Chapter Text
The Ghostface Killer Strikes Again: Tragedy at Walker Preschool
Written by Jed Olson
This past Friday, the Ghostface killer claimed three more victims. Dana Williams (38) and her two sons, Jared (9) and Tim (4), were found dead in their home mere blocks away from Walker. As described by a teacher at Walker (who wishes to remain anonymous), Dana was a “responsible mom” who “did her very best to provide for her kids.”
Tragically, while the majority of the family of three was discovered at 3:00PM the next day by a neighbor, an undisclosed quantity of the victims’ body parts were found the following Monday on display in the first floor classroom of the preschool. Several students have now been withdrawn from the school, and the administration is providing guidance and counseling to the children and teachers who witnessed the scene. Nevertheless, several parents have come forward to heavily criticize principal Marleen Davis’ conduct-
You blink blearily as a text notification obscures the news article you’re scrolling through on your phone.
Flirty Regular: Good morning!
A barely-there smile tugs at the corner of your lips, but it fades. Flirty Regular… should you change that?
You tap at the contact icon, but you hesitate.
Flirty Regular: Any new desserts on the table today?
You sigh and glance at the time. 6:25AM. With a groan, you launch yourself out of the warm nest of blankets in your bed, stumbling toward your dresser. Lazily, you tap out a response.
Muffin Lady: profiteroles
Flirty Regular: I’ll have to stop by to pick some of those up during lunch break
You snort. Sometimes, you think he really did ask you out for the free pastries.
--
Jed’s been getting the same cup of caffeine every weekday for the past year. He used to be normal, in your life, as given as the sun rising and setting. Smaller than the sun, to be fair, but no less of a foregone conclusion.
You were used to him and everything he was: The cadence of his good morning, the way he holds his coffee cup, his favorite desserts. The clothes he wears. The teasing tone in his voice. Simple intimacies between virtual strangers.
And now, the more you look at him, the more he seems like a person you don’t know.
What changed?
Well... now you’re dating him, obviously.
The thought has a prickle of sensation spidering up your neck. Dating. Or are you technically dating, when you’re trying things out? Either way, still pretty unbelievable. You still don’t know what drew him to the conclusion that you were remotely a good idea - in general - and you’re not sure how far he wants to go with this. But you’re game. For now.
You suppose he might be trying you out for the novelty.
Pretty people might do that. You wouldn’t know.
Now, he shows up during your lunch break twice a week. You’re the recipient of his daunting, undivided attention for a half-hour every two and a half days; it’s certainly a change, and you feel both relieved and oddly disappointed that you haven’t been asked on a proper date yet.
Asked.
It’s strange how much your perception of someone can shift in such a short time. He’s a different creature entirely, now. You’re more aware of him. You’re paying attention.
And you still know essentially nothing about him.
The more you peer into him, the more he seems like a funnel made of dark, opaque glass. When you look into his eyes, all you can see are distorted reflections.
--
Flirty Regular: How do you feel about watching that movie on Friday night?
You stare at your phone.
Jed’s asking you on a date?
Muffin Lady: the one you mentioned last friday?
Muffin Lady: the home invasion one with the deaf chick
You suppose that the guy who covers the Ghostface murders might prefer a certain sort of media.
Flirty Regular: That’s the one!
Flirty Regular: If you’re still interested
Your heart, or some other organ in your chest, squeezes. Maybe your lungs.
Muffin Lady: sure why not
Muffin Lady: yours or mine
Flirty Regular: Yours?
Hm. You wonder what his place looks like. Anything has to be better than your apartment, although you don’t bother saying so.
Muffin Lady: sure
Muffin Lady: can make popcorn but bring extra snacks if u want
Flirty Regular: :)
Flirty Regular: Do you like raisinets?
Shock and revulsion courses through you.
Muffin Lady: wtf i should break up with you for that
Muffin Lady: raisins are the enemy
[Flirty Regular is typing]
Flirty Regular: You’re allowed to have bad opinions
This guy might actually be deranged.
