Horror - Short

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. Final Girl Math Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

FINAL GIRL MATH

Rug burn marred the soles of her bare feet as she broke for the pale brown, shag-carpeted staircase. The din was frantic, the pulse on the atmosphere vibrating at high frequency. A ceramic vase featuring a blue and white floral pattern crashed. Amy Field rounded the thick redwood banister. She glanced down at the bright red marks her feet left behind, but she didn’t dare chance a peek over her shoulder.

She knew what was back there. It wasn’t only the bodies lying in her wake, there were cut phone lines and smashed smartphones. There was chaos set to motion, bleeding out like behind the plastic curtains at an abattoir. There was more blood than just residual stains. Friends she’d known since the first courses she’d taken in college. Suddenly, she was the only one still breathing.

This wasn’t a reactionary choice. To kill was the plan all along. There was no other way to account for the hideous mask he wore.

They’d been swimming in the lake. They’d stepped out to towel off and freshen daiquiris when they first noticed the cellphones missing. In twosomes and singularly, they branched out over the sparse and remote cottage getaway. It seemed very much like an Easter Egg hunt: find the hidden phones. Perhaps this individual had a mind to corner a classmate they’d been too intimidated to ask out, try for a drunken kiss, or a roll in the long grass.

Amy was not the first to get the idea to use the landline to call her cell and was only three minutes late in thinking of this option. Initially, she’d left through the front door, then soft-stepped out the gravel lane to see if the trickster put the phones in a mailbox. Emptyhanded, she returned to the front door of the rental to meet the familiar waving arm of Mike, her boyfriend, just beyond a pane of glass.

His voice was loud and carrying. Someone had closed the door. She swung it open to the raucous panic in his tone and movement of his arms as he approached.

Here was the first instance that she saw blood.

She took a step, and an axe came down, splitting his scalp into a meaty bone gulley. As the fluid bubbled, his body teetered like a felled pine, pitching him forward. Behind him, a big man loomed. He wore a grinning, green ghoul mask with a pink tongue that reached like Gene Simmons’ and had stretching black eyes that bugged pure black spears, bouncing shine like liquid beneath the light of a living room fixture.

Large hands extended red-stained fingers.

Amy spun, the damp towel around her waist losing its hold and flopping to the spillage-sticky linoleum of the doorway where Mike oozed what used to make him tick. Her bare feet smacked with the chase. She broke through the living room, veering towards the door to the deck. Through the windows, she saw three corpses: one male and two female.

Bobby’s shorts were around his ankles and a bloody gash made a crude vagina of his once proud manhood. Courtney and Neve had matching holes in their backs, crimson spider webs dancing their pale flesh from the cavernous impact points.

Between the vision and Amy, was a food prep island. On top, the cordless phone base rested alongside a variety of kitchen items. Amy glanced over her shoulder. The ghoul stood mere inches away. There was no chance to stop.

She and the ghoul both broke into a sprint. Once Amy hit linoleum, she slipped in a fresh pool of blood—didn’t know who it belonged to and did not have the luxury of time to care. Clunking manly steps were hot behind her.

Her feet squeaked three times before the slap of composure had her moving forward anew. She checked over a shoulder again as she regained her footing.

The man had taken a long knife from the butcher’s block next to the cordless phone. He swung at her. Amy ducked and skidded while the blade whistled a breath through the air. She fell to her knees, scrambling, and rolled, instinctively. A foot stomped next to her head and right forearm as she continued her spin under the dining table. She popped up on the other side, half-dizzy, but gaining a lead on the ghoul in the ghoul mask.

The chase had moved in a circle. The front door was before her like a promise. Her brain ran through two streams of math: one, being in the foggy subconscious, pondering how a man killed so many in about three minutes, the second calculated the time it took to open a door and then run barefoot over the gravel while her pursuer needn’t consider terrain at all in his heavy boots. Maybe it was slasher movie stupid, but she concluded her odds were simply a bit better by going for the stairs. Now, nine steps to the top, the man’s footfalls echoed hers.

There were three options once to the main floor. The bathroom door had a lock, but it was flimsy. Then what?

