The Last Final Girl

by Jones, Stephen Graham

  The sheriff’s beer froths over onto his hand.

  “Here, here,” Izzy’s mom says, reaching across with her napkin, looking up to Izzy. “The sheriff was just appreciating my new hobby,” which

  → delivers us to a lingering look at one of her metal sculptures in the front yard, lit by muted footlights. It’s twisted rebar, reclaimed farming implements, burnished welds everywhere like a snowball from a junkyard, but, still, there’s something there. Lines of intention, loyalty to some vision, a snapshot of Izzy’s mom’s mental state—something.

  “Thought I needed to be here to babysit the runt,” Izzy says.

  “Sheriff Mills is just—”

  “Going door to door to everybody whose property backs up to the creek,” he says with all the booming authority of his office, then he finally drinks the top off his beer, not looking away from Izzy’s bare stomach even for an instant.

  “Why?” Izzy says, then looks away fast and guilty: she thinks she’s given Billie Jean away. That they know already.

  “Supposedly some kids found some of that junk from the Halloween truck,” Sheriff Mills says.

  “I didn’t see your car out front,” Izzy says.

  “Just ambling, little lady. Taking in the night air.”

  “And you need it?” Izzy asks. “The costumes or whatever? It evidence?”

  “They just don’t want it showing up online,” Izzy’s mom says, taking stock of Izzy’s non-outfit, now. “Somebody could dress up, get. . . hurt. You know how people are.”

  “Pitchforks, torches,” Izzy fills in, so sick of this medieval village she lives in.

  “Wouldn’t reflect well on Rivershead either,” Izzy’s dad says now, from the opposite doorway. “Mobs, lynchings. Necklaces made from fingers.”

  Like Izzy’s mom, he’s fit but going soft, looks like he works in the corner office, looks out the window a lot, drives a car that costs as much as his first house. Or maybe doesn’t work at all.

  His arm’s cocked high in the doorway, and casual in that hand is a mixed drink without much mix in it. It’s full enough to suggest he just stepped into the other room for it.

  “Must have been some memorial service,” he says, tipping his drink at Izzy’s black bra, then, to Izzy’s mom: “Didn’t Bobbie Brown wear one like that in . . . what was it? Cherry Pie? Remember that one? Real classy.”

  “Dear,” Izzy’s mom says, blinking patiently to show us Izzy’s dad’s drunk, and that this is nothing new.

  “No, no,” he says, stepping in anyway. “It was that, that Bobbie Brown in, in—yeah. That one Great White video.”

  Sheriff Mills is looking at him like the alien he is.

  “Or was it Billie Idol, Rock the Cradle of Love?” Izzy’s dad goes on. “That the look you’re going for this month, Iz?”

  “June, are you going to let Ward talk to me like this in front of company?” Izzy says to her mom.

  “Father knows best,” Izzy’s dad says, sloshing down into a chair, peeling out of his own shirt. “Maybe it’s the new style, right? What do you think, Sheriff? Sure as hell makes getting dressed a lot easier.”

  Sheriff Mills takes another drink, doesn’t answer.

  “She was smoking cigarettes down at the creek.” It’s a boy’s voice—‘Ben,’ the sixth grader from the bridge.

  “Ah, the one who needs babysitting . . . ” Izzy says to him, cutting her eyes at him hard, slicing her hand across her own neck to shush him.

  “Is that illegal?” Ben says to the sheriff, staring at Izzy the whole time. “Can she go to jail now for underage smoking? Need to borrow my harmonica, Iz?”

  Sheriff Mills stands to make his escape, lifting the beer bottle to show he’s taking it with him, and’s grateful.

  “Just let me know if anything washes up,” he says. “Got a lot more houses to get to before—well.”

  He tipsies towards the front door, leading with his gut.

  “Magazines count?” Ben asks.

  Sheriff Mills looks back to him, his eyes uncertain for a moment. And a little bit nervous.

  “Halloween litter,” he says. “Not the usual kind.” Then, to Izzy, “And you should listen to your parents, little miss. About wardrobe issues, I mean.”

