Say her name three times, just to look her in the eye. You’ve called her from the mirror, and now you have to die.
It was just a bit of fun. No-one really believed in Blanca Mortons, but had you really even done your last year in social studies and psychology without investigating the most popular campus legend?
Jaz’s beer bottle clinked against the porcelain of the sink, the sound mingling with the blue-grey fug of smoke hanging in the air. Overhead, one of the lights flickered on and off.
“Pass us a cig,” said Ivan.
“Getcher own,” Valerie sniggered, spinning the glowing butt of her cigarette between her fingers. Hot ash scattered across the floor, under the grimy stall doors.
Ivan scowled and dug through his rucksack. “You wanna be “fun time” or “feeling lucky”? he asked, waggling a Sharpie.
Jaz’s sigh was nearly drowned out by the pipes rattling as something passed through them, on to parts unknown.
“Can we just...?” She waved a half-filled beer bottle at the dingy mirrors lining the wall, positioned in a haphazard line above the sinks. The one at the end was broken, cracks skittering across its surface like a tangled maze of spider silk.
“Oooh, can we just?” Valerie warbled in a mocking falsetto.
“Shut it, computer-girl.” Jaz’s smile took the edge off the words, and she passed another bottle to Valerie. “Bet you get spooked first. Won’t last two minutes.”
“Ayyyy,” Valerie blew a cloud of smoke in Jaz’s direction and leaned back against a stall door that proclaimed in roughly scratched letters HV’s eternal love for BM. “Well, go on then.”
“Man, all your ninnyhammering’d make people think we’re in a hurry.” Ivan tapped Valerie on the shoulder, triumphantly snatching the half-finished cigarette from her hand while she was distracted. “We’ve got all night. Not like the teachers are gonna come barging in or something.”
Jaz wrinkled her nose and waved a hand, leaving tiny trails of clear air dancing among the clouds of smoke. “Thank god for that; this place reeks like a club.”
“Oooh! We should have brought glow-sticks!”
Ivan rolled his eyes. “I doubt Blanca Mortens would be impressed by glow-sticks.”
“Right, right. The whole ‘no eyes’ thing. Right.” Despite the nervous tremor in her voice, Valerie was leaning forwards, one foot bouncing on the tiles. Her eyes flickered between the mirrors. “How’d she lose them again?”
“No-one knooooows...” Jaz’s words were accompanied by spookily waggling fingers, although the effect was somewhat undercut by the lack of a torch held under her chin. High-school toilet lighting, even with erratic flickering, just didn’t have quite the same effect. “Buuuut I’m pretty sure she was born like that. Freaky, right?”
“I think it’s more the whole ‘murders people who summon her’ thing is what makes Blanca Mortens creepy AF. Weird eyes are just... weird.”
“Point.”
Silence filled the room, sinking into the tiles and latching its claws onto the walls. It hung like a fat spider, watching three juicy flies standing on the edge of its web, egging each other on. Three pairs of eyes watched the mirrors.
“She doesn’t actually murder people, right?” But Jaz’s eyes had a certain light to them, one that suggested that even if Blanca Mortens killed people and wore their skins as a snazzy motorcycle jacket, she’d still want her to appear. Provided she didn’t kill Jaz, naturally.
“Don’t be a baby. There’s never been an actual verified case of someone dying from summoning Blanca Mortens.”
As Ivan spoke the cursed name, in the mirror, in the shadowy gap of a half open stall, Jaz caught a glimpse of a shadowy figure, long dark hair obscuring its face and then the lights went out.
A hand gripped Jaz’s shoulder, nails digging into her skin like knives. She shrieked, flailing at the spectre of Blanca Mortens that danced easily between the shadows of the bathroom and her mind.
Ivan leaped backwards as the light vanished, crashing into a stall door just as a banshee scream echoed around the room. The noise rattled his teeth - or perhaps that was the concussion talking - sparks erupting before his eyes in a veritable inferno, brilliant yet illuminating nothing. Blanca Morten’s maddened cackling filled his ears.
He reached blindly forwards, shards of bones crunching underfoot. Blanca Morten’s previous victims, and soon he would join them.
Jaz’s ears were filled with the wild symphony of her thundering heart, the shrill treble of her own echoing scream coming in as a piercing crescendo. The hand had vanished, but she still felt its presence. It’s owner’s presence. She was her. Blanca Mortens was here.
Her hand knocked against something cold and smooth. She jerked away, stumbling in the dark, her arms pinwheeling but meeting only emptiness. Another scream was building up inside her. She could feel it burning her insides like lava, rising inexorably up, up, up until—
The lights went on.
Ivan and Jaz froze like rabbits caught in the middle of a highway with a sixteen wheeler bearing down, high-beams on and engine roaring.
Darkness resolved itself into dim shadows crouched in the corners - fantasy condensed into reality. Shattered bones became broken glass, beer bottles dropped and splintered on the ground. Jaz clutched at the sink, where condensation gathered on the gentle curves of beer bottles nestled in half melted ice. The mad laughing continued to ring around the room, before slowly petering out as Valerie’s breath ran out and she bent double, clutching at her knees and wheezing.
“Your faces. You see your faces!”
“That was— you— what—“ Ivan, beet red and leaning heavily against the puke green walk of the bathroom stall, spluttered indignantly.
Jaz’s face was tight, her lips pulled into a thin line as her mind analysed the situation. All at once, her face split into a huge grin.
“Haha! Holy shit, that was brilliant! High five!”
Valerie grinned, leaning back against the door. “And you thought I would be the one to freak out.”
“Ha. Ha. I told you she wasn’t real. Ha.”
The two girls rolled their eyes. “Sure, Ivan.”