Behind her, the man grunted, his feet swishing on the brown shag as he stumbled. A second or two to add to her equations.

Ahead: two bedrooms. One was an adult’s room. The other was the room with bunkbeds and items belonging to vacationing brothers who spent summers and Christmases at the cottage. It was a mess of sporting goods from varying years stretching two decades, walls featuring pictures of athletes and swimsuit girls on top of cars, and a glimmer of hope, as some of the toys that boys played with were handy in a pinch.

Then again, the master bedroom might’ve had a shotgun under the heavy cherry sleeper set and the door might’ve held long enough to find it. Unlikely. She charged straight for the furthest room because when a decision had no right answer, staying the course was the only plausible conclusion.

Through the door, she spun to swing it closed. Immediately, pressure came back at her as she pushed. The cornered edge struck her in the forehead, sending stars into her vision. The man laughed. She took the moment of respite to gain her stance. Shouldering the wood, she closed the door and fingered the peak lock on the knob. Fortuitous hockey sticks fell from behind the door, two Easton player sticks and one Victoriaville goaltender stick. Amy screamed and jumped back, as if the assailant had magically crossed the border of the wall to lash out at her as the sticks rattled. The door opened a foot. Her hip instinctively bounced into the door. The sticks fell further, pinching between the dresser and the bunk beds, adding a fresh barricade to the door.

The noises from the other side were no longer amused.

Amy stumbled backward as the door thumped. She scanned the room. There had to be something. Automatically, she took a moment to put her breasts back into the cups of her bikini. The banging changed and an indenting bevel in the hardwood door cracked.

She had to act quickly. Scanning, scanning, scanning. There was so much garbage in the room, but a lot of it could be useful. The question was, which would keep her alive? Tennis rackets, balls, a set of lawn darts, lacrosse sticks, a bow with a quiver of arrows, a long knife in a sheath?

The wood snapped and cracked further. Slivers fell to the floor. There was an angry groan and a full-bodied pounding resumed. The sticks tipped the dresser, releasing old t-shirts, a yo-yo, hockey cards, and magazines, as if spewing the sum of someone’s childhood.

“You bitch,” a throaty voice hissed as the man in the ghoul mask pounded into the cracked portion.

Bits of wood flung by her face.

Time was short.

Another elbow landed, doing grave damage to the barrier.

Amy picked up the bow.

About a decade earlier, she had shot arrows for two days in gym class. There was a science to nailing a target at a distance. It took practice and patience, well-oiled and experienced fine motor skills.

Hands in motion, she reeled back the bow thread, pinching the feathers of the arrow between her finger and thumb. She hadn’t done this more than fifty times and never under duress. The door cracked again, and she stepped forward, shaking, feeling the strangeness of the lightweight bow and arrow. In school, they’d been much cheaper and heavier. Relics.

Another crack.

She took a step, knowing she’d die like all the rest unless she took care of this problem. It happened in movies all the time. There was no safety in waiting. Running was temporary. The time was now. Now. Now!

Another thump sent the remainder of the indented door tumbling, the fine beveled edges ruined, a face lowered to peer inside and Amy charged forward, there was a huge skillset necessary to nail a target, usually, but up close, any rookie could find the bull’s eye. The man’s gaze widened for a heartbeat before the arrow zoomed the two feet and tore through the meat next to the eyehole of the mask.

The man howled, dropping back.

Amy grabbed the knife from where the sheath dangled over the upper portion of the bunkbed post and then lifted the sticks out of the way. The door opened. She broke for the man, now writhing on the floor, and dropped her knees onto his big frame. His upper body oophed up and she stabbed his throat. Blood sprang like magma riding a steam surge.

Red and juicy, but tasting oh so horrid, the cut artery sprayed into her mouth for a blink before she closed her lips. The man jerked a dying man’s dance and she backpedaled in a crabwalk, her feet painted in the blood of at least three others. She didn’t dare stick around to see if the slasher flick thing happened where the culprit rose like a revenant and didn’t care a lick whose face hid behind that rubber visage. She continued back, into the bedroom, uncertain why she did so, aside from the terror. She lifted the dresser, ready to put the sticks back in place.

