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, theknife—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.
What if I’mnotthe Final Girl?What if I’m just Casey Becker at the beginning ofScreamand this is the plot twist none of us saw coming?
I flick my eyes down from the stall door to my dress.Hitchcock once said that blondes make the best victims because they make the blood show up better on screen.“Like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints” is the exact quote.If we’re operating by that logic,then I amcoveredin red.My dress, both my own blood and other people’s, thefuckingglitter—it marks my skin, mapping the last few hours of terror across my body.But even with all that, I don’tlooklike a Final Girl.
I mean, I didn’twantthe part, but I don’t want the alternative if it means being demoted to Dead Blonde Number Three!
A sickening scratching noise starts up, metal on glass, and all I can do is clamp my hands over my ears.It does nothing to muffle the sound.It goes on for what feels like hours, the screech and scrape of the blade tearing through me as I crouch on top of the toilet.
My feet are stuck to the seat, my hands trembling at the sides of my head, when it eventually stops.There’s a pause, a shuffle of clothing, before footsteps move out across the tiles.A long groan emits from the door hinges, the same one that preceded his entry into the restroom, before it’s followed by a dull, conclusive thud.The whole space becomes silent.
I don’t move.
I may be scared, but I’m not fucking stupid.
I don’t get down off the toilet.Instead, I stand up, using the walls on either side of me to maintain my balance and peek over the side of the stall.I look over into the other stall, across to the sink, anywhere he could’ve hidden to draw me out, and the air rushes out of me when I can see he’s gone.He really did leave.
If he can’t get in, he’s got to give up and move on, right?You haven’t got a slasher if there isn’t any slashing.You haven’t got a rom-com if the love interest isn’t responding to the romancing.
Minutes pass before I get the nerve to grip the top of the door, lean forward, and see the tiles.The asshole took Laurie’s shoes with him, but he left the corkscrews on the sink counter.Even he knows they’re useless.Glints of light from the mirror draw my gaze higher and I realize the corkscrews are not all he left behind.
Not again.
The bathroom door slams open and I almost fall off the toilet in shock, but when a tall, maskless figure moves into the restroom, I jump down and unlock the stall door before I can stop myself.
“Wes!”
He’s pulled me into his arms before the door is fully open.They’re tight, almost restrictive around my body, and I can feel where he’s tucked the flashlight into his pants when it jabs into my ribs, but I don’t pull away.I need him to take my weight and hold me upright, because I feel like I might fall apart and spill onto the floor if I’m given one more second to process what just happened.
Heart Eyes left me alone.
He left mealive.
He terrorized me, yeah, but it was a game to him.It was foreplay.Now that he’s made the decisionnotto kill me twice, I can’t deny I’m the object of his affection.I can’t deny that even if I don’t look the part, even if I don’t know if I can live up to the title, he wants me to be his Final Girl.
“I couldn’t find Billie, but I thought I found a way out,” Wes grits out before I can ask where he’s been, how he avoided Heart Eyes.He steps away to check if I have any visible damage, holding his knife away from us, almost behind his back, as I perform my own once-over.“I turned down a corridor and found a door, but it was fucking jammed, and when I came back everyone was gone and there was blood on the floor, and I thought…”