  “They haven’t led me wrong yet,” Izzy tells him, and falls back from her station in the doorway, to

  → the sink, to deposit her water glass. “My life is so generic,” she says to herself.

  “You know better than to provoke him,” her mom says, there behind her already, her hand trying to cup Izzy’s side.

  “Weren’t you going out?” Izzy says, shaking her mom off, then running her glass full of water she doesn’t want.

  The front of Izzy’s house is stately. White stone, good windows, manicured lawn. A pricey sedan pulling away—Izzy’s parents—its headlights coming on as it gets onto the street.

  Except, is that “Billie Jean” starting up in the background?

  “Not that one,” Izzy voices over, and we go

  → inside, to the living room.

  She’s on the couch in shorts and a t-shirt—standard babysitter outfit—and Ben’s got the remote.

  He clicks it again, away from the “Billie Jean” video, and, instead of going to whatever he’s advancing to for Izzy, we take a lazy pan over to

  → the video cabinet.

  It’s a mix of VHS and DVD, heavy on the VHS.

  We linger. It’s all the Golden Age slashers, and beyond, and before, and besides. A horror library, so complete it hurts.

  “Those are all for you, you know,” Izzy says to Ben, cueing us in that it’s her POV we’re dropping out of.

  Ben looks around to her, tracks to the cabinet she’s studying.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Next year it’ll be like a ceremony. You’ll watch them all with him over the summer. Mom won’t like it, but you know Dad. It’ll probably work with you, though.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You pee standing up,” Izzy shrugs.

  “This it?” Ben says, stabbing the remote at the screen to stop it.

  Inset on their television, it’s “Thriller.”

  “He’s a werewolf at first,” Izzy says, “but then he’s a zombie, but then at the end he’s kind of got werewolf eyes again.”

  “And now he’s dead.”

  Izzy shrugs like that’s not the point.

  “And we have to listen to this?” Ben whines. “Drink your cough syrup.”

  “Nobody dresses like that in real life.”

  “Somebody is.”

  “Billie Jean?”

  “Y’all know about him in baby school?”

  “He’s dead too.”

  “Well. Until the sequel, yeah. The really good killers always get a return visa to the land of the living. You’ll learn.”

  “Life isn’t a movie, Iz.” “Don’t call me that.”

  “Iz, Iz, Iz. Wizard of Iz.”

  “He means ‘Isadore’ when he says it, not ‘Isabelle.’ And that I’m not him. That it should have been me.”

  Ben swallows whatever he had ready, his eyes flicking—for us—

  to

  → a family photo above the video shelf. It’s from before his time, is Izzy and her mom and dad all happy on a boat, and, smiling right there with him is Izzy’s twin, Isadore, the two of them indistinguish- able at that age. And so happy.

  Izzy again, watching “Thriller.”

  “You’re the second chance, now,” she’s saying to Ben, disgusted. “He’s already given up on me.”

  Ben’s just staring at the screen as well.

  Each of their reflections are there, ghosts stenciled onto the music video.

  “Billie Jean,” Ben says, finally. “It’s from the song. ‘The kid is not my son’ or whatever. Some dad back in the dinosaur days thought his daughter’s date had knocked her up, so he took the kid, the date, I think his name was James—”

  “And your friend’s big b
rother’s teacher remembers him from chemistry class.”

  “—he takes him up to that make-out place and ties a rock to his. . . you know, mister dangly, and drops it off, and James or whoever, instead of letting the string . . . he jumps off after it—”

  “Is never seen again,” Izzy fills in. “Yeah, close enough. Except when that girl has the baby, it didn’t look like her date at all. And the dad drops it off the cliff as well.”

  “Then it grows up to become Billie Jean!” Ben says, pumping a lackluster fist then letting that fist become masturbatory, his comment on this bullshit story.

  “Recognize a theme?”

  “The cliff?”

  “Fathers of the year,” Izzy says, obviously.

  “If you’re wanting me knocked out,” Ben says, sitting up. “It’s going to take more than this.”

