Growing up, my brother and I were never scared by the things other children were. Our mother’s love of horror movies saw to that pretty well. We were never frightened of the possibility of the cucuy lurking in the dark nor the idea that something hid under our beds, waiting to nibble on little toes as we scrambled atop their home.
When kids in my class whispered excitedly about -gasp- the PG-13 movie they snuck behind their mother’s back and how frightening it was, I was bored. When those whispers turned to hushed confessions of how they have needed a nightlight ever since, the embarrassment of admitting such being outweighed by the need for the other student to understand just how scary the movie was, I would snicker.
“Babies,” I would think derisively, “absolute infants. Who’s actually scared of The Grudge?”
I was undoubtedly super popular as you can probably tell. My classmates saw me as weird and off-putting, too wrong to associate with. Perhaps it was the idea that my mother was neglectful to encourage the watching of such things and by speaking to me, they were upsetting their own parents who had instructed them not to do so. Maybe it was that I was an insufferable little twat. Probably both and luckily as an adult, I can say I have grown out of the incessant need to be better, braver, harder to scare than others. Now I relish in showing people movies, living their fear vicariously, soaking up the panicked gasps as they watch a final girl make her last stand. I love seeing my friends discover something I have loved for so long and I thoroughly enjoyed being the person to introduce them to it.
For the last three years though, I have lived with my mother, Nancy and my brother, Tom. Current circumstances made it easier for the three of us to cohabitate and attempt to save money while the housing market is in the absolute gutter. Most of the time, it is an easy existence and not one that I particularly have any problem with. Sometimes, it can be hard, though. I mean, who wants to live with their family 24/7? Not me. Overall, though, I don’t mind it. I like being able to come home and see two of the most important people in my life sucked into a new movie they have dredged from the bowels of Amazon Prime. I take comfort in the sounds of their chairs scraping the floor as they readjust during one of their nightly talks at our old, worn kitchen table. Their presence brings me peace even if sometimes it is also the one annoying the shit out of me.
This all brings me to now. I am now an almost 29 year old woman and for the first time in my life, I am scared shitless. I am sweaty and terrified and fucking frozen while I try to figure out how the hell I got here and why I, of all people, had to be chosen for this. I am immovable with the knowledge that something out there is waiting to hurt me.
When I arrived home earlier, riding the high from introducing one of my friends to Ringu, the original Japanese version of The Ring, I could already tell something was off. Neither of them were to be seen. Not in front of the television. Nor at the table. I called out hesitantly, moving from room to room. It wasn’t so much the lack of them in the room that was unsettling me, it was the silence. Ever since I was little and even more so now as an adult, all of us have been especially loud. Now though, it was silent, deafening almost in how oppressive it was. There wasn’t a lack of noise, it felt like the smothering of it. I moved into the kitchen, dinner had been put away and dishes left to soak in the sink. I could see the faucet dripping but I couldn’t hear it. Not from my spot at the door fifteen feet away and certainly not from right in front of it. I pushed the faucet down to cease the drips and carried on.
I moved through the hallways, straining my ears for any sounds. Our house has never been particularly big or impressive but it was always just right for us. Walking through the entire thing has never taken more than a few minutes but here I was, only halfway through and it felt like it had been an hour. As I got deeper and deeper into the house, the only visible light was coming from my mother’s room, her door open and spilling the only light I could see into the hall. This was only adding to my unease. Tom doesn’t often spend time in her room. Why was his light not on? I have never known him to be asleep before at least 1am so even if he was in his room, the door shut, I should be able to see a little bit from under the door. His room sat directly across from hers and while it’s possible that her light was engulfing his and I just couldn’t see it, I didn’t think that was really the case.
I took my last few steps and hesitantly approached her room. Relief flooded me because here she was at least. She was sitting at her vanity table, brushing her hair. I walked in behind her, catching myself in the mirror and gasped as I took in her appearance.
Holes, dozens of them, picked through her flesh as if she had sat here all day and just dug in into the skin. All of them were scabbed over which was the only consolation I could remark because it meant they weren’t too deep to be healed. Her face, pockmarked and red made me feel sick and for a second, I hoped she was trying out new movie makeup in an effort to be like her favorite genre, but no. The stench of copper wafted through the room and confirmed the holes were real and very much had bled and seeped before I got here.
