CHAPTER ONE | LAURIE STRODE

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

          I'm covered in blood when I wake up. It's not mine.

          I sit up with a start before reminding myself I need to stay quiet, stay hidden, and pretend to be invisible as much as it's humanly possible. I have been playing dead since I was a child, a morbid talent that has always amazed my brother Xavier and terrified my parents, and it has proven to be quite useful. I can hold my breath for over two minutes and, even when I'm breathing as shallowly as I can, I manage not to move my chest too much.

          Only, the dead don't have teeth that chatter in horror and dread. They don't have heartbeats that can be heard a mile away, reverberating off the walls. They can't sob. They don't have to fight the urge to yell for help or for mercy—yell, plead, beg. They can only be dead.

          I'm alive. That much I'm certain of.

          I'm also hidden, tucked inside a storage closet with a broom threatening to fall on top of me, and it's not blood oozing down my neck. I'm overcome with cold sweats even though it's June and summer in Illinois, but the thick mess smeared down my temple, pooling under my jaw, is a gaping wound from when my head was slammed against a doorknob.

          I know I can't allow myself to breathe too loud and I even cover my mouth with my hand, trying my hardest to keep all sounds to a minimum, but I can hear footsteps echoing in the distance and there are only two living people in the entire campsite. One of them is sitting hunched inside a closet. The other has slayed all my friends and my boyfriend in cold blood.

          I'm next.

          When the floorboards outside creak, my throat expels the most pathetic whimper it possibly could, and, in the sepulchral silence of the cabin, it's more than enough to alert him to my presence. I press my back against the wall, wishing I could be smaller, wishing there were a way out of this, wishing there were a way to rewind, but, in this world, no one cares about my wishes.

          He slams the door open, no longer wanting to play cat and mouse with me, no longer taunting me about the destruction he's left behind. He saves me for last, yanking me out of the closet and tossing me aside like I weigh nothing, but I'm assuming that's all I am to him—that's what all of them were, mere sacks of meat and bones, but those were my friends. Those had been his friends once, too.

          In this world, that doesn't matter.

          This time, I don't escape. This time, the machete doesn't hit the wooden door, right where my head used to be, after I dodge it in time. This time, I'm hit.

          This time, the blood is mine.

          When I jump awake, I'm drenched in sweat, soaked like I've just gotten out of the shower. My throat is raw from screaming myself awake every single night and I doubt my voice will ever go back to how it used to be; it's lower, raspier, like I can't afford to take up too much space. Being quiet has helped me survive before, and it will keep helping me going forward.

          I'm good at surviving. It's all I'm good at these days—it's what I'm praised for, too, like this is some sort of exclusive, fancy club I've somehow weaseled my way into.

          The media just went with it; they didn't turn it into a high-profile case like O.J. or Ted Bundy, but people like to have something to talk about and it helps that my dad is a high-ranking detective. How could such a terrible thing happen inside his jurisdiction? To his own daughter, even?

          I'm a Final Girl now.

          I was the only one to survive a summer camp massacre that killed all my friends and my boyfriend, and, somehow, the media circus around me expects me to wear it like a badge of honor like a girl scout. I'm supposed to be glad that ninety-eight percent of the people in my life I care about are dead and that I'm left behind to pick up the pieces.

          A whole month has passed since The Incident, as my mom calls it, and I still can't condition my body to stop waking me up like this—the shortness of breath, the feeling of imminent danger, my heart being about to explode out of my chest. Sleeping by myself is something I need to get used to, as there won't ever be another sleepover with Emma or Cecelia, there won't ever be another opportunity to sneak out to see Zach when his parents are out of town.

          It's July now. It's warmer. I still need to sleep with multiple blankets like they could possibly protect me from any harm that awaits outside of my bedroom. The only thing that has ever protected me has been myself and the baseball bat I found tucked under one of the beds, and that might as well have saved my life. It wasn't my strength or my wit or divine intervention; it was sheer luck and the stupid bat.

          All I did that night was run and hide. I only fought back when I absolutely had to, when I knew for sure I would die if I didn't do it, and it was certainly more time to react and come up with some semblance of a plan than what my friends had been given. I survived because I ran, but that's all I've been doing ever since.

          I don't know how long I'll have to keep running. I wonder which room will be the last one I enter.

          My heart is beating so fast, so hard against my sternum it has left me nauseous. I push away the covers and roll out of bed with legs that can barely hold my body weight, and disappointment doesn't begin to cover my feelings for myself. This is my nightly routine now—screaming myself out of my nightmares, ensuring my bedroom windows are locked, tiptoeing across the hallway and waiting until I hear the muffled sound of my dad snoring in the distance, checking all the doors and the windows downstairs. I double-check the doors and windows this time, as it's a windy night and something could have broken without me noticing a thing.

          It's the way fear creeps up on you. Most of the time, you never see it coming—most of my friends didn't—but Emma knew. After she was gone, once it was just me, I knew.

          I don't allow myself to rest until I've walked past every window downstairs at least three times. It's exhausting and I've tried so many times to get myself to stop, lying in bed as still as a corpse, but I can never fight the urge to give in to these compulsions. It usually ends with me being tired enough to sleep soundly through the rest of the night, but my brain is still on high alert, still scanning my surroundings. It's suffocating to have to live like this and the effects of continuous sleep deprivation are taking their toll on me, but this keeps me alive.

          On nights like these—windy, but still hot—I sit in the dark kitchen, impossibly alone, staring blankly ahead like I'm waiting for something—or someone—to come and snatch me.

