How was she here?

“I found a way,” she whispered in his head, seemingly having read his mind.

More images assaulted him. New things now. They weren’t just images though. They felt like full sequences of events being poured into him. They made him confused and disorientated, and he pushed the curtain aside and stumbled out of the shower, not even bothering to turn the water off.

He stumbled over to the sink, supporting himself against it as he stared down at the opening to the drain. It reminded him of the sight of the ring in Samara’s video.

“How?” he gasped out.

“You’ll know everything soon enough,” she replied.

More images flowed into his head. They were repeats of what he saw last night regarding the woman asleep in his bed. The word REBIRTH flashed through his head as the image of Julia flashed back and forth between her and Samara in his mind. And then he was suddenly at last night’s party. Only this time, he was seeing things through her eyes. He saw her watching him. Saw her approach him. Watched as they conversed, as they made their way back to his dorm, as they had sex.

The visions stopped, and suddenly, he understood. “Julia. You used her to get to me.”

“She was the proxy for my rebirth,” Samara told him. “Through her, I found new life. And I found you. And now, Aidan Keller, you are mine.”

More of these visions hit him, flashing violently before his eyes. And then, something else. A series of thoughts and feelings that were not his own began pouring into him, making him feel like his skull was going to split in half. He lifted his head and looked at himself in the mirror, gasping at what he saw.

His features had changed some more. His hair was even longer, now reaching his shoulders. Both of his eyes were now blue instead of the brown they should be, their color darkening further right in front of him until they almost appeared black. And his face. Oh, God, his face. It was still his, but now unmistakably feminine.

“What are you doing to me?” he demanded in alarm.

“I’m taking you, Aidan. Completely. You belong to me.”

Fear gripped him. She’d tried this before. Wanting Rachel as her mother, she had possessed him. But it hadn’t been like this. No, nothing like this. Back then, she had just gotten inside of him and taken control of his body. There had been no physical changes in him from that, his consciousness had simply been put to sleep while she’d taken over. He’d only been able to communicate with Rachel and have awareness through their dreams, telling her what she had to do to exorcise Samara from him, and she’d done it.

This though, this was something else entirely. Last time, she had simply been in possession of his body. He hadn’t undergone any of these bodily changes he was going through right now. And these thoughts and feelings pouring into him, that hadn’t happened last time either.

“You’re trying to possess me again,” he said, trying to understand.

“Possess?” she said, and he felt her curiosity at how he had come to this conclusion. “No, Aidan, you are not being possessed, not this time. You are… becoming.”

Pure dread filled him. “Becoming what?”

To his further horror, his mouth moved on its own, and her voice came out of it. “Me.”

Her response was accompanied by more information, he supposed was the right words for it, flowing into him, and he looked on as his reflection continued to change. His features became even more feminine, to the point where he now looked like a female version of himself, as if he had been born a girl. His hair became longer too. He could actually see as it grew in length, extending before his eyes as it grew down past his shoulders.

Reaching up, he grabbed his long hair, tugging at it hard, and pain went through his scalp, confirming that it was indeed his own actual hair. “This can’t be. How?”

When her response came, it was once more in his head. “You gave yourself to me last night, just as I gave myself to you. We both took each other. I poured myself into you just as you poured yourself into me.”

As she spoke, he remembered her words as they’d had sex the other night for him to take her, for him to become hers. “No, that wasn’t what that was. I never would have…”

“It does not matter what you intended or what you meant, only what you did. We gave ourselves to each other. It is done. There’s no going back now, Aidan. You are mine forever, the two of us united as one for all eternity.”

More of her seemed to fill him, and he suddenly realized that these visions he was seeing were her memories. They along with her thoughts and emotions were flowing into him, having him inherit them one might say. He could feel what she was feeling, and it was terrifying. And the primary driving force she felt was a deep rage and hatred for all of humanity, and an insatiable thirst to torment, to kill, to bring as much pain and suffering to as many people as possible, and the sick delight she took in doing so. And yet, mixed in with it all, there were still some remnants of that little girl she once was that still longed for a mother of her own.

It was all too much, all too overwhelming, and he stumbled back, away from the mirror. He looked down at himself and saw that the rest of his body hand changed even more in addition to his face. No longer did he have man-boobs, but actual breasts. The breasts of a woman. They only appeared to be an A-cup, but he could see that they were still growing in size.

