Jason didn’t know what she was talking about. He felt only a weak, glacial burning in the right side of his body. He hefted the cast-iron pan, leaning into the strain in his left bicep, praying the pain would keep him alert. The kitchen windows were starting to lighten, no longer pitch black but a hazy indigo. Panic scrabbled in his chest like a cornered animal. When dawn hit, he wouldn’t be able to hide anymore.
“Do you feel the fear, Jason?”
Jason flinched as the pantry door banged open. Yes, he did feel the fear, especially when the axe whistled through the air, followed by an almost soothing shimmer as the blade broke the box of rice and grains spilled all over the linoleum. That could’ve been his guts.
Carrie sniffed disdainfully. “I bet you’ve never felt an inch of real fear in your life. Or shame. Do you feel it now? Do you feel the guilt? The regret?”
Another time he might’ve been hit by the full force of his remorse of how things had gone down, after Carrie’s photo had been spread. The cumulative stress of those sleepless nights, wondering what he could’ve done differently. But at that moment there was no space for anything other than dread in the tightening cavity inside his chest. He remained still, left hand clammy around the pan, right hand holding the bag of flour to his side. A cold sweat gathered at his hairline, threatening to sting his already burning eyes.
“Do you feel exposed? Naked and vulnerable?”
That he did feel. The axe was so large, so brutal, and all he had were implements for making crepes.
The fridge door squeaked. Carrie grunted. Bottles and cans clinked as the axe soared again and found nothing to cleave.
“Do you feel angry that you wasted so much time beingnice?” Jason heard the smirk in her voice, and tried not to react to the truth of it. She was only trying to bait him.
“When I had a crush on you, I fantasized that you also dreamed of breaking out of the boxes people put us in. But you did nothing when everyone turned on me. You kept your mouth shut to protect Tiffany and Mikey. Or was it to protect yourself? Your self-image of the good guy who sticks up for your cousin? You’re just as weak as the others. No courage. No guts.”
Her words cut deeper than any axe. She was right. He’d never had the courage to do the right thing. To live how he really wanted. To love how he wanted.
“It’s time to put it all behind us, Jason. Time tobury the hatchet.”
He heard the axe smashing the cabinets beneath the sink. It was now or never. Jason launched himself out from behind the standee, yelling in agony as his injured arm shook the bag of flour open and tossed the contents into her face.
Carrie jerked in shock. He swung the cast-iron pan at her head with his other arm, but she deflected blindly with the bloody axe, shrieking like a hawk. The blade struck the base of the pan with a clang that vibrated through Jason’s bones all the way up to his teeth. The pan dropped, his left hand unable to take the weight anymore.
Jason ran.
“Is that what you want?” he couldn’t help calling out. He skidded on his own blood as he sprinted across the linoleum to the hallway. “For me to suffer like you did?”
“Yes,” Carrie spat. He heard her brushing the flour out of her face, her hair. “I want to take away everything you’ve ever known. I want you to feel like your life is over. That you have nowhere to go, no one to turn to.”
She’d achieved that goal. Jason desperately scanned the hallway for the knife Mikey had dropped. He wasn’t thinking of his own survival. He was thinking of Patrick, at the bottom of the cellarstairs. Carrie swinging the bloody axe had made him remember the blade had been unstained when she’d emerged from the cellar. If she hadn’t struck Patrick with the axe, there was the possibility he was only stunned from the fall and still alive.
Jason had never been particularly religious, but a desperate prayer ran through the back of his head.Please, God, don’t let Patrick be dead.Patrick could survive. If Jason lived long enough to help him.
“It’s done now, Carrie,” he panted. Mikey’s headless body lay prostrate on the ground in a spreading puddle of blood. The knife was nowhere to be seen. Jason had the terrible feeling Mikey had fallen on top of it.
“You got what you wanted. You don’t have to do this. You got your revenge on Mikey.” He staggered for the front room, his right arm dangling uselessly like it belonged to a rag doll. He wouldn’t be able to load the flare gun or operate the fire extinguisher, but there had to be something he could use to take Carrie down.
The front room smelled like pine and burned paper. Ash from the charred books and board games stirred as he stumbled inside, sidestepping the shards of the vase Mikey had thrown at the Slasher earlier. Fuck, he should’ve suspected then that Mikey was working with their attacker. No one’s aim could be that bad.
There—the souvenir Cedar Lake snow globe lay on the floor by the sofa, the miniature cabin enviably peaceful in its glycerin bath. He glanced up and noticed the antler chandelier was hanging at a dangerous angle.
To his surprise, Carrie’s laugh rang out. “Do you really think this is all about you? About a dumb schoolgirl crush? The mistakes of my wayward youth?”
Jason froze, speechless, his sweaty fingers slippery around the snowglobe. Hadn’t she just explained that she’d wanted to make the Jumpscare Society pay for their part in her fall from grace? That she’d twisted the advice from her therapist to justify her thirst for vengeance?
“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” she continued. “When I started out,it was all about revenge. But a funny thing happened when I lured Daniel into that alley and showed him my new meat cleaver.”
She stood framed by the arched doorway to the dining room. The flour had rendered her hair into a pale wimple about her face. Saint Carrie of the Axe, about to fulfill her sacred destiny.
The corners of her mouth curved up in a radiant smile, and she almost seem to glow. “I liked it.”
Jason finally understood. Carrie, the outsider and underdog, had tasted power. God help him, he sympathized with her. Envied her, even. To seize control over your own fate and dance to nobody’s tune—this past year he’d been chasing that, too.
“The Final Girl is always transformed by violence,” she said. “When she has nothing left to lose, that’s when she finds her hidden strength. Her true self.”
