Final Girl (horror fiction)

I

My whole life I’ve been alone at the end. Bloodstained and grief-stricken. Center-frame, music up, laughing or crying or smoking, it has always been my face under a ton of Karo syrup and Red 40 food dye. 

My earliest foray into Final Girl status was The Loving Mother, I was the beloved daughter of the titular character and it was me, along with ten other inhuman lookalikes that were bloodied and left standing when credits rolled. I was nine years old. From then on, I lost count. I’ve shot zombies, killed vampires or turned into them, survived home invasions and even been the sole chaste survivor at a doomed summer camp (though the media will be the first to say I’m hardly what one may describe as chaste). 

Being a child star fucks you up. Anyone who says different is an executive producer or a liar (probably both). Being involved with violent media and in the public eye for fourteen years straight involves a lot of scrutiny and a maturation process that is way too quick. Other kids got yelled at the first time they said “fuck,” but I got asked to do it again by the director. I was handed a script that featured a topless scene on my eighteenth birthday, but the harassment started well before that point. 

This is the ugly truth of show business (and life, really): Everything is a lie covered in plastic. I’ve never been to a party where I haven’t been offered cocaine. As a matter of fact, until about a year ago, I’d never been to a party where I’d refused the offer. 

But you know this. I’m sure you’ve read the classics: “Film Star Christina Dawes Causes 3 Car Pile-Up, Spends Night in Jail,” “Bikini Clad Christina Dawes Spotted with Michael Curry in Cancun,” “Christina Dawes Arrested on Red Carpet,” and “Christina Dawes Bares All in Leaked Photos.” Those are just the tip of the iceberg. 

The movie offers slowed down while those headlines circulated, though some other more revealing and less lucrative offers did appear in my inbox. Six months in rehab and another six isolated in my Portland cabin did the trick, though. The media moved on to harassing sixteen-year-old popstars and forgot all about me. 

So, there I was, at the wrap party for Deep Cut (my first film of sobriety), and I watched a dog get run over from four stories up. I was the only witness. The mutt was picking at roadkill scraps when a Tesla rounded the corner a little too fast.  Ten years prior, I would have cried, but the drugs had fried a lot of my empathy and the world’s watching me through a magnifying glass had taken what was left. It’s hard to be emotional when you’ve spent your teenage years crying because you couldn’t eat anything but salads to stay rail-thin and every one of your relationships became a magazine cover. 

Desmond, one of the waiters at the party, had “a normal, human” reaction to seeing a freshly killed dog. 

“Oh,” he said. He set down the tray of hors d’oeuvres. “We should do something.”

“It’s dead,” I said. Animal Welfare will pick it up in the morning.” 

“It’s not right,” he said between tears. “People shouldn’t get away with that kind of thing. It was just an innocent animal.”

I was struck by his reaction. It was human, that was rare in L.A. I was shocked when I reached out and put a hand on his shoulder, and even more surprised when I said “Let’s go get him out of the road then. Do you want to?”

Desmond wiped away the tears and asked his manager for a fifteen-minute break. The elevator ride down was silent. I snagged a towel off one of the hotel maid’s carts on the way outside. Desmond stood over the dog for a second and muttered something. The Lord’s Prayer. Then, we gently wrapped up the dog and moved it out of the road. We called Animal Welfare and waited for them to send a truck.

“I’m sorry for being so callous,” I said while we waited. “It’s been—"

“I know,” Desmond said. I gave him a look and he smiled. “You’re Christina Dawes, the whole world knows about you.”

That was true. I stood silently, looking at the bundled, formless creature.

“You didn’t deserve it,” Desmond said. “All that hate. You were just trying your best, that’s all.”

He was sweet. It was rare that a handsome man in Hollywood had a conversation with me that didn’t end with a request for an autograph, a phone number, or worse. 

He seemed to have a perpetual smile. The only moment it faded was when he saw the dog. But now, he was looked at me with the world’s friendliest smile. I took out a cigarette. 

“Thank you,” I said upon the first drag. “You want one?” I asked on the second.

“Yeah, sure.” He let me light his cigarette, like we were Bogart and Bacall.