Downstairs, the front door opened, and a voice shouted, “Holy Jesus Christ Alfuckingmighty!”

Amy waited but heard nothing else. This was a safe voice, one not expecting to holler. She swung the door open and ran screaming, stamping a new series of footprints, down the stairs.

—

The second man in a grinning, green ghoul mask on the roof was about to climb down and break through the bedroom window. He had stopped when he heard the intruder to the game and waited. Amy barked panicked thoughts while the interloper’s voice carried on the wind, explaining what he saw to whomever, assumedly, a 911 operator.

At this, the second man in a ghoul mask climbed down the lattice and broke for the trail into the woods that led to his car.

—

Things were not easy after the media took hold of the story, and in some ways, things kept getting worse. The wiliest, most self-righteous reporters hounded Amy. The insane tomato, Alex Johannes, declared the event a staging for feminist propaganda, furthering the dehumanization of men and their role on the planet as providers and protectors. He screamed for Amy’s head and the uncovering of the phony bodies never killed by the poor man used as a martyr for the charade. This sparked the conspiracy nuts and the Russian anarchy bots causing Amy Field to change schools, change her name, her hair, and her attitude.

For one calendar year, internet fools badgered her family thanks to what she’d survived. They all wanted to tear her down for being a woman and coming out ahead, whether or not they recognized or dared admit such an ideology. Eventually, like all storms, it passed and life was ready to continue, though there were points forever carping at her mind.

She finished the final year of a Master of Art History program and looked to the future.

Art was a respite, there were no slasher reminders, sure there was plenty of blood, but it was distant, oil on canvas, acrylics on cotton, latex on stone. Days before she’d received her diploma, an email found her inbox. It was an offer to interview for a middle management post as the secondary curator at a smallish, but well-endowed, museum back east. The idea of returning to only a few hours from the cottage massacre she’d survived sent the dormant butterflies in her tummy into frenzy. From there, a terror rose in her chest. She took a day’s worth of deep breaths and it settled. With logic and mental reassurances at the helm, anything was possible.

She emailed a thankful reply.

Skype first. Meeting second. Signing third.

—

By May 2018, Amy Fields was happy and busy at a job that suited her needs in more ways than she’d ever expected. Of course, people did not call her Amy Fields, she was Em Smith by then. She’d already long adapted to the name and even her parents played along, understanding completely.

In society outside work, she wore the smile of a woman knowing life was finally going to move on. When it came, the ring was beautiful and the plan was amazing. Marriage on a secluded beach on Grand Turk Island.

“It’s all finally going to be behind me and all over with,” Em said to her mother over the phone on the morning before she departed for her wedding getaway.

“Oh, honey, it’s been over. I’m so happy, I wish we could come, but you know…”

Amy’s father was sick, and her mother was terrified of leaving the country. She hadn’t been on a plane in almost twenty years, and really, it was more of a party atmosphere if the guests were around the same age.

“It’s fine, truly. Darren isn’t bringing his parents. It’s going to be ten of us, drinking, soaking in the sun, and—”

“Don’t forget to wear sunblock. My friend Linda got the skin cancer and...”

—

Em hadn’t seen the cottage prior to arrival. It was an image, like a ghost from the past. Now, it sent a quiet shiver through her core, rocking her legs to jelly. It was so eerily similar to the place of a recurring nightmare based on too many notes of reality that she had to remind herself to breathe while pausing to let her limbs solidify.

Of course, she didn’t mention this, didn’t show a hint of bodily discomfort. Her fiancé, Darren, had planned this out and it wasn’t cheap to pull off. This alone, although there was much more to it, was enough to quell any release of verbal trepidations.

“It’s perfect. So perfect. It looks just like the pictures,” Darren said as they approached.

Em sipped at the sweet, damp air to avoid wheezing. She had become lightheaded alongside everything else. She reached for the railing at the front entrance.

Darren stopped short of taking the first stair step and said, “Now, what’s this?” He smiled as he approached, added jokingly while bending to the large brown carton set by the front door, covered in Canadian postage markings. “So, what’s in the box? Bass Pro Shop? Like fishing stuff?”

“A wedding surprise.” Em forced a smile, clutching the second part of the surprise tight against her hip, hidden in her oversize purse.