“Mom?” I called out, cautiously moving forward to see if she would lunge at me or possibly injure herself further.
“Yes, mija?” she answered, hand still moving, still brushing through what I could now see was a matted and wet mess.
“What…What happened to your face? Are you okay? We need to get you to see someone!”
She looked into the mirror and smiled, shaking her head no.
“No, I don’t think so. I think I am right where I need to be.”
She then stood and walked over and that was when I caught the massive stain of blood blooming on her nightdress. Disjointedly, she walked over as each step she took made a squelching noise. Looking down, I now noted that there was a distinct…wetness to the rug she had situated in the middle of the room. I tapped it with my toe and recoiled as it felt like I had put my foot into the most disgusting combination of jam and corn syrup.
As she got closer her hands, now cracked and elongated, reached out to me. I did not feel the same comfort that I usually did at the sight of them. I began to feel the first stirrings of what I could vaguely recognize as fear.
“Did I tell you that I met a man?” her voice rasped.
“No…” I stumbled back, reaching blindly behind me, “but why don’t we talk about it? Come on, I’ll run you a shower and we can see how deep those cuts go and then the three of us can talk about this man, okay?”
I was saying anything to get her to agree to let me get help. Whatever this thing was, this was not my mother.
She carried on as if I hadn’t said anything at all, “He told me…I could be a movie star. Just like my favorites. He also said…you could be one, too. Just like Tom.”
Alarms bell, blaring and consistent, telling me to GET OUT NOW.
“Oh?” I stammered, still stretching my hand out, hoping to touch something, anything that would help me subdue her or get me the hell out of here. My steps continued backwards until my back thudded against the wall.
“Tom is already a star, mija and he loves it. Don’t you, Tom?”
I whipped my head around, frantically trying to find where Tom possibly could be. My mom raised a gnarled finger and pointed at her closet. Knowing you never turn your back on someone who has shown they could be the killer of the movie, I slid against the wall and turned the doorknob. An overwhelming smell emanating from the closet made me wretch.
Tom, the boy I had watched grow up into one of the only men I could ever trust, was now quite literally a husk. His insides had been removed and left in a pile at his feet. The heart that he used to love everyone he met so fully was placed atop the pile as though on display. My fear let me crush down the sorrow and nausea I felt, only gagging at the sight.. The eyes that so resembled mine stared blankly up and his throat had been ripped out, silencing him forever. How many times had I wished he would be quiet, his incessant questions hushed for even a moment? This isn’t what I wanted. I would give anything to hear him one more time, asking me anything his heart desired. His body was draped over a chair, one I had sat in so many times as a child while my mother brushed out my hair before bed.
“We always remember the first person to die in a movie. Casey Becker in Scream, Tina Gray from A Nightmare on Elm Street…” my mother ground out, advancing towards me, “but you’ll be the star, mija, won’t you? You’ll be my final girl.”
Tears streaking down my face, mingling with the vomit staining my shirt as I shake my head no, hyperventilating.
“Of course you will. I’ll give you till the count of 10, then we’ll see if I made the right choice in choosing my final girl.”
A wicked smile mars my mother’s face and I run. I bolt to the kitchen, looking for any kind of butcher knife but they are all gone. I can’t run back to where I was, that technically is what a final girl would do but I’m not dumb. I refuse to not use the front door when the option is right fucking there.
Changing gears, I run to the front door and rip it open. I launch myself outside, close the door behind me to slow her down and begin to run, mentally taking stock of where the hell I am and which ways I could go to avoid capture. When I was younger, I had often daydreamed about where I would go should a murderer break in and attempt to bisect me and my family. You know, just things normal, well-adjusted little girls do. There was a stretch of woods to the left and the road to the right. If I go into the woods, I may be able to hide, though movie rules dictate my mother’s hearing will be supernaturally good and I’ll accidentally step on a twig and alert her to my presence. The road, I could run to and hope a driver stops but my mom mentioned meeting a man and that means if I get into a car and beg them to take me to the nearest police station, wouldn’t you know, the driver’s the man and he takes me back to my mother’s house.