We stood and talked for a while. He was the oldest of five kids, his favorite band was Hall & Oates, the usual. 

Animal Welfare came and went. We were about to head back inside when I stopped him. “You’re not the usual type,” I said.

“What’s ‘the usual type’?” he asked.

“Well,” I said, I put out my second cigarette of the conversation, “Most of the wait staff in L.A. are budding screenwriters or actors or sex pests or murderers and you’re none of the above. At least, as far as I know.”

“As far as you know,” he replied, “No, I’m just Desmond Torrence. I was actually born in L.A. so, technically I have license to complain about all those guys you mentioned, too.”

“Nobody’s born in L.A.,” I said. “But a lot of people die here.”

“I guess I’m an exception to the rule.”

I hadn’t cared about anyone since before my “ordeal.” The drugs and alcohol gave me the illusion that I cared about people, but I just cared about the next fix. I was trying to get out of that headspace, the “kill or be killed” mentality of stardom. Desmond represented a fresh start. The next words out of my mouth were: “Hey, do you wanna grab coffee sometime.”

And we did. 

II

Our relationship developed fast. Only a few weeks later I was on to my second feature of sobriety and I had a boyfriend to boot. Desmond got a more stable office job right after we started dating, completely of his own volition, and we would meet during breaks around the city. 

The film was another horror movie called Skyscraper. We filmed predominantly in 777 Tower. The movie was about a zombie outbreak that starts on the bottom floor and the survivors need to keep moving upward. I just had a supporting role, and my character was supposed to die just before the second act break. By jumping out a window. 

This would have been fine, but I was deathly afraid of heights. The director, Kyle Winthrop, was really into practical effects too, so I had to do a stunt. The entire shoot I had been anxiously awaiting my “death day” and it finally came on my last day of filming.

The stunt was a simple Texas switch. I was to jump out of a set window five stories up and a stunt double would jump out a floor below me. I would be attached to a steel cable and only fall two stories, but the double would freefall the entire distance. In camera, it would give the appearance that I was falling the whole time. The only problem was, it was a complex camera move, which meant if we didn’t get it on the first take, we’d have to reset and do it again. 

We spent the first half of the day rehearsing. First, they had me jump ten feet, then twenty and so on. Everything past twenty feet was an endeavor. I’d get right to the edge, secured by a steel cable and harness, but anytime I got close to the edge I got vertigo. Most things don’t bother me, blood, guts, spiders, clowns, whatever. But it’s that feeling of looking down and knowing that science is going to try its best to kill you. Gravity won’t stop if something goes wrong and, well, a lot had gone wrong in my life. There were less than sixty seconds of terror between me and the ground, but I would rather be water boarded than feel that pit in my stomach drop. 

After one—and only one—successful jump from stunt-height, we broke for lunch. The first shot after lunch would be the real deal. I couldn’t eat. I chain smoked on the curb outside the studio. Desmond walked up carrying a bag of tacos, his smile was as bright as ever.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“I know what day it is,” he said, “I didn’t want you to do it alone.”

He sat with me for the last fifteen minutes of lunch, we talked about mundane things. Finally, the assistant director called a final safety meeting, and we were ready for picture. 

I threw up a couple times. Hair and makeup were pissed, but they weren’t jumping out of a five-story veneer. Desmond came up and gave me a final kiss as one of the crew latched the last carabiner on my harness. 

I took a long deep breath. The sound washed out of the room. The wind was stronger up there. 

“Action!” the director called. 

I didn’t think, I sprinted. 

The demolitions crew detonated the window, so it looked like I broke it. I leaped. A few stunt doubles dressed as zombies crowded the window I launched from and I felt it all at once: The lurch. The ground fighting its way toward me. The cable catching me just in time to see the stunt double hit the crash pad. 

“Cut!” the director started, but I didn’t hear the rest of his spiel. He was interrupted by a loud creak! The winch that held the cable, and me, snapped. All at once, I plunged directly downward. I don’t even remember if I screamed. 

I hadn’t been told how to fall; I probably wouldn’t have even remembered in the moment. I face-planted into the crash pad at speed and bounced forward somehow. I tumbled off the safety mat and landed on my wrist, hard. Everyone heard the crunch. 