Muffin Lady: anyways
Muffin Lady: bring whatever u like lmao at least that’ll give us something to talk about
Whoops.
Muffin Lady: that isn’t the movie
Flirty Regular: Sounds good.
You put your phone down. Thinking of sitting on a couch with Jed - in the dark, at night, watching a movie - close enough that the gray in his eyes is swallowed by black…
It makes your guts do a complicated flippy thing that you can’t really describe. You can’t tell if it’s a good or a bad feeling. Maybe that’s just how romance is supposed to go.
--
Huddled under a blanket, you stare at your TV screen, bright in the dark.
Three feet to your right, Jed shifts, and you hear the quiet drag of his socks against the carpet. The couch creaks softly.
The darkness is both wonderful and awful; you feel hyper-aware of every sound, and your attention flips back and forth from the slow build of tension on the screen to the much subtler, gentler swell of tension prickling in the air around you. Onscreen, the setup is neat, narrative; nothing wasted with the mundane trivialities of life. It feels mocking. While a completely fictional woman deals with the preclude to horrible trauma, you’re withstanding the excruciatingly human tension of the person you’re dating (trying things out with, you remind yourself, not dating) sitting three feet away from you in the dark eating raisinets.
“Any thoughts so far?”
Jed’s voice is low, soft. Barely audible. You shiver, and are immediately horrified with yourself. You hope he can’t see much. “...Nothing scary has happened yet. The main cha-”
You cut yourself off with a shriek as a bloody woman slams against a glass door onscreen. She cries, shaking, and you realize that you’ve lunged across three feet of dead space and snagged Jed’s sleeve like a lifeline.
You let go. The fabric, a soft, worn t-shirt material, leaves your fingertips tingling. Mutely, an unidentifiable emotion twisting through you, you huddle down lower in your seat on the couch.
“Are you scared?” Something in Jed’s tone of voice calls to your attention, but you can’t really tear your eyes from the clamor on the screen as the woman slamming frantically on the glass door gets struck by a crossbow bolt. “You’re usually so calm.”
“Is it really that strange to be scared of horror movies?” You know your tone is a little harsh, but your pulse is hammering in your throat and you can feel yourself starting to sweat. “Fuck, this is why I live in an apartment in the city. So much safer.”
“I did notice that you have a lot of locks on your door.”
“Yeah,” you say, only half paying attention. The woman onscreen sobs, pounding at the glass. “Someone broke into my place last year. Hopped up the security big time after that. Pretty airtight now, though. Oh god, she’s so dead.”
Onscreen, a man in a white mask steps out of the darkness, catching the frantic woman in a parody of an embrace. She sobs, pleads, struggles, and is overpowered. He stabs her over and over and over again, and though the actual stabbing is hidden, she jerks in his arms with each gristly squelch. Slowly, haltingly, she goes slack, moving only as he stabs the knife into her guts. When her eyes are empty, face slack, the killer drops her to the deck.
The main character, unhearing, doesn’t notice when he steps forward and taps at the glass of her door.
You huddle down even lower as the killer taps harder on the glass, then hammers on it with his fist. The main character can’t hear.
“You good?”
Jed’s quiet voice shocks you: You’ve scooched about two feet to the right. Embarrassment barrels through you. “Sorry,” you murmur, but your voice catches in your throat when he slings an arm over the back of the couch. He’s not touching you, but he’s near. You can feel the heat radiating off of him. In the daylight, this would be intolerably nerve-wracking. Now, you can’t think much past the adrenaline, and you’re grateful.
“All good.” His voice is lower than usual. Quiet.
You go silent. Mustering up your last two brain cells, you try to watch the movie.
--
“Oh fuck, oh Jesus, come on, come ON- oh god, oh no…” You trail off indistinctly, cringing into Jed’s side. If you’d looked, you would’ve seen that he was grinning - definitely an odd expression while watching a woman get her hand grotesquely broken under a boot - but you’re too busy clutching at his shirt and staring in rapt horror at the events onscreen.
