Slasher Summer(52)
“There’s a hot straight white couple wandering around,” she added. “You should go for them first.”
And then Jen had the terrible thought that maybe he had. Maybe he’d dispatched Tiffany and Jason already, and the others, and she’d finally gotten her old wish of being the Final Girl. In a lot of slasher films, the Final Girl never knew her friends were dead until she was alone with the killer.
Jen should’ve been careful what she wished for.
She squirmed backward another few paces, and something shifted at her waist.
The knife tucked in her belt.
Heart racing, she made a grab for it. It wasn’t much against that axe, but she could at least stick it someplace that hurt. That should give her enough of a head start to keep running. She just needed him to come closer.
The Slasher paused. He had all the time in the world.
Jen gritted her teeth. She wouldn’t be beat so easily. She had a knife—and her words, which could cut to the bone more swiftly than any blade.
“I did not come back to Cedar Lake so some loser with mommy issues could chase me around the fucking woods. Go to therapy like everyone else,” she spat.
The Slasher calmly cocked his head toward her like a scientist observing a new species of insect. But the gloved knuckles tightened around the axe’s handle, the leather squeaking almost imperceptibly. Good. She was getting to him.
It was time to double down on the insults. “Is your dick so tiny you have to carry an axe to compensate? Put that down and kill me like a real man.”
The axe swayed. Jen put all her strength into ducking out of the way, shrieking as she struck at his arm with the knife.
The back of the Slasher’s axe knocked her wrist, sending the knife flying into the dirt, out of reach. The fucker had faked her out, anticipating her strike. Jen screamed in terror and frustration as her last shred of hope crumbled to dust.
The poets weren’t going to write about her after all. She wouldn’t get her romantic death. Not the drug overdose in a Paris garret or stabbed by a jealous lover in another woman’s bed. Instead, she was going to be butchered senselessly by a rando dressed as the Slasher. In fucking Cedar Lake. So uninspired. So derivative. She’d be memorialized in fucking true crime podcasts instead of the tears of her lovers.
She was so cold, and the blood soaking her T-shirt was scalding hot. “At least make it spectacular, you fucker,” she wheezed.
She imagined Carrie and Tiffany sobbing over her open casket and took comfort in knowing she’d be a beautiful corpse.
The axe swung. Jen jerked backward and lost her footing, blood spurting out of her mouth as her spine arched. She choked on the coppery mouthful, waiting for the impact of the forest floor and the fall of the axe.
But they never came, even though her arms and legs dangled uselessly from her body like she was a marionette. She was suspended in air, a bloody and broken ballerina held aloft by—by what?
She glanced down at herself. A long shape protruded from below her ribs. Not a blade, but a tree, its broken tip dark and glossy. That was her dance partner.
Fucking trees.
The Slasher stood over her, watching impassively from within the depths of his hood, the axe perched on his shoulder. Jen tried to say something witty and cutting, but the words came out as bloody bubbles that drooled out of the side of her mouth. The stars above began to fade, and so did Jen. Her head lolled back, unable to hold itself up anymore. The Slasher nodded once with satisfaction, then turned and silently trudged away, leaving Jen to face the rapidly darkening sky alone.
17
Jason
Jason’s first instinct was to chase after Tiffany when she’d stormed off into the woods. Which made him as angry at himself as he was at her. Though he worried it was his fault she was acting out. Maybe he shouldn’t have been nice to Carrie, but he didn’t think he’d treated her differently than anyone else.
Ah. That was what had upset Tiff. She’d expected him to give Carrie the cold shoulder, even though that photo was ancient history. Jason balled his fists and bit back a growl. Tiffany had made this night all about her when they were supposed to be looking for Mikey.
He longed to be back at the cabin, driving the satisfying weight of the axe into the logs. These days he felt like that wood. Ready to split at his weakest point with the right amount of pressure. Unable to hold it in anymore, he arched his back and let out a roar they could’ve heard across the lake. He threw all the rage and frustration of the past six months into his voice, imagining the lake’s ducks taking off in alarm.
Throat sore and shoulders shaking, he wondered for the hundredth time what was happening to him.
He was sure of one thing: he should’ve never come to the Slasher cabin. He should’ve tried harder to persuade Patrick to hold a reunion elsewhere. And when Patrick refused, he should have stayed away.
See? a little voice in the back of his head scolded. Being the old, obliging Jason had gotten him into this mess. The Jason who’d always given in to others’ desires—like his dad’s and Tiffany’s—to make them happy.
He took the compass out of his jeans pocket and shook the needle as if it could guide him through his existential crisis. Fuck. If he had the compass, then Tiffany didn’t. He’d better stay close in case she got lost. Reluctantly, he trudged off in the direction in which she had gone. He didn’t know whether it was because he truly cared about her or if it was an automatic reflex. There was no reason why it couldn’t be both, he conceded, reassuring himself he was still human and not a monster.