Scream Test: An unforgettable and gripping psychological thriller

by Mark Gillespie

  He wiped his nose, removing the white powder.

  “Did anything else in the script catch your eye when you were reading it earlier? A Sally scene? Any scene? We can do anything you want right now. Anything you want.”

  He looked at his science-fiction watch again.

  Nicole squinted her eyes. “Script?”

  Klein laughed. “Oh,” he said, stabbing his finger at her again. The finger was getting closer to Nicole’s face each time. “I gotcha. There’s no script. We got an improviser right here ladies and gentlemen. Alright, spoken like a true actress. I get it, I get it. Everything’s loose and off the cuff. But indulge me please, Ellie. For now, let’s just stick to what Bob’s written down in the early draft. Cool?”

  “Cool.”

  Klein thumbed through the script. One foot was constantly tapping off the floor and when he spoke, everything sounded like one giant, mangled sentence.

  “Alright, let’s take a look. Okay, okay. What about this scene right here where Delilah knifes the mugger in Central Park? This is where, I guess, we establish that Delilah is a badass and not just another helpless hot chick running around in hotpants. Female empowerment Ellie, you gotta put it in the movies these days. Even Tucci isn’t immune to this PC shit which by the way, is fucking killing the industry. Pussy power, right? And you can’t just put a badass chick in there too. That’s not enough for them anymore. The feminists got all these little games they wanna play. You know what the Bechdel test is? You gotta have two chicks talking to each other about something that ain’t a man and you gotta know their names too or the dyke army will bitch about how the movie didn’t pass this test. Holy shit. Who gives a fuck, right? Same thing when you realize you’ve whitewashed a movie. Even if the movie doesn’t need diversity you gotta drop a black guy or an Asian dude in the buddy role and give him a couple of lines. Make it seem like he’s doing something even if it’s completely superfluous to the plot. Motherfuckers. Gotta keep the mob happy though, right? Say, do you do martial arts Ellie?”

  He thrust one of the Tucci scripts into her hand.

  “Ellie, you hear me? Do you do any martial arts? You ever done kickboxing? Brazilian Jiu Jitsu? Karate? Taekwondo?”

  Nicole took the script and held it in her hand like it was a piece of wet toilet paper. “No.”

  “That’s okay,” Klein said. “That’s cool. But take my advice kid and get yourself some lessons. Kicking ass ain’t a bad thing to put on your resume. You understand? Become a well-rounded actor. Take this business seriously and it’ll take you seriously. That’s my advice and I’m giving it to you free of charge.”

  “I take my business very seriously,” Nicole said.

  Klein glanced at his watch again. “We gotta get a move on baby or I’ll be late meeting Johnny for lunch and I don’t want to piss the little fucker off. At least not until I get his signature on the dotted line. Then I can do whatever I want, right? Okay, let’s see what’s on the page here. Where are we? Delilah is out running in the park and blah-blah-blah. She’s minding her own business, listening to music or a podcast, and she turns a corner, runs down a narrow lane where a mugger is waiting to pounce. I’ll play the mugger. I’ve got a knife and after I jump you, I try to drag you into the bushes. What am I going to do? I’m going to hurt you. I’m going to rape you. I might even kill you.”

  “No you won’t.”

  “Exactly,” Klein said, clicking his fingers. “Because Delilah’s a black belt in kicking ass. He jumps her and she kicks the shit out of the mugger before he can even think about unzipping his pants and pulling his pecker out. Okay? Let’s run through the dialogue. You don’t have to throw a kick or a punch. C’mon Ellie, I’m running out of time. Jesus, it’s hot in this room. Are you hot?”

  “No.”

  Klein’s fat finger pointed at the script. Halfway down the page. “Take it from here. I’ll start, okay?”

  “Okay. You start.”

  He cleared his throat.

  Klein started reading, waving an imaginary knife back and forth in his hand. “HEY BITCH! Don’t scream or I’m going to stab you in the eyeballs. You do what I tell you or you’re fucking dead, you got that?”

  Nicole winced. The dialogue was as painful as Klein’s dog-bark of a voice.

  He grabbed her by the arm. Nicole was so surprised that she dropped the script on the floor. She yanked her arm free and retreated towards the counter. Towards her bag.