Jed doesn’t say anything, but the arm around your shoulders - properly around your shoulders, heavy and holding you close to his side - tightens as you hiccup in fear.
“Shh,” he says, but he doesn’t seem like he’s really shushing you. He’d said he didn’t mind if you talked. His thumb strokes over your shoulder, but you’re wearing an oversized t-shirt: You can’t feel it.
(You’d asked Jed if he was a talker during movies, and a complicated expression had flitted over his face. I’ve seen this one a few times. Talking is fine.
It’s not really your thing to hold the art of movie-making sacred, so you’re glad he’s seen it. At least someone knows how it ends.)
You can feel it, though, when he squeezes your arm, and in your peripheral, you catch his profile, highlighted in light and shadow. You glance to the side.
At this angle, tucked against him, your eyes are at his jawline; your gaze traces over the stubble painted over the cut of his jaw, the curve of his cheek, down his neck. A sick, nervous feeling pools with the horror and violence. You ignore it. The smell of chocolate, and raisins, and butter and popcorn is harder to ignore. You try to focus on the movie.
“You know,” Jed says, tone inexplicably bright - bright? - and quizzical, you turn your head-
He’s turning to face you, too, as he talks, and purely accidentally, his mouth catches yours.
His eyes- they’re wide and gray, and then, just as you imagined, they pool with black as his pupils dilate. His face is painted in the light from the TV, long eyelashes and arched brows and the elegant bridge of his nose. His eyes flutter, and he sways toward you- then they close.
The softest of movements slants his lips as he tilts his head, adjusting the angle- and suddenly he is moving, and so are you, and your hands are clutching at his front as he grips your shoulders.
The movie buzzes in the background, groans of pain and the silver-bright song of shattered glass. Jed is kissing you, and for a moment you can’t tell how past the rushing in your ears, but you realize: it’s soft, and the slide of his mouth on yours is dizzyingly slow.
Heat floods your cheeks, rushing up from your neck. No tongue, but his lips are slick from spit, just a bit chapped, and your whole face tingles from the stimulation as they slide against yours. You lean closer, hapless, too fast, and your canine catches the plush edge of his bottom lip-
You taste copper and Jed inhales, sharp and quick, his mouth still pressed to yours. And abruptly, Jed is surging forward, and you are being pressed back- your right shoulder presses into the edge of the couch and you’re still partially upright, flexing against the force of his hand firm on your sternum.
And then that hand is sliding up, up, cupping your jaw- the heel of his palm rests at the hollow of your throat and it’s pressing down, just a tad, and his tongue laps over the seam of your lips-
And you feel him, pressing against your hip-
You wrench away with a gasp.
“The raisinets,” you blurt, "you taste like..."
Jed- your mouth goes slack.
He’s so close to you. He’s still leaning over you, hand empty in the air where it held your jaw, the other tight on your shoulder, and he’s inches away.
This close, you can see his expression.
Shock, above all else, with confusion, frustration - eyes wide - is painted over naked hunger. His teeth are bared- desire, surprise, an unidentifiable crush of emotion- but the look on his face quickly morphs. His lips are unbelievably, indecently shiny and flushed, but his mouth pulls into a flat, bloodless line. It’s like he’s tucking whatever it is you see away- in less than a moment, it’s all completely gone, like you imagined it.
In a flurry of movement, he pulls away.
“Sorry,” Jed says, and he sounds… so normal. Contrite. Your eyes search his face. “That was probably too far.”
“Yeah,” you say. Your voice is rough. Just above the hollow of your throat, there’s an ache where his palm pressed down. You’re too warm, still tangled in your blanket, breathing uneven. “Not… now.”
“Not now,” Jed repeats, and rises. Your face flames, and you avert your gaze- from this angle, it’s pretty obvious how he’s feeling. “Sorry, just give me a second. Gonna get some water.”
He leaves the living room and steps into the kitchen. In the other room, he flicks on the light.
Your fingertips brush your tingling lips as you lose yourself in thought. Past the sick heat in your belly, you can’t get the thought of his expression off your mind.