          My parents got divorced two years ago and I can still feel my mom's presence in the house even after all this time. It's easy to expect to see her marching down the stairs or vacuuming the living room, but, no matter how hard I wish for it to be real, no matter how hard I close my eyes and click my heels, she's not coming back home. No one ever comes back—I'm the only one who does.

          I run.

──────────

          When morning comes, I wake up downstairs.

          I usually have the decency to drag myself to my bedroom after ruining my night, but for some reason I slept on the couch. It's not ideal and my whole body is creaking like an old house as I sit up, blinking away the little sleep I got, but it got the job done.

          The living room is unusually bright, at least when compared to the dimly lit state of my bedroom most of the time, windows boarded up like a private fortress, and it takes me a while to get used to the sudden change. Even so, the lighting isn't what woke me up; I was pulled out of a less than peaceful slumber by a voice coming from the kitchen, which instantly sent my heart into overdrive.

          Once my brain registers the voice belongs to my dad and pushes away every other scenario—he's being forced to talk to make me think everything is okay, he's been kidnapped, he's been replaced, that's an AI using his voice—I make my way towards the kitchen entrance on the tips of my toes. He's on the phone, holding the device against his ear with the help of his shoulder so he can pour himself a cup of coffee at the same time, and briefly glances up at me when he hears me shuffle inside.

          "I don't care if the department has 'other stuff to do'," he says, to whoever is on the other side of the line. "I want this figured out now. I've already had to change my home phone number twice this month."

          I shrink with guilt, stepping away.

          It's my fault we've had to change our home phone number. People keep calling, mostly reporters begging for an inside scoop on an investigation that had reached a conclusion, an exclusive interview with me, the Camp Comet Final Girl, in spite of my dad's requests for everyone to leave me alone, and then there are what he calls 'the trolls'.

          They're harmless in nature, just annoying, but they've gained the habit of quoting horror movies whenever they call just to rile me up, like asking me what's my favorite scary movie after I pick up. Sometimes, they walk around the house in full costume, like this is funny, like my life is just a joke or a horror movie trope to them, but those are easier to deal with when they make the mistake of pissing off a detective. The phone calls are trickier, as numbers can be masked, burner phones exist, and it's not as easy to track the callers. My dad calls it stalking and harassment, even when I tell him it's worse when they follow me around on the rare times I go outside.

          "Well, then do better!" he snaps, startling me when he slams the now empty coffee pot against the marble kitchen counter. It's a miracle the pot doesn't break. "Call me when you decide to do something useful."

          If the only thing affected by this was our home phone number, I could live. The guilt wouldn't be nearly as overbearing. 

          Everything else has been put on hold—most of his cases, his work hours, my plans for my sophomore year of college, my mom's plans to move away—because they don't want me to be left alone for too long, left to my own devices. They had never been overprotective before, trusting me to know the dangers of being on my own and to ensure I'd always have someone with me everywhere I went, and Mom even wanted to be less overbearing by not being present all the time, but all of that was tossed aside.

          I only leave to attend my mandatory therapy sessions with someone who doesn't want to be there any more than I do and we spent those forty-five minutes in almost perfect silence. I pick at the skin around my nails, tug at loose strands on my clothes, and do everything but talk to someone who doesn't get it. I don't see the point in trying to explain how I feel to someone who has only been trained to try and understand the theoretical side of it, the generality of these cases, instead of focusing on how this impacted me.

          My parents have suggested support groups, groups made of people who went through similar experiences since they think that's what's bothering me the most, but I'm too bitter to even consider talking with people as disillusioned as I am. I tried an anonymous forum once, shortly after my discharge from the hospital, but even that fell flat. Everyone there had reached a point of numbness that they handled in a manner that was almost comical, satirical, even, and called out horror tropes in each other's stories like golden stars. My case was recent, still popular on the news, and I'd read posts criticizing my approach and my reaction—too emotional, too fake, my eyes didn't look as dead as they should have in the photos taken of me immediately after the police arrived—which made me close the tab for the sake of my mental wellbeing.

          What do I need then? How can I get what I need when everything I'm being offered stands on either side of the spectrum? Where's my gray area? Do I not deserve that? Should I have fought more, gotten hurt more, suffered more?

          I don't know how to be the perfect victim. I don't know how to be the perfect Final Girl some anonymous people want me to be. I don't know why I want to meet their expectations, why I want their validation so bad, like that could bring me any sort of closure, but I do, and it's eating me alive.

          "Sorry you had to hear that," Dad apologizes. He and Mom have been doing it a lot since the divorce, assuring me it's not my fault in any way, assuring me we're still a family even without a license legally binding them together. We all apologize to each other now more than ever, especially after I pretty much ruined their lives; Dad got in trouble at work by trying to use the departments to directly help me, Mom had to postpone her own wedding. "I've been trying to get this to stop, but . . ."

          "It's okay."

          "Did you sleep down here?"

          I shrug, eyeing his now empty cup of coffee. "My room was too hot."

          "Wendy . . ."

          We both freeze the second we hear the sound of a car engine outside. The sight of an all too familiar Aston Martin is unmistakable.

          Mom is back.

──────────

this is my child wendy don't touch her don't hurt her she's been through ENOUGH

hello! welcome to final room. this book is a hot mess. i don't know how to stockpile chapters. half of it was written on scrivener, the utter bane of my existence, but i'm back on docs now, as i should.

if you liked this first chapter, please please don't forget to vote and comment. do it for wendy. do it for the newsfeed.