by Adam Millard
Just then, as it was wont to do when one least expected it, the phone rang. Amanda left the pile of useless implements on the bed and went to answer it.
“Amanda!” Freddy’s voice said before she’d even picked up. Of course, she didn’t hear him say her name, for she hadn’t picked up yet.
“Hello?” Amanda said, finally picking up after not picking up a moment ago.
“You might be right,” Freddy said. “I hate to admit it, but you might be right.”
“Right about what?” Amanda said, picking up the pen she had been doodling with earlier and wielding it like a sword.
“About Pigface,” Freddy said. “About him coming back from the dead.”
“What made you change your mind?” She couldn’t help feeling a little smug. Of course she was right. She was the final girl. The final girl is always right. Until they get there head smashed off with a sledgehammer.
“I was at the arcade with Rich,” said Freddy. “He said something about voodoo, about how you shouldn’t trust anyone that wears robes and talks in tongues.”
“What about the Pope?” asked Amanda.
“No, I didn’t see him at the arcade. Anyway, my point is that, if what you’re saying is true, that we’re about to come face-to-face with that bacon-faced bastard once again, we need to prepare.”
“I was just doing—” Amanda trailed off as dizziness washed over her. She had to grasp onto the telephone table to prevent herself from toppling backwards. She hadn’t felt this woozy since the first time she fingered herself.
“Amanda? Amanda? You still there?”
The truth of the matter was, she wasn’t there. Well, of course she was still bodily there. If she wasn’t, then things had really taken a turn for the worse. If you had been there in her hallway, you would have seen her, swaying slowly back and forth, drooling slightly, eyes staring off into the middle-distance, as if she was trying to remember something just out of reach. And though she was still there, phone to her ear, dribble on her chin, piss running down her ankles, her mind was somewhere else entirely.
Somewhere it didn’t want to be.
*
“Ma, have you seen my axe-sharpener?”
“What does it look like?” came the reply.
“It looks like something you could sharpen an axe with.”
“Does it look like a whetstone?”
“Kind of, but it’s shaped like a hockey puck.”
“Oh! A hockey-puck shaped whetstone?”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“No, I haven’t seen it.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Gigantic arthritis-riddled hands reached across and picked up an axe. The axe went into a suitcase which appeared to be held together with duct tape. Already in the suitcase were several large knives, a length of rope, a map of Haddon (outdated by about twenty years, but a map, nonetheless), a copy of 60+ Sluts Magazine, a bloody apron, and a scented candle. To an outside viewer, if indeed there was one, the scented candle might have come across as overkill.
“Please believe me when I saaaaay,” sang Larry. “This is how it has to end. This is easy on us all, well easier than other waaaays.” Into the case went a packet of extra-strong mints – because nothing said ‘Dead Slasher’ more than halitosis – and a roll of toilet-paper – because nothing said ‘Dead Slasher’ more than a dirty asshole, except maybe halitosis.
“You’re really doing this?” a voice from behind asked. Edie Travers, standing in the doorway, looked to be on the verge of a mental breakdown. She hadn’t had one for a while, and so it was long overdue, and Larry’s insistence upon leaving her to her own devices – no amount of Cary Grant photos would get her through this – was just the kind of thing to push her over the edge.
“We already talked about this, Ma,” Larry said, slamming the lid of his suitcase shut and fastening it with a padlock. The fact that a sudden gust of wind would rip the whole thing to bits was neither here nor there. “I’ve got to finish her. The final girl must die. That’s how this works.”
“I thought the final girl lived?” said Edie, scratching her beard with confusion.
“In part one,” Larry said. “I’m thinking that me dying signalled the end of that, and me coming back meant the start of part two. Is there any chance this might be a trilogy? Only I’ve always fancied being in 3D.”
“Let’s hope not,” said Edie. “Look, son, you’ve made your point. Why don’t you unpack your case and come and sit down in the dark with absolutely nothing to do but twiddle your thumbs? Huh? You’re pushing seventy, Larry. You shouldn’t be off killing people; you should be relaxing, sucking wine-gums, foraging in your ears for something to play with.”