He picked it up. “It’s heavy.”

“Put that down, mister,” Em said as the others joined them. Darren set it down and then shot her a curious glance. She shrugged, stuck out the tip of her tongue playfully.

“Wow,” Becky said. She was Em’s guest—she’d lived around the block from Em’s first apartment in the city. “I’ve never been in such a swanky place.”

Darren opened the door and Em stepped through. At least the inside wasn’t exact. There was less carpet and more hardwood. The banister was significantly thinner, and the walls featured paint on plaster in island tones. It let her breathe easier yet and she said, “Master bedroom’s upstairs I take it?”

“Of course,” Darren said and then turned to the group. “Feel free to fight over the remaining rooms. One more upstairs, one small one by the kitchen, and then in the bunkhouse are singles.”

—

The officiant was from town. A tall, dark man with a lumpy head shaved bald. He had long arms, legs, and fingers. He smiled, baring pale yellow teeth as he explained how things would go the next day when they got down to the thick of the event. Em was done pretending to smile and posted true emotion. This was indeed exciting. Darren grinned as well, had since she’d agreed to the quiet island marriage.

There were eight guests total. Five were Em’s and three were Darren’s. It was intimate and strangely so since Em and Darren were only truly close to one another.

In fact, these guests made it all too clear that both spent too much time at work. There was Becky. Em had met her at a Starbucks and connected initially in a disgruntled patron and bored barista relationship, and then softened as Becky served her coffees for several months running. There were Gwen, Lisa, and Amanda, lawyers who worked occasionally with the museum. Em and the lawyers would have lunch, skipping out playfully on Darren. Girls only! There was Don, a man who’d asked Em out before Darren, accused her of a few nasty things thanks to his mismanagement of embarrassment and a dented heart, but apologized, settling into the friend zone after she made abundantly clear that she had no interest. He worked as the entire IT crew for the museum. Em’s guests weren’t really friends at all, not in the same sense she’d had friends back in college. None of them knew her past.

Darren brought three men from his fantasy hockey pool, two Garys and a Greg. These men worked for an investment firm and acted like every overgrown frat boy Em had ever met. She never asked Darren what he saw in these men. Motives in friendship rarely held up beneath a microscope anyway.

Darren had Em and Em had Darren; everyone else were ancillary characters to the plot.

Their linkage wasn’t immediate, but it happened quickly. He was her boss and she understood that a smart and careful man of the modern world would leave making moves beyond flirtation up to her. Professionalism should be the norm. Offering complete respect in itself was sexy.

Then again, the signals were there. Often. Em and Darren were at the museum late and in the spirt of releasing workplace sexual tension, she reached into the loose pocket of his trousers to rub his penis. Manhood doubled and tripled at her touch as the level of professionalism dipped into the negatives.

Darren proposed six months after that. She moved in with him and they began planning the big day. Strangely, this was where Darren grabbed for control, as if he’d dreamt the wedding since his boyhood. Em told everyone how cute it was and could only laugh, settling with planning the food, the music, and the attire, while Darren did the rest.

—

There were some traditions to follow. On the eve of the big day, and in true wedding fashion, the parties separated and dipped into liquor and the ocean. Em let the booze carry away the subtle paranoia that had crept beyond the potential for ceremonial failure. The paranoia that suggested something horrible might happen in the familiar looking cottage.

Silly thought. She told herself that lightning never struck the same spot twice.

The moon was high. The ocean splashed gently. There was a fire and laughter. They’d circled and Becky had a speaker connected to her iPhone. It was a Top 40 mix and Becky sang with a champagne volume and a cheap whiskey voice. The others sang with her when the right tune found the airwaves. Shots of rum went down throats, and all too often. Em didn’t want to disappoint, but after the second drink, began tossing the servings over her shoulder. It wouldn’t do to be off her game.

They had the beach to themselves, and Em swallowed slowly, not only the booze, but the notion that as of tomorrow, she could start anew. Life would be different. There were no doubts of that.

“Okay, probably time to go in?” Em said.

“You know, you still got time to change your mind. I’m right here,” Don said, rising to his feet, adjusting the crotch of his linen shorts, sending all the message necessary.

