CHAPTER 22
“You should be killed and often, and by someone who knows how.”
—Not Gone with the Wind
The corkscrews finally come into use. While they’re too dull to cause any damage to a human, the ends of the spirals are pointy enough to dig underneath the cover of the vent.
They loosen the paint around the edge and allow enough room for Laurie to dig her fingers into the gap so she can pry the bottom of the cover away from the wall.
The hinges at the top whine in protest, but once I hop up onto the counter and maneuver around Laurie to hold the vent open, it takes us no time to figure out a way to get her into the metal shaft.
Half of her body is hanging out of it when matching screams echo from outside. The muffled Run! that follows them freezes me in place on top of the counter, my hands gripping the bottom of her thighs as my heart leaps up into my throat.
“Fuck,” I breathe.
“Jamie?”
Her head is so far into the vent she probably didn’t hear the sounds, but from the way her body tenses, she definitely heard me.
I know her so well that even though her ass is in my face I can visualize the panic on hers.
It’s only when I hear a dull thud, a pained grunt, that squelching sound that is starting to sound too familiar, that I push with renewed vigor.
What if Heart Eyes comes in here and sees her escaping?
What if I can’t stop him from getting to her?
“Laurie, don’t stop.”
She starts to shimmy the top half of her body farther into the vent, picking up on my urgency.
As expected, her upper-body strength works in her favor, as does the slippery silk of her jumpsuit, and she slides easily across the metal with very little assistance from me.
Her feet are in my face when I stick my head into the vent after her.
It’s dusty, dank, and I can see it isn’t completely smooth like I thought.
There are jagged edges jutting out from where the sections of the vent are welded together, and while I can hear her hiss in pain, she doesn’t stop. She can’t.
“You’re going to get out of here and get help, okay?”
I don’t know whose benefit I’m saying that for, but I pull my shaking fingers from the painted plastic that leaves blood-like stains on my hands and reach down to the counter for something to use as self-defense against whatever—whoever is outside.
Bypassing the abandoned corkscrews and grabbing Laurie’s shoes, I pull them toward me, almost toppling off the counter for my efforts.
I wait until she’s moving more easily through the vent before I push the cover back in place, wincing at the high-pitched squeal of the hinges.
Laurie’s feet disappear into the darkness as I peer through the thin slats of the cover, needing to make sure that whatever happens next, at least she has a chance.
“Jamie, please… Please! Jamie! Jamie!”
Her cries of my name turn into nonsensical pleas, echoing back out and sounding deafening to my ears, but then the desperate calls move farther away.
She’s getting away.
The realization draws a choked sob of relief from my throat that gets drowned out by the long groan of the bathroom door swinging open.
My entire body goes rigid against the wall as the room falls into a heavy, deadly silence.
Look behind you, Jamie.
For the first time tonight, there’s no screaming, no pounding pulse in my head, no sound of metal slicing through flesh.
It feels almost like if I don’t turn around—if I keep my eyes locked on the blood-red wall in front of me, then whoever is standing in the entrance of the bathroom doesn’t exist. If I don’t look, they can’t hurt me.
That’s not true, though.
Jamie, turn around.
I know what happens when you turn your back or close your eyes or curl up in a ball and wish you were somewhere else.
You don’t make it to the credits.
So that’s why I turn and face him.
Heart Eyes stands in the doorway, using a gloved hand to keep the door from swinging closed, but that still leaves the other free to hold the second meat cleaver I’ve seen tonight.
This one, at least for now, is still an unmarked steel rectangle.
And I can’t help but wonder what was used to make that sound before. Did he leave another weapon outside?
Did he leave it in someone outside?
That pink mask, bathed in the glow of the neon light, is just as terrifying up close.
I still can’t see his eyes, but I don’t miss the way his head tilts up to see one of my hands still pressed against the vent.
It must look like I’m trying to take the cover off for myself.
At least I hope that’s what it looks like, and he has no idea Laurie is army-crawling her way farther and farther from this lovesick asshole.
Farther and farther away from being another one of his victims.
I need to draw his attention away from her escape route.
