CW: Stalking, General violence, attempted kidnapping
After she had witnessed both Abel and Vinzent’s tape, Viper felt considerably less confident about how she would react to what was displayed in hers. There was only one thing it could be, really. And so, she realised very quickly that ripping off the metaphorical band-aid would be the best solution.
Fishing her tape out from the bunch, she headed off to a further away TreeVee and set to witness what awaited her.
…
The tape starts with Viper, a few years younger, sitting in her room, typing away at some code on her computer. The room is almost entirely shroud in darkness, but it was noticeably a small studio apartment. The file is saved, and dropped into some other tab that was open, before she checks her phone after a notification pings. Before the camera picks up the text on the phone, the footage cuts.
It is replaced by Viper once more, but this time she is walking down a street. An old, beaten-up silver car drives by slowly, and she doesn’t glance at it whatsoever. This footage cuts, but it’s almost as if it’s repeating at first. A few scenes go by in quick succession, Viper walking down the street- a good few years younger, shorter hair, no dyed piece, and that same beaten-up silver car drives by. With each repeat Viper becomes more and more sketched out, her hand grips her backpack straps, her gaze flits around after the car passes by.
…
It’s dark. Night-time. Viper is approaching an apartment complex, the lobby the same one she had witnessed with Abel earlier. She heads inside, goes to check one of the mailboxes. Her mailbox. As she is checking her mail, a car pulls up outside. A silver beaten-up car. A figure in a ski mask gets out, and creeps in through the lobby door.
Somehow, they know the security code.
Just as she closes the mailbox and prepares to turn, the figure grabs her from behind, pressing a cloth against her face. The fight breaks out instantly, Viper starts wriggling for her life, hitting and punching the figure without care for how much they hit her in return.
She starts screaming. It’s the type of scream reserved for someone who truly thinks they’re going to die.
Viper hits the figure, hard, and he drops her. Doors open, and the figure bolts, speeding away in the car. Viper crawls to her apartment, coughing, retching and bleeding from some injuries, and begins sobbing as she closes her front door.
…
Another cut- Viper is packing her belongings. She still bears the injuries, and the footage speeds up considerably through her taking her belongings, and ending on on the doorstep of someone she seems to know.
…
How much more could there be? Viper grits her teeth, preparing for what she hoped was the last part of the tape.
…
The next part is indeed the final part. It shows Viper, as she looks now, surrounded by fast food trash as she sits in her room playing video games. This part is shown as a sped-up montage, of dawn ’til dusk, doing the same thing all day. For days on end.
Viper cuts the tape before it can go any further.
They just had to get in that pure embarrassment in the last part, didn’t they?
Viper flexes her hands, expression dark and miserable, before she winds up and punches the tree in front of her. She doesn’t care that it hurts, but being forced to witness her deepest shame once again for the second time on this train was just plain insulting.