  “What are you doing?” Klein asked, a blank stare on his face. “What the fuck’s wrong with you?”

  “Why did you do that?” Nicole said. “Why did you touch me?”

  “Are you serious? We’re fucking acting right now you crazy Canadian bitch. It’s acting!”

  Nicole shook her head.

  “No, this is real. And I’ve got something in my bag for you, Mr. Klein.”

  Klein groaned. Then he slammed his script off the countertop. Everything – glasses, coffee cups, coffee maker and tripod – trembled under the weight of the man’s frenzied, coke-fueled rage. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” His face and neck were turning purple.

  Mad dog, Nicole thought.

  She was inching closer to her bag.

  “You’ve been acting like a fucking retard ever since you came out of the bathroom,” Klein said. “I thought we’d put the misunderstanding behind us. Huh? I thought we were making progress here. Why are you trying to humiliate me? Is this all part of an act or something? Last fucking chance Ellie, I swear to God.”

  His finger stabbed the script on the table. He continued to yell at Nicole like she was a small child who wouldn’t listen to a parent’s instructions.

  “This is where you knock me down. This is where Delilah knocks the mugger down. It’s only a few lines of dialogue, just say the words and throw a few fake punches, okay? And turn a little to the right so you’re facing the camera. C’mon Ellie, for Christ’s sake.”

  “I have something in my bag for you.”

  Klein shook his head. “Later. Pick the script up off the floor. Say the words on the page. Do it now or I swear to God I’m gonna...just fucking do it.”

  Nicole had no intention of picking up the script. She’d been orchestrating things behind the scenes for a long time. Making moves. And now here she was, on the brink of her long-awaited reunion with the Shadow Man. Nicole was the one who’d packed the bag at Motel Bliss this morning. Not Ellie. She’d wrapped the knife up, burying it in several layers of spare clothing. Then she’d tucked the clothes deep down into the bottom of the bag. Good thing too – she hadn’t realized she’d be needing it so soon.

  “We’re rolling,” Klein snapped. “Throw the shot. I’m a mugger and I’m about to…”

  Nicole threw a lightning-fast punch that landed on Klein’s bloodshot eye. Direct hit. She felt an explosion of pain in her hand. There was meat behind the punch but more importantly, the element of surprise. Klein was caught off-guard. He staggered backwards, howling in pain with a hand pressed tight over his eye. He doubled over for about five seconds. When he straightened up like a reanimated zombie, he took his hand off his face and stared at Nicole through one good eye and one mangled eye. He was wobbly on his feet. His expression, a hybrid of anger and confusion.

  “You crazy fucking bitch! You’re not supposed to actually hit me. Are you trying to blind me today or something?”

  But Nicole wasn’t listening. She was already at the countertop, rummaging through her bag, digging both hands underneath the extra layers of clothing. Spare t-shirt. Spare pants. Sneakers. She’d need them all later. Her hand was sore but it wasn’t broken. That was something to be thankful for. Everything had to work today. And especially right now.

  “Did you hear me bitch? Did you hear what I said?”

  Nicole’s hands probed further. Searching frantically.

  Her heart was thumping.

  And then she found it. Inside a tightly wrapped bundle of jeans and two plain-colored t-shirts. Nicole peeled the lay
ers of clothing backwards. Quick, she had to be quick. She knew the sort of volcano anger building up in Klein right now. She knew it only too well. It had to erupt. It had to go somewhere.

  “Fuck this,” Klein said, kicking the chair away from the table. The chair toppled over onto its side and Klein kicked it again so that it skidded over towards the bed. “Fuck this!” His hands were raised. Two massive, clenched fists that wanted to cause damage. “Nothing’s worth this amount of hassle. Nothing. You look good Ellie but you can’t act for shit and you’re probably a lousy fuck too. All you’ve done is waste my fucking time this morning. Crazy cunt.”

  Spit flew out of his mouth.

  He marched towards her. Arm cocked back, ready to throw.