Away from the scratches around the edges of the vent that look like claw marks cutting through the red paint and revealing the brushed metal underneath.
So I jump down from the sink counter, a dull ache throbbing in my feet as I straighten, keeping my eyes on him the whole time.
He doesn’t move. He just stands there, Michael Myers still, and watches me.
I can’t say I have the same composure, my chest heaving, eyes darting across to the two corkscrews left on the countertop that couldn’t do shit anyway. I’m armed with nothing but an encyclopedic knowledge of this exact situation ending in bloodshed and a pair of fucking shoes, and—
The shoes.
I look down at them just as he takes a step forward, off the carpet and onto the tiles, his hand smoothing down the surface of the door when I glance back up at him again.
It’s a long shot. Something that would only be used for a moment of comic relief within an actual slasher.
An absolute fluke completely reliant on my pitching skills, which haven’t been required since my high school softball days.
Batting was always my strong suit anyway.
Regardless, as he takes another step forward and the door swings closed behind him, I wrench my arm back and hurl Laurie’s shoes at his head.
The shoes fly across the space between us, the heels aimed straight for those heart-shaped holes. They almost meet their mark, smacking against his chin and eliciting a sound of pain that’s muffled by the closed zipper across his mouth and—Holy shit, it actually worked.
He stumbles back, falters against the door, but as the heels fall to the ground with a heavy thud he’s already straightening.
I think it was more surprise that sent him backward than any skill on my part.
When he steps over the shoes at his feet, his gloved hand raising the meat cleaver into clear view, he doesn’t need to say anything for me to know he’s pissed.
This is our first lover’s spat.
He barrels toward me, slamming into the tampon machine when I veer to the right at the last possible moment and throw myself into the closest stall.
A spray of superabsorbent torpedoes shoots out and hit his chest when he pushes off the machine, his pink-covered head jerking toward me as he resituates the cleaver more comfortably in his hand.
This is the closest we’ve ever been. The clearest view I’ve had of him.
And my eyes must have been playing tricks on me when I saw him gutting the guy up on the mezzanine.
He looks shorter, smaller, not as big and broad as I expect a bogeymen to be, but maybe that’s just the magnification of fear.
Because the mask, the too-big jacket, the baggy black coveralls, the knife—they’re still very much the same as what I saw in the hallway upstairs.
I slam the door in his face when he lunges for me, flicking the lock into place and climbing onto the toilet seat.
There’s one moment of gratitude to the universe that the stall doors extend too close to the ground for either of us to crawl under, and they reach too high for him to climb over, before all the sounds of the bathroom rouse together to form a terrifying symphony.
One that could become the soundtrack to my demise.
The cleaver he’s holding clangs against the door as he throws his body against it.
It shakes from the power of his ramming, the hinges scream, and my heart beats so loud it’s like a war drum over the top of it all.
If he manages to bust this door down, my options are limited.
No scenes are coming to mind, and if they did, they aren’t going to have any satisfactory outcomes for me.
I could throw myself over the wall into the next stall, but the door is open, and by the time I find my feet, either he’ll be in there with me or I’ll just have the same problem in a different location.
I gauge the gap between the ceiling and the stall anyway, but when I do, I realize I have the same issue as the vent situation.
Laurie could fit through the space, but I’d get stuck.
The door continues to heave under the strain of Heart Eyes’s continuous battering, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. There’s nothing in the stall I can use to defend myself, not even a toilet brush. I’m completely alone, completely unarmed, completely fuc—
The banging stops.
The only sounds left are the throbbing of my pulse between my ears and a final impetuous smack of Heart Eyes’s hand against the door. I force myself to get my breathing back under control, and the reprieve allows me to consider the situation Heart Eyes has put us both in with a little more clarity:
If I’m the Final Girl, this can’t be the final showdown.
It doesn’t have the makings of a finale. It’s too early, it’s not “grand” enough, there’s—hopefully—still a lot of people alive.
He’s either just playing with me, testing my aptitude to be his Leading Lady, or my name on the dance floor was a red herring. And that thought sucks the air out of my lungs.