CHAPTER 34
“Murder me, because I’d like to date you.”
—Not The Proposal
I wasn’t wrong. This night has been following the slasher formula perfectly. Sometimes a killer needs someone to help see their plan to fruition. Teamwork makes the dream work.
“You’ll be a disappointment, just like the others, and then I’ll be the One.”
The One. It seems we’re back in rom-com territory, because who better to assist a psycho in their murderous love quest than another psycho who wants to prove they’re their perfect match?
“Jamie?”
I look up and see Wes a few feet away from me. I’ve backed away and didn’t even know it. My stake is at his feet, and I should grab it, but he’s closer. He’s armed and he’s staring right at me, chest heaving, eyebrow quirked expectantly.
When it’s not two bros bonding over a massacre (if we ignore the homoerotic overtones in Scream), there’s a whole catalog of slashers where a woman tasks a lovelorn suitor with the heavy lifting of their killing spree.
It always backfires, of course, and there’s some confrontation where the suitor becomes disposable after they’ve served their purpose.
Despite their undying love, they meet a gruesome end…
like dying on top of a pressed-metal bar.
“There’s always two,” I say again. Louder, more forceful. Pain spears through one of my fingers. My hands are gripped so tight one of my nails—that have held up well given the circumstances—bends and breaks. They’re not the only thing holding on by a thread.
“Billie couldn’t have done all of this alone.”
And she wouldn’t have. Not for me. And it has always been about me.
Wes pauses, his face hard as he presses his palm against his ribs again, like he’s steeling himself—or is he just upset that his role in this may be revealed too soon? Was that why he attacked Billie? Because she was about to give away the ending?
After a stunted breath he nods. “I agree. That’s why we need to—”
“What?”
I can’t make my tone soft. I can’t revert to the way I usually talk to him.
The way I was always tempted to speak quieter to make him lean in because I liked having him in my space.
Because having him close made my pulse race and my skin prickle, and—what if I was just misreading all of that? What if I’ve misread everything?
He’s breathing heavily now, and I can’t tell if it’s from his ribs or if it’s because I’m uncovering the plot a little too early for his liking. Before he can take this from slasher back to rom-com. There aren’t any roses or messages to accompany this latest kill, and that’s off-brand.
“We need to stick to the plan and set off the alarms.” His voice is raspier than it has been the entire night.
He makes sure he looks me right in the eye, doesn’t dare to blink, and that should put me at ease, but the effect of “attraction under aversive conditions” has fully dissolved now.
We are firmly removed from “afraid and horny” and right on into “blinded by fear.”
“We need to set them off to let people know we’re here.”
“Or so you can draw the others out?” I ask, and watch as comprehension crosses his eyes. He straightens, winces, starts to shake his head even as I take another step away. “So that it can just be you and me? So that we get the right ending?”
When it comes to Wes, I have never not felt safe.
Not until now. Not now that I look back on the night with the knowledge there are two killers and realize Wes had the means and the opportunity to commit at least half of these murders.
Not when I’m disgusted with myself because I should have known better than to be seduced by some nice words and unbroken eye contact.
I know you never trust the love interest. I know that.
“Jamie, you’re scared. You’re not—”
“Do not tell me I’m not thinking straight.”
He doesn’t. Instead, he starts talking to me in that coaxing murmur again, but this time it just makes my stomach twist sharply.
“I’m scared, too.”
I haven’t known him long enough for my heart to break, but that thread that’s been pulling me toward him certainly threatens to snap because it is so unfair, cruel even, to use that voice on me right now.
“Jamie, please—” My breath stops when he reaches for me, and even when I step back again, I can’t force the next inhale down past my throat.
I try to recall the way Billie and Wes have interacted all night to see if there was something I missed.
Something that will act as clear evidence in determining his innocence or his guilt, but all I can see is that calculated smirk and wink before he ran for her.
