The Last Final Girl

by Jones, Stephen Graham

  “Do mascots have, you know, proper equipment?” Crystal says out loud, smiling. Lindsay cuts her eyes across at her but is already reaching back into the Cadillac, down alongside the closed passenger door, between it and the white leather seat, coming up with the sword, polished to a chrome blindness.

  She holds it up while everyone cheers, and a gust of rain sweeps across the car, threatening to fold the roof up.

  Lindsay Skywalkers the sword higher into the sky, for the crowd, the water beading down it, and her, and all of them.

  “Dante okayed this?” Izzy says back to Mrs. Graves, but Mrs. Graves is crying from the power of the moment, trying to wipe away the tears.

  Izzy leans back up into her place in this line-up, still politely clapping, Titan taking the sword now, touching its tip to the ground and kneeling behind it, saying to the audience no, no, you.

  Masters sets the bullhorn down to lead this round of clapping, Izzy’s POV desperately searching the stands, the faces, the wings, the field, for

  → “Dad?” she’s saying. “Mom?”

  Nowhere.

  Her breathing is getting heavier now, her eyes worried, about to spill over, and now Masters has the bullhorn again, is clicking it open.

  “And last but certainly not least,” he says, “and probably in a matching ensemble . . . ”

  He turns with flourish to the ramp Ponyboy walked up.

  The crowd stands, starts clapping, but there’s no one.

  The applause dies off.

  “No,” Izzy says, a tear actually feeling down her face now, Lindsay and Crystal looking over to her in anticipation if not sympathy, Masters tongue-tied, trying to come up with something.

  “Not now, you prick, not this time, not again,” Izzy’s saying, and just as she’s turning away from the crowd to hide for the rest of her life, a flutter of motion catches her eye.

  And everybody else’s.

  There’s no jumbotron, but there ought to be.

  It’s Ben, cleaned up and in a poorly fitting suit, his hair plastered to his head, his tie perfect.

  He’s walking up that ramp, staring so hard at Izzy.

  She smiles, holds her hand out, the crowd clapping for him but not yelling this time, and when Ben gets there Izzy lowers her face enough to ask, careful not to show anything to the crowd, “Where are they?”

  Ben shrugs a knowing shrug, sending us

  → all the way across Rivershead for the explanation.

  To Izzy’s house.

  To the driveway, both these expensive cars cocked at wrong angles in the driveway, Jigsaw-brand metal cages booted around each of their outside rear tires, big enough that the metal’s chewed up into the fender, is permanently snarled in place, Izzy’s dad sitting on the border of a flowerbed in his rumpled suit, a half-emptied bottle in his hand, Izzy’s mom walking up the driveway, looking out into the road.

  This is what Ben was making in the basement last night, yes. His

  → smile tells us so, and, backing off a bit, Izzy’s hands are gripping his shoulders in thanks.

  Crystal reaches a hand over, places it on top of one of Izzy’s.

  Izzy’s just staring out at all this proudly, her face still wet,

  → Mrs. Graves completing that motion for her, lowering a tissue from her face, her wrist catching the Cadillac’s shifter, jerking the whole party forward a foot or two.

  Nobody falls but everybody’s different, kind of smiling their questions back to Mrs. Graves, who has her shoulders raised in comical apology.

  “Not yet!” Lindsay hisses back to Mrs. Graves, and something about this makes Izzy turn around. Not to Mrs. Graves but the opposite direction, the far side of the stands.

  What she’s seeing, what she can’t even find the right profanity for,

  → it’s Wildfire, blind and bandaged, being led out onto the track by a football player in full, muddy pads.

  Various women in the crowd stand, crying softly, and, on cue, the speakers start into she ran calling Wi-ildfire, and then everybody’s swaying with it, a lighter or two flaring on against the drizzle.

  Lindsay stands, her hands balled together under her chin in teary-eyed surprise, and, when she reaches across to the not-there-yet Wildfire, Jake lifts her by the waist again, sets her sidesaddle on the horse’s back.

