by Alan Spencer
"YOU DON'T WANT TO BE IN MY MOVIE? YOU DON'T WANT TO BE IN MY MOVIE? YOU DON'T WANT TO BE IN MY F-UCKING MOVIE?"
The madman kept shrieking those words as he bashed everybody across the head.
Dan cowered to the corner of the room. It was too late. Out of the thick smoke, the ball bat swung, and he too hit the floor.
The whine of a machine woke Dan up. He was sprawled out on the hallway floor.
"And action!"
Dan could only move his heavy head so fast. The hallway was dark lit; so dark, it seemed to go on forever.
He searched for the person who talked. Dan couldn't hear much else over the roar of the machine. It sounded like a hair dryer from hell.
From a good ten yards to Dan's left, he saw a blinking red dot.
Somebody was recording him.
"Andy, is that you?"
Dan did his best to locate the people in the dark. There were two people. One was Andy, holding up the camera. The blinking red dot wasn't from the video camera. It was from the bomb on Andy's chest.
Bloody Mask was also nearby. Dan caught the split-second gleam of his .357 Magnum and the baseball bat in the other.
Anger brewed in Dan's body.
"What is it that you want from me? Do you want me to act out another scene in your Goddamn movie? Huh? Tell me what you want. I've got not fucking choice, but I can't give you what you want unless you tell me. You're not too crazy to understand that simple concept, are you?"
"That's good. Get fired up. Show some character. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Good. That's very good."
"Andy, what does this guy want from me? Are you helping him? I fucking knew it."
"I'm not, Dan. I swear to you. He's making me do this. I never would do this to anybody. You must believe me."
"Quiet behind the camera," Blood Mask snapped. "It's not your job to talk or direct. I direct. I call the shots. Dan, you're going to explore the school. If you try to escape, I'll blow your heart right out of your chest. Fun's waiting for you in every room. Just follow the sounds of terror. Play along. Act like you're in a movie. I'll follow you for awhile. If you do a good job, we'll talk about letting you live."
Dan got up from the floor. He didn't realize he'd been sitting there the whole time.
The psycho had changed the rules. Instead of playing out scenes, Dan was going to be the main character who searches for his friends. There would be traps, he imagined, and people dead or dying.
The .357 shot the tile floor right by Dan's foot.
"Get moving. No more time to think it over. It's not up to you. It's up to me. Now go!"
Dan hurried away from Andy and Bloody Mask. What was he supposed to think? That Andy wasn't a part of this demented pageant? Did Bloody Mask sound like Brian for a moment? Did his voice slip? It was hard to tell.
He was making a turn down another hallway. The old elementary school was designed in a square. There was a large wall that was paned glass that showed into a courtyard. The killer had covered the wall with high stacks of chairs and desks. He didn't have quick access through the glass. It would require some momentum to smash the glass, and Bloody Mask was right behind him. By the time he would crawl over the desks, attempt to break the windows, he'd be dead. And he couldn't forget the explosive on his chest.
Dan had to keep looking for something, anything, to improve his situation.
He saw the fire extinguisher on the wall.
No good, you can't fight him.
The whine of the high pitched machine was getting louder. He was closing in on the source. This is what that bastard wanted.
Give him what he wants. If it's only to buy you more time.
Up ahead, there was a box of yellow light coming from an open door. The whine didn't sound like a blow dryer anymore. Dan stepped into the light and peered into the room.
Part of it was a homemade engine. Dan hadn't seen anything like it before. It was attached to a vacuum cleaner. The suction part was shoved into Mitch's eye socket. The top of the vacuum had come undone because the motor attached to it was shaking the device so violently. Mitch's skull was hollow. His head made an empty sound every time it thumped against the wall. Mitch's entire body was hollow, in fact. The suction was so powerful brains, blood, and intestines had been spit out of the vacuum's tube and into the reservoir.