  He’s holding up the cough syrup Izzy’s dosing him with.

  “I could just deck you,” Izzy offers.

  “Where you wanting to go, anyway?”

  “Telling you would defeat medicating you to sleep so you can’t tell on me, wouldn’t it?”

  Ben appreciates that, but’s wheeling and dealing here, too.

  “Just saying,” he says, and holds up his nearly-gone cough syrup, fakes a cough out.

  Izzy stands from the couch, crosses to the obviously-locked liquor cabinet. No: liquor shrine.

  “Tell on me for this, you’re telling on yourself,” she says, and pops a book neatly from a shelf—Brains Anatomy—and flips to a page, pinches up the liquor cabinet key.

  “That’s where he put it,” Ben says, kind of impressed.

  “It’s always here or that urban legends one,” Izzy leads off, opening the door grandly, “or just in the lock, depending on how late he goes.”

  She picks a bottle at random, dollops a shot or two into the high-dollar tumbler.

  “Don’t be stingy now,” Ben calls across. “I might wake up, get scared, call Mom.”

  Izzy shakes her head, impressed, and sloshes the tumbler full.

  Meanwhile, Brittney’s sleeping in her bed—lots of emphasis on her absolutely huge (and unaccountably frilly) bedroom window— when her phone burrs in her hand, the glow kind of adding to the tension.

  It’s not a call, of course, but a text.

  She pulls it to her face, reads for a few seconds then drops her hand.

  “You bitch,” she says, and looks to her window, as if sensing something there. Somebody.

  It’s just a window, though.

  For now.

  Back to Izzy’s dark street.

  Sheriff Mills is walking back, making his return trip from the cul-de-sac.

  Now he has two empty bottles in his left hand, a mostly-gone one in his right, and they’re all different colors.

  He’s humming, is pleased with himself.

  As he passes Izzy’s house he lifts his current bottle in drunken salute then kills it.

  About even with their bricked-up mailbox, he looks behind him. And ahead of him.

  Not for any threat, but to make sure the coast is clear.

  When it is, he steps off the road a bit, into the ring of light of one of those swirly metal sculptures, and unzips, arcs a sputtering, pale stream into the twists and turns of the sculpture.

  “You want modern art, I’ll give you modern art,” he mumbles, splashing it over as much of the metal as he can.

  The way this is framed, too, there’s this big empty space over his shoulder, so that we’re holding our breaths (but grinning, be-cause he’s so going to deserve it), and jump hard when, instead of some shape stepping into the sheriff’s space, the garage door of Izzy’s house starts to grind up.

  Its yellow light spills down the drive, almost to him, so he has to hotfoot away, trying to zip up but then an old-fashioned landline suddenly rings in Izzy’s opening garage, so much louder than should be possible, and this is one startle too much for Sheriff Mills.

  His heel catches a brick flowerbed border and he falls back, his hands still occupied (beer, peeing), and this incline is sharp, dangerous. He spills down it and down it, disappears into the darkness.

  Inside the garage, under that light she evidently clicked on, Izzy’s standing there, a twisty-corded phone stretched from the wall to her ear, some camo hunting duffel bag hooked over her shoulder. Still in shorts and t-shirt, barefoot, hair washed and pulled back.

  “Do you know where the children are?” an altered voice says through the phone.

  “You should come over, Britt,” Izzy says, peering out into the darkness like she thought she heard something out there.

  “Do you want to play a game?” the voice asks. Izzy switches ears, hitches the duffel up higher.

  “Listen, I’m the only one in this town who would get this like you want, and you’re the only one who would know to call me at home instead of my cell. Doesn’t take Colombo. This is more Matlock grade.”

  “You’ve got seven days to live.”

  “Yeah, homecoming, right? More like two days, sorry. Big pig- blood finale, a little Prom Night disco action. Hey, you want to know what else? You’ll like this. I know what you did last summer. And who with.”

  Silence, silence.

  Izzy smiles. “Seriously though, I’ve got a surprise. This is no-joke big-time. It changes everything.”

