The Final Girl

by Kenneth Preston

  These reporters were vultures. What should have been a sixty-second walk to her mother’s car carried on for five minutes. Despite being told to keep her eyes down, Jill couldn’t resist sneaking a look when she heard Detective Moore’s voice up ahead. She was leading the way now, cutting through the persistent mob of reporters like a pro, like she’d done this before―or many times before. Because she had, Jill knew. Jill hadn’t been born under a rock. She knew Detective Moore’s horror story all too well. She knew that Detective Moore had plenty of experience beating back the press, and it felt reassuring to have someone with that kind of experience in her corner.

  Jill flashed back to the moment she asked Darlene about the loss of her daughter. She had known then who Detective Moore was and what she had gone through. Rather than offering her condolences or simply pretending that she didn’t know who the detective was, Jill had grabbed the proverbial knife in Detective Moore’s heart and twisted it. It hadn’t been one of her finer moments.

  After beating their way past the press, Jill slipped into the passenger seat of her mother’s red Ford Escort. She watched as her mother and Detective Moore exchanged a few words next to the open passenger-side door, something about their police escort.

  Her mother took her seat behind the wheel, closed the door, and sighed. “Are you okay?”

  She didn’t bother looking at her mother when she said, “I’m okay.”

  She could feel her mother’s eyes on her, assessing her. Her mother wasn’t convinced that she was okay. How could she after everything Jill had been through?

  Their car was escorted by a number of police cruisers and press vehicles. Detective Moore’s car was somewhere in the mix. Her mother attempted to make small talk along the way. Jill met her mother’s small talk with the shortest possible replies. She knew her mother was just trying to get her to open up, but Jill just wasn’t ready. Jill wasn’t even there in the car with her mother. In her head, she was back there at the campsite.

  ―

  The Man with the Pushed-in Face. He’d taken the only friends she’d ever had. More than saddened by their loss, she was horrified by it. It wasn’t the blood and the bodies that had seared their way into her brain, as horrific as those images were; it was the void that had been left in their wake. She had been given the gift of friendship, and just as suddenly, it had been taken away. And the void she’d barely known was there before was back with a vengeance. The loneliness that had been a dull emotional throb was now a sharp, searing pain. But why? she wondered. She’d called them her friends, but were they really? Did she even know what friendship was?

  She wasn’t just out of their league; she was out of everybody’s league. How could she have expected some of the more popular kids in school to befriend her? But befriend her, they did. And it all started with the enigmatic and oh so cool Richard Caulfield.

  Richard wasn’t just cool; he was the coolest of the bunch, at least to her eyes. He was the bad boy, and what good girl doesn’t love a bad boy. But he was more than just his bad boy image; he was dangerous. Jill didn’t need to know him to know that. Danger burned in his eyes, and she was fascinated by it―so fascinated that she couldn’t keep herself from staring at him in the hallways despite the fact that his friends picked on her. He picked on her too, of course, but it was subtle, and there was something kind of charming about the way he picked on her. It was like he was flirting with her. But that couldn’t be, could it? Richard Caulfield flirting with a freak like Jill Turner? Don’t be ridiculous.

  But then Richard caught her looking at him in the hallway. All of his friends were snickering, but he wasn’t. He had that look in his eyes, that dangerous look. The kind of look that her mother had taught her was dangerous, the kind of look that made Jill feel right in all the wrong places. Or the places that her mother taught her were the wrong places. She didn’t know if they were the wrong places, but she knew that the way he was making her feel was right.

  Then Richard approached her, and she was rooted to the ground as he opened his mouth, not to make fun of her. She knew before the words came tumbling out. He opened his mouth to talk to her the way boys talk to girls. The way sullied boys talk to sullied girls. And she felt oh so right. He turned on the charm. She doubted that he ever turned it off. And he said all of these wonderful things. Normal things to everybody else but wonderful to her because she had never heard them directed at her. He was asking Jill about herself. He was interested in her. And Jill was so enraptured that she didn't feel the need to lie. She never even considered it. She just told him all about her lonely life and her crazy mother, and he didn't make fun of her. On the contrary, he was interested. He wanted to know more about her. He wanted to know about her father. So she told him...everything. She told him about the drinking, and the abuse. And she told him about the day she discovered her gift and how she used it to kill him. He didn’t look at her like she was the monster her mother believed her to be. No, he smiled and invited her to lunch.

  They sat in the cafeteria. Their first date. All eyes were on the two of them. The cafeteria nerds were probably wondering what Richard Caulfield was doing in the cafeteria. Cool kids like Richard Caulfield never sat in the cafeteria. And they had to be wondering what Richard Caulfield was doing with a freak like Jill Turner. But Jill didn’t have to wonder. He was fascinated by her. It was in his eyes, and in the questions he asked her. She killed her father, and he wanted to know more. So she told him...in detail. She told him that she had looked up to her father, that he was her hero. She’d wanted to be just like her father. But then she discovered that her father had a bad side. He liked to drink. And he liked to beat his mother. She loved her father but she hated his bad side, hated it so much that she had to destroy it. But she couldn’t destroy the bad side without destroying all of him. So she waited until that fateful day when she went down into the basement. She knew then that her father’s bad side had completely taken over. All the good in the man was gone. So she decided it was time. She used her gift to bash his face in until he was dead, lying in a pool of blood that spread across the basement floor and past her feet. When he asked her to demonstrate her gift, she told him that she couldn’t. Her mother told her that it was a gift that should only be opened once. She must put the gift away and never open it again. And she had obeyed her mother. She hadn’t opened her gift.

