My Heart Is a Chainsaw (The Lake Witch Trilogy #1)(62)

“But—”

“What I’m saying,” Hardy says, speaking over her, holding her eyes for this, “is that your presence will not be needed that night, Ms. Daniels. Rex Allen and Francie will escort you out if you try.”

“But you can’t. I’ve been waiting for this for my whole—”

“It’s for the best,” Hardy says, challenging her to tell him otherwise.

I’ve been waiting all my life, she wants to say, but can’t.

All she can do is stand there on the front sidewalk of her ex–high school, her world crumbling around her, all of it just falling away. Hardy tips his hat bye to her and eases away, and Jade can’t even think of anything sharp or cutting to say. She’s numb.

“Went ahead and clocked you in,” Rexall says in passing, carrying a crumbling pipe over his shoulder, both ends seeping unmentionable sludge. “Thank me later, yeah?”

Jade doesn’t have any clever comeback for him either, a silence he’s probably taking for acceptance of this deal— timecard-action for later, to-be- ascertained action…

That’s all distant to Jade now. Happening to some other girl.

Thirty minutes later she’s trudged back inside, is scrubbing profane words from bathroom stalls. By midafternoon, using her county razorblade, the metal wall by the urinals her dark blue canvas, she’s carving her own profanity, each letter a foot tall and deep, going down to bare metal.

THE LAKE WITCH SLAYINGS.

That’s definitely what they’re going to call it the morning after, when all the bodies are floating facedown in the water, blood blooming out from their sides like wings.

It’s going to be glorious.

SLASHER 101

What’s lucky is that you can go on teacher vacation for MY WHOLE JUNIOR

YEAR but when you come back all the same rules of the slasher genre still keep applying, and we can now finish your education, sir. Or should I say Night Flier.

That’s not a slasher but it’s still from the horror mind of Stephen King, who has a high bodycount in his books and movies but his Freddy Krueger is Pennywise the Clown and his Chucky is Gage and his final girl is Carrie and his Jason Voorhees is a dog, but none of them are really slashers. Really if you want some truth then if you compare Mr. King with a little old lady then she’s probably done more to give the slasher legs and arms and a secret face than the acknowledged king. That’s right I’m talking about Agatha Christie and the next important slasher ingredient, which is the Reveal.

But first a reveal of my own if you don’t overmind. Since this is the 2nd week of class only that means this 2 pager in your extra credit box is me putting money in the bank. Because Halloween is going to be here before we know it.

So, the Reveal in the slasher is when all will be said out loud and made clear as to Who’s been doing all this and Why and also How. So when I’m mentioning Mrs.

Christie above what I mean from the one book of hers I mostly read titled And Then There Were None which has nearly as many titles through the years as A Bay of Blood, where people are dying and who’s doing it, who’s doing it, then at the end, SURPRISE! It was this one dude all along, and here’s why, and he’s showing his secret true face at the end.

Or if Scooby Doo is more your thing then that’s the very same thing, sir. I know he’s a hippie dog to you but he also faces ghosts and werewolves who all pull their masks off at the end and explain WHY they were doing all this, which made great money sense at the time to them even if it was a LOT of trouble, on par with some of the Joker’s schemes.

But in the slasher where there’s real necks getting the axe, how that works is, okay, pretend all the people who have been killed in the movie get to be alive again for five minutes in a living room and then the slasher comes in and explains to them why he did what he did to them and they all look at each and nod and say that, Yeah, they probably did sort of deserve this. It sucks that it had to hurt so bad and it was pretty scary and they really had other plans and their families are going to be sad and who’s going to feed their dog now, but they should have thought of that before doing whatever Bad Thing they did to someone who couldn’t protect himself or herself at that point, and for sure wasn’t even close to asking for it any way whatsoever. At which point any good slasher will unlimber his machete and kill them all over again, just paint that living room red.

However note that this is only for slasher movies of the mystery variety like Scream and not the supernatural variety like A Nightmare on Elm Street. Scream at the end has Billy Loomis giving a lecture REVEALING why he’s been doing this, while Nightmare has Freddy giving his lecture through the whole franchise with quips, because while Tina does pull his face off, showing his animatronic skull, Freddy’s really only more of himself without it, which isn’t really a Reveal, just a magnification.

Though if we’re talking Agatha Christie like this then we need to talk about fish and fishing, Mr. Holmes. Specifically, Red Herrings. Coming soon to an extra credit box near you.





VISITING HOURS

It’s not Rexall who fires Jade for leaving graffiti when she was supposed to be erasing it—that’s Hardy’s job—but she’s pretty sure he’s the one who ratted her out, either as payback for stealing his glory at graduation or because she never does slow-motion shirt changes under any of his spycams.