Dan was on his hands and knees crawling away from the scene. Mitch's permanent scowl of agony replayed in his mind's eye. The one eye remaining in Mitch's head had rolled up into the back of his head. The sick thud of his head as the machine kept jostling the corpse repeated. The putrid gleam of insides, Dan wretched onto the tiles.
The blinking red light appeared in his peripheral. Bloody Mask and Andy were near him. The fuckers were getting their close-up shot.
Dan's head was flooded with thoughts, reactions, and questions of what to do next. One thought stood out against the rest.
I have to keep doing this. I can try and save who's left. I can't let him out of this building. He'll kill more people. He's doing it because of my movie. This is my fault, and I'm going to stop him.
Where else was he going to look?
Dan ran into the darkness, then banged on the classroom doors. "Is anybody in there? Please, answer me! Can anyone hear me?"
He was the terrified victim in a movie. Andy and Bloody Mask were stomping after him. They were fast moving shadows. Moving spectators to this jilted scene of drama.
Dan was rushing so fast he almost collided into the person limping in the middle of the hallway. It was the twenty something girl Bloody Mask shot in the kneecap. There was something different about her. The way she talked, for one.
"Dan Daniels, is that you?"
She said it a vacant, dreamy kind of way.
Dan held her by both arms. "Let's get that leg wound looked at. You've probably lost so much blood."
"Doesn't matter how much I bleed."
"It does. You're going to live, because I'm going to save you."
"You know something, Dan Daniels?"
He could barely see her face. The darkness was taking its time to let up enough for him to really see her.
"What is it?"
"The darkness keeps getting deeper. I don't know what to feel anymore, Dan Daniels. I can't cry without eyes."
Bloody Mask put a flashlight beam to her face.
Her eyes were empty sockets crawling with worms and maggots. She was literally crying earthworms.
"Goddamn!"
"All I see is darkness."
In each palm, she was holding onto an eyeball heavy with pink socket flesh.
Dan fought through his horror to help the poor girl. "I can help you. Come with me. Somehow, we'll survive."
"I don't want to live!"
She screamed, and screamed, and screamed. Dan couldn't see what she did in the coming moment, because the flashlight beam vanished, and then the explosive on her chest went off. This was a much bigger blast then the pathetic dud from earlier. The concussion threw Dan off of his feet. He slammed into a locker and deflected onto the ground. Through the merciful blanket of darkness, Dan saw her upper half separate from her lower half.
Dan couldn't sit there.
He fled from the scene.
Andy and Bloody Mask were right behind him filming every second.
Darkness everywhere. It must've been night outside, because no lights were filtering from the cracks of the covered windows. That deep of black made it that much easier to see the three numbers that glowed in the dark.
421.
The .357 Magnum was cocked and pointed in Dan's direction.
"Go ahead," Bloody Mask suggested playfully. "Open the locker. What's inside? Only one way to find out. Will you find out who's behind all of this? Only one way, Dan Daniels.
"Don't you want to save Janey, or how about your friend, Brian? What about your innocent fans?"
Dan wasn't sure why he said it. He was guessing and hoping somehow the man behind the mask slipped and revealed his id
entity. It would do little to change the psychopath's plan, but it might be enough to reason with the murderer and get out of there alive.
"When did you come up with all of this, Brian? Before the reunion? This doesn't have to happen. We can still make our movie. I'll quit my job. I'll fully commit."
"You know nothing about me, so opening the locker will help make things clearer for you. I am in charge; I am directing you. You're going to give the performance of your life. So open the fucking locker, or I pull the trigger."
He knew nothing more, Dan thought, about the killer's identity. The rouse didn't do anything.
Open the locker.
Dan's fingers trembled as he rolled the combination.
Bloody Mask was laughing.
"There sure wasn't much room. Taz isn't as in shape as he used to be. The scene called for a stunt. He was supposed to pop out of the locker and scare you, Dan. But I had to saw off his head and his legs and split his belly in two."
