by Jack Quaid
He shook his head. “A bear’s work is never done.”
Five
Teddy-Hugs-A-Lot poked his head around the corner of a massive Teddy-Hugs-A-Lot display and looked down the first aisle of Toy World. Parker Ames was on the floor, under a whole stack of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Fisher-Price toys that had apparently fallen and knocked the monster hunter out.
“Isn’t this quite fortuitous,” Teddy-Hugs-A-Lot said as he half walked, half danced down the aisle toward the fallen Parker. He cleared a few boxes until he had a direct path to his next victim. “They’re always underestimating you, Dick,” he said to himself. “And that never works out well for anyone.”
He raised the butcher knife high—as high as his bear arms would allow, anyway—but just as he was about to slam that blade down hard into Parker’s body, Teddy-Hugs-A-Lot paused. Something wasn’t right, and he knew it. He grabbed Parker by the hair, and the hair came clean off. It was nothing more than a wig!
He leaned down and rolled the body over, only to discover that the body of Parker Ames was just a display mannequin. “What the shit!”
Behind him, the real Parker Ames stepped out of the shadows. In one hand, she had a bottle of rubbing alcohol that she had collected from the cleaning cart, complete with the flame on the label warning it was dangerous, and in her other hand was a Zippo lighter. The two traditionally did not go hand in hand.
Teddy-Hugs-A-Lot looked down at his little furry feet. The bear was standing in a pool of alcohol. “Oh, hell.”
Parker sparked the lighter. “Looks like somebody has been a bad, bad teddy.”
“I’m going to—”
They’re all the words Parker let him get out, because as soon as he started speaking, she tossed the Zippo at his feet, and as soon as the flame touched the alcohol, the bear, the mannequin, and the entire pool they were both in erupted in flames.
Teddy-Hugs-A-Lot stopped, dropped, and rolled, but nothing was killing that fire. The bear was toast. Parker lit a cigarette and watched.
Thirty minutes and two more cigarettes later, the fire had all but burned out, and what was left of Teddy-Hugs-A-Lot was nothing more than a pile of burned and melted fur and a scorched plastic skeleton.
She crushed the cigarette under her boot and pushed off the shelf she was leaning against. “I guess my work here is all done.”
Parker headed off down the aisle and had only made it half a dozen steps when she heard a long and deep groan coming from the burned pile of fur that had once been Teddy-Hugs-A-Lot.
“No way,” Parker said as she turned around.
No way indeed.
Teddy-Hugs-A-Lot, the world’s creepiest teddy bear, slowly climbed to what was left of his feet. It was a struggle, but he managed to stand and raise his little singed and melted plastic hand and give Parker the middle finger. “Fuck you, bitch.”
Parker pulled the machete from the sheath over her shoulder and gripped it tightly in her hand. “No,” she said. “Fuck you.”
Parker took a couple of quick steps, swung, and whacked Teddy-Hugs-A-Lot’s messed-up head clean off, sending that little plastic skull flying into the darkness of Toy World. And that was that. Teddy-Hugs-A-Lot was no more. The evil little bear went to evil-little-bear heaven.
It had been one long bastard of a night, and Parker was tired. She wanted a hot bath, some MTV, and a Diet Coke. Her body ached, and she just knew the pounding in her head wasn’t going to leave for at least a couple of days. She was beat.
When she felt the hand on her shoulder, she reacted with pure instinct and maybe even a little experience that told her it’s better to act first and ask questions later in the wake of a slasher battle—99.99 percent of the time, that was 100% the right way to go. So when Parker felt that hand on her shoulder, she gripped her machete, swung around, and gave it a thrust. That machete, the very same one she had used to send slashers all the way back to hell, rammed through the belly of Officer Nick Harding.
Teddy-Hugs-A-Lot had stabbed him and hurt him really bad, but the bear hadn’t killed him. Harding had passed out, and when he came to again, he’d struggled to his feet and found Parker. He’d tried to call out to her, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t make a sound. So he reached out and touched her instead.