  Nicole showed him the knife. It was a Japanese chef’s knife with a blue resin-wood handle. A big mother by anyone’s standards. Nicole had taken it from Ellie’s mother’s kitchen on one of those rare occasions when Ellie had summoned up the nerve to go visit John and Marian Ferguson, who were miraculously still together after all these years and living in the same West Rouge bungalow that Ellie had grown up in. The tension, the lack of conversation, the strange, uncomfortable looks exchanged between people with blood ties who didn’t like one another, it was all worth it because Ellie’s mom had turned into quite the chef and she had the tools to prove it. The Japanese knife caught Nicole’s eye from the moment she saw it sitting on the counter. That was the one. It was beautiful and best of all, very sharp.

  Klein’s expression changed from predator to prey in a split second. His hands shot up in the air as he backed away, one step at a time. “Woah, easy now. Take it easy Ellie. What the hell’s going on here?”

  Nicole’s thumb jerked towards the iPhone.

  “Camera’s rolling.”

  “Get away from me,” Klein said. He was inching towards the door. “What the fuck is this? A robbery or something? You brought a knife here?”

  “Soon you’ll wish it was a robbery,” Nicole said in a flat voice. She was stalking him, ready to lunge.

  Klein’s retreat came to a sudden halt. “Please Ellie, let’s talk about this – I’ve got a wife and I’ve got three kids. What do you want? I’ll give you whatever you want. You want money? I’ll give you all the money you want. I can make you a multimillionaire with a single phone call. Say the word. What do want for Christ’s sake? Ellie!”

  “Why do you keep calling me Ellie? Ellie isn’t doing this. Ellie could never do something like this.”

  “Huh? I don’t understand.”

  “I want you to turn a little to the right, Mr. Klein,” Nicole said, still edging forward. “Face the camera, for me. We don’t want to miss anything. Do we?”

  “You’re crazy,” he whispered. “You’re actually crazy, aren’t you?”

  “Face the camera.”

  “My children. My babies. Please think about my children.”

  With that, Klein made a run for the door. But even though he was clearly terrified, he was too big of a man and all that extra bulk slowed him down. He had to turn around. He had to get his legs moving from a standing start.

  Nicole was fast and she’d seen it coming. She knew she had to be precise and clinical with her attack. Klein was stronger than she was, much stronger, and if he was able to grab the knife out of her hand, she was in big trouble. The first strike was a slashing blow across Klein’s neck, close to the jugular but missing the mark. A red line appeared on pink, sweaty flesh. The line began to leak. Klein screamed and put his hands to his face. To his neck, searching for the wound. His eyes bulged in terror.

  “Ellie!”

  Nicole took advantage of this opening. She rushed forward again, slashing the blade across Klein’s belly. She dug it in deep. She heard the scraping noise, the sound of clothes and flesh tearing.

  Boy, that knife was sharp.

  Klein was leaking blood all over the carpet. So much blood. Nicole watched as the slow realization dawned on his grizzly bear face, the surefire knowledge that all thoughts were about to cease and that his life would end in a seedy hotel room off Sunset Boulevard. What was he thinking right now? About his wife? About his kids? Perhaps he was thinking about all the morbid tourists who’d flock to Room 59 in the years to come, paying extra money to sleep in the room where Grady Klein was murdered. Take pictures of the spot where his body lay undiscovered for hours. Maybe they’d even reenact the murder itself on the anniversary. So much fun to be had.

  Another story. Just another story.

  Klein stood paralyzed with shock. Nicole marched forward and stabbed him repeatedly in the neck, in the chest, in the gut. Fast, she worked fast. Making sure. Making so many holes in the man it’d be impossible to count them all. A wet, slicing noise filled Room 59. Finally, Nicole pulled the knife out and stepped backwards, retreating from the pooling blood on the floor.

  Klein dropped to his knees with a thud, desperately trying to plug the flow of blood with his fingers. But there weren’t enough fingers in the world to save him now.

  He was trying to say something. Lips moving, slowing down like the last gasps of a dying goldfish. The light dimmed in his eyes.

  Nicole watched, knife in hand, blood dripping off the exhausted blade. She didn’t think that Klein was trying to talk.

  Looked like he was trying to scream.

  April 22nd, 2017

  Ellie and Cassandra were both twenty-two when they met for the last time.

  The meeting took place in a No Frills discount supermarket, about eleven miles outside of Toronto.