There was a hacksaw at the bottom of the locker. Dan saw that first. Taz's severed head was jammed into one compartment. His guts unspooled from his belly once his arms tipped out of the locker. The rest of his corpse flopped onto the ground.
Dan backed up in repulsion. He considered grabbing the hacksaw and doing something, anything, to put a stop to this horrible charade. The sight of Taz dismembered body threw Dan into a temporary, split-second insanity.
He reached for the hacksaw and turned around to destroy Andy's camera—that would put up a road block in this sick production!—when the two of them were gone.
Dan scanned up and down the hallway. There was no evidence of where they went or where they were hiding.
I know they're watching me somehow.
He was determined to find a back door, an exit, a window, or anything unsecured. Whoever was doing this had worked very hard to make this happen in a short period of time. They wouldn't let him leave. What would he have to do to escape?
Kill them, he thought.
Dan refused the idea. More problems, he realized. Even if he did locate an exit, he couldn't up and run. Janey, his fans, and God knew whoever else, could still be saved.
Or he's going to butcher them in front of you and capture it on film.
Just like my movie.
Dan called out and offered help to whoever might hear him. He kept passing more rooms. Dan tried the doors. Each of them were locked.
Continuing on, he almost tripped over what was on the floor.
A body bag.
It was empty.
A light turned on up ahead in the hallway. Dan ran towards the door first, but then he slowed down. He listened and trained his ear to the faintest sound. Dan heard something. It wasn't footsteps or talking.
The sound was strange. Hissing air, maybe.
Dan had to take responsibility and do whatever he could.
The door was a double door. Inside was what looked to be a cafeteria. The large square room had folded up tables against the wall. Nobody was in the room. He didn't see any blood.
Dan searched and located a door into the kitchen area. This is where the odd sound became louder. Once inside, he saw the industrial kitchen equipment covered in cobwebs and tarps. The place smelled musty.
Then Dan saw the silver pot boiling on the stove.
That was the sound he was hearing.
Something was banging inside of the pot. Against the tile wall, drawn in blood, were the words: LOOK INSIDE OR YOU DIE.
Dan whipped around and searched the kitchen. There were too many places to hide.
He did what he had to do to save his life and maybe somebody else's.
Dan grabbed the lid, threw it aside, and when he peered inside, his breath hitched in his throat.
He couldn't tell what was boiling. They looked like two peeled potatoes until they flipped over in the water, and he saw the faded pink nipples.
Trisha's breasts.
Dan spotted them across the room. Bloody Mask with his gun and baseball bat. Andy holding up the camera.
Dan feared they were going to corner him and kill him. He saw the door nearby. He threw himself into the room, and when he shut the door, Dan realized his mistake.
The door was quickly blockaded from the other side. He heard a large piece of equipment be shoved up against the door. A single light bulb lit up what used to be a storage room. He imagined canned goods by the bulk being placed on the now empty and dusty shelves. What he didn't imagine being there was the woman's body suspended upside down by the legs. She was up against the far wall. He head was inches up off of the ground.
Becky Little.
She was still wearing her waitress outfit from the night of the reunion party.
The sight of her upside down with all the blood rushing to her head was immediately disconcerting.
"Becky, oh Jesus."
The full picture came into focus. Both sides of her abdomen were soaked through with blood. Her shirt was torn in parts. Her pants were torn as well around the pelvic area.
"You sick son-of-a-bitch!"
Becky was dead, but her head jerked in short spasms.
"Becky...?"
Dan was hesitant to get too close.
Through the door, Bloody Mask spoke.
"Little did you know Becky was pregnant. She's about six months along. I guess this was meant to be. You see, I have a special trick. It's a fun trick. One you won't believe until you see it. Judging by the sounds you're making in there, it's about to happen. I borrowed from your script, Dan. I hope you don't mind. Just a few cuts in the right places, and gravity does the rest."
The light bulb was already on. Dan had walked right into the trap. He had done exactly what they wanted.