My last glimpse of the world before blacking out was Desmond’s face.

~

Somebody told me it was a miracle for me to fall five stories and only have a compound fracture in my wrist, but I didn’t care. To come that close to a thing you hate and live with it was enough to make you a little bit miserable until something finally did kill you. And I was miserable. Each time something tried to kill me, it got worse. 

They gave me a cast, asked me what color I wanted. It made me feel juvenile, in a good way. 

I chose black. It fit my style and it went with everything. 

Desmond didn’t want me to be alone. He could see how shaken up I was, and he knew my history. So, he picked that night, of all nights, for me to finally meet his family. 

For some reason, I agreed to go. It was way too soon, but I said yes. 

I should have said no. 

III

Desmond’s house was in the middle of nowhere. It took us a few hours to drive out to the Torrence mansion, not that his family was self-aware enough to call it a mansion.

Desmond’s father was effectively a stay-at-home dad, but he dabbled in the stock market. His mother was the heiress of a diamond mine in Ethiopia, so yeah, they had money. 

The exterior looked like a college right out of Oxford. Sandy-colored stone and elaborate grey roofing. Gargoyles would have felt right at home, but the builders had opted for turrets, chimneys, and steeples in alternating patterns. The lawn was the kind of verdant green you saw on Technicolor film. A quarter mile or so from the property there was a giant pond, stocked with fish I’m sure, with paddleboats and a gazebo to boot. 

Torrence Mansion may not have been fitting. Castle Torrence was more like it.

“And I thought I had money,” I gasped as we passed through the gate. 

“What?” Desmond joked, “This old thing?”

We pulled into the circle drive and the door burst open. His family flowed from the threshold like horses from the gates of the Kentucky Derby. 

They could have stepped out of an oil painting for all I knew. Their faces cleared any doubts one might have about their shared genetics. Their hair was all that same golden blonde and their eyes were a piercing emerald. 

It was all a bit overwhelming. I was hugged in age order: Mr. Torrence (“Call me Roger”), Mrs. Torrence (“Oh, it’s Sandy, or Mom, haha”), then Rebecca (twenty-one), Clarice (twenty), Deborah (eighteen), and Sadie (twelve). I didn’t know enough about them to distinguish their names yet, so I just tried to correlate names with height.

They herded Desmond and me inside and shut the wrought-iron door. 

They had drinks while we awaited dinner. I stirred a virgin Bloody Mary with a celery stick, but I only sipped it periodically. It had been a long day and my nerves were just about to send me into a panic. 

I could tell all the girls were starstruck, they whispered periodically but never really spoke to me. 

Finally, Sadie, the youngest, piped up. “What’s your favorite part of being a movie star?”

I was taken aback. It was not an unusual question from a child, but I figured the family would have tried not to ask the obvious questions to appear familial. 

“Well, probably the adventures,” I said. “I mean, I’ve been to a bunch of cities and countries I never would have been to. I’ve crashed sports cars and shoot machine guns. It’s all very exciting.” 

“Well, normally.” Desmond said, holding up my freshly-casted arm. 

“Yeah,” I said, “Normally.”

“What about the guys?” Deborah asked, testing the waters. I noticed that she was nursing a Tom Collins despite her only being eighteen, but who the hell was I to judge?

“Oh my God, Deborah.” Rebecca chided. “You can’t ask her that. She’s dating our brother!”

“No offense, Desmond,” Deborah responded, “but she got to fuck Christopher Randall!”

Mr. Torrence stuck his fingers in his ears. Mrs. Torrence shot her daughter a stern look. 

“We didn’t actually… do anything. You know that, right?” I asserted. “No matter what you hear, it’s all make-believe. It’s actually more awkward than it is sexy when you’re filming it.”

“Oh,” Deborah said, disappointed. They all seemed deflated, except Desmond. 

“Can we move on from talking about my girlfriend’s fake sex life, please?” Desmond asked. His smile faded only momentarily.