And the more I think about those facial expressions, the more warped they become in my mind until she may as well have been standing on a London stoop in the snow holding a cardboard sign that says To Me, Wes Is the Perfect Accomplice.
When we were first on this mezzanine, when he was patching up my arm and we were discussing our theories, he said the killer was doing this for the One.
Billie just said that was what she wanted to be.
The singular, perfect, predestined One.
They both said it.
“I know so much crazy shit has happened,” Wes pants, dropping his hand to his ribs when I don’t reach back for him. His shoulders rise and fall with the force of his breaths, and I can’t figure out if this is him getting riled up. Is he getting ready to put that knife in my chest if I reject him?
“But you need to trust m—”
“No, I don’t.” I stare at him as blood rushes between my ears, syncopated with the sound of someone breathing in quick, short, panicked pants. Me. I’m the one who’s about to hyperventilate, but I also feel kind of removed from it. Removed from all of it. “I don’t need to trust you.”
I don’t know what to do. For the first time tonight, I have no idea what the next logical step is. Even when I was being chased and cornered and terrorized, there was always something that would come to mind, but now everything is blurred by panic and hurt and shame and… What if it is him?
Less than an hour ago, he had me pressed against a wall and… Oh my god. The rules do apply. We had something close to sex and now I’m going to die.
“Please, Jamie.” He looks at me with this crestfallen face that compels me to move back to him, to consider that maybe this is an overreaction, but I’d rather overreact than end up dead because I assumed a man who kissed me wasn’t capable of killing me.
“I just want us to get out of here… I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”
I’m tempted to retort that if he wants that he should stop hurting people, but I can’t make my mouth work. I don’t know what to do. I can’t keep standing here. I can’t fight him. So that leaves me only one option.
Understanding dawns across his face, panic fills his eyes when he realizes my intention.
“Jamie, don’t…”
The last time he said that he ended up kissing me three seconds later, but this time I’m running away before he can move toward me. We’re in the third act now and alliances mean shit here, even if they’re sealed with a kiss, because the thing about being a Final Girl?
They always end up alone.
I don’t stop.
Not when I pass the hallway where I first saw Heart Eyes and spy the body still discarded at the end of it, or when the cuts in my feet open up again and make each step unbearable.
Not until I find myself in the hallway John must’ve turned down earlier in the night and see the stairs that brought him back to us on the dance floor.
I don’t go down them; I don’t want to go anywhere near the dance floor, but I have a clear exit if Wes comes looking for me.
The idea he could come looking for me—hunt for me—makes the espresso martinis threaten to make a full reappearance. I push myself up against the wall and force myself to breathe. I need a clear head and my full aerobic abilities to figure out how the hell I’m going to end this once and for all.
Because I am going to end it. I have to. I can’t deny it any longer. The movie only concludes when the lead fully embodies their character arc, when the Leading Lady gets her man, or the Final Girl… well, she gets her man, too.
They always do.
But, an insidious voice at the edge of my mind reminds me, you are not them.
I’m not the jaded, levelheaded Final Girl and I’m not the plucky, free-spirited Leading Lady.
Right now, I’m just a woman trying to survive the night.
And even before this I’ve just been trying to survive in a world that wants women to play the role of one of a few outdated archetypes.
It’s taken a lifetime to learn how to tread the line between “not enough” and “too much,” years to memorize what it takes to be a Leading Lady and a Final Girl, and one night to force me to choose whether I’m capable of being either…
I really would be one of a kind if I could be both.
One of a kind and just my type.
The sound of Wes’s exasperated, awed voice is hard to forget, and I press my palm against my chest as it tightens at the memory.
I hear an unnatural crackle and slip my fingers into the neckline to touch paper.
The two match cards are still in my bra and I pull them out, trying to make my trembling fingers straighten the sweat-dampened cards without ripping them.
I alternate between the one with the male names and the one with the female names to try to figure out who I know is gone and who could still be out somewhere in the club.
