Chapter 16 Jen
Jen
“Patrick?” Jen said.
A rustle whispered in her ears. It might have been a breeze, it might have been someone creeping in the brush. Jen held her breath, torn between wanting to call out and wanting to hide.
Patrick wouldn’t have skulked away to look for Mikey on his own without saying something. She loved to tease him about his many character quirks, but being an asshole wasn’t one of them.
Unless he actually was a psycho killer like she’d joked.
She slowly spun around, searching the shadows for Patrick’s familiar outline. Coarse tree trunks striped the night, and without much light she couldn’t tell how far away any of them were. Her field of vision had gone flat.
She stopped, slightly dizzy and regretting the spin, because now she didn’t know where she’d started from. Fuck. She tucked the flashlight under her arm and dug in her shorts for the compass.
Which, like Patrick, was gone.
She remembered with sickening clarity that he’d been the last to hold it. “Fuck!” She kicked at a dark shape, assuming it was a fallen log, not caring if anyone heard her. It disintegrated satisfactorily into splinters.
She slipped out her phone and prayed for a miracle.
None were forthcoming. Her battery was at its last gasp.
Not that it mattered. No phone, no data connection, so she couldn’t use GPS.
Why the fuck had she joined the local NIMBYs in protesting the building of a new cell tower when she was in high school?
Every other teenager in town had been all for it, but at the time she’d wanted to have places she could sneak off to without Daddy tracking her location.
There was nothing to do but keep going. Jen was fairly sure this was the direction in which she’d started—on the left side of the splintered log.
She and Patrick had been walking for about a half hour.
She had to be close. She’d keep going forward and hopefully she’d hear cars going down the highway soon.
Her hope was as faint as the moonlight seeping through the canopy, but it was all she had to cling to, besides the knife.
It was an unfamiliar feeling. Jen’s lizard brain had always been more fight than flight.
More into fucking than fearing. But now that she was in near-total darkness, holding only a knife in the wild, her brain told her that terrible things were waiting for her in the woods.
Another rustle sounded somewhere behind her.
Heart pounding, Jen dared to whisper, “Patrick? Mikey?”
Only the mocking call of a whippoorwill answered. Jen clutched the knife close to her chest like a prayer and crept forward a few more steps. Her lizard brain told her she was just a girl in the woods, surrounded by potentially dangerous men.
A shadow stirred out of the corner of her eye. “Daniel? Russ?”
The movement had been only her imagination, or the trees shifting in the light wind. Jen gulped a breath of cedar-scented air, and a giggle escaped from her tense diaphragm. “Timmy?”
The Slasher’s real name should’ve reminded her how ridiculous this all was, but her fears got the better of her. What if Freddy was right? What if Russ Meachum was another homicidal creep with mommy issues like Timmy Thompson and Jason Voorhees?
Something stirred out of the corner of Jen’s other eye.
She resisted the urge to turn on her flashlight.
Otherwise she might as well put up a flashing neon sign pointed straight at her.
Victim Here. A young woman wandering alone in the woods was definitely a movie slasher magnet.
Like brash Heather, whom Jen had played at the Rialto.
The defiant bad girl had disregarded her friends’ warnings and gone off by herself to have a smoke.
Jen almost expected an audience to yell Bitch!
as she crept through the woods. The thought made her bristle but also reminded her of who she was.
A bitch, yes. Not a victim. She was Jennifer de la Fuente, badass goth artist. This kind of atmosphere was her element.
Would Mary Shelley have been afraid of a few shadowy trees?
She’d fucked Percy on her mother’s grave, as legend had it.
You couldn’t get more goth than that. Jen would gladly fuck someone on her own mother’s grave, just to show Mom once and for all that she was never going to be a perfect little princess like Tiffany.
“Who’s got mommy issues now?” Jen muttered to herself.
And then she laughed out loud. Here she was, the town misfit roaming the woods at night with a butcher’s knife.
Anyone in the woods should be afraid of her.
Jen’s spine straightened. Let Russ or Daniel or any knife-waving screw-up come at her. She was ready for them. She’d always been a little pissed that she never got to play the Final Girl at the Rialto, but she realized now that she’d never been Final Girl material.
She had the potential to be the killer.