The room went quiet for a little bit, then the only daughter who hadn’t spoken piped up. “Did it hurt?” Clarice asked. She gestured to my arm. “I broke my arm once. I fell backward off the high dive at the pool. Mom said I was lucky I didn’t crack my head open.”

“You were,” Mrs. Torrence inserted. 

“Yeah, it did,” I said. “I’m sure it hurt. I just blacked out from the pain, so I don’t remember much of I,” 

“It’s funny what the human body will do,” Mr. Torrence said. “Instead of letting us experience the worst things imaginable.”

Too many moments flashed through my mind. “Yes,” I agreed. 

The room was silent for a time. I took a sip of my drink.

“Can I sign your cast?” Sadie asked. Again, I felt juvenile, like breaking bones is something you can only do in childhood. Now this twelve-year-old was asking if she could sign my cast. 

“Yeah, sure!” I responded, more jovial than my thoughts. “I was worried nobody would.”

Sadie’s face lit up and, for a moment, I felt good about myself. 

They scoured countless junk drawers looking for silver or gold Sharpies. Stupid me, I had to pick the hardest color to sign. It turned into a kind of family-wide scavenger hunt and ultimately evolved into more of an impromptu house tour. 

We searched the craft room first, an elegant eggshell room filled with sewing supplies, desks, easels with half-finished canvases and anything else a budding artist might have wanted. 

Next was the office, Mr. Torrence’s space where he could pretend as though his exuberantly wealthy wife would not be the one bringing home the bacon with passive income. An oak-heavy room that felt like they had spent more time designing and furnishing it than they had worked in it. Sadie and I hid out for a moment and pretended to make business calls while the rest of the family moved on. I got the feeling the age difference was hard on her. 

The laundry room, kitchen and library also proved fruitless. It was like finding a needle in a haystack. 

I left the library and moved across the hall to check and see if a random room may have had some sort of permanent marker in it, but it was locked. The door was painted white, where all the other doors had been a sturdy oak. 

“You can’t go in there,” Desmond said from behind me. 

“Oh, okay, I was just looking…” I tried to respond, flustered.

“It’s not a big deal. It’s just a private room. This way.”

We walked down the vast hall, but I stole every glance I could back in that direction. I made a mental note of where the room lay in the labyrinthic passageways of Desmond’s house.

Sadie ended up finding the Sharpies. She was the first to sign my name and she scrawled her John Hancock in big yet elegant letters along the forearm of my cast. The rest of the family filled in their names as desired, and Sadie finished the design off with some stars and hearts. 

Sadie asked me all kinds of questions and the rest of the family watched. I had been to enough conventions and fan events to recognize those eyes. I felt like a mirage, a vision that appeared to this family but they couldn’t believe it so instead they just stared. 

A butler entered the room as Sadie finished her doodles. 

“Dinner is served!” he announced. We migrated to the most extravagant dining room I’ve ever seen.  

IV

The steak bled as I cut into it. The moment it touched my tongue it sent shockwaves through my system. It was the perfect combination of salty and meaty, with a bourbon seasoning to seal the deal. The salad was extravagant even by Californian standards. The baked potatoes were loaded with fixings and just at the precipice of becoming runny with butter at the time of serving. The rest of the family had a ’62 Zinfandel that I could smell from across the room. The iced water was fine. 

Dinner brought much less bleak and invasive small talk. I got to know the family almost as well as they knew me. 

Rebecca, the oldest, was about to enter her final year in Finance at UCLA. She wanted to become a CFO of some company within the next five years, and I believed she had the gumption to do so by the way she talked. 

Clarice was the quiet one. She relayed information in stops and starts.  She didn’t really know what she wanted to do, so she was taking a gap year. The way she acted was peculiar, she didn’t wear her heart on her sleeve like the rest of her family and it drew me in. I was about to ask her more, but she seemed more interested in the floor than in me. Her fingers drummed the table and her eyes avoided mine. 

Deborah was just about to graduate high school and had grand aspirations of being a model. She ate her whole salad, but a member of the kitchen staff took away a full steak and baked potato at the conclusion of dinner. I almost offered to take it home, but I knew that would be impolite. 

