Duality (slashers x reader)

My head thumped against a hard surface with a clang and I awoke with a loud groan. I felt an itchy pillow below my head that amplified the sound of rocks and gravel below me. Then I felt the motion of this thing hit me all at once, and I realised I was in a van.

'Sorry about that!'

'Fuck's sake, I told you, be careful.'

My body jerked and I immediately shot up when I heard Sam and Amy's voices. The sight of them should have been an expectation of mine but since yesterday, or today I guess, the thought of them made my skin crawl.

I was sat in a rusty blue van driving down a barren road with Sarah, Sam, Amy, and another guy I didn't know yet. Sam sat in the driver's seat with Amy beside him, while Sarah and the mystery guy sat in the back with me. His hair was black, curly and a little matted but his face seemed kind, if a little rugged. He was incessantly sniffing and had a pile of tissues growing around him.

'Are we almost there? Or at least out of this goddamn field?' His voice was nasally and he was clearly suffering from some extreme form of hay fever.

'Yeah, Noah... just a bit longer.' After she said this, Sarah looked at me with a grimace, telling me we obviously weren't.

My mind was swimming with confusion: I was in a van with four other people, in the middle of nowhere, two of which had seemingly tried to attack me earlier. Did this mean they were different in this 'dream state'? It took me a minute to realise exactly what movie I was in but as soon as I pieced everything together, a lightbulb went off in my head; we were all in a beat-down van; we were in the middle of nowhere; we all had on bell bottoms and just a t-shirt or tank top; and all of us were fucking boiling to death. My heart immediately dropped to my stomach and I feared I'd have thrown up if Sarah hadn't spoken to me then.

'So, what did your aunt say when you told her we were doing this?' I had no idea what she was talking about and stared at her blankly for a minute. 'Your aunt. She can't have been happy with you coming out here with us in this.' She gestured to the van then looked back at me.

'Oh yeah, I mean she wasn't thrilled. But she didn't see the van so it could've been worse.' Sarah laughed and nodded and I mentally sighed, pleased my lie had worked. I always had an aunt in these dreams but I'd never met her. I wondered if I would someday.

'Now that Y/N's awake, can we put the music back on? I'm sick of sitting in silence.' Sam peered round his chair at us three in the back, and Sarah nodded.

'Yeah I guess. Put something good on though.'

Amy started rifling through a box at her feet, pulling out a few tapes and reading the labels before finally deciding on one and pushing it into the player. Rainbow promptly started to blast through the van, everyone singing along except Noah who bopped his head along instead, holding a tissue up to his nose.

We drove like this for what seemed to be hours, singing along to Rainbow, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and basically every rock band from the mid-70s. I didn't see much of anything, maybe a patch of taller grass every now and then, but not even a single other car. That is until Sam pulled into a gas station he'd spotted. He hopped out to fill the van up and we all jumped out to stretch our legs a bit.

My feet hit the ground and my legs almost buckled out from underneath me, causing Sarah and Amy to laugh. We walked into the store and were watched by an elderly man at the counter, who seemed to suspect us of something. Sarah and Amy grabbed a few packets of something and multiple cases of beer, while I browsed at the magazines, hoping to catch a date on anything. I picked up a newspaper and read July 12th, 1976. The bellbottoms made sense.