  She leans forward to hug Wildfire, draping herself along him like a mermaid would have to, her good arm to the crowd, up along Wildfire’s neck, her hand scrunching up into his mane, her eyes closed in what can only be interpreted as true love.

  “Everybody loves a good donkey show,” Crystal says, just loud enough, her face pleasant for the crowd.

  “She kept it alive?” Izzy says, in complete wonder, and already Jake-as-Titan is leading Wildfire by the bridle, back behind the car.

  “The stupid leading the blind,” Crystal says through her smile, and Jake flashes his mummy eyes up at her but—

  “Now for the victory lap before the queen is crowned!” Masters is already saying through the bullhorn, Wildfire mostly in place behind the car, Lindsay’s

  → POV chancing down onto that shiny rear bumper.

  A distinct pair of brown and white cowboy boots there, toes up.

  She screams, Wildfire prancing back, flaring his nostrils, and Jake reels him down, helps Lindsay stay on in her slick dress, finally looks down to what everybody’s seeing now: two cowboy boots we know and dread, toes up. Only there because Mrs. Graves burped the Cadillac forward.

  “Not karma not karma not karma,” Izzy’s saying, stepping down, and when she sees the boots, so definitely Brittney’s, she opens her mouth to scream, can’t even do that.

  “Uh-oh,” Crystal says, beside Izzy now, then, calling over the Cadillac to Mrs. Graves. “I think you hit something, Mrs. Graves.”

  Mrs. Graves stands away from her seat to try to see,

  → her right foot slipping into the gas pedal,

  → the Cadillac surging forward again, off Brittney, who drags with it a foot or two, her hands tied above her head with a thick rope, the rope apparently tied to the frame of the Cadillac.

  Izzy collapses over her as if protecting her, her hands furious on the knot but Brittney’s wrapped in iridescent videotape that’s confusing everything.

  “You were right, it was, it was—” Brittney says up into Izzy’s ear.

  “Somebody cut this!” Izzy screams up to the world, and

  → we go close on Jake’s eyes, gears clanking in there.

  He steps in with the sword.

  “Look out,” he says, and brings the sword down, cleanly severing the rope, Brittney pulling her hands to her chest, smiling, Izzy hugging her.

  “My fault, my fault,” Izzy’s saying to Brittney, pulling her close, saying right into her ear, “my fault, I killed the sheriff.”

  Brittney pushes her back a bit, looks up to her with wonder.

  “Then—then it’s you,” she says. “You’re the final girl.”

  “No, it was an accident, it was stupid, I’m not—”

  “You look so beautiful,” Brittney says up to Izzy, even reaching up to touch the sparkly B Izzy’s wearing, and spills more tears. Izzy runs Brittney’s still-dry bangs from her face.

  They blow right back.

  The Cadillac’s thick exhaust is right on top of them.

  “Eww, 1972,” Jake says, and looks up to Mrs. Graves, waves her forward with the sword, and Mrs. Graves complies, her

  → POV looking very intentionally down to the pedals now.

  She punches the right one about forty-two times too hard—either that or that 500 under the hood’s more than she expects. Either way

  → the Cadillac spins its tires against the clay, pulling forward again,

  → hard enough for a razor-thin black cable wrapped around Brittney’s neck to snap tight,

  → hard enough for the cable looped around her boots to become obvious, the stakes holding it down to the track obvious, the chalk it’s buried under obvi
ous, everything obvious,

  → except it’s all too late: Brittney’s head pops cleanly off, her torso jerking up, pumping blood from its neck stump, her head doing that Prom Night roll across the red clay, taking its place in the line of memorial photos.

  Izzy screams, pulling Brittney close, her dress slathered in hot blood and gore, and

  → in the Cadillac, Mrs. Graves screams, the Cadillac fishtailing ahead dangerously, a different line snapping up from under a white line of chalk, now, also tied to the frame of the car. We follow the cable as it pulls tight, we barrel down the guitar string it is now until we see it’s tied to the main electrical junction for the stadium, back at the field house.

  And then that giant breaker box jerks off the wall in a cascade of sparks.