I liked Sadie the most. Sadie was just at the right age to be bold about what she wanted to do before she knew just exactly how much work it would be to accomplish such a goal. “I’m gonna be an astronaut or a scientist,” she said before I even had a chance to ask. She smiled and showcased a toothy grin with a chive stuck in between her bottom front teeth. Other than Desmond, she seemed to be the only member of the family who could make me laugh. 

“What films are you working on next?” Mrs. Torrence asked between bites. 

“Oh, I’m not sure,” I said. “I probably won’t be cast in anything, no pun intended, until the arm heals. Afterward, I think I may take a break from horror.”

There was a cacophony of forks being dropped. All the Torrence family turned and stared at me as though I had just spoken a foreign language at a loud volume. 

“Quit horror?” Mr. Torrence said. “Christina Dawes? I never thought I’d hear such a thing in my life!”

The rest of the family echoed the sentiment. 

“Who knew you were such big fans?” I said. I looked to Desmond for help. He looked at his potato solemnly. “I mean, it’s the only thing I’ve ever really done. I don’t think it would be so bad to branch out.”

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” Sadie piped up.

“It would just be so weird to see you in, say, a western or a comedy,” Mr. Torrence said. 

“I am an actor,” I responded. “So, it shouldn’t be that strange.”

The room grew cold despite the roaring fire in the fireplace. 

Mrs. Torrence cleared her throat. “It’s Christina’s career. It is her choice. Though we will miss seeing our favorite final girl.”

“Let’s change the subject, shall we?” Desmond interjected. My proverbial knight in shining armor whisked me away from this topic. “We should play Rummy with Christina after dinner.”

 “Yes!” Clarice said. “Then she’ll really be part of the family.” 

“Rummy?” I asked. 

“Cards,” they all responded. 

“It’s really a good time,” Desmond said. 

The kitchen staff came in and cleared our plates. They brought in a fresh round of drinks and assured us that dessert was well on the way. 

“Strawberry and rhubarb pie,” Mrs. Torrence said. “It’s heavenly!”

Sadie yawned loudly. Mrs. Torrence got up to escort her to bed. She gave me a sleepy hug goodnight and walked away with her mother. Most pre-teens would have tried to stay awake to seem cool. Sadie knew better. 

I nodded and excused myself to the ladies’ room. I was determined to keep the good spirits of the night; I just needed a moment to myself. 

I wandered down the halls. If I stole a few extra minutes away for myself nobody would mention it. 

I found the restroom easily enough, though on my way out I passed it again: the unusual door I had been told not to open. You know as well as I do that someone telling you not to open a door only makes the impulse more intense. Besides, I could take a minute or two to snoop, right?

I took a bobby pin from my hair and a nail file from my wallet. I jimmied the lock. It was something I had learned to do for a role. Shelly Pietro had been a journalist—sans ethics—who broke into a crime scene and wound up becoming another victim. It was a useful skill learned from a movie that still got me decent residuals around Halloween. The lock clicked home and I checked my surroundings once more before entering the stark white door. The coast was clear. 

I stumbled into the dark room. It was pitch black. An interior room without windows. I found a light switch and flicked it. No amount of preparation could have readied me for what I saw. 

Golden string lights plugged into the circuit came on after I flipped the switch. They were the sole light source of the room. The string lights were predominantly around the ceiling and running boards, but one section in the middle of the room drew my eye. The lights were woven around a stone column. Atop the column was a picture—an oil painting, rather—of me. It was surrounded by tabloid magazine photos of me that had been cut out and pasted into a collage. Knickknacks representing props from movies I had been in or hobbies or interests of mine were artistically organized around the room. Posters from every single one of my films—even the shitty short films I had done right after college—decorated the walls, along with newspaper articles about my life. 

It was all too much. I put my hand on the wall to steady myself, and maybe to puke. I came up with a game plan in a matter of moments: I would sneak into the living room, grab Desmond’s car keys and get the hell out. No, I’d call the police and then do all of that. 

I took my phone out to commence my plan, but my hands were too shaky, and I dropped it. I bent over to pick it up and saw a pair of chukka boots in the doorway. Desmond. 

“I told you not to come in here,” he said in a low voice. 

