The amused expression on her face doesn’t shift as she bends down and pulls at her pants leg, revealing a handle sticking out the top of her boot.She deftly pulls the stained kitchen knife from where it’s pressed against her calf and brings it to her side.The switchblade is steady in her other hand, feet planted on the ground, and it’s a familiar stance.All she needs is the oversized jacket and the coveralls, a machete instead of a switchblade, and it’d be a remake of what we saw downstairs at the end of the bathroom hallway.The one John ran toward so Wes and I could get away.
“It’s not a great first impression to lie on a first date, Wes.How are you supposed to trust someone if they hide who they are right off the bat?Right, Jamie?”
The way she can still speak in a dry, unaffected tone is terrifying.Emotions have been high all night.All of us have gone through a Technicolor spectrum of fear and shock and rage and—okay, maybe not all of us—horniness, but she hasn’t.She never did.Even when she left, she was levelheaded in her retreat, but now I realize that kind of calm can only come from knowing you’re in control.
“Put the weapons down,” Wes says slowly, calmly, but I know it’s purely for show.I can hear it in the tightness of his voice and see it in the tension in his shoulders, the tick of the muscle at the back of his jaw.
Billie shakes her head, tiptoeing over Jennifer’s body and the pool spreading out around it like she’s sidestepping a puddle on the street.The blood seeps out across the carpet and to the vinyl flooring that’s closer to the railing, sinking into the former and settling across the latter.It looks like a perfect coat of nail polish.
“You know I’m not going to do that.”
The muscles of Wes’s back flinch underneath his shirt as she moves, but the knife stays steady in his hand.
“I have to apologize that I’m not dressed the part.I left my little ensemble downstairs, and the coveralls were getting a bit… messy after everything.Anyway, I figure we know each other so well by this point that we can do away with the mystery, right?So!What comes next?”She directs that question at me, and not for the first time tonight I feel ill-equipped to be in this situation.She and Wes are more evenly matched.Cop against criminal.Hero against villain.But still, despite her goading, the fact remains: she made me the center of this.I have top billing.So that’s why I move to Wes’s side before he can stop me, slipping in next to him so we’re shoulder to shoulder.
“If we follow your theory, Jamie, Wes is definitely going to die.”She winks as she shoots him a sarcastic pout and then points the still-dripping switchblade at me.“And then it’ll just be you.TheFinal Girl, right?”
The way she says it, like that isn’t the ending she has planned and it’s stupid to even think that, makes me study her.She’s followed the formula almost to the letter.All night she’s been trying to push me into the spotlight, but what I just can’t understand iswhyshe’s the killer,what’sdriven her to do this.
“You’re not in love with me.”
I don’t say it like a question.Even before this, she looked at me like I was something disgusting on the bottom of her shoe.Though that might not be the right descriptor, since she doesn’t seem to be concerned by the thick, congealed wine-colored substance lapping at the edges of her boots.
She scoffs.“Maybe you’re not a total idiot.”
“But this is still about me.That’s my name on the dance floor, isn’t it?”
I point to it over her shoulder, but she’s not dumb enough to follow the gesture.Her little smirk does drop, though.Very quickly.
“You’re just a means to an end.”
She says it more to herself than to me, and it’s… it’s baffling.
“Then why?Why the flowers and the hearts and therose petals?”
She puffs up when I mention all the little tokens she’s been leaving behind all night.Flinches like it’s a sore spot.So I keep scratching at the wound.See if I can get her to launch into a motive-reveal monologue that will kill some time and help me figure out if we have aSingle White Femaleor aScream 4situation on our hands.Maybe distract her enough so we can get the upper hand.
“Why go to all that effort?Why not just kill me?”
Her gaze sharpens when I ask the final question, her grip visibly tightening on her blades.
“Oh, I’m going to kill you.”The matter-of-fact statement is like a noose around my neck, my breathing restricted as quickly as Wes steps in front of me again.“I just can’t kill youyet.Like I said, it’s not over.Not until we see if you can make it to the end.But I’m sure you’ll be a disappointment, just like the others, and then I’ll be the one.”
“The one what?”
“The One.The one who h—”
Wes lunges forward before she can finish, the flashlight back in one hand and his knife brandished in the other, but even with his size and skills and reflexes, he’s no match for Billie, who’s been doing this all night.She’s warmed up, and when she swipes the switchblade in front of her, I swear I can hear the slice of his skin and a grunt that hints to a kind of pain much harder to come back from than an accidental graze.
No.No, no, no.
Wes drops to his knees, and when Billie charges toward him with the kitchen knife aimed at his chest, the next part happens so quickly I can’t even be sure it’s real.I’m already moving forward by the time he goes down, holding the stake with two hands, drawing it back over my shoulder, and I just… swing.Front heel down, rear elbow in linewith shoulder, eyes on point of contact, as if Wes has brought me to a batting cage for our first date and I want to show him how good I was when I played softball in high school.
And the thing is, Iwasreally good.I had to be.How else would I convince my parents to let me watch wildly inappropriate horror as a teenager if I didn’t maintain a well-rounded lifestyle to prove said films didn’t have any impact on my mental health?
Billie looks up at just the right time and the rod makes contact with her nose.It folds beneath the wood, blood bursting from her face like a firework, so much that it coats her skin like a mask.
One that could rival the disguise she’s been wearing all night.