  In the parking lot, standing by the woman deputy’s cruiser, Dante looks over to the stadium, says it for us: “Oh shit.”

  The stadium lights are all dying as one, the clouds opening up in a peal of thunder, a sheet of rain coming down on the field like judgment.

  The crowd, already in a panic, scatters more, some of them jumping off the side of the stands from too high, others spilling down the stairs, a few crashing the announcer’s box, fighting to pack themselves in.

  Mrs. Graves abandons the Cadillac, leaving it in gear so it noses into the fence just down from the stands, pushes it in a bit, its exhaust coughing once, going quiet for the entrance of what we’ve all been secretly waiting for: standing at the fifty-yard line, outlined in a nimbus of rain, it’s Billie Jean, that long black sword hanging down from his hand.

  “So this is how it is, then,” Jake says up to Lindsay, about the Billie Jean they can both see.

  “What?” she shrieks back to him with her whole body.

  Jake just shakes his head, plants the real sword ahead of him in the field and steps out of his Titan gear.

  Underneath, it’s a zip-up hoodie, jeans, sneakers.

  He looks out to Billie Jean, approaching at his fast-slow slasher pace, starts unwinding the bandages from his face so we finally get to see his wounds, running with rain.

  It’s not Red Skull. More like Two-Face, especially when he smiles.

  “Looks like I’m going to have to save the day again,” he says, and walks past the sword, picking it up on the way like a hero, Izzy’s

  → POV just seeing him walk off, then reaching down for the thin cable that so ingeniously decapitated Brittney.

  It doesn’t make sense.

  Out on the field now, closer to the home side of the track than not, the two swords clash together, clash together again, even sparking a bit.

  Behind them, Wildfire rears up, slashing the air dramatically with his hooves, Lindsay barely clinging to him.

  The swords come together again, and Jake’s faster than Billie Jean, is having fun with this, is playing Kill Bill to Billie Jean’s Drago while:

  → Dante’s pushing through the gate by the ticket booth, spitting his toothpick out on the way, a serious rifle cocked up on his shoulder, murder in his eyes;

  → Izzy’s trying to pull Brittney back to the fence for some reason but Brittney’s feet are still staked down, Izzy pulling anyway, still trying to save her;

  → Lindsay’s wheeling on Wildfire, Wildfire screaming, blind, blood frothing at his nostrils;

  → Crystal’s standing just off the side of the stands, watching this develop, a memory sparking in her eyes;

  → Ben’s sliding out into the muck to pull Izzy away from Brittney’s body, Izzy fighting him, lost in some panic attack, refusing to accept that this is all happening,

  → but it is.

  Out on the field, Jake finally gets too fancy with his samurai posturing. Billie Jean clatters his fancy sword away.

  Jake just smiles, drops to his knees, parts his hoodie at the chest, daring Billie Jean to run him through.

  Billie Jean cocks his head, doesn’t seem to understand but does it anyway: steps forward, thrusting the sword into Jake’s chest.

  But not.

  The sword doesn’t go in.

  Jake smiles, knocks on his chest with his knuckles, showing off the vest.

  “If it was good enough for April Ripley’s stupid little pop gun, it’s good enough for you,” he says.

  At which point Billie Jean unsheathes a machete from his overalls, says in Jamie’s voice, “How high’s that vest go?” and slices the machete around sideways, lopping Jake’s head off so easily.

  For a few long moments in the rain, Jake stays there on his knees, his trachea white, somehow longer than his neck stump, like a worm trying to crawl out.

  Then Billie Jean walks past, his eyeholed POV fixed on Izzy, Ben fully aware of Billie Jean, trying to pull her away even more desperately.

  But it’s so slick, they can’t get purchase, and everything’s going quiet now, quiet enough for

  → Izzy to look up, her face serene, and say, “This is that kind of movie.”

  Which makes her stand, holding onto Ben.

  Together they climb over the bottom rail of the stands just as

  → Dante’s barreling up the ramp, about to burst out, so intent on the approaching Billie Jean that he never sees Crystal, reaching through the rails to trip him with the homecoming baton.