“No,” Larry said, picking up the suitcase. “I’m off to Haddon, and nothing you say is going to change my mind.”
“Bollocks,” said Edie.
*
When Amanda came to, she glanced around the hallway as if she had been mysteriously teleported there. Freddy’s panicked voice was yelling into her ear. “Hello! Amanda! Hello! For fuck’s sa—”
“He’s coming,” Amanda said. “He’s coming, Freddy, and he’s packed a suitcase.”
“Oh,” went Freddy.
“Oh,” added Amanda.
And outside, millions of other people went Oh! at the exact same time, though that was just synchronicity and had nothing at all to do with Larry Travers, or the fact that he’d packed a suitcase.
9
Haddon City Centre
Johnnie Ketchum had been the mayor of Haddon for almost a year, and in that year he had opened more than fifty stores, three museums, a visitors’ centre, half-a-dozen taxi-ranks, fifteen breweries, and the Phat Phuc Noodle Bar over on Green Street. He estimated that he’d spent more than twenty-two entire days, standing next to a ribbon with a pair of scissors in his hand, which is where we now find him, looking moderately dejected and wondering what would happen if he was to suddenly plunge the scissors into his own eye-socket, apart from the bleeding obvious.
“It gives me great pleasure,” he lied, “to be here today,” the lie went on, “opening this wonderful new tanning salon,” scissors in eye, scissors in eye, his brain suggested. To his right, three bright orange ladies wearing luminous orange t-shirts and appallingly short orange skirts, applauded as if it was the first time they had ever heard a human speak. “Yes, indeed,” Johnnie said, before waiting for them to stop it.
There was a decent crowd gathered around the new tanning salon – Tan Yo Hide, for anyone that might have been wondering – which was remarkable, really, since the sun offered almost the exact same service, free of charge. People, Johnnie thought, had no patience any more. They couldn’t be bothered with all that sitting on the beach malarkey, where they risked sand-chafe and crab-bites and shark-attacks and gratuitous nudity courtesy of some shrivelled-up old crone whose breasts hung like Dachshund ears. People wanted to wake up pastier than Casper on a Saturday morning and be walking around illuminating their entire neighbourhoods by lunchtime. Skin cancer? Ah, that’s a small price to pay for the ability to render oneself an oompa loompa.
“It was only last month,” Johnnie continued, “that I lay in bed, thinking—”
“Wanking!” someone from the crowd shouted.
“Thinking!” Johnnie yelled back. “Thinking that what this city needed was yet another tanning salon.” He turned to the orange women, who regarded him warily, now, as if they were afraid of what he might say next. “And here you are, the answer to my prayers.” His knuckles were white from squeezing the scissors too hard.” He stepped up to the ribbon, allowed those with cameras to, for whatever strange reason, capture the moment forever, and then snipped it, all the time smiling like a dog with a bout of wind.
The orange women all wanted a kiss from him – of course they fucking well did – and Johnnie spent the rest of the afternoon handing out 2for1 vouchers, just in case gravy-browning wasn’t dark enough for you.
I’d do anything for a
bit of action, Johnnie thought, passing vouchers to five handsome men sharing a packet of past-its-best jerky. Anything.
*
Across the city, where a new tanning salon would be popping up in just a few weeks’ time, was an alleyway. This wasn’t uncommon, of course; most cities have alleyways. Where else would the junkies dispose of their needles if they didn’t? This particular alleyway was slightly different to all the others, however, inasmuch as it was home to one of Hollywood’s forgotten heroes.
The woman walking through said alleyway had no idea that she was being watched. It was, after all, broad daylight, and rapists, like bats and Lindsay Lohan, only operated at night, or so she thought.
A wolf-whistle told her otherwise.
Coming to a stop in the middle of the alleyway, equidistant to the safety offered by the busier roads at either end, a horrible noise ripped through her. After apologising profusely, she said, “Who’s there?”, which was an absolutely stupid thing to say.
