Final Girl

As much as I hate to admit it, things really did all go downhill after I accepted that one stupid role.

It was only just two years ago, but it was the biggest thing I’d done at the time- biggest thing I’ve ever done, even if it was a backyard production… that psycho director was the slasher, and I was his final girl.

I never hated the guy, not then. I mean, I didn’t know. He was a little weird, but I thought, like, all directors had to be that way. He was… interesting, in a sort. I think he was a very creative person. Up until… you know.

Before I get into any more of this I should probably talk about the actual film we shot together. At least, I’d like to. You see, I never saw the thing. None of us did. I’ve gotten in touch with just about everyone else in the cast and not one of them had gotten a screening. Said the director was always busy “editing” it, even months after production should’ve ended. I never even asked. I didn’t know it was okay to do that or even that seeing the product of my work before it came out was normal. I was so happy to be a part of something, I just didn’t want to mess it up. He was… never strict, but something about him told you to stay away. I should’ve listened to that instinct a little more than I did.

I can’t be too harsh on myself. I was only just eighteen- hardly eligible to be in that thing. It was… kind of sick, a lot of the content in it, but it was so surface-level it really didn’t even come across as weird to me… and like, he was polite and all. Had an… obsession for detail, but if you’d told me what he’d end up doing back then, I still don’t think I would’ve ever believed you. I’d… known plenty of creeps, and out of all of them, I wouldn’t have guessed Mike would be the spree killer out of all of them.

After my work on Resurrectionist was done, I felt a lot more confident in myself than I ever had before. I applied to a college. I auditioned for and got plenty of roles, not just in small web productions, but a couple of decently high-budgeted ones. It wasn’t Hollywood, but it was still more than a girl like me had ever dreamed of.

But it was also around the time I left Yountville, just as all this was going on, that everything went sour. I was getting work, but my performances were… just pitiful. I couldn’t deliver a line to save my life. Every expression I made looked the same, and I… I think I completely butchered most of the scenes I was in. And yet, no one ever complained to me. I never got hardly any direction other than “smile more” and not a single production threw me overboard. It was bizarre, actually. I know we’re all our worst critics, but this isn’t a small problem I’m talking about, I mean really I was awful. I couldn’t ever watch what I made, after a while… I didn’t want to show my mom the things I was in, yet when she watched, she always said I was great… it honestly made me feel like I was going insane.

Was everyone just making fun of me? Or maybe it was the opposite and they only pitied how worthless of an actor I was. Maybe they were just being nice… or maybe those directors were trying to get in close with me. Maybe it wasn’t my acting they were looking for to begin with, and even a mannequin would fill my role fine if it was pretty enough.

It sent me into a full-on crisis eventually. Was none of this real? Was I the target of some Truman Show hidden camera prank? No matter what I did, I couldn’t let it go. I ate and breathed self-loathing. As I laid in bed, I saw my blank, lifeless, unemotive face staring at me from the darkness of my empty dorm room. By the time I’d fall asleep, I’d always have the same nightmares, every time- always in a giant theater, watching every movie I’d ever acted in, alone. Except every time the me on screen said or did anything, an ear-bleedingly blown-out laugh track would cry out from somewhere up above, maybe in the projector room. And it never failed that, when the dream ran out of movie clips to show, it would play scenes from my own life. I’d watch the screen as it showed me botching my first kiss, or tripping over a rake. And still, each time, the people in the projector room would laugh. And the dream always ended the same way- once it got to the point that near the end where, no matter what, I ended up laughing at the movie too.

It was around this terrible era I got the news. There was… a killing, in my own hometown. And the culprit was none other than one Mike Murderhead.

This was when I started to believe I was cursed.

I took a break off school. Told my parents I was coming home. I got my old room back for a time, still covered in memorabilia from projects I’d worked on. I had to take one photo down. It was of me right next to him- the director, as he was dressed up as just one more of the dozens of slashers he’d supposedly portrayed.

Mike had been shot dead by cops that same night he killed seven convicts in a county jail. Don’t ask me why he was in there or how he got in. He hadn’t been arrested. I guess… he just wanted an interesting setting, for what had been his final scene.

Nobody really went to the funeral. Not anyone related to him, anyway. It was mostly just… people like me. The father had invited us there. First victims. Comic relief characters. Final girls. We were the only people the killer knew. The tools in his toolbox, the cogs in his artistic machine. Maybe it would be more accurate to call us paints on his canvas. He did treat us well. I even liked my time working for him. I hated that this was how it all wound up. I had a thought then, you know- that this was the absolute worst way it could have ended.

I was wrong.

“Sara?”

He recognized me, not as who I was- but as the character I had once portrayed for him all those years ago.

“Mike…”

It looked like he was wearing dead skin. I wanted to throw up just looking at him, even before the smell hit me. We were all alone- just behind the building the service was taking place in- I’d been crying. I don’t know why I felt so bad for him. I'd told myself I was just wishing I’d never met him. That he’d never cursed me and ruined my life even before he died.

But he never did die, and now all I felt was terror.

“You’re alone. Where is everyone?”

My eyes darted down to the weapon in his dirt-covered hands- a rusty shovel. I started to laugh. Had he dug himself out of the grave? This was ridiculous.

“Where are they, Sara? Where are my victims?”

My choking laughter turned to cold silence. Which was he talking about? The ones he really killed, or the people inside..? I couldn't tell him.

“They’re gone you fucking murderer!”

I didn’t know what came over me. I bashed my hands into his chest. He looked surprised. Something in his innocent eyes told me he didn’t want to hurt me.

I wanted to hurt him. He took everything from me.

“I just want to show them- I’m real now- America's first slasher!”

I ignored his every word as I ran to the nearest wall. A lone broken brick on the ground came into my hand all on its own.

“Aren’t you proud of me…?”

“I’m gonna kill you.” I lifted the heavy concrete cube, egging myself to do it. I knew it was wrong, but I could feel the audience’s eyes on me. He was already dead anyway, right…? It was about time I set the script straight.

“I’m not going to hurt you. I couldn’t do that, you’re the final girl.”

“I’m the one who’s going to fucking kill you!” I stepped forth- then back again. He chuckled.

“Oh.” The boy smiled under his ragged cloak of violence. “I guess that’s right, isn’t it…”

I shuddered, working up the nerve to smash his skull as he smirked at me.

“It’s okay. You can kill me this time. I’ll be back to finish you in the sequel.”

“Die!” I charged at him with the brick, but his words were already starting to hit me as I swung it down onto his forehead.

I stared at his newly-dead body, and fell to my knees. For a split second, as polka-dot blood drained from his head... I felt free.

I ran away then. As far as I could go. I didn’t want to think about what happened. And then, that night, in my childhood bed, it hit me.

If he could come back once… what’s to say he couldn’t do it again?

I cried myself to sleep that night. And the same would ring true for every sunset from then on till now.

As I write this I know there is no escaping him. Whether I live to see it or not, Mike Murderhead, my director- will come back for me. And no matter what I do- no matter what I try- I will never forget that fact.

Despite leaving me alive, he has stolen what little life I still had left.