  He spills hard, his head slamming into a bench, knocking him useless, the gun clattering ahead of him.

  Crystal walks ahead to it, pulls it cleanly through, says back to him, “I’ve got this, Deputy,”

  → and now Billie Jean’s clambering easily over the rail after Izzy and Ben, Izzy falling backwards and up, her POV looking ahead, where they’re going: to the top rail.

  A dead end. A fast drop. Just like the cliff.

  “Stupid girls run upstairs, stupid girls run upstairs,” she’s saying to herself, turning to pull Ben with her up the aluminum steps, Billie Jean just feet behind them,

  → Crystal down on the track, Billie Jean in the crosshairs of Dante’s rifle, about to have his insides opened up.

  “Now, you fucker,” Crystal says, and pulls the trigger.

  On nothing.

  She doesn’t understand this gun.

  She drops it to her chest, clicking everything, pulling the trigger: nothing.

  She looks to Dante for help, and when he’s still not moving, her POV looks up to

  → what we’re already on: Ben, pushing Izzy ahead of him, hard enough that she can’t be the big sister, hard enough that she can just keep falling up, falling up.

  Then Billie Jean hooks a finger into Ben’s suit jacket.

  Ben slithers out, spills ahead, but they’re almost to the top rail now, too.

  This can’t go on.

  He looks up to Izzy one last time then turns around, sets his feet on the stairs. He bends down between the seats and comes up with a red and gold golf umbrella somebody left open, rolling in the wind.

  He snicks it shut, holds it by the J-handle, slashes it back and forth in the air between him and Billie Jean.

  “Stay the fuck away from my sister, you son of a bitch,” he says, tapping the tip of the sword on the stair between him and Billie Jean, and Billie Jean shakes his head at how stupid this is, but is raising the sword anyway, to do what has to be done, Izzy screaming no, fighting back to get between Ben and Billie Jean but she’s not going to make it she’s not going to make—

  And then we’re in the least likely spot, suddenly: tight on the back of Crystal’s spike heels.

  Because her dress is puddling down around them.

  We back up and she’s in her boy shorts and strapless bra, just standing there in the rain.

  “Hey!” she says up to Billie Jean, her voice cutting through the heart of the night. “This is what you want, isn’t it?” and then reaches back with one hand, undoes her bra

  → Ben definitely frozen in those headlights

  → but of course we’re over her shoulder here, can’t quite see all of what she’s showing, even though we wheel around for her wicked gri
n when she says to Billie Jean that “They’re real, and they’re spectacular,”

  → and Billie Jean, he’s already turned from Ben’s completely slack face to Crystal, and—he is a slasher after all—he’s caught in amber, he’s walking through honey, he’s twelve-years-old again, can’t even hope to tear his eyes away, his sword twitching in his hand, and the moment’s dilated enough for each raindrop to have definition, the world’s suddenly turning slow enough that

  → Dante’s service revolver can stab a finger of flame out over the top of an aluminum bench, blast the night even more open

  → Billie Jean aware of that flash in the same moment that slug’s barreling through time and space for him

  → Dante saying it once and for all, his chin resting on the bench: “Smile, you fucker,” his shot

  → dead-on, spattering Izzy and Ben with Billie Jean’s blood, Izzy’s POV looking up to Billie Jean wavering there, blood spilling from under his mask.

  He falls, his foot catching on a bench so he doesn’t roll down, Dante standing groggy from where he fell, trying to clear his own blood from his eyes so he can fire again if he needs to.

  Izzy steps forward gingerly, her palm in Ben’s chest to keep him back.

  “Is it, is it over?” Ben asks, a kid now, again. Like he should be.

  He looks past Billie Jean to Crystal, shimmying back into her wet dress.

  Izzy doesn’t answer him, her eyes intent on this Billie Jean.

  She lowers herself to him slowly.

  “Hey, horror girl,” Crystal calls out from the track, tucking her breasts back in, our and Ben’s POV a breath too late for that.