“You’d better run,” she announced, flicking on her flashlight, imagining dumb teens scattering like cockroaches. “Because here comes the real Slasher. Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair.”
The flashlight’s glow carved out the space in front of her like she was viewing it through an eighties soft focus lens.
The killer’s POV, outlined by the eyeholes of his mask, or the slats of a closet door or horizontal blind.
The shadows beyond merely became part of the scenery framing Jen’s hiding place.
There was power in not being seen until the last minute.
That was the joy of being a slasher. Not the killing itself.
The voyeurism was heady. Jen was the one behind the camera, searching for her first victim.
Maybe it would be Mikey. Or maybe she’d stumble on Jason hooking up with Tiffany, just like Derek and Cindy in Slasher.
Or maybe it would be Jason with Patrick. Wouldn’t that be an unexpected twist.
Elevating mundane lives to grim tragedy—that was more glorious than Jen’s usual playbook of breaking hearts and taking names. She grinned maniacally, holding the flashlight arrow-straight in front of her, ready to spotlight her unsuspecting victims.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” she crooned.
A tall, dark figure stepped out from behind a tree.
Jen’s body went rigid, and she snapped out of the imaginary horror movie she’d been starring in. “Patrick?”
The figure didn’t move, as frozen as she was. Because she was sneaking around the woods with a knife, Jen reminded herself gleefully.
She didn’t lower the knife, enjoying the moment of power. Directing the flashlight at the person’s face, she stepped closer. They didn’t flinch. Jen expected to see someone she recognized—Patrick, Mikey, even Ranger Russ—but the features were smooth and blank.
Like a mask.
The smooth, white mask of the Slasher.
Jen’s scalp prickled. The person had gone all out with the cosplay.
The heavy jeans and boots, the buffalo plaid coat and gray hoodie with the hood pulled up over their masked head.
Even the stance was accurate. Shoulders back, legs planted slightly apart, arms straight by their side like a foot soldier from ancient times.
Ready to plod powerfully through the night and wreak revenge on those who’d wronged him and his mother.
Although Jen had seen the Slasher hundreds of times before—on-screen, or as fan cosplay or the masked special guest at the Rialto—the sight stole her breath. It was one thing to see him on grainy film stock, or as a half-assed costume. It was another to see him in the woods.
No wonder Freddy had freaked out when he’d seen the Slasher standing in the middle of the road. Why hadn’t she taken him seriously?
Jen forced herself to breathe. The person had to be a fan who’d arrived early for Slasher Summer, and was roaming about in search of the famed cabin.
It was too late for her to melt back into the shadows anyhow.
“Hey there,” she called out. “Killer costume. If you’re looking for the Slasher cabin, I’m afraid it’s already been rented for the weekend.
The power’s out anyway. There’s a motel just east of here if you need someplace to stay.
They’ll probably have vacancy since they’re outside of town. ”
The Slasher said nothing. Jen blew a stray strand of hair out of her face in annoyance. Some people just didn’t want to be helped. “Suit yourself. Sleep in the woods if you want.”
The Slasher finally stirred, slowly bringing his hands up and revealing what he’d been holding by his side.
Leather-gloved fingers curled and uncurled around the handle of an axe.
Jen’s pulse began to drum. That was unusual.
The Slasher didn’t kill anyone with an axe until Slasher 2, when he started getting more creative with his kills.
Maybe this guy was cosplaying as sequel Slasher.
Which was an unconventional choice, since most fans preferred the original, but not unheard of.
Although the Slasher had never worn gloves.
Jen’s stomach lurched. Who wore leather gloves in the summer? Killers in giallo films, that’s who.
Or criminals worried about fingerprints.
The Slasher raised his axe, and the blade sliced through the air in a graceful, brutal arc.
Jen turned and ran, certain she could feel the steel edge julienning her spine even though the Slasher was at least fifty paces away.
She gulped air into her straining lungs, and surprised herself when it blasted out of her throat in a scream.
Jennifer de la Fuente, badass, had never screamed for anyone.
She would’ve been disappointed in herself if she’d had time to stop and think about it.
All the times she’d watched classic slashers with the Jumpscare Society, rolling her eyes at the hysterical girls who fell to the killer’s attacks, and it turned out she was just like them.