  Until recently.

  Yes, the bad side of her father had completely taken over, but Jill couldn’t believe that there wasn’t a sliver of the good man in there somewhere. She was consumed by the possibility that she may have destroyed the little good, the little hope, that was left in the man. So for the first time since killing her father, she used her gift to bring him back. And he was good now. He was her guardian angel. He followed her to make sure she was safe. He even wrote to her. Yes, he wrote her letters, thanking her for bringing him back, telling her that he couldn’t get too close to her but that he would always protect her.

  She had never told anybody about her father, The Man with the Pushed-in Face, but she told Richard. And he didn’t run away from her. He didn’t think she was crazy.

  On the contrary, he was fascinated by her, particularly her gift. He told her that her gift reminded him of the Stephen King book Carrie. He told her that she reminded him of Carrie White. Jill was enthralled. She told him that Carrie was her favorite book, that she’d read it more times than she could count. She told Richard that Carrie White was her hero because she’d used her gift to stand up to bullies. Her father had given her the book when she was just learning to read, she told him. Her father was a horror aficionado and had introduced her to all the classics. They would read books together. They would watch movies together. And her mother hated it, probably because she was jealous. When her father died, her mother confiscated all of the DVDs and most of the books, but Jill had managed to hold onto her father’s battered paperback copy of Carrie, keeping it hidden in the small heating vent at the base of the wall beside her bed.


  This led to a lengthy discussion about all things horror. Richard was every bit the aficionado that her father had been. More so, actually. Her father had loved horror, but Richard was obsessed with it. He didn’t want to just read and watch horror; he wanted to live it.

  That’s when he told her about the game. The Final Girl. It was a role-playing game. Richard and his friends were assigned roles―killer, victims, and the final girl―and acted out scenarios. Richard was almost always the killer. They had one coming up in a few weeks, as a matter of fact, and they needed a final girl. Would she be interested?

  She jumped at the opportunity.

  He took her to his house, into his room. She thought he might kiss her, or more. She would have liked that. But he didn’t kiss her. He showed her his memorabilia. His posters. His DVDs and Blu-rays. His books. His souvenirs. His props. The props he used for the game. Outfits. Masks. Fake knives, axes, and machetes. Fake blood. Even a severed arm. It was all so sick―and fascinating.

  He showed her the script for the role-playing game―yes, an actual script―and a map of the campground.

  That’s when the conversation got weird.

  He put the script and map aside and took her hands. Again, he thought he might kiss her. But he didn't. He told her that he wanted to try something different with this game. He wanted to take it up a notch. He wanted to make this game more realistic, more frightening than it had ever been before.

  The fact of the matter was that the game had never been frightening, he told her. How could it have been? All of the participants knew it was a game. But what if they could change that? What if they could start playing the game as usual, then change something, introduce some frightening new element that only he and Jill would know about, something that would lead the others to believe that the game wasn’t a game anymore? Better yet, Richard could tell the others he invited Jill to go camping but didn’t tell her about the game, that they would be playing a prank on her, then he and Jill would turn the tables on them, introduce this frightening new element, and Jill could have her revenge.

  Just like Carrie White.

  Jill liked that idea, but she didn’t want anybody to get hurt. Sure, she wanted to get the others back for picking on her, but she also wanted them to like her. She wanted them to be her friends.

  No one would get hurt, Richard assured her. It was just a game, after all. One with an interesting new twist. And when it was all over, after she got her revenge, everything would be okay. The others would accept Jill as one of their own. She would be part of the club.

  She would have friends, Jill mused. Imagine that; Jill Turner with friends. They would all be there, all the kids who’d spent the better part of the school year picking on her. But they wouldn’t be picking on her anymore. She would get her revenge. And when it was all over, they would all be her friends. She was ecstatic.

  And more than a little naive, she knew now.

  It got out of control long before The Man with the Pushed-in Face showed up. It got of control when she left the house without telling her mom, knowing full-well that her mom would be furious when she found out what she was up to. Next thing she knew, she was drinking beer, something she had never done before. Her head wasn’t clear, far from it.

  Then the game began, and there were people running...and screaming. It all looked and sounded so fake...because it was fake. It was a game. But at some point, in the midst of this alcohol-fueled haze, the line between fantasy and reality blurred. Then everything went dark, but there were spots of memory here and there. Richard wearing a ski mask, as planned. Richard holding a knife, as planned. Everything was going according to plan.

  That’s when The Man with the Pushed-in Face showed up.

