The question that’s never answered here though is why the slasher DOES this, which I’m sure you’re right now asking out loud at your desk. Well, WHY he does and HOW he learns all these knot tying and spring loading bodies from ceilings tricks, but if you start thinking like that then Michael Myers would never have learned to drive the car he steals to get back to Haddonfield, and nobody wants to have to think like that, sir. Especially not Yours Untruly.
But there is a reason the slasher does this kindness, sir, but since I’m nearly at my 2 page limit here I’ll save that for a My Bloody Valentine to you, I think. But don’t feel cheated either. Really, I’ve put my own beating heart into every one of these already.
DON’T GO IN THE HOUSE
In A Nightmare on Elm Street, after Rod’s been jammed up for Tina’s murder, he doesn’t know not to fall asleep. So, when he does, Freddy’s able to twist a sheet into a noose and hang him, make it look like a suicide, which is pretty much an admission of guilt as far as the cops and parents are concerned.
Nancy knows better.
So does Jade.
All night in her cell, each time her head started to nod forward into sleep, she’d jerk awake, check the bars and cinderblocks for a hidden face, watch the drain in the middle of the floor for bladetips reaching up. And it’s not just Freddy to watch for in a place like this. Wishmaster could step into the passage between the two cells, use his drug dealer voice to ask her if she’d like to walk through these solid bars to freedom, and if Jade was tired enough, she might not remember to word this wish with utmost care, and end up being pulled like taffy through the steel bars.
No thank you.
It’s so hard to stay awake without a phone, though. Without a spear to stab trash with. Without Holmes sad-ranting about Terra Nova. Without a videotape playing. Without Fugazi leaking into her ears. Without Letha screaming to fill the night.
It had been glorious, though, hadn’t it? And—the way she stabbed her hand up, plucked that machete down from the heavens by the handle. If she’s not a final girl, then there never was a final girl, and Jade’s wrong about everything.
But no way is she wrong.
Jade stands, paces the meager length her cell affords, tries to grim her eyes down like a real convict but it’s hard to maintain while doing the pee-pee dance. There are no facilities in the two cells, just a chamberpot from, she’s guessing, 1899.
Henderson and Golding themselves probably took turns pissing into it.
So far, Jade’s been granted access to the ladies’ room up front. But that was only one trip, and that was a lunch tray ago, which included two boxes of apple juice.
More pressing, if it’s halfway through Thursday afternoon —and she’s pretty sure it is—then that means the massacre is seriously looming.
“Sheriff! ” Jade yells, and it’s like she’s yelling into a megaphone while also being in that same megaphone. Before the first call’s even echoed away, she’s saying it again, and again, louder and louder, until a key announces itself in the lock, giving her a chance to stop before the door opens.
Hardy saunters in, one side of his face printed with the ghost of a backwards “4”： he was asleep on his desk calendar.
“I’m thinking you need to charge me or let me go,” Jade informs him, digging hard in her Law & Order dictionary.
Hardy breathes in deep, lets it out slow.
“How was the bologna?” he asks, then before Jade can get a comeback together, he’s already following up: “There’s an old song by Tom T. Hall about getting hot bologna every day of his stay here in the greybar hotel.” Hardy pats the cinderblock up high as if confirming its solidity. “He comes to like it.”
“What am I being charged with?” Jade asks, trying to lock him in her glare.
Hardy chuckles, strings his keys out from his belt, hauls Jade’s door open, grandly presenting the outer world to her.
Jade steps through, not trusting this even a little.
Hardy rubs his mouth so he can smile behind his hand.
“This is for your own good,” he finally says.
“Being locked up?”
“Your dad let me see your bedroom.”
“What? He let you in the house?”
“Why wouldn’t he? But it’s official now, Jade, sorry. You’re a runaway.”
“I’m almost eighteen.”
“Which means… let me do the math here, let me do the…
does that mean you’re still seventeen, and subject to a whole different set of laws?”