Cutting Room

by T. S. Worthington

  “I hear that,” Max said.

  “What are we going to do, man?” Jay asked.

  “I don’t know. The cops are looking into it,” Max replied.

  “They put it together? They know that what happened to Lori and Joanie is exactly what happened in our movie?” Jay asked. The way he said it felt like he was trying to convince himself that he was not crazy for noticing that connection. He was basically asking Max if he had put that together as well.

  “Yea, I called that Detective. She is doing some research to see if she can find anything online that might tip her off to a disturbed fan. I’ve just spent the last hour myself going through all the social media accounts that we set up for the film to see if any of the comments are ringing any bells. So, far I haven’t found anything.”

  “Shit,” Jay said. “Do you really think that someone hates the movie so much that they are targeting us? And why would they hate that movie in that way? It’s all fiction.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe Jack the Ripper has a lot more fans in this world than we thought,” Max said.

  “Yea, with the internet there are fan sites for every crazy person who has ever lived. I mean it’s bizarre. I‘ve actually seen websites full of people who love Ted Bundy, and other killers. They worship these people as if they are still alive. Which would still be creepy even if they were. There are several of them for Jack the Ripper. Crazy stuff.”

  “You couldn’t have mentioned any of this when we were starting to make the movie?” Max asked.

  “Hey, it’s stupid to let others dictate what you do, especially when it comes to great art.”

  Max laughed. “I’m not sure I would call our little horror movie great art.”

  “What? Are you kidding? People love that flick. If things keep going this well we are on our way, my friend.”

  “Yea, if someone doesn’t decide to end our lives like he did Lori and Joanie,” Max reminded him.

  The silence that filled the room right then was awkward and deafening. Max wasn’t sure if he’d crossed the line with that remark, but he felt almost as if he’d offended himself.

  “Speaking of which, where is Tyler? How is that guy doing?” Jay asked.

  “He texted me yesterday and told me how sorry he was about what happened. He offered his condolences.”

  “Isn’t he supposed to be our friend?” Jay asked. The bitterness in his voice was hard to hide.

  “I thought so, but that guy is so goofy I think he might consider himself more of a floater friend. Almost like a temp,” Max said trying to inject some humor back into this conversation. The heaviness was getting too deep and he could feel a good cry on its way if he did not alter his course ASAP.

  “That’s true. The guy is a bit of a tool, but still he worked with us on the movie for like eight weeks. I thought he was becoming part of our little crew here. Maybe he just doesn’t consider himself there yet and feels out of place,” Jay said.

  “Yea. We should go talk to him soon though and just see where his head's at. You know he always had a thing for Joanie,” Max said.

  Jay laughed. “Really? Did he ever make a move?”

  Max tried to hold back his own laughter as he remembered the story. “He tried to during the first week of shooting. He tried to hold her hand and she told him to go to hell and to never touch her again. It was like first grade bullshit really. It was hysterical to watch.”

  “Oh, man. Where the hell was I? Why didn’t I see it?” Jay asked.

  “I think you were taking a whiz or something. I dunno.”

  “Did he get really mad?”

  “Nah, he basically thought it was hilarious himself and spent the whole day teasing her about it. I think he was actually starting to wear her down by the end of shooting.”

  “You think that anything happened between the two of them?” Jay asked.

  “I don’t think so. I didn’t really get that vibe with them the other night at the club, but who knows. I try to stay out of other people’s business.”

  Jay’s head perked up right then as if a light bulb just went off inside of it.

  “I just remembered something.”

  “What?” Max asked.

  “At the club. I was dancing with this chick who said she’d seen the movie. She was at the premiere. We talked and danced for a bit and afterwards when I was starting to ask for her number I saw this crazy dude coming at me. I thought I was gonna have to kick his ass, but then the chick stepped in and calmed him down before he really got near me. But as they walked away the guy was glaring daggers at me.”

  “Wow, and you didn’t think to ask me for back up?” Max asked.

  “Dude, I’ve seen you fight. You suck,” Jay said.

  “Still, it’s nice to be asked,” Max mocked.

  “Well, next time then. But the thing is I remember seeing that guy at the show. He was hard to miss. He is a real big guy, maybe six foot five and had to weigh two fifty.”

  “And you were going to fight him?”

  “Hey, I’ll fight whoever wants to bring it on. Win or lose, it’s the principle of the thing.”

  “Easy to say until you get your ass handed to you,” Max replied.

  “It has to happen occasionally. Life is not painless, my friend. Sometimes you gotta fight and sometimes you have to get hurt.”

  “That’s morbid,” Max joked.

  “It can be,” Jay replied slapping Max in the arm. It hurt much worse than Max felt it should have, but he had learned long ago to just go along with Jay’s arm noogies and overall violent nature towards him. He’d grown up the youngest with five brothers and Jay had learned at an early age that he had to fight and live through pain to get anywhere.

  Max’s phone buzzed just then.

  He picked it up and felt the blood turn cold in his veins as the grip of terror took him. If he had not been sitting he might have fallen to the ground and possibly not got back up for a good long while. Yea, the floor would have been safer than where he was.