“Just us, chick-a-chick-a,” came the reply. The woman spun to find her escape obstructed by a trio of punks. Brightly-coloured Mohawks, pierced noses and ears, and more dangling chains than at a Hellraiser reunion party, these were proper punks, and make no mistake about it. After swallowing her heart back down, the woman turned and—
“For fuck’s sake!” she gasped as her eyes fell upon even more punks. She was the filling in a punk sandwich. Now she knew how groupies felt backstage at a Stiff Little Fingers concert. She had to think fast, and think fast she did. “I’ve got AIDS!” she said.
“Ain’t we all, love?” asked the punk at the front of the second wave. “Jeb here was one of the first in the country, weren’t you Jeb?”
An old punk with turquoise hair and a bone through his nose said, “Caught it off a monkey. Passed it on to Michael Stipe.”
The woman’s heart was racing, for she knew she was in a spot of bother. “Just let me go,” she said. “I won’t tell the cops nothing.”
“You won’t tell ‘em nothing, anyway,” said the leader. “Now if you’d just be a good girl and take your knickers off, that would—” He was about to say ‘that would be spiffing’ when something, moving quicker than the eye could see, rushed across from the left of the alleyway and knocked three of his teeth out before disappearing again. The punk just stood there, blood drooling from his lips, a look of exquisite confusion upon his weather-beaten phizog.
The other punks began to laugh. One of them bent, picked up a tooth, and handed it to his leader. “Bloody hell, Zip, how fast were you talking?”
Zip scanned the alleyway. “Something just…something just knocked mah teef out and split mah lip,” he said.
“I didn’t see anythin’,” said Jeb, but that might have been his AIDS playing up.
“Me neither,” said a third punk. All six of Zip’s comrades denied seeing anything.
“You!” said Zip, marching up to the woman, who was just as shocked by this strange turn of events as the punks. “What did you just do to me?”
“I didn’t do anything!” the woman gasped.
“You bloody well did,” Zip said, fingering his split lip and pushing a bloody digit toward her as proof. “You’re like that Carrie girl, ain’tcha? That Carrie girl from that film? For fuck’s sake, what’s that film called, the on with that Carrie girl in it?”
“Star Wars?” Jeb ventured.
“I didn’t do anything!” the woman reiterated.
Suddenly, something whooshed through the alleyway. Blurred limbs and cracked skulls were all that the woman saw. It was more than those with the cracked skulls saw, though, as they hit the concrete and began the relatively slow process of bleeding to death.
Zip glanced around at the six punks, who were the ones doing the aforementioned bleeding out. He took a step back, away from the fallen body of Jeb. You didn’t have to roger a monkey to get AIDS, not in this day and age.
Turning back to the woman, he looked terrified. “Please! I’m sorry! Don’t hurt me!” he begged. “We wasn’t gonna do anything to hurt you!”
“You bloody well were!” said the woman, who, for the first time and somewhat confusingly, had the upper hand. “You were going to rape me.”
Zip looked offended. “No we weren’t,” he said.
“You were. You told me to take my knickers off!”
Zip pulled a handful of knickers from his leather jacket. “We’re the Haddon Halleyway Hunderwear Hooligans!” he cried. “We just pinch peoples’ underwear and run about the place, swinging them around our heads and singing the greatest hits of The Clash.”
“Oh,” said the woman. In Haddon, three other people said Oh!, which just went to show that synchronicity worked just as well on a small scale.
“Look what you’ve done to my gang!” Zip said, motioning to the bloodied bodies carpeting the alleyway. “I’ll have to start over from scratch now. Punks are like Pokémon. Rare as rocking-horse shit. You’ve probably set me back t—”
The blur appeared once again, bolted across the concrete, and picked Zip up by the throat. The woman saw now that the mysterious figure was hooded, though not in a yobbish way. He was, in fact, dressed like a ninja, if ninjas had old pizza-boxes stuck to their plimsoles. His face was concealed by a dark mask – the woman could just about make out a pair of steely eyes.
“Gnph!” Zip said, which was far more than his cohorts had been afforded. “Ach!” Which was amazing, really, as he’d never taken a Scottish class in his entire life.
With a flick of the wrist, the vagabond ninja snapped Zip’s neck, and the old punk dropped to the floor with a meaty thud.