“No, no, no,” Parker said as she cradled him to the floor. “This is not… I didn’t mean… Why did you…” But it wasn’t his fault, and she knew that.
Parker had been around death long enough to know which ones were going to make it and which ones weren’t. Taking one look at Harding, she didn’t like his chances, not one bit.
Parker brushed hair out of his face so she could look into his eyes and tell him she was sorry, desperately sorry, but when she looked in his eyes, she knew he was already gone.
Parker didn’t know what to do with herself. So she just sat there with Harding in her lap, his hand in hers, until the sun came up. Killing evil was one thing. Killing Nick Harding was something else entirely.
ONE YEAR LATER
Six
Parker Ames wasn’t a morning person, so when her alarm went off at five o’clock, she was less than impressed. Her arm came out from under the blanket and hit the snooze button. Then she went on hitting that snooze button for thirty minutes until one of her half-closed eyes peeked out from under the covers and saw the time.
“Shit. Shit. Shit!” Parker snapped as she threw the covers off and lunged out of bed. “Goddamn it!”
She ran her fingers through her dirty hair as she scanned the floor of the trailer for her uniform. Her shift at Al’s Diner started in thirty minutes, and if she was late, which was highly likely, it would be the third day in a row she was late. And that wasn’t going to go down too well.
“Bingo,” Parker said when she spotted the pastel-pink uniform, which she hated, on the floor by her Converse sneakers.
Parker stripped off the clothes that she had fallen asleep in, then she slipped the uniform over her head. She grabbed her coat, her car keys, and a bottle of beer from the cooler on the floor and stepped out into the cold Detroit morning.
Sunnydale Trailer Park wasn’t exactly one of the most luxurious of trailer parks. It wasn’t even an average trailer park. Nope, Sunnydale Trailer Park was the trailer park for people who have been kicked out of all the other trailer parks. It was full of felons, domestic abusers, junkies, and anyone who really, truly wanted to get lost from society. They took the rent money and asked no questions. That last part was what Parker liked the most.
Parker climbed behind the wheel of her 1976 Beetle, slid the key into the ignition, and turned it. Usually, the little Beetle, which she’d bought for the grand total of one hundred seventy-five dollars, started no matter how cold it was. Never on the first time, but after a good ten or twenty seconds of pumping the gas, turning the key, and swearing, the engine would usually turn over. Then she would be on the road. But on that particular morning, no amount of pumping the gas, turning the key, or swearing was going to get the little Beetle’s engine to turn over.
She yelled, swore, and slammed her hands against the wheel until she saw the time on the dashboard. Realizing she didn’t have the time for any of those things, Parker got the hell out of the car. Every morning when she was on time, she drove past the 171 bus that stopped all along Outer Drive Avenue and right outside Sunnydale Trailer Park.
It was cold but not yet cold enough to snow, and Parker was wearing her Converses anyway, so she ran. She didn’t make it more than twenty or thirty feet before her knees started to ache, her heart started to pound, and her breath started to get very, very short. A year ago, she could sprint for ten minutes at that speed before running straight into a slasher and going into battle. She was so out of shape that at that moment, she would have been lucky to make sixty seconds at that speed.
She made it through the trailer park, past the entrance, and out onto the street just as the 171 bus sailed straight on past her and down the street. Parker wanted to scr
eam and beat the living hell out of something. She didn’t have the energy to do any of those things, so instead, she slipped her hand into her handbag, pulled the can of beer from her bag, cracked it open, and drank half in one hit.
It was going to be one hell of a long walk.
Seven
A little over an hour later, Al Ferzetti, the proprietor of Al’s Diner on the corner of Warren and Harvard, was behind the counter, staring at the clock. He wasn’t in the mood for this shit. He was forty-five years old, and his wife had just had their fourth baby. All their other babies weren’t even babies anymore. They were all teenage boys, and in a couple of years, they would be men and out of the house. But his wife wanted a little girl. She’d always wanted a little girl, and she’d convinced him to try just one more time. So they did, and bang! Another boy.
