Bloody Mask

by Alan Spencer

  The basement was also a bad place. A lot of these kinds of houses built back in the 1950's tended to leak in the basement. Even if the basement stayed dry, the door leading into the basement didn't have a lock. You can't watch your murder porn in a room without a lock and stay married. You know women, and I know women. They don't always knock.

  A minister and a married man was protecting a false identity, and Glen would go to extreme lengths to protect himself.

  The bedroom wouldn't be a good place either. Glen wouldn't want to make associations with killing hookers and suppressing his beasts when making love to his wife.

  He needed a sanctuary.

  I checked the room to the right of the bedroom. This was small enough I imagined religious books on shelves. A desk. A laptop. Then I thought about what can be done to conserve an old VHS tape. The man probably had it recorded on digital. He'd keep the relic as a souvenir, but he'd the copy on his computer like porn.

  I scanned my hands along the bare walls. I rapped my knuckles, hearing the hollow sound. The walls were intact. They hadn't been modified.

  So that left one more hiding place. It had to be easily accessible and still well hidden.

  I pulled up each corner of the room's carpet. It wasn't until the third corner that I found a loose board. I lifted up the board, and then I found the lockbox without a lock.

  I eagerly opened it up. I found the VHS tape with a faded label: Sweet Memory. There was also the hooker's panties. Candy's panties. There were fifteen burned discs of unknown material. I imagined they were snuff films. But there was also a dogged Big Box copy of Bloody Mask.

  This is what kept Glen from becoming a murderer over the years.

  The son-of-a-bitch had ruined many things that night after the reunion party.

  It was time to make things right again.

  I took the items and left the house and started the long drive home. There were the fans out there who needed this. I would make so much money off of my niche market. I had already taken care of the big part of the job weeks ago...

  Finale

  "You can wake up now."

  A bucket of cold water splashed over Brian's face.

  Brian opened his eyes. The room seemed vast, because everywhere that surrounded him was dark. The dome light shined down on him like a spotlight.

  "Who's there? What the fuck is this all about?"

  Brian began to remember what had happened. The reunion party. Glen drugging him up and stuffing him in a body bag. Then shooting Glen dead. But what had happened to Dan?

  His memory was fuzzy. Brian couldn't jog his memory. Brian could only stare about the room. He sensed standing persons in the shadows. They were weak profiles. The gleam of eyes.

  "I said who's out there? Why am I strapped to this chair?"

  Against the far wall, an image projected onto the screen. It was from the other night at the abandoned school. The scenes were choppily edited. Terrible '80's synthesizer music culled from Bloody Mask played in the background. Brian watched the film in bits and pieces.

  "Who are you people?"

  Then out came one of the persons hiding in the dark.

  Andy.

  He was wearing a Bloody Mask t-shirt and holding a video camera.

  "Let me go, Andy."

  Andy smiled. "I can't do that, Brian. You've made a lot of people mad."

  "Mad, but why?"

  "Why? Really? There's a few things you should understand, first then. You don't understand the concepts of money and hard work. Dan Daniels did. He raised the money for Bloody Mask, put in the hard work of distributing it, and he suffered the consequences when the movie financially failed. You, on the other hand, moved on.

  "Dan wrote the script, Dan had the ideas, but you, Brian, you were nothing more than a tag along. We raised the money to re-release your movie, and do you wonder where that money came from, Brian? Did you ever think, wow, how did Andy's company afford to buy us free lunches and pay for a big reunion party? No, you didn't.

  "We were planning to fund the sequel to Bloody Mask with Dan Daniels at the helm. But you killed him, Brian. You shot him in cold blood."

  "But I can make the movie," Brian blubbered. "I can do it, Andy! Think of the awesome publicity we have."

  "Dan had the vision and the ideas. You don't have shit, Brian. We have to recoup on our investment. We spent a lot of money making this happen. Since we can't make another Bloody Mask, I pitched an idea to my investors. I'm making an extra special snuff supplement to the Bloody Mask re-release. Only the fans who are willing to pay fifteen grand a pop will receive it.

  "I have Glen and his father's tape of when he killed that hooker. I've got footage from the school. And I'll have the best footage of all. The fans avenging Dan Daniels' death. After all, the fans are the ones keeping the horror genre alive these days."

  Out from the dark, six individuals stepped into the beam of light. They were all wearing rubber aprons and reproductions of the mask from the film.

  "These are all of my investors from Cult Crushers. Care to meet them? They were the biggest Dan Daniels fans. It's a shame you killed him, Brian. We have to keep re-releasing lost horror classics, and if the money isn't there, we have to create these special projects to raise the funds. By any means necessary, horror movies will live on. You gotta do what you gotta do, right? So there's always a niche audience for snuff films. We'll do what we must do to make films like Bloody Mask live on for future generations to enjoy. And that includes killing you, Brian."

  Brian stammered.

  The six people were stepping in closer. Brian noticed them carry axes, drills, bone saws, huge syringes, I.V. fluid packs, jars of spiders and beetles, rats in cages, rusty buckets, and push carts with insane surgical instruments.

  "Hold on gentlemen," Andy said over Brian's peals of horror. "Let me get my camera set up. It'll take me just a few moments. Let's make some money, gentlemen. We've got more classic horror movies to resurrect!"