What this Final Girl does is turn around, scream into his face that she’s so sick of this, that this is ENOUGH, that this is over. And then, in a move not matched in all the years since, not even by Sidney Prescott, not even by slow motion Alice when Pamela Voorhees won’t stop coming at her, not even by Jamie Lee Curtis in that long dark night of Haddonfield, Constance climbs up her slasher’s frontside and because she has no weapon, because she IS the weapon, she forces her hand into her slasher’s mouth, down his throat, and then she reaches in deeper, and comes out with his life pulsing in her fist.
To put it in conclusion, sir, final girls are the vessel we keep all our hope in. Bad guys don’t just die by themselves, I mean. Sometimes they need help in the form of a furie running at them, her mouth open in scream, her eyes white hot, her heart forever pure.
THE INITIATION
The rest of the day blurs past for Jade. It’s like she’s moving at normal speed, but everyone else in the halls and classrooms and cafeteria are superfast ants. Either that or it’s her that’s going slow, her that’s trying to wade through syrup.
In seventh period, probably because he’s tired of teaching the same old history unit—the Shoshone and the Oregon Trail, mining and Drown Town—Mr. Holmes shows them a video he’s taken from the ultralight little airplane he’s been buzzing around in all year, and sometimes parks in the parking lot even though his house is only three blocks away.
Because there are no airspace laws over Indian Lake yet —“But wait, wait,” he says all sad-like—he can drift over to Terra Nova if the wind’s not too bad, report back on the progress of construction. That’s maybe why he built the ultralight in the first place, Terra Nova being his pre-retirement paranoia. But the ultralight’s pretty cool, Jade thinks—it’s pretty much just a sky go-cart. She’s surprised he hasn’t already killed himself with it.
Now that he’s mounted one of the school’s videocameras to the frame, it won’t be long, she imagines. Tilting his fabric wings this way or that for a better angle, a longer shot, that’s a good way to take a header into a flagpole, a tree, the tall brick side of the drugstore, or even just the hard surface of the lake.
Like he’s always saying, though, we all become history at some point or another, right? And, if Jade’s right about there being a final girl in town at long last—if that’s in fact what Letha Mondragon, sitting two rows up and one over, is—then what that means is that a slasher cycle is trying to get started, meaning life’s about to get real cheap around these parts. A lot of people’s insides are about to start being on the out side.
Jade can hardly help smiling. Best graduation present ever.
But it’s not a for-sure thing yet, she reminds herself. It can still be wishful thinking on her part. When you’re wearing slasher goggles, everything can look like a slasher.
What she needs is proof the cycle’s starting, and in the slasher that proof only ever takes one form: a couple of randos getting eviscerated, usually while half-dressed. It’s the blood sacrifice the ritual needs to get going right.
Who will it be, though?
Jade cases history class, looking for any of the telltale signs of impending death: a water bottle sloshing with something a lot harsher than water （check）; a text thread exploding with a party’s address （check）; a pair of pupils dilated well past mellow （check, check, check）; the purple corner of a condom wrapper sticking up from a wallet or purse （it’s already torn, but still: check）。
And—will this slasher be punishing the graduating class due to some long-ago forgotten prank their parents were part of, or will this have more to do with trespassing, with waking something that should have been left sleeping? If it’s the trespassing build, then Camp Blood will probably play a part, since that kind of horror always has tendrils connecting it to the black-and-white past. If the slasher’s here for something the parents have done and know they’ve done, though, then the slasher and the final girl will probably face off at the scene of the original prank, which will most likely be the lake.
Either way works.
Jade can’t help but smile.
“Ms. Daniels?” Mr. Holmes says, reeling her back to class.
“I’m watching, I’m watching,” Jade says, and she sort of even is. On the rolled-in television screen Mr. Holmes has tied the videocamera into, he’s just crossed the opposite shore of Indian Lake, is skimming the top of the pine trees about a quarter mile to the north of Terra Nova.