  The text was from a blocked unknown number. It was someone he did not recognize.

  The Game is just beginning. I hope you are ready to play.

  “Jesus,” Max stuttered.

  “What?” Jay asked, instantly alerted. “Dude, you ok?”

  Max showed him the phone. Jay’s eyes went wide as saucers as he stood up and began to pace back and forth.

  “OK, ok. Let’s not panic. You just gotta chill man. You know I thought that it was possible that I was wrong about someone actually targeting us, but I say this makes it official.”

  “How did you think it wasn’t a direct attack before?” Max asked.

  “I didn’t really, but in the back of my mind I just kept hoping that somehow it would turn out to be wrong. It was just wishful thinking.”

  “Well, we have to leave. I don’t really feel safe here right now,” Max said.

  “Ok, let’s roll. Where are we going to go?”

  “Wait. Let me call Gellar first.”

  “Ok…” Jay said shaking his head as if Max was suggesting something that was going to be a huge waste of time.

  Gellar picked up on the third ring.

  “What did you find?” Gellar asked.

  “I got a weird text message. It said that the game was just starting. Me and Jay are both here and we are pretty freaked out,” Max said.

  “Dude, don’t make us look like total wimps!” Jay said.

  Max rolled his eyes. Even on the phone Jay was concerned with how he looked. It was a bit annoying at times.

  “Ok, can you come down to the station and bring some of your phone company info? We can contact them and see about possibly doing a trace of the number it came from. Odds are it came from a burner phone, but we might get lucky.”

  “Ok, sure. We will be right down.”

  Ten minutes later Max and Jay were driving towards downtown. Max was thankful that he never really threw anythi
ng away and had a document with all of his phone information on it. He had always prided himself on being meticulously organized. It was a bit of a sickness really when you thought about it and Jay was always razzing him about how lame it was to be so organized. He said it was girly and stupid. This coming from the guy who was by far the biggest slob that Max knew. He often wondered how they were such great friends when they were polar opposites in almost every single way. But somehow it worked. He had never had a friend closer to him than Jay was.

  “I never realized how far outside of town you actually live,” Jay said.

  “What? I’ve lived there for two years now. It’s not that far.”

  “Well it is when I’m scared,” Jay said.

  “You are admitting to being scared? That might be the wussiest thing I’ve ever seen you do,” Max joked.

  “I know and I don’t like it either. You know how I hate to get in touch with my emotions and stuff,” Jay said.

  “Yea, you need to get rid of those,” Max replied. Somehow it helped him feel less scared knowing that Jay was having some issues with this too. He was always pretending to be bulletproof, but it was nice to know that it was not the case.

  “Yea, they have always been a drag.”

  Max’s phone buzzed right then. The noise startled him slightly and he felt his fingers lose their grip on the wheel for just a few seconds, and quickly grip them hard as he tried to freeze his posture so that Jay would not know that he had been scared by the sound of his own phone vibrating. It was cool that they were both feeling vulnerable and not scared to let each other know, but there had to be a limit somewhere.

  He quickly grabbed it off the cup holder where he usually kept it when driving and glanced at the screen. He had an email notification. The message was frightening.

  It’s time to play. Read this email or your friend dies.

  Max’s hands slipped off the wheel again as his whole body gasped and he tried to gain control of the car.

  “Whoa! What’s wrong?” Jay said grabbing the dash and holding on for dear life as the car began to swivel back and forth on the road.

  Max got the car under control and pulled over to the side of the road to stop.

  As the car rolled to a grinding halt Jay looked at him like he was crazy. “What the hell is going on?” Jay asked.

  “I got an email. It’s from him,” Max said. He was having trouble controlling his breathing as the hyperventilation started up inside of him. He just needed to get a grip. He had to get control of the situation here.

  “Oh, shit. What does it say?” Jay asked.

  Max opened the email. It pulled up a link that said CLICK HERE FOR INSTRUCTIONS.

  Max glanced at Jay as they both looked at the screen.

  “What the hell…” Jay asked.

  Max clicked on the link gritting his teeth the whole time.

  The video pulled up just then. It was Joely Turner. Joely was a friend of Max’s from film class. She was supposed to work on their film but she decided that she had an avenue she had to pursue with her own independent movie with a different crew. She was a very talented camera person and was amazing at the use of light and shadows. It had been sad to lose her.

  She was right then in a dark place, tears streaming down her face screaming for her life.

  “Help! Someone help me please!” Her screams were the terrified yells of someone who has all but given up. The voice belting from her slender body was full of pain and had grown hoarse from screaming for who knew how long. Max felt sick all over as he watched. This could not be happening, could it?

  “Shit,” Jay said.

  A voice came on the video just then. It was a deep voice, a man’s voice but obviously muffled and put through some sort of electronic disguise.

  “Hello, Max. As you can see the game has moved to the next step. You did not have a warning for the first round. You did not have a way to stop what happened to your other friends. But you have a way to stop this time, provided that you play by the rules here.”