Em rolled her eyes. This went beyond the orange campfire glow, too far beneath the blue moon for Don to see.

“Oh, fuck off, Don, you goddamn perv,” Lisa said, then laughed.

“How about you and me fuck on,” Don said.

“Whip it out.”

Em barked and spat juice heavy drink at this. Becky, Gwen, and Amanda laughed. When Don’s penis came out, Lisa made good on her threat, hopping to her feet and latching on to slightly inflated flesh.

In real life, Lisa worked sixty-five-hour weeks. She ate poorly, exercised rarely, and was chubby, despite the enormous sum of stress calories she burned on a daily basis. Her Tinder account acted mostly as a one-night stand finder. Men like Don were right up her alley.

 She took Don by the cock and led him out into the shadowy shrubs at the periphery of their section of beach, not far from the cottage.

Silence overtook the campfire for a few moments before, distantly, Don’s voice carried, “God, yes.”

“That was easy,” Em said.

“Confession: Weddings make me horny, too,” Gwen said.

“Too bad you’re a lesbo, Don might have enough to go around,” Amanda said. She resembled a TV lawyer, skinny, bird-like, sharp in every way a person could be sharp.

Gwen tossed a handful of sand at Amanda.

“Eat me, bitch,” Amanda said and tossed sand back at Gwen.

“All right, I’m done. Time to go in?” Em said again.

“I lost the cap,” Becky said, “so we gotta finish.”

Becky stood with the rum bottle, took a good sip, tilted sideways, toward the fire. Gwen reached up to steady her. Not for Becky’s sake, but so Gwen didn’t have a lap full of drunken woman.

“You trying to get some now?” Becky said and cackled. “I gotta piss.” The bottle fell into the sand, neck up, spilling not a drop.

“Where did you dig up that one?” Amanda asked, Becky still well within earshot.

Em shook her head, wondering how it truly came together this way. These specific people and this wild location. It was not how she imagined it going.

Eight feet away, pattering alongside the gentle swish of the ocean, was the sound of rushing piss. Becky burped. Enough, Em rose.

“Fine, you all do what you like, I’m going to bed.”

She didn’t move, though. The shadows between the fire and the cottage gave her shivers. They’d grown exponentially since she’d last been in the cottage four hours prior.

“You need an escort?” Gwen asked.

“You’re trying to get any one of us alone, aren’t ya?” Amanda said.

Em shook her head again. They were adults but were so childish. They worked too many long hours, didn’t get enough time to let loose, maybe never learned how to let loose. Perhaps they were too flawed and that was what brought them together.

“Yes, please,” Em said.

Gwen rose, leaving Lisa in the sand at the campfire.

“Just you and me, Beck-ster, you waste case!” Amanda shouted.

Em and Gwen moved slowly in the loose white sand. Em sensed something awry beyond the fearful sensation and the sifting beach beneath her feet. It was too quiet. Becky hadn’t yet replied to Amanda’s insult. Don and Lisa were silent as well. Em grabbed for Gwen’s hand and Gwen leaned in close. Drunk and wistful.

A few feet from the back deck of the cottage, a dark puddle reflected moonlight. Em inched closer, bending at the waist.

“Is that…?” she whispered.

Behind them, Becky squealed as heavy breaths chased up the beach.

“Jesus fuck!” Amanda screeched.

Em turned. The moonlight banked off Amanda’s wide eyes as she rushed toward them. As if Simon said stop! the motion stilled. Em and Gwen stared, like deer caught in halogens. Amanda’s mouth gaped. She coughed, her dry lips moistened by a crimson flow, banking Em’s terror tenfold. She dropped to her knees, revealing a shadowy figure behind her. He looked enormous with the nothingness of ocean and hanging moon beyond.

“Again,” Em whispered and pulled at Gwen. “Come on.”

Gwen was a statue, stone solid.

“Move, come on!” Em shouted and yanked. Still nothing. She wound back and punched Gwen in the right breast. “Come on!”

Gwen moved then and together they skipped over the puddle. From the corner of her eye, Em saw bloody flesh masses and the reaching arms of the dead coupling. There was no way to know how they’d died, not that it mattered. Dead was dead.