  “I like your red shorts.”

  Izzy looks down, does have red shorts on.

  “Forget it,” she says. “Don’t tell me not to hang up on you either. It’s already too—”

  And she dial-tones the call, snakes her tongue out to it, very Freddy.

  Now it’s just her and the darkness past the driveway. She nods to it like telling it to wait and we go with her to some supply-closet part of the garage. The outdoorsy closet—how rich people do it, anyway. There’s kayaks and skis and backpacks and water bottles and, on another wall, all the turkey-hunting gear one person could ever order from a catalog.

  Izzy shops the shelves until she finds a mondo first-aid kit.

  She puts it in the bag, steps out the garage door and uses the keypad on the wall to close it behind her, leaving her in some deep darkness.

  She flips the keypad back up, opens the door again, rummages in the cute little coupe in the garage until she finds a stun gun in the console. She taps the trigger once, sending a blue arc of pain from contact point to contact point.

  Now she’s hiking down through the scrub, to the water glittering down there.

  “Lindsay Baker my ass,” she’s saying to herself. “Any virgin can kill one. Try bringing one back, though.”

  Soon enough she’s there, but has come out a different part than where Billie Jean was. She thinks.

  Right?

  It’s so dark, though.

  She unpacks a flashlight, cups her hand over the lens and flicks it on.

  It glows harsh for a moment then dies.

  She taps it against her other palm but it only sputters light.

  “That kind of movie, then,” she says. “Car won’t start either, will it?”

  She’s talking because she’s nervous.

  “But you’re not Janet Leigh,” she says to herself. “You’re not Drew Barrymore. This is completely different, nobody ever sees the slasher during his down time, nobody ever . . . ”

  Then she senses it, the hulking presence behind her.

  “Billie Jean?” she says, wincing because she doesn’t want an answer, her hand working the stun gun up from her pocket, and then, at the absolute worst (best) possible time

  → that sparkly white glove latches onto her ankle again.

  Izzy shrieks exactly like she would crucify herself publicly for doing, and jumps back, into something. Somebody.

  When she turns, she’s leading with the stun gun.

  It lights the bloody mouthed sheriff up, shocks him back into the water.

  He keels over, his grey head crunching into another rock.

  Izzy falls back the other way, her hand
s to her mouth, and, where she’s landed, it’s right on Billie Jean.

  His arms come up around her legs and, like his white hands are spiders, she smashes at them with the stun gun.

  It shocks him and her both.

  She flops out into the water, goes under, comes up with the sheriff draped around her, his bloody, blubbering face right in hers, his arms hugging her, trying to pull her down.

  She screams, and

  → it’s loud enough to wake Ben on the couch, for a moment. He blinks, groggy, drunk, and onscreen, Izzy’s left Slumber Party

  Massacre playing, it looks like.

  He nods that that was the source of the noise, nods back off.

  Back at the creek, Izzy’s still screaming, but now she’s clapped her own hand over her mouth, is shaking her head no, that this isn’t how she’s supposed to react.

  Her eyes are telling a different story, though.

  Slowly, slowly, she controls herself. The sheriff bobbing beside her.

  “I’m sorry,” she says to him, and pushes him away, trying to use just her palms, not her fingertips.

  He rolls in the water like a dead catfish, drifts away.

  Izzy treads water for a few moments, actually crying now, her teeth chattering, then she raises the hand still latched onto the stun gun, and stands easily.

  She hits the trigger once, nothing, twice, nothing, then, on the third time, it sparks, but the water running off it’s still connecting to her.

  It gives her a jolt, shorts out, and she throws it away. The water swallows it, but

  → at that precise moment, that turtle we saw earlier surfaces, as if this stun gun tapped into its shell.

  Izzy screams again, even louder, kicks and splashes back, fighting for her life.

  Some amount of panic and adrenaline later—it still feels like the same dilated moment—Izzy pulls herself up onto the bank, lies there breathing, breathing. She looks up to her house, and, in

  → her POV, it’s still dark.