<< INSIDE - KELLY AND ERIKA'S DORM ROOM -- NIGHT >>

Erika paces the room back and forth as Gennard sits on her bed, hands clasped, elbows on his knees.                     

He listens as she rants swinging wildly from frustration to grief.

ERIKA

“...They asked me all these questions. She's come over here at night to study a million times, there's no way anyone could have known. This is the friggin safest campus on the planet. Pasha said she saw a great grief coming, but I thought she was just talking about me flunking my midterms or something-”

GENNARD

“Wait?  What?”

Gennard sits up alert.

GENNARD

“You're still talking to that wannabe psychic lady?!”

Erika stops pacing and faces Gennard, arms folded over her chest defiantly.

ERIKA

“I only talk to her a few times a week.”

GENNARD

“A few times a week?!”

She snaps back.

ERIKA

“She's been right about a lot of things like how successful my hair business would be.”

Gennard shakes his head side to side as if to say "no way".

GENNARD

“Parlor tricks and guessing. Those people are dangerous. Crooks at best and at worst talking to demons that can attach themselves to you with one of their "readings".”

He makes air quotes as he wrinkles his nose up in disgust. Erika cuts her eyes and turns away.

Gennard takes a breath for a moment then softens his tone.

GENNARD

“Erika, C'mon…”

He reaches up and tugs gently on her elbow.

Erika loosens her folded arms and turns to face him.

He takes her by the hands and pulls her to sit down next to him, putting his arm around her shoulders. She buries her head in his shoulder for a moment.

GENNARD

“Maybe we should go down to the bonfire.”

  Hair covering most of her face, Erika just shakes her head. She wipes a tear from her eye.

ERIKA

“I can't be around all those people right now.”

They sit in silence for a moment. She stands up and takes him by the hand.

ERIKA

“Let me oil your scalp. I need to do something. Come. Sit.”

She motions her head over to The Chair.

Reluctantly, he gets up and sits in The Chair.

She takes a bottle from her dresser, pours some oil into her palm, and begins to massage his scalp.

Slowly, a sinister look comes over her face. Her hands move from his scalp to the nape of his neck, then his shoulders. His eyes close as she massages deeper.

Suddenly she mounts him.

She grabs his head and begins to kiss him passionately. Lost in her kisses, he grabs a hold of her waist.

She grips one side of The Chair back with her left hand and pulls the adjusting lever bar with the other, reclining The Chair with a jerk. She straddles him, kissing his neck.

His eyes still closed, she starts to undo his belt.

GENNARD

“Erika...wait...we can't…”

She presses against him more forcefully. Pulls on his lower lip with hers as she kisses him, and whips his belt from its loops completely off with one motion.

She moans low.

ERIKA

“We need to feel good. Make me feel good.”

Suddenly, her voice has the raspy deep tone of a man.

ERIKA

“I can make you feel good.”

Gennard startles upright and grabs her shoulders.

He looks into her face and only the whites of her eyes are showing!

He stares at her in horror as her arms fall limp and hang at her sides like a puppet on unmanned strings.

Her body twitches in short jerks as her eyes roll around like marbles, rolling back into place and stopping abruptly, one after the other like slot machine cherries.                         

Her large black dilated pupils stare lifelessly back at him.

GENNARD

“No!  No, no, no.  What the- no-”

He shoves her off of himself, pushing her into the dresser, and bolts for the door holding up his pants, which are falling at the sides.

IN THE HALLWAY

Someone watches from the corner stairwell as Gennard bolts out of the door struggling to rebutton his pants.

As he runs down the hall, the shadow of the onlooker shrinks back between the stairwell double doors, watching Erika lean blankly against the dresser.

<< INSIDE - OUR LADY OF SORROWS CHURCH - CONFESSIONAL BOOTH >>

Gennard sits in the confessional booth with one hand against his head, just shaking his head looking lost. 

OTHER SIDE OF THE BOOTH

Father Holloway leans toward the partition in the confessional booth listening to utter silence from the other side. 

FATHER HOLLOWAY

“Son?.... Son?”

Father nods to himself and purses his lips with understanding.

FATHER HOLLOWAY

“Maybe we should just sit and talk?”

A small affirmative squeak that sounds something like "uh huh" comes from the other side of the booth.