Onto the deck, thump-thump-thump their feet stamped on the wood. Through the windowed doors. It was like a horrid replay from a new angle, like watching a fullback’s leg snapping from camera two.

Ahead of them, an earthy, outhouse stink wafted through the doors. They moved despite this, nothing connecting. Smell hardly clicking. There was a phone in the living room. The cellphones were a million miles away, left in rooms as an affront to work and roaming fees. Gwen bumped a chair and began slapping the walls, reaching for a switch. She found it. A gore revelation banked and reflected the glow from the yellowy bulbs of the overhead fixture. Darren’s guests sat on the counter, heads tied to cupboard handles to keep them from falling forward. Slices split Hawaiian shirts and flesh up the abdomens, intestines uncoiled, fluids spilling. It looked like a professional haunted house gag. That stink promised that this was no gag.

“What the hell? What the hell?” Gwen begged and Em continued on, breaking for the living room, as if life wanted to repeat itself, to the front door.

The sound of footfalls chased them from the wood of the rear deck. Gwen ignored these. Em did not, peeking back, seeing that familiar shade of green. She screamed a smallish cry and pushed on through the kitchen, tracking sand over the hardwood.

They veered into the dim living room toward the stand featuring the cordless phone. Em was two feet from the door when she spun again. It wasn’t the ghoul face she saw, not at first. An anvil-head sledge crushed Gwen’s skull, spurting blood onto Em’s face. She watched the woman’s expression sour into vacancy in the matter of a half-second.

There he was. That hideous tongue stretching out toward her until the man bent and slammed the sledge a second strike for good measure. The sound was wet and crunchy. The man straightened.

Em drank in the mask. It was almost blinding as the terror connected: those eyes, that color, the rolling folds of rubber cheeks around the monstrous mouth. It had the power of knowledge and a thousand nightmares compounding the moment.

Though most of her expected to see this totem of terror once again, seeing it afresh sent a tremor through her knees. The grinning, green ghoul dropped the bloodied sledge and pulled a long knife from his beltline. He stomped forward.

Em spun, grabbed for the banister, and pulled her body to the stairs. She took two at a time. The man in the ghoul mask laughed and slammed a fist against the wall as he chased, adding an aura of here, there, everywhere, with nowhere to hide. Em reached the top. There were four doors along the skinny hall. There at the end of the hall—déjà vu—was the best chance at survival. Instead of being the room of ever-growing children, featuring their useful goods, it was the master suite. It had her cellphone and luggage, plus a private toilet. Perhaps she could safely call from there, as hopeless as that seemed given that the doors were significantly slimmer than the last time she faced off with this situation.

She reached the door first, several steps ahead of the ghoul. A look over her shoulder sent a refresher dose of adrenaline through her veins, putting her legs up a gear. Rather than speed up, the man slammed the butt of his knife into the plaster five times.

The ghoul in the ghoul mask slowed as Em reached the master bedroom door, and with Darren’s voice said, “AAAAAMEEEEE!”

Em’s heart was already racing, of course, but hearing her old name was a notch in the wrong direction, it was something akin to invoking the name of Jesus to a possessed child, she turned, her legs twisting and twining as she stumbled, and then backed into the bedroom, tears rolled her face, her mouth opened and closed with gasps.

“No, please,” she managed to whimper.

“Oh, stupid Amy. You got away once. You won’t get—Hey!”

Not done. Not by a long shot. She was a survivor. Em turned again and ran, past the king size bed and the bulky wardrobe. Her knees bent and she broke into the dark bathroom with a leap.

Behind her, the fiancé ghoul closed the distance with the pace of an Olympian. Around the bed, arm raised ready to finish what he and his comrade in presentation had started so many years earlier.

Back when, they’d guest-lectured a group of yappy students at a conference in Toronto. These kids had mouths that refused to stop, no matter the speaker. Once the cocktail hour began, they only grew louder. It was where Darren and his equally disgruntled curator acquaintance first heard the plans of the weekend getaway for the hopeful art-history majors who dared to talk through their presentations.