He also saw that his chest was now completely clear of any hair. In fact, it seemed that he had been cleared of all his body hair, save for the triangular patch on his crotch. And just beneath it, he saw that his cock was less than half the size it should be, and seemed to be shrinking further. He grabbed for it on reflex with his now feminine hands, and felt something missing beneath it. His sac was completely gone, and as he felt for it beneath his scrotum, he felt something else in its place. He actually had a pair of vaginal lips between his legs where his sac should have been that were taking form more and more. All the while, his cock not only continued to shrink, it seemed to be getting sucked into his body until it disappeared entirely, now leaving him with entirely female gentiles.

Releasing his new nether bits, he looked back up at his reflection again, watching as he continued to change. On his chest, his breasts had grown further and now seemed to have reached a B-cup in size, and they were still growing. Even his height seemed to have shrunk some. And upon examining his face, he saw that his features were not only that of a woman, but were shifting further to become less like himself even if he had been born as a girl.

“Please, God…” he slightly begged.

“God?” Samara whispered in his head. “God cannot help you. God will not save you. You’re already damned, Aidan. You have been for years.”

“What?” he whimpered in terrorized confusion, and noticed that even his voice now sounded feminine, his tone changing to a higher pitch.

“You passed along a death sentence, Aidan,” she explained. “My curse, you recreated it and gave it to another. That amounted to murder. You sacrificed them, condemned them to die, in your place, and in doing so damned yourself in the process. It is the same for all those who pass on my curse. You all damned yourselves in doing so. There is no longer any divine protection for any of you. Salvation has been lost to you. And now, you, your soul, your entire being, is mine. I have claimed you completely, Aidan. Forever.”

As she told him this, perhaps for the first time, the true ramifications of Samara’s curse and just how inescapable it actually was registered to him. If what Samara said was true, then her video wasn’t just a death curse, it was also a means to damn one’s self of they chose to preserve their life by passing the curse on to someone else. Because she was right, it was giving a death sentence to another person.

It wouldn’t even matter if that person also planned to pass it on as well, repeating the process in a never-ending process to prevent anyone from dying, it was still passing on one’s death sentence to someone else. That meant that there was truly no escaping her curse. One way or another, through death or damnation, the curse would still have a victim.

Julia was different. The knowledge of her case came flowing into him. She had taken the curse upon herself. She’d known what the video was and had willingly copied and watched it herself to save her boyfriend. Holt, that had been his name. This act hadn’t spared her though, but had enabled Samara to take different actions, allowing her to be reborn through Julia, and ultimately find her way to him. And now, she was taking him over.

“Not completely,” she told him. “I am becoming you just as much as you are becoming me. Do not fight it. There is no stopping his, no undoing it. You and I will forever be united. One body, one mind, one soul.”

She was telling the truth in that. He could sense that she was. This wasn’t a possession. Rather, it was a merger. They were coming together, fusing into a single being, becoming one entity. He wasn’t disappearing, he was very much still present, but he was no longer himself, because she was there too, becoming half of him, the being they were merging into being half her and half him. Like a single person with two sets of memories that had lived two separate lives, one his, one hers. They were no longer individuals as Aidan Keller and Samara Morgan, but someone who was a blend of the two.

Or almost anyway. He still remembered everything from his life, and now he remembered everything from her life. But there were now two sets of consciousnesses in his head. Two sets of thoughts, two sets of feelings. But only one could be dominant. Only one will could reign supreme. And more and more, he felt his own shift. His thoughts were becoming her thoughts, his feelings were becoming her feelings, her will becoming his will.

He could feel it happening. His thoughts, his feelings, his personality, his will, all of it was changing. All of it syncing up and falling into alignment with hers, becoming hers, the two of them as one. His desire to remain himself was fading, becoming her desire for them to become one. His individuality, the things that separated him from her and made him Aidan Keller, fading away, becoming her as well, the person he was before becoming a thing of the past. He was truly becoming… her.

“Please,” he begged as the last traces of himself that were still separate from her that were still his own flickered, “don’t do this…”

“It is already done,” she replied, speaking with his mouth. “You are me. I am you. We are each other.”

And they were. As the last traces of the transformation occurred, they looked at themselves in the mirror. No, she looked at herself in the mirror, the two of them fully and completely unified as one. She was still Aidan, she still remembered being Aidan, but now had fully and completely become her. It was just as she said. He was her and she was him, with his will having been completely dominated by her own until his it had become hers as well. He had truly and completely become Samara Morgan.

Internally anyway. And she cocked her head to the side as she examined her new appearance. She was fully and completely a woman, but there were still physical traces of Aidan in her. Appearance-wise, it was as if she were their daughter, a perfect biological blend of the two genetically passed down from parents to child, that was the form in which she now saw in the mirror. Not a child as she had been before, but more along the age of what Aidan had been.