I wanted to reply, to plead, to beg. I raised my head to do so and saw his silhouette bringing down a large, cylindrical object right onto my face. 

I fell into darkness. 

V

The pain from my head wound was the first thing I noticed when I woke up. The blood trickling into my eyes was second. The Torrence family, save for Sadie, standing in front of me watching as though I were a sleeping tiger at the zoo was third. 

I struggled to move, only to discover I was tied up. Clarice wiped the blood from my eyes and applied a bandage as Mr. Torrence spoke. “You weren’t supposed to find that.”

“Your shrine?” I asked. 

“Yes.” He didn’t mince words. 

“What are you going to do to me?” I asked. “Who the fuck are you?”

“We’re big fans,” Mrs. Torrence said.

“We want to make your dreams come true,” Deborah said. 

I just stared at them, clearly unaware of what dreams they could possibly fulfill for me. 

“For years, I watched you on the screen,” Desmond said, taking center stage. “You were flawless in every performance. You always managed to solve the ‘kill or be killed’ problem just in the nick of time. It was energizing. It was inspiring.

“All it took was some planning on our part, I got a cater-waiter gig at your wrap party and that dog dying was my way in. I would’ve found another way to get to you, but you made it really easy.”

“You’re sick,” I said. “What do you even want from me? An autograph?”

“We want to see if your survival skill translates,” Mr. Torrence said. “To the real world.”

“That’s not my dream,” I said. “It’s yours.”

“But it is your dream to leave here alive, isn’t it?” Rebecca chimed in. 

“Kill or be killed.” Deborah finished. 

“You guys are fucking lunatics!” I screamed. Adrenaline flowed through me. 

“The rules are simple,” Mrs. Torrence began. “You have a half-hour to fortify yourself. The staff have been given the night off, so it’s just us in this big old house.”

“We know it’s every nook and cranny,” Desmond said. “And you don’t.”

“Good luck,” Rebecca joked. 

Suddenly, Clarice chimed in. She looked nervous. “But leave Sadie alone!”

“Yes, please,” Mrs. Torrence said. “Her room is locked, as if you’d know which one it was. Also, she’s sleeping, so try and keep it down, okay?”

Before I could respond, they put a bag over my head. I tried to keep track, count the steps and turns but they knew what they were doing. They had me confused within minutes and then it was just a matter of getting me where they wanted. 

“Count to a hundred and spin around,” Desmond spoke into my right ear.

“We’ll know if you stop!” Deborah’s all-too-excited voice piped in my left ear. 

My bindings were removed, and I did as I was told. At the count of one hundred I dizzily took the sack off my head. I was in the library. I wasted a few moments of my precious half hour regaining my balance, then scoured the room for protection. 

It was sparse, save for the fireplace. I grabbed a fire poker to use as a weapon until I found something better. 

I exited through one of the four doors in the library and decided to head toward the front of the house. If they hadn’t barred the doors, at least there would be more space and light for me to prepare for a showdown. 

The front door had heavy furniture barricaded in front of it. How long had I been out? This amount of preparation would have taken awhile. 

I grabbed my coat from the rack by the door. My pants didn’t have pockets, and I figured it would be good to have spaces to carry things. 

I made a beeline for the kitchen. I stowed a paring knife with a slipcover in my boot and shoved a meat tenderizer in my coat pocket. I also drank a big glass of water because my mouth was dry. 

I moved into one of their common spaces next. A shotgun hung above the mantle and I forgot about everything else. Just as I reached up to grab it, Rebecca cleared her throat. She’d been sitting in a chair twice her size the entire time. The switchblade in her hand caught the firelight.

“I still have time,” I said. 

“I don’t think anyone will notice if we get started a few minutes early,” she said. 

She lunged at me. I quickly knocked the knife out of her hand with the fire poker. On the backswing, I redirected and swatted at her face. The sharp ends of the poker caught her nose and ripped it open. 

She screamed and turned away from me. I went for the shotgun, but my cast-hand couldn’t grip it properly and the gun clattered to the floor. Rebecca tackled me and we fell dangerously close to the fire. 