Dan could only stand and watch as the corpse's body kept twitching. There was a long wet suction sound, then Becky's head went into tremors. Her jawbone made a creak, and another wet suction noise. Becky's mouth edged open. First, there was blood and fluids. Then the head came first, and the rest of the body, and finally, the umbilical cord hung out of her mouth until the baby landed on the floor.
He threw himself into the door, banging his fists to be free of the room and the two corpses.
"YOU SICK SON-OF-A-BITCH!"
Dan kept pushing up against the door. He couldn't turn around and look at the horrible sight. He would be processing this for years, if he survived the night. How could he ever get over this?
Pushing, pushing, pushing against the door, the barrier was beginning to budge. He heard the heavy piece of equipment scrape the floor. Dan applied more force. He wasn't staying in this storage closet with Becky's body any longer.
After shoving the door so hard, and using his weight and strength, the door came open just enough Dan could squeeze through the opening.
Bloody Mask and Andy weren't in the kitchen.
The pot on the stove kept boiling. He could smell the faint smell of meat. The thought that it resembled pot roast made his stomach churn terribly.
A propane lantern shed light in the room. Dan picked up, and he saw on the wall in bloody writing: FOLLOW THE ARROWS TO JANEY.
The son-of-a-bitch is going to do something to Janey next.
Dan didn't have to think. He ran with the propane lantern in his hands. The hallway was lit by the moving beam of lantern light. He caught severed pieces scattered on the floor. Torn up torsos wearing Gash Masters and Bloody Mask shirts. Smeared on the lockers was blood and variations of the phrase: Bloody Mask Is Back/The Mask Means Hack To It/Don't Fuck With The Mask/Bloody Mask Wants Your Blood/The Mask Is Meaner Than Ever/Look Through These Eyes, The Eyes of Satan.
He could use the propane lamp to bash against the psycho's head. He could start a fire. No, he might get himself killed. There was no clear, quick way out. The explosive was still strapped to his chest.
Another large arrow pointed left. Next to the arrow, Janey's dress she wore at the party was stuck to the wall with a knife, as was her bra.
I'm going to kill thi
s guy.
There's no other way.
Janey—hold on!
He sensed a red blinking light. Dan whipped around. Nobody was there.
Steps echoed from the hall behind him and ahead of him. This was a trap. Janey could, and probably was, already dead.
Dan stopped moving. A display case showed a series of severed heads. The necks oozed fresh blood. The heads were recently decapitated from their dead bodies. Dan's fans. He never knew them, but his heart sank with guilt.
Under their heads were small paper signs, labeled:
Best in Class
Most Likely to Succeed
Most Popular
Glamour Girl
Nerd
Valedictorian
Slut.
The double doors ahead stated that Janey was inside this room. Dan feared entering, but he feared more not entering. He couldn't attempt to save Janey otherwise.
The moment he stepped inside, the doors were thrown shut behind him. Dan tried to open them, but they were locked.
He ran to the other set of doors. They too were locked.
Dan was standing inside a gymnasium. Two basketball goals. Risers on each side of him. And hanging from the ceiling by rope, were four bodies. They were thrashing in their restraints and moaning through their gags.
He saw two of the fans, and the other persons being Chad Paulson from Gash Masters and Ellen Roth. She still wore her original shirt labeled: Twat. The rope was tied around their waists and fashioned around their backs. They weren't hung to be strangled.
Something worse was in store.
Directly beneath the hanging people were long metal poles. They were standing up straight. Attached to the ends of those poles were skinning knives. This scene was set-up for impalement. It was just like in Dan's movie. The impalement scene. The psycho was emulating the deaths from his movie. The vacuum cleaner, the boiling breasts, and now, the impalement.
Bloody Mask came out of the shadows, aiming the .357 up at the ceiling. Andy was right behind him, the camera still recording every moment. The camera was right on Dan. Dan knew he was probably wearing the appropriate expression for the scene.