What fuckin’ luck, Al thought to himself. What fuckin’ luck. Now he’s up all night listening to the screaming kid. Then he has to be back at the diner hours before the sunlight ever has the guts to shine just so he can prepare the hamburger mix, cut up the salads, and take the delivery of all the eggs and milk and whatever else he’d ordered the day before. The very last thing he wanted to do was wait tables because he was a waitress down.
She called herself Ellis Bell, but he figured that name was bullshit. Not that Al really cared about her goddamned name. He did care about being a goddamned waitress down during the morning rush.
Then finally, just as he could feel his blood pressure start to rise, she walked through the door as if she weren’t an hour late and cruised right on by without a care in the world.
“You’re late,” he said.
“Al, I’m totally not in the mood.” She didn’t even look at him, just cruised right on by and pushed through the double doors that led to the office and lockers.
Not in the mood? Al thought. Not in the mood? Who the fuck is ever in the mood? There were ways things were going to be and ways things weren’t going to be. Speaking like that to Al in his own joint fell into the latter category.
He made his way along the counter and walked into the office just as the girl was trying to salvage her makeup in the mirror of the locker door.
“I’m coming, Al,” she said. “I know I’m late, and I know I said it wouldn’t happen again, but shit, it happened again, and I couldn’t help it.” She was franticly pulling makeup out of her bag, deciding it was the wrong stuff, and putting it back in only to pull it out again.
“There is something else,” he said.
“Yeah, what?”
“You weren't hired for your waitressing skills or damn well near lack of them,” Al said. “You were hired because you’re easy on the eyes, if you know what I mean.”
Parker stopped applying the makeup and stared at him through the mirror on the locker room door. “What are you saying, Al?”
“I’m saying that it wouldn’t hurt if you undid a button or two.”
Parker gave him a look.
Al held up his hands to signal that he wasn’t trying to start a fight. “That’s all. Give it some thought.” And he backed out of the room.
For a moment or two, with a look of disgust on her face, Parker watched the empty space where he’d been, then she went back to applying her makeup. She didn’t get far before she paused, and her eyes dipped down to the first couple of buttons on her uniform. Parker sighed and undid them, just like Al had asked.
Eight
Even though everything from the benches to the vinyl booths looked tired and worn down, Al’s Diner did a pretty damn good bit of trade. By late morning, the place was packed with truck drivers and factory workers from the nearby plant. The first shift started at three in the morning, so by eleven, the tables were full of big men with empty stomachs.
All three of the waitresses were run off their feet. Samantha and Regina had both started not long before Parker, and although they had done their best to show her the ropes, Al wasn’t wrong—Parker wasn’t much of a waitress.
She had three coffees to take out to Table Nine; a sloppy Joe, a country-fried steak, and two Cokes for Table Six; three cheeseburgers to Table Three; and two Big Al’s Breakfasts for Table Eleven.
Ten minutes later, nobody got what they’d ordered, and no one was shy about complaining. Parker had taken out slashers all over the country. Big hulking sons of bitches armed with chain saws and machetes. One had even used a microwave oven. Still, what stressed her out the most was getting the right meals to the right tables and remembering who wanted curly fries with their burger. The funny thing was she tried—she really tried—but a natural waitress she just was not.
She was in the middle of trying to make sense of her last order when she felt a massive hand slap her right on the ass. Parker stopped dead in her tracks as half the men in the diner erupted in laughter while the other half just gave a weak, noncommittal smile and went back to their meals.
“Hey, sugar,” the man said. “Can you get ol’ Denny another cup of joe?”
Goddamned Denny, she thought. Old Parker wouldn’t have thought twice about taking out two of the son of a bitch’s teeth at a bare minimum. New Parker… well, new Parker had rent to pay.
“I’ll be right back, Denny,” she said, and true to her word, she was back in two shakes of a lamb’s tail with the coffee.
And the day went on like that for the next few hours until she was about to head out to the kitchen for a cigarette.
“Parker Ames,” a teenage girl’s voice called out.