The familiar names conjure a montage of brutal scenes, an “in memoriam” of who isn’t making it out of this club.
Curtis
Drew
Colette
John
Campbell
Dani
Stu
Jennifer
Billie
Then there’s the woman we found next to Drew. The guy at the end of the corridor.
Eleven people.
Then there’s the “others.” The ones I haven’t seen since the speed dates, the ones who, I hope, are hiding if they’re not the two bodies we found.
Lee, Michael, Jason, Ari, Nia, Niamh, Ellen, and Shelley.
Not to mention the host, the two bartenders, and the coat check attendant. If I get out of here I’ll learn their names, I’ll commit them all to memory, because they deserve more than being an unnamed victim at the end of the call sheet.
I move past Laurie’s name when I catch it under my own on the match card.
I can’t think about her right now unless it’s the mantra I’ve been repeating over and over since I watched her slide through that vent: she’s okay.
She’s outside. She’s getting help and soon we’ll be back together relinquishing last cans of sparkling water and arguing over my dissertation.
God, my dissertation. To think that was the biggest concern in my life a few hours ago, and now I’m using those years of research to work my way through a real-life slasher.
If I get out of here—when I get out of here—I will just write the damn thing.
I’m not going to doubt my ability to write about genre theory ever again. That’s for damn sure.
Slipping the male date card back on top, I see Wes’s name.
I brush my thumb across the ink and tears pool at the edges of my eyes when I think of the way he kissed me, touched me.
How even after I ran away from him, I can’t fully convince myself he’s the one who’s doing this.
I can’t even begin to comprehend how stupid it is that I’m crying over a boy while there’s a killer on the loose.
Especially if the boy and the killer are the same damn person.
But now that the panic frenzy has passed, now that I’ve had a moment to breathe and I can push the image of Billie’s body splayed across the bar out of my head…
I release a breath.
There is a pretty good chance I might’ve fucked up.
Wes was right next to me when Heart Eyes lodged an ax in Stu’s skull and then wrenched it back out. Billie couldn’t have physically accomplished that. She definitely wasn’t as tall and broad as whoever did.
While the part of me that’s been able to recall so many slasher scenes tonight insists I can’t fully discount Wes until the killer is unmasked, I can’t ignore the feeling in my gut that tells me it’s not him.
Not when my brain brings other images of Wes to the forefront of my mind; pleasant, rose-colored recollections of what he’s said and done tonight that makes the hook in my chest pull.
You’re my type, Jamie. You’re one of a kind and just my type.
What if my complex has led me to believe a man is more likely to murder me than want to be with me?
That’s when I know I must be crazy. Because I’m not just afraid he could be the one who’s committed all these murders tonight; I’m afraid that if my intuition and my eye-fucking preferences are correct, I might have just messed up my chances at that real date if we get out of here.
And right now, I can’t tell which would be worse.
So instead, I focus on trying to figure out how many men are still left.
Because I’m certain Billie would only be doing this with a man—for a man. That, I would stake my life on. She proved time and again tonight that she wasn’t a girl’s girl, and she said it herself: after she killed me, she was going to be the One.
It’s a concept I’m more than familiar with, and when I think about the way Billie called me a means to an end, a disappointment waiting to happen, I know Wes and I were right. Billie thought—the other killer thinks—they’re in a rom-com. I just don’t think Billie was happy with her role.
That makes two of us, I think, but before I can keep feeling sorry for myself, movement at the bottom of the stairs pulls my eyes from the card, draws my heart up into my throat.
A shadowy figure blends in with the darkness.
An abstract silhouette that wouldn’t be out of place in Lights Out, and I can’t help but think it would be the cherry on top of the never-ending shit sundae of this night if I have to start dealing with a goddamn haunting as well as a killer.
The shape moves up the stairs, becomes more human, and I have to stop thinking this shit into existence because as the shadow ascends each step I realize…
It’s John.