  “Jesus Christ…” Max said. He did not want to listen to anymore. Why did he open the email? Why did he continue to play this bullshit game? If he had ignored it then he might have never known what was happening to Joely. He could have moved on and no one would have been the wiser. It would have been out of sight, out of mind.

  “You have exactly twenty minutes to save your friend’s life. After that they will be completely out of air and they will die. Of course the calculations may not be exact. It is possible she only has ten or fifteen minutes left. She has used a lot of air screaming for her life. But at this moment she is very much alive. Whether she stays that way is entirely up to you.”

  “What do you want?” Jay yelled as if the recording could hear him.

  “You must go to Leeds Cemetery. Your friend is there, buried in a grave. What grave is the question? You must reflect on your research that you have done for your film. The film you made is a disgusting gesture and you are about to find out how disgusting it really is. The answer you are seeking is a significant number associated with the subject of the film. I should not have to give you more information than that. You are a smart guy; I’m sure you can figure it out. You must hurry; your friend doesn’t have much time.”

  The video went blank.

  “Jesus Christ! We got to call the cops!” Jay yelled.

  “We don’t have time to wait for them. We can be at Leeds Cemetery in five minutes.”

  Max floored the car heading off down the road, disobeying the forty mph speed limit with reckless abandon.

  “Man, we should at least call them. She might need an ambulance,” Jay said as he pulled his phone out of his pocket.

  “Ok, good idea. Call Gellar. Here is her card,” Max said pulling it out of his pocket and handing it to Jay just before he turned onto Leeds road.

  Jay made the call and told Gellar what had just happened and then hung up after a few “Uh huhs”.

  “Ok, she is going to meet us there. She told us to stay in the car,” Jay said. “But fuck that, right?”

  “Damn straight,” Max said impressed by his sudden stroke of courage.

  “So, what is the plan?” Jay asked. “How are we going to find her?”

  “I don’t know. We have to think. He said that he gave us the clue. It is a number important to the subject of the movie. Ok, the subject is Jack the Ripper.”

  “Maybe it’s 1888? That is when he first started the murders in Whitechapel.”

  “Right. So it’s a cemetery. I imagine it was someone who died in the year 1888.”

  “How are we going to randomly find that? The cemetery is huge. It’s not like the people are plotted out according to exactly when they died.”

  Max pulled up in front of the cemetery and the two men hopped out.

  “Maybe there is a map for this sort of thing online?” Max said as he walked towards the gate.

  “Ok… it’s worth a shot I guess,” Jay said as he pulled out his phone and began a google search.

  “Shit,” Max said as he got close enough to the front gate of the cemetery to see a great big padlock staring him down and offering a challenge. The bars of the gate were basically unclimbable since the cross bars were so far a part that you could not step up from one to the next like a ladder, which Max imagined was designed that way with specific purpose in mind. He guessed these cemetery people were not so damn dumb after all.

  “What?” Jay asked. His eyes fell on the padlock and Max saw him nodding his head in understanding. “Oh. Shit.”

  “We have to get over this damn wall somehow. Maybe you can give me a boost?” Max said. “I’m a lot lighter than you.”

  “Yea, but once you’re in there it’s going to be much faster if we both split up. Doing it by yourself you might not find her in time.”

  “Well, then what do you suggest?” Max asked feeling flustered.

  “There,” Jay replied.

>   Max saw he was pointing to something shiny about twenty feet from them. He jogged over towards the shining light, blaring brightly in the darkness, illuminated only by the moon.

  It was a pair of shovels just lying on the ground.

  “Wow, that is convenient,” Jay said.

  “Well, he did say he gave us everything we needed to succeed. I’m still surprised though,” Max replied. Psycho killers were not really known for being so trustworthy.

  Jay grabbed up a shovel and Max grabbed the other one. Jay quickly went to work bashing the lock on the front of the cemetery gate. Max was surprised that this cemetery had not joined the twenty first century and replaced that lock with something better, but apparently the huge old padlock was still working well for them that had been in place for so many years.

  On the third strike the lock busted open and Jay removed it, grunting as he set it aside and let it fall to the ground. Max kept looking around paranoid as if they were doing something wrong and wanted to avoid the police, but then he quickly reminded himself that they’d called the cops and they should have been there shortly.

  As they entered the cemetery Max felt a coldness fall over him. He had always had a fear of cemeteries. There was something about them that just creeped him out. But he figured that a lot of people felt that way. It was weird to be surrounded by so much death. As a horror film buff, Max could not help but let his imagination run wild with him in this situation. He could just imagine the cemetery being haunted and running into some sort of a ghost. It was silly he knew, but with the terror that they were currently facing that would not have been so far out of reach after all.

  “Where do we go?” Max asked Jay as he closed the door behind him. Jay closed the door quietly as if he was afraid of disturbing someone’s rest. It was odd, but Max somehow understood.

  “I’m working on it,” Jay said pulling his phone back out of his pocket. He fiddled with a few things on google and seemed to find what he was looking for after a couple of minutes. He smiled.

  “Ha, there we are,” Jay said.

  “What?”