Parker hadn’t gone by the name Parker Ames in almost a year. To everyone in Al’s Diner—and everyone in Detroit, for that matter—Parker Ames was Ellis Bell, a high school dropout from East Chicago with no family and a bad attitude.
Parker looked over her shoulder at the couple of teenagers sitting in the booth at Table Five. The pair of them looked as if they were straight out of a John Hughes movie. The girl was Anna. She was maybe sixteen years old and looked like she was college material. The boy was Blaine. He was a year or two older, and the letterman jacket told Parker two things. He was captain of the wrestling team, and he was from Whittier, someplace she had never heard of.
“Miss Parker Ames?” Anna asked again.
“Never heard of her,” Parker said as she was about to take off to have that cigarette.
“Have you heard of Hurricane Williams?” Blaine shot back with.
And that stopped Parker dead in her tracks. She’d heard of Hurricane Williams all right. He’d killed her parents and damn near half the town of Happydale. Parker hadn’t thought about those things for a very long time, and if she had her way, she would never think about them again.
The kids didn’t look like they were the type to take no for an answer, and Parker didn’t fancy them hassling her for the rest of the day, so she slid into the booth across from them. “You’ve got three minutes.”
“We came from Whittier, Alaska. It’s a small town with a very small population,” Anna said.
“The locals call it Bastard Town,” Blaine said.
Parker lit a cigarette. “What’s so special about Bastard Town that you had to run all the way down here to tell little ol’ me about it?”
“We have a problem… a slasher problem.” Anna let the words linger between them for a moment before continuing. “Two months ago, old Mr. and Mrs. Reed were found dead in their garage.”
“You sure it wasn’t old age?” Parker asked.
Blaine took a sip from his Coca-Cola. “Their limbs were torn from their bodies.”
“Old age isn’t known to do that,” Parker said. “Go on.”
“Two weeks later,” Anna continued, “Jenny Goldman’s body was found with a machete buried in her chest, and two weeks after that, Arnold Buck was impaled on the spire of the church.”
“Kinda sounds like you do have a slasher problem,” Parker said.
“We need your help,” Anna said.
Parker leaned back in her chair, gave it some thought, and blew smoke out thr
ough her nostrils. “No.”
Anna frowned. “What? Why?”
“I don’t do that kind of thing anymore.”
“But you’re Parker Ames,” she said.
“You killed Hurricane Williams, the Dominator, and Richard the Mad,” Blaine said.
Anna followed up with, “You’re a hero.”
Parker slid out of the booth and stood. “I’m no hero.”
“But…” Anna said, confused. “We need your help?”
“I’m sorry,” Parker said. “I really need this job.”
Nine
The kids left their address in Bastard Town on the back of a napkin and were gone shortly after that. Parker shoved it into her pocket and got back to work clearing tables and taking orders. She pushed the whole incident out of her mind altogether.
Running around the country taking down slashers and monsters was so long ago for Parker that it felt a movie she had watched once and forgotten most of the plot or a story that had happened to somebody else. What she did remember in 3-D Technicolor was the very last moment she had held a weapon in her hand and used that weapon to separate Nick Harding from the world altogether. She remembered the fear on his face and the confusion in his eyes, and no matter how much time passed, those were the things she would never forget. As far as she was concerned, she wasn’t Parker Ames, monster hunter, anymore. She was only Ellis Bell, waitress. And not a very good one at that.
That was until she reached for a plate and saw a tiny bit of a tattoo poke out from under the sleeve of her uniform. The tattoos had been with her for years and were so much a part of her that when she looked at her body, she barely saw them. On her left arm, she had forty-three skull-and-crossbones tattoos—one for each slasher she had sent back to hell. On the opposite arm was an elaborate vine with hundreds of leaves running from her wrist all the way up her arm. There was a leaf for each and every life she had saved. The tattoos were meant to remind her during the times of darkness that each slasher she’d killed and each life she’d saved mattered. Despite the blood and gore and the nomadic lifestyle, saving those lives was worth it. Every single, bad, bloody thing about it.