“You didn’t think I’d let you get away with it—ah!” Darren said as he rounded the corner, stomping into the washroom and square onto the pressure plate of a grizzly bear trap.

Em, Amy, sat on the toilet, wiping the excited tears from her face before she reached over and spun the wheel to light the room. Blood splattered over the linoleum and the side of the shower stall. Em wore the sneer of someone taking charge and clobbering a challenge.

When the original trouble occurred, the cops hadn’t looked for another killer, despite her insistence that things happened so quickly, there had to be a second person involved. They didn’t care, rarely cops do. Cops would rather call a task done than really finish it, congratulate themselves, fill and file the paperwork, and then head out for celebratory drinks.

Amy knew better than that. She’d even learned things from the conspiracy nuts who claimed it never happened: namely, question everything.

Who had known they’d be out there?

Too many people.

Could she think of anyone who might want to kill her?

No, that’s absurd.

What did the killer do, was it personal?

Gutted, focusing no more or less on any one of them.

Who was the killer in real life?

“Bass Pro Shop: fishing and hunting. You know, the hardest part was trying to figure out why anyone wanted to kill us. The cops and media kept calling it random and a coincidence. There was one thing that stuck with me. It was a photo of the man I’d killed. He wore a suit and a headset mic and that stuck but didn’t yet connect anywhere.

“Your buddy spoke at a conference two months before he’d killed all my friends. I knew it couldn’t simply be a coincidence.

“So, I asked myself, who perceived themselves wronged by me or the others? Then it was simple. I remember that conference well. Not the topics, but the days. We’d been somber, but then we got news during the break before the two of you spoke. Josie’s mother—one of you gutted Josie, by the way—had beaten cancer. We all loved Josie and it had us bubbling. Perhaps it was rude how we reacted.”

“You knew?” Darren whined from beneath the ghoul mask.

“I still had my doubts about you when I took the job. I knew I recognized you, but the list of speakers from a small conference wasn’t easy to find. The trick was to get you to lower your guard. Thankfully you’re attractive, which made the sex less awful.”

“You bitch.”

“I hacked your computers, and poked around your cellphone. There’s so many tools a nosey would-be-wifey can use and they’re not even that expensive. Nobody bats a lash at the store when you ask about this stuff. It’s a time of urban espionage.

“Your biggest downfall was assuming you knew better. It’s a man thing, I think.”

“Em, let me out of this. It’s all a gag. Nobody is really hurt, it’s like…okay?” Darren lifted the mask. Sweat ran his face in rain shower streams. His color had paled his suntan to a jaundiced yellow. The shining teeth of the trap dug to bone, blood spilled, but remained mostly clean. Darren’s hands trembled whenever he reached for wounds and absolutely shook when he touched the trap. “This is… It hurts, baby.”

Amy laughed a single bark at this. “I’m going back to my real name. You calling me Amy really had my inner-self feeling, well, self-like. And I think we’re past the ‘baby’ point too. Oh, and sorry to be the one to tell you, but taking off that trap isn’t going to help you much. See here on Grand Island there are no venomous snakes or lizards, but there is one highly poisonous tree.”

Darren whimpered, his chin quivering.

“Money goes far here and after a quick one-two-three internet search, I found a pal with the stuff ready on hand. It’s why you feel so weak, you had your first dose of rosary pea this morning, your second this afternoon, and now, you’re getting a straight to the bloodstream helping from those loving teeth digging into your flesh and muscle.

“The bear trap, I obviously had mailed. How awkward would’ve it been had you peeked into the box? Does it feel heavier now or when you picked it up when we first got here? Told ya I had a surprise for you.”

“Wait. Wait. Wait, but…” Darren swayed. “You knew, but you, but you brought friends?”

“Friends? Ha! Those jerks got a raw deal for being horrible people. For any great achievement there has to be sacrifices. Eggs gotta be cracked, right?” She exhaled a deep breath. This was bliss. This was freedom. “It’s finally over. I always knew you were out there, and soon you’ll be gone.”

Darren lay on his back, choking.

“Nothing to say? Or can you talk? You hear me? I got you! It’s over!”

Darren coughed and then forced out four final words, “But am I alone?”

XX