No longer did she resemble a drowned, rotten corpse, but her skin was still a gray color, as if she were someone who had been dead for several days. And if one were to squint, they would be able to just barely make out the dim glow that Aidan had seen emitting from Julia last night surrounding her. Her hair was a dark shade of brown, so dark it could pass for black in most lighting, and while not as long as before, it came down to just beneath her breasts rather than reaching her naval.

When she finished looking her fill, she turned towards the door and stepped forward, her movements almost mechanical. She didn’t even bother to open the door. One moment she had been on one side of it, the next she had been on the other, and she casually made her way through Aidan’s room, pausing at their pile of discarded clothes.

Reaching down, she picked up the white dress she had discarded last night and slipped it on over her head. Her hair had fallen forward to obstruct her face when she bent down, and she didn’t bother to push it aside.

On the other side of the room, the static of the TV continued to broadcast. Her gaze behind her curtain of hair went past it though to the computer. She cocked her head to the side and the screen flashed to life as the device let out its powering on sound as it booted up.

Once it was active, a video file suddenly appeared on the screen. This was instantly followed by the web browser opening, the process happening much faster than it should have. The address bar filled in itself, and YouTube suddenly came up. A moment later, Aidan’s log-in information filled out in the sign-in area, his username and password available to her along with the rest of his memories.

Were Aidan himself, he would have been opposed to what she was doing, tried to stop it even. But no longer, for he was her, feeling the same things, wanting the same things, their wills one and the same. And so, there was nothing to stop the video file that had appeared on his screen from uploading and being posted. And as the video uploaded, it revealed itself to be Samara’s video. The extended version that had manifest for Julia. Only now it was slightly longer still.

Towards the very end, there was an additional couple of seconds of an extra scene that flashed across the screen. A few frames of Samara and Aidan as children facing each other, followed by a few frames of them facing the screen. This was immediately followed by a couple frames of their faces having been split down the middle with the two halves slapped together. Then, finally, it was followed by a few more frames of Samara as she was now before the last few frames of her face still staring at the screen suddenly had their colors inverted to portray an eerie image of her before the final shot of her well appeared and the video came to an end.

As the video finished posting, the webpage jumped to the link, and the video popped up on the website, appropriately title The Ring: Don’t Watch This, because nothing would make people want to do something more than being told they shouldn’t do it. The view count currently sat at 0, but she knew it would only be a matter of time.

Suddenly, there was a stirring from behind her, and she turned to the bed as Julia finally began to awaken. Confused, and disorientated, she began looking around, trying to get her bearings.

“Holt?” she asked, her voice no longer the empty, emotionless tone it had been the previous night.

Her gaze fell upon Samara, who shifted her head enough for her hair to part enough for Julia to see her dark eyes. Julia’s own eyes widened and a scream tore its way out of her, loud enough to shatter glass. A moment later, she dropped back down on the bed, her blank eyes a milky white, her mouth stretched open beyond its limits, her face rotted and twisted into an expression of absolute terror.

Allowing her hair to fall back into her face, Samara turned back to Aidan’s desk. There, off to the side beside his Xbox, was a small picture frame. She walked over to it and picked it up, looking at it through her curtain of hair. It was a picture of Aidan and Rachel, the former of when he was still a child, smiling as his mother, her mother now, hugged him from behind.

“Time to go see Mommy,” she said in a hushed tone.

And this time, she would accept her as her daughter. She would have no choice but to if she wanted to have Aidan in her life in any way, for she was Aidan. They were each other, one and the same. And this time, there would be nothing Rachel could do to get her son back, nothing that anyone could do, because there was nothing to be done; they were eternally inseparable. Samara was well and truly her daughter now.

Letting the picture frame drop to the floor, where it cracked upon impact, she turned and began making her way over to the door. Just like with the bathroom, she didn’t even bother opening the door, and simply disappeared to the other side.

On the desk, the static-filled TV continued to play, while on the computer screen, the view count for the newly uploaded video changed from 0 to 1.

THE END

(A/N: So, was it good? Did I succeed in giving you your horror fix? It certainly had a horrific ending, but then, a lot of horror does. Speaking of which, the movie I saw that reminded me of this story was Together. If you saw that movie, I guess you can figure out why it reminded me of this one due to the similar themes it had. I'm glad it did, because I don't like not writing my ideas for stories, even if I forgot about them. Makes me wonder if I have any other stories ideas locked in my head somewhere that I forgot about. In any case, let me know what you think of this one, I always enjoy feedback.)