After a few seconds, and realising that the ninja was in no rush to piss off, the woman said: “Who are you?” in that way they do in those films with the people, and stuff, with the heroes, and whatnot.
The ninja reached up, removed the hood, then peeled the face-mask away to reveal…
“Julia Roberts!” the woman gasped. “What happened to your hair?”
“Actually,” the vagabond ninja said, “I’m Eric Roberts. You might have seen me in such action classics as Best of the Best, Best of the Best II, and my personal favourite, Love, Honour & Obey: The Last Mafia Marriage.”
“Were you in Mystic Pizza?” asked the woman.
“No, that was Julia.”
“Steel Magnolias?”
“Julia.”
“Ocean’s Eleven. Come on, you must have been in that one. Everyone was in that one.”
“I wasn’t,” Eric Roberts said. “But Julia was. Look, do I get a thank you, or something, for saving your life?”
“Hardly save my life,” said the woman. “They were only going to pinch my knickers.”
“Were they?” said Eric. “Oh, then I fear I may have overdone it on the old punishment front.”
“I fear so, too,” said the woman. “Anyway, look, it’s been lovely meeting you. Give my love to Julia when you next see her.” At that, and with the woman disappearing into the distance as quick as you like, Eric Roberts’ face crumpled up as if he’d bitten down an a lemon.
“Fuck Julia,” he muttered, kicking one of the fallen punks in the face. The punk groaned and spat out blood and teeth. “Fucking princess, getting all the good jobs…got some fucking stories about Julia fucking Roberts…played with herself while her teddy watched…shit the bath when she was thirteen…
10
Camp Diamond Creek
Larry waited until nightfall before making his way through the woods, down past the used condom, right at the frog skeleton, left at the tree with the rudimentary penis carved into it, and onto the road at the bottom of the hill. By the time he arrived at the road, he was absolutely shattered, once again a reminder that he wasn’t as young as he used to be. “Fuck!” he said, for he’d forgotten to pack his incontinence pants. He glanced back the hill and, for a moment, considered heading back to the cabin to fetch them.
I wouldn’t, said the mask. I can hear your heartbeat. You’re
just going to have to shit yourself.
The mask, as was usually the case, was right. If he was lucky he’d make it halfway before succumbing to a coronary. Shitting himself seemed like the safer option.
Hold your thumb out, the mask said.
“Why?” Larry was confused. He imagined that the next few days would be filled with such confusion. Not to mention lots of frowning, several bouts of shrugging, a plethora of questions, and an almost infinite supply of ‘what the fuck?s’.
How else do you expect to thumb a ride? said the mask. That’s why it’s called thumbing a ride. It’s not called ‘nonchalantly standing with your hands in your pockets’ a ride.
“It should be,” said Larry. “My hands are fucking freezing.” Reluctantly, he slipped his left hand from the warmth of its pocket and held it out, thumb extended.
Other way, said the mask. People will think your criticizing their driving skills.
Larry turned his hand so that the thumb pointed upward. “Now what?”
Now we wait, said the mask. For a ridiculous amount of time, by the looks of it. Seriously, you couldn’t find a busier road than this? Mars sees more traffic than this road. The last time a car came along here, Henry Ford was driving the fucker.
“This is the only road I know,” Larry said. “I’m sure someone will be along in a bit.”
Yeah, if they’re lost, said the mask. This road has seen less action than Stephen Hawking.
“Are you going to be like this the entire time?” Larry said. “Because I’ll leave you…” He trailed off.
Hah! That’s right! You can’t leave me. I’m part of you now. A permanent fixture like that foot on Sarah Jessica-Parker’s face, or that horrible face on top of Mickey Rourke’s old face. Try taking me off. Go on, have a go, see what happens.
Larry knew exactly what would happen; the mask was his face now. Who knew what mess lay beneath? He could peel the thing off only to discover a featureless ball. He had eyes. That much he was sure of, but Jocelyn Wildenstein had eyes; Rosie O’Donnell had eyes; Marilyn Manson had eyes – though one of them had cataracts, apparently. What Larry was trying to get at was: having eyes did not stop you from being utterly repulsive.