She wrenched the poker from my hand and threw it away. She got on top of me and readied her switchblade. I bucked like a broncho and knocked her off balance. She tried to compose herself, but I used my momentum for a punch. 

I sent her into the fire with a follow-up strike. 

She wailed as she burned. I lunged for the poker. I grabbed it and—without looking—whirled and thrust it in her direction. I caught her in the chest. The poker went deep. She fell back into the fire, lifeless. 

I picked up the shotgun, broke the action, and checked the chambers. It was an old school double barrel and it had two rounds in it. “Twelve-gauge slug” it read on the nickel plating. 

I ditched the poker and decided to go on the offensive. This would be over soon, one way or another. I walked back into the entryway to try and get my bearings when I saw her on the grand staircase: Deborah. Despite her being an aspiring model, she was more muscular than her sister. I didn’t want to take any chances. She clenched a baseball bat in her hands. 

“Don’t come any closer or I’ll send you straight to Hell,” I warned. 

“It’s not real,” she said. She wanted me to check, to doubt, to give her an opening. 

“I know what a real gun feels like.”

“So, shoot.”

I did. Orange flames leaped from the left barrel and Deborah’s left hip turned into red mist and viscera on the stairs. I waited for a moment and she didn’t move. I lowered the gun and let my heart rate slow down. 

I moved past her, headed toward some other part of the house. A hand gripped my ankle as I moved past, and Deborah pulled me down. 

She was weak, not dead. I used the shotgun to knock her hand away. She wouldn’t quit hassling me. I finished the business with the butt of the gun and stood. 

I smelled smoke. I looked toward where Rebecca and I had our showdown, and my suspicions were confirmed. The fire was spreading from Rebecca’s cotton clothes to the rug, then to the rest of the room. I walked the opposite direction.

My muscles already ached, and I still had four Torrences to deal with. I decided to look for a house phone. I had never had a good experience with a cop, but I hoped my luck would change tonight. I remembered making fake business calls with Sadie and headed to the office. 

The dust lines marked where the phone had been, but it was gone. I cursed and left the room. 

Desmond waited for me in the hallway. He wore that perpetual smile. “No phones, if that’s what you’re looking for,” he said. “That’s Horror 101.”

I was tired of the bullshit. I raised the gun to my shoulder, but Desmond was ready. He closed the distance quickly and slammed me into the wall. The second slug fired harmlessly down the hall. Desmond had a weight and strength advantage on me, and he was pressing the gun down to my neck. I brought a knee up into his weak spot—his groin—and he doubled over with speed. I mounted him and got the meat tenderizer from my coat. I struck his forehead, right on the temple and he went out. I spat on him and fell back. I could feel the tears coming and I tried to stave them off, but they came anyway. I let myself have a moment. I shouldn’t have. 

Just like his sister, Desmond was not dead. He grabbed the tenderizer while my eyes were blurred with tears. He got up slowly and crept to me. His shadow cast over me but I was too slow. He brought the tenderizer down on my weak spot—my casted arm—repeatedly. The pain was unbearable. I swung as hard as I could with my other hand into his ribs. He wobbled, which gave me purchase. I headbutted him, which probably hurt me more than him, but it sent him backward. The wound on my head re-opened and began to bleed in my eyes. I mounted him, grabbed the tenderizer and pretended his face was a nice cut of beef. 

“Why…” I screamed between blows. “Couldn’t… you… just… be… normal!”

By the end of it, I was covered in blood and my good arm hurt almost as much as my re-broken one. The remains of his face still wore a smile.

Three to go. 

I searched Desmond and found a pistol tucked into his boot. I wondered if they all had these. Was there a contingency plan? It was a small revolver, a girl’s gun as my father would have called it. Any port in a storm, and this port was loaded with five .38 caliber rounds. 

I made my way down the hall without direction. Eventually, I stumbled upon Clarice. She was sitting on the steps of the Western staircase. She made no move on me, but I kept distance between us. I raised the gun half-heartedly. 

“You don’t have to worry about me,” she said. “I don’t want to do this. I knew it was coming all night, but I didn’t have the courage to warn you. Please don’t be mad.”