Feeling damned if I do and damned if I don’t, I choose a third option: hiding in plain sight. I run and hide under her car, sliding quickly under. Gravel and debris digs into my back and I am in so much discomfort already but it’s better than death and certainly better than what she did to Tom, so I keep my trap shut and look at the bright side: I am younger. I am faster. I am the Final Girl.
She hasn’t come outside yet and I begin to wonder if she thinks maybe the door shutting was a red herring, admittedly a genius play that I wish I had thought of at the time. Notes for next time, the dark part of my brain whispers.
Finally, after I count to 30, I hear the door open and my mother’s thumping steps echo on the porch. Her feet I can barely see as they descend the steps and begin stepping barefoot on the sharp gravel. I wince as I see her pierce her feet with jagged rocks, though I suppose after making your face into what looks like a fucking minefield, some gravel isn’t going to take you out. She stops, assesses her surroundings and I just know she’s also going through her extensive database of movie knowledge, trying to figure out just where I would go.
She eventually, blessedly, starts to walk towards the road but I don’t dare move just yet. Not until I can no longer hear the metallic clang of the shovel I now know she is dragging behind her. After what feels like an eternity, I no longer hear it and I wait until minute or two because I know this could just be a jumpscare moment. I take my chance and pull out my phone to call the police. Wouldn’t you just fucking know it, my phone is dead. Of course it is. I can’t call for help or try to send a Hail Mary Facebook message to a friend like, “Hey girl hey, mom’s gone crazy like we all thought would happen LOL can you go ahead and call the police, kthxbye!”
Well, fuck. Guess it’s time to die then. I start to mentally check off all the things I wish the paramedics would not find, like my browser history, reddit searches and all my google searches of stuff like “Is Canada a US territory?” before I remember my brother has a little pistol somewhere. He would go out into the woods for target practice should anything like this ever happen, though I don’t think he ever considered my mother would be the culprit. Fat lot of good that did us, eh, Tom?
Steeling myself, I ran back into the house, feeling like the dumbest sack of garbage ever for doing so. I was out. I was OUT OF THE HOUSE. I didn’t run around like an idiot or take a shower so the audience could see my sudsy bottom. I actually got the fuck out. But here we are. Here I stand humbled, now having to bolt into my brother’s room and root in his closet for a pistol that I am not even sure is there anymore.
Elbow deep in revolting laundry, I have the fleeting thought that he should really wash his clothes more often before mentally slapping myself. He’ll never wash clothes again. My brother is dead and I am literally complaining about his hygiene. God, I’m a bitch.
Hearing the front door creak open, I jump and lock his door, pushing his small dresser in front of it and even more frantically searching for it. My hand touches metal and AHA! There it is! A small gun, barely bigger than my hand but it’ll work. It has to, providing it doesn’t jam or even better, not even contain bullets to make the climax of this movie even better.
My mother may not be a large woman but she is strong. Being a single mom needing to manhandle two children into submission, especially two who grew to be quite taller at a young age, means she knows how to handle herself and throw her weight around. Currently that weight, all 145 pounds of it, is shoving and slamming itself against the door while I clutch the pistol, pointing it at where her face will be should she manage to open it.
Little by little, the door opens and I see glimpses of her maniacal face, still looking like a reject from The Exorcist.
“Mija, be my star. Be my final girl.”
“I am,” I respond and I point the gun at her face, pulling the trigger. The last look I see on my mother’s gruesome face is pride and contentment before her body drops and I no longer hear her ragged breaths that have been a soundtrack to this moment. I move the dresser and shoot again, knowing from Sydney Prescott that it ain’t over till it’s over. Her body no longer moves and I am still alive.
I know this won’t be the end. I won’t have the clean cut belief of cinema that of course I am telling the truth and not just a crazy person who murdered her mother and brother. I can hope someone believes me but it is not up to me. Even worse, even more fear-inducing, somewhere the man still lurks and I don’t know how or what he said to make my mother, the woman who loved her children more than herself, turn on them like this.
I will never not be afraid again.