  Ellie was shopping after work, hurrying up and down the narrow aisles with a yellow plastic basket hanging off her arm. She was on automatic pilot, grabbing the same items she always did on these weekly shops. Same old fruits, vegetables, frozen meals, bread and pasta.

  The store was too crowded. Ellie passed the other shoppers without a second glance, desperate to escape the invasive lights that cheap supermarkets like No Frills did so well. Not that there was much to get excited about when she got back home. The plan for tonight wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. She’d go back to her one-bedroom apartment in Scarborough, eat some half-assed meal in front of the TV and then scour the web for good acting jobs.

  That last part was like panning for gold in a used toilet bowl.

  Ellie’s acting career hadn’t exactly gotten off to a flying start and that was putting it mildly. So far she’d done several commercials (non-speaking roles), a small-time play (non-speaking background eye candy) and a couple of low-low budget student films where she’d played the good-looking dumb blonde. Another non-speaking role.

  Of course, she tried to be grateful about the positives in life. There were some things to be overjoyed about. At least she wasn’t living with her parents anymore, having moved out of the family bungalow at the age of seventeen. She’d gone on to share several apartments over the next few years with some of her workmates across Toronto, a convenient rent-sharing arrangement. After a while, Ellie found a small place of her own to rent in Scarborough. It was a shithole with no room to swing a cat and a kitchen that was more like a tiny, bizarre closet attached to the bedroom. But it was her place.

  Ellie hurried up and down the aisles, keeping her head down. In the frozen foods section, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in one of the glass domes on the ceiling – the type with hidden security cameras fixed under the casing to catch shoplifters. That was always a treat. She looked haggard and older than her twenty-two years. Ellie had always been tall and skinny but now she was sporting a full-on throwback nineties heroin chic look with her pale skin, dark circles under the eyes, slightly disheveled hair and striking bone structure.

  The lights. The fucking lights were killing her. Ellie was convinced that there was someone up there in the control room, a spotty teenager or a middle-aged pervert, messing around, chasing after her with a spotlight and making the sickly yellow shelves of No Frills glow brighter.

  All she had to do was grab the pasta sauc
e. Then pay. Then run.

  She hurried back to the pasta, rice and beans aisle. As she turned the corner at a hundred miles per hour, Ellie’s basket collided with another shopper who was exiting back into the main aisle. This other shopper, an overweight woman with short, stringy brown hair, was the first to apologize. She was blushing. Avoiding eye contact.

  “Sorry.”

  Ellie mumbled back. “No, I’m sorry. That was my fault. I was going too…”

  She stopped. Tilted her head.

  The two women stared at one another.

  “Ellie?” the woman said, taking a step forward. Her mouth hung open in shock. “Ellie Ferguson? Is that really you?”

  “Holy shit,” Ellie said, nodding like someone under hypnosis. She felt strangely giddy at the sight of her old friend. “Hey Cassandra. Yeah, it’s me. It’s you?”

  The woman offered a timid smile. “Yeah.”

  Ellie wasn’t sure how she was supposed to behave. How was anyone supposed to behave in a situation like this? Like nothing had happened and they were just two old school friends bumping into one another after a few years? Make small talk, pleasantries and then move on?

  “Wow,” she said. “It’s great to see you.”

  Fucking pasta sauce.

  “You look well,” Ellie continued. It was a lie. Cassandra wasn’t in great shape – she was seriously overweight and the skin around her neck was pale and blotchy. Ellie noticed, even after a minute of reunion time, that her old friend had picked up a weird habit of blinking too much as if there was something permanently stuck in her eyes. But what was Ellie supposed to say? What the fuck happened to you? Cassandra was wearing a pair of faded blue jeans and an unflattering sweater that hung off her like a tent. She was makeup free, a cluster of acne at the tip of her chin. As she clung to the handle of the shopping basket with both hands, Ellie noticed ten sets of badly bitten fingernails.

  “You don’t think I’ve put weight on?”

  Ellie shrugged. “Hasn’t everyone?”

  “You haven’t,” Cassandra said with a weak laugh. There was a hint of resentment in her voice but it quickly tapered off. “What was it everyone used to call you at school? Stick insect?”