  Now, Richard was gone. They were all gone. And it was her fault because she brought her father back from the grave. To protect her from them before they became her friends. To protect her from the memory of what she’d done. She didn’t want it to happen that way. She didn’t want The Man with the Pushed-in Face to kill her friends. But it was her fault all the same.

  Guardian angels aren’t supposed to kill, but this one did. He had a list. She didn’t know it then, before he’d killed her friends, but she knew it now. She could see the list in her mind’s eye. A list of eight names.

  Four down, four to go.

  ―

  “Look at all those people.” Her mother’s voice jerked her back to the present. Jill had been looking but hadn't quite seen them, people lining the streets to get a look at the procession of police and press vehicles making its way through their otherwise quiet neighborhood. And, of course, to get a look at the red Ford Escort carrying the procession's star attraction. The closer they drew to their destination, the thicker the crowds became. They were standing three rows deep as the Escort made its final turn. There were ten houses on this block. The Turner's modern ranch was situated dead-center on the right. What should have been a seconds long drive to reach the house became a good seven minutes as Jill's mother gallantly weaved her way through police barricades, crowds trickling past the barricades to be pushed back by the police, and a new contingent of press that had apparently been lying in wait to seize the Turners the moment they arrived.

  Upon pulling into the driveway, they were met by Detective Moore and a number of uniformed police officers. Detective Moore opened Jill's door, helped her out, and guided her to the front door as if Jill were an invalid. She had fully recovered from the superficial wound to her abdomen and could walk perfectly fine on her own, but she appreciated the effort on Detective Moore’s part nonetheless. More than appreciated it, she enjoyed it. Her skin tingled at Detective Moore’s touch, an arm around her shoulders, a hand on her elbow. Actual goosebumps. It was intimate. Not sexually intimate. She wasn't attracted to women; at least, she didn't think she was. She didn't have any experience with either gender, but she didn't need experience to know where her sexual instincts were directed. It was more like a mother-daughter intimacy, the kind of intimacy that her actual mother’s helicopter parenting couldn’t provide.

  “Are you all right?” Detective Moore had to raise her voice a bit to be heard over the cacophony of reporters’ shouts.

  Jill smiled up at the detective. “I’m fine.” She was beginning to like Detective Moore. She was beginning to see her as something she had no firsthand experience with. The detective had lost her daughter. Brittany, her name was. Everybody with a television or a radio and a set of eyes and ears knew that name. That name and the name of the girl's mother were synonymous with tragedy. But it didn't have to be that way, did it? Not for the mother. Surely, some good could come from that tragedy. Like the mother, she was so consumed by the need to protect the girl who reminded her of her lost daughter that she went above and beyond for the girl, that she formed a connection to the girl. Maybe she would come to think of Jill as her own daughter. Maybe she already had.

  The moment they stepped into the foyer, Detective Moore released her hold on Jill. Jill was disappointed. She could feel herself leaning into the detective, rubbing shoulders with her the way a cat will rub up against a person's leg, begging to be pet.

  The detective gave her a curious look before turning her attention to her mother. “I’d like to have a look around, if that’s okay,” Detective Moore said. “Get a layout of the house.”

  “Of course,” her mother said. “Let me show you around.”

  Jill watched the two drift away. She was jealous. The mother who shouldn’t have been her mother was taking the woman who should have been her mother away from her. Jill was struck by how quickly these feelings for Detective Moore came to her. One tender touch was all it took. That was one more than her biological mother had given her.

  Her biological mother.

  She was already making that distinction. Or maybe she had always made that distinction, and she just hadn't been aware of it. Maybe she just hadn't known what a real mother was until Detective Moore had put an arm around her.

 
; Jill took a seat on the living room couch. The vertical blinds were drawn. It was quiet. The hum of the crowd outside was like that of a box fan. It was soothing, barely noticeable, lulling her into a trance until the voices of her biological mother and Detective Moore pulled her out of it.

  Detective Moore was looking at the family photos hanging on the wall in the foyer. She wasn’t just looking at the photos; she was studying them, particularly the image of her late father. She wondered if Detective Moore believed her, and somehow, Jill knew that if Detective Moore didn’t quite believe her, she didn’t quite doubt her either.

  Her biological mother, on the other hand, just shut it all down. She’d watched Jill use her gift to push her father’s face in, and she’d shut it down. She’d told her biological mother and Detective Moore that she’d raised her father from the grave, that he was her guardian angel, and her mother had shut it down.

  Her biological mother was at Detective Moore’s right shoulder, gabbing in her ear, probably doing her best to shut down the possibility that Detective Moore believed in Jill.

  They faced one another, and Detective Moore smiled one of those getting ready to leave smiles. She walked into the living room and sat down beside Jill. “Well, I’m getting ready to leave,” she said. She was smiling a different kind of smile now, an affectionate smile, a motherly smile. “Is there anything you need from me?”

  Jill needed her to stay, but she shook her head.

  Detective Moore hesitated. “Do you have any questions for me?”

  It was Jill’s turn to hesitate. “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, if you have any questions, feel free to call me. You have my number.”