“A little too late,” I said. “I’m pretty fucking mad.” 

She nodded. “How many have you killed.”

I spat out some blood. “Three. Rebecca, Deborah, Desmond.”

Tears slid down Clarice’s face. 

“Where are your parents? It’ll save us both some heartache.”

“Promise me you won’t kill me afterward?” 

“Sure. Don’t stab me in the back and don’t feed me bullshit and you’ve got a deal.”

“Master bedroom,” she said and handed me a key. “They have weapons. They’ll be ready.” 

“Where—"

“Up the stairs, take a left. Second door on the right.”

I nodded. I made it halfway up the stairs and turned. “Hey kid?”

“Yeah?”

“Call the fucking cops. Or fire department. Just make sure there’s an ambulance. Tell them what happened because I don’t want to die after all this work.”

She nodded and walked off.

I climbed the steps. 

VI

I found the bedroom door and worked my dead hand to use the key on the knob. I needed to be ready for anything. It was painful, and it took longer than it should have, but I got it open. I halfway turned the knob. The door creaked open. I kicked it the rest of the way home. 

Mrs. Torrence charged me right away. She held a machete and meant to swing down on me, but two shots sent her to the floor. I didn’t want to use a third, but I didn’t want her getting up. I aimed at her head and pulled the trigger. 

“Can we not do this cat-and-mouse bullshit, Mr. Torrence?” I called as I scanned the room. 

“How do you want to settle this?” he asked. His voice came from the massive walk-in closet. 

“I want to kill you and lose my sobriety chip. I want to get so drunk I forget what planet we’re on, much less the people I’ve removed from it today.”

“Not without a fight,” he said. He emerged from the closet with vicious speed. Time froze. His eyes were red and puffy from tears, but they were full of a white rage. Time sped up again and I shot reflexively but it landed in the door frame. He slapped the gun into the wall. He was on me now, strangling me with both hands. 

He was stronger than me. Stronger than he looked. I could feel my windpipe breaking and my fleeting oxygen supply leaving my body. 

I grasped for anything. I tore a bit of the skirt around the bed. I felt around the carpet. Then I walked my hand to my leg. Luckily, my legs were propped up. Mr. Torrence’s bulging eyes were locked with mine. Nothing else in the world mattered to him, not even the knife in my boot. 

I flicked off the slipcover and stuck him in the jugular. Once, twice, thrice. Blood came in spurts, the dark red kind. His eyes went vacant, and his hands went to his own throat instead of mine. 

I caught my breath. I tried to scream. I sat up and looked at him, the life hadn’t yet left his eyes. He was looking at me, half-pleasure and half-pain.

I picked up the gun and opened the door to leave. Sadie stood in the doorway. Her eyes were filled with tears. 

“Kid, you don’t want to see this,” I said. 

She moved past me. She took in the scene. I waited for her. 

“Come on,” I pleaded, “The police will be here soon.”

She bent over, I assumed to give some final goodbye to her parents. Instead, she picked the machete off the ground and turned to me. 

My hair stood on end as she shrieked and charged for me. 

I didn’t want to hurt her. She had shown me kindness. I hesitated. If she wasn’t a kid I wouldn’t have, but I did. 

I bought her just enough time to slice into my right thigh. I fell backward. Sadie repositioned to strike down and I fired at her, unthinking. The shot struck home. Sadie did not get up again. 

I lay there for a while, I hoped that I would die from all my wounds. 

Sirens approached. They called to me. I decided to get up.  

It was a hard journey getting down the stairs. I placed a cigarette in my mouth at the bottom as a reward. I lit the cigarette with a candle on my way to the front door. 

I passed by a room that had a full bar. I used some of my precious energy to pour myself a pint glass of bourbon. That first smokey sip made me feel better, even if just for a moment. Even if it killed me eventually. 

Clarice sat on the main stairs, her sister’s body behind her covered in a cashmere blanket. I sat next to her and gave her a cigarette. 

Blue and red lights crept in through the windows. 

My face was covered in blood. Real blood. 

A cigarette hung out of my mouth. 

I cried.

But at least I wasn’t alone this time.