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Billy dragged himself out of bed when the house phone rang. It was ten in the morning on a Saturday; his dad wasn’t awake yet and he barely was either. He rubbed sleep and the dizziness of standing up too quickly from his eyes and stumbled to the spot on the wall where the phone rattled in its plastic cradle.
“Hello?”
“What’s your favorite scary movie?” asked the voice on the other end, far too energetically for the time of day.
Billy sighed loudly into the receiver. “Hey Stu.”
The phrase had become a sort of in-joke between them, like a secret handshake. Billy could always tell it was Stu on the other end of the line when he heard it, no matter what goofy voice his friend was putting on.
“Parents left for the weekend again. You wanna come over?”
That briefly raised questions. Stu’s parents were out of town again? And Stu was already up to host a party? Then the questions dissipated; Stu’s parents were never around. The fact that he always had an opportunity to throw parties was why everyone liked him so much.
“I don’t feel like helping you set up a party this early,” Billy said.
Stu laughed wildly on the other end of the line. “Who hosts a party this early in the morning?”
“You, dipshit.”
“I was just gonna hang around and watch movies all day,” Stu explained through a haze of residual giggles. “You wanna join?”
“Maybe. Which movies?”
“All the good ones! Halloween, Friday the 13th, Hellraiser, Nightmare on Elm Street… Do you still have Texas Chainsaw?”
“Uh-huh. I’ve got it rented until Monday.”
“Hell yeah, man, bring it! We can–”
“Woah, hold on,” Billy stopped him, “I never said I was coming yet.”
Stu groaned. “Aw, come on, what’ll it take? No one else is coming, not even Casey!”
That was enough to convince him. Stu had a habit of obnoxious, over-the-top flirting with Casey that got on Billy’s nerves, even if he did a good enough job at pretending it didn’t.
Still, he was in a position to keep making demands.
“Fine. But if you order food, you’re paying. And get something less mainstream in the lineup, something like Eyes Without a Face.”
“Dude, where do you expect me to get a copy of that?” Stu complained.
“Alright, alright, too obscure,” Billy admitted. “Uhh… Videodrome, then.”
Stu brightened back up. “Oh, you got it man, you’ve fucking got it! I’ll see you at eleven.”
“At eleven, alright. See you,” Billy repeated back. He hung up the phone, satisfied with his dealmaking.
He considered going back to bed for a precious few more minutes of sleep, but decided against it the longer he thought about getting ready. He’d have to find the copy of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, explain to his dad where he’d be… No, that one could just be a note on the fridge… Did he need to shower? Would Stu really give a fuck whether or not he did? No. Probably not. Shit, what else did he need?
In an attempt not to overthink things he went with the bare minimum. Deodorant, clothes, shoes, movie, note on the fridge. Good enough. He snuck out the front door and closed it as quietly as he could.
It was mid August, and as early in the morning as it was, the air outside was already hot and muggy. Billy hurriedly crossed to the shady side of the road. He could feel himself smiling as he walked, which was unusual for him. He’d always been told he had an unexpressive face, stuck in a constant flat glower. As Billy got older he’d learned how to convincingly emote on command, but still rarely caught himself smiling genuinely. It was only natural that hanging around Stu would do it for him; he was Billy’s closest friend.
‘Closest friend’ was an understatement, even. As a little kid Billy had a hard time making friends. He lashed out too strongly when he got angry, which was very often given how little he enjoyed the company of kids his own age, and eventually decided he’d stop trying to make friends altogether.
Which is why it surprised everyone when he befriended Stu Macher, of all people. He was loud, extraverted, and took nothing seriously, all traits Billy would despise in anyone else, but when seven year-old Stu asked to fight with Billy, not to show off or stand up for a classmate but merely for fun, Billy started to respect him.
From that point onwards they were inseparable, much to the dismay of their parents and teachers, as their friendship just seemed to make each other profoundly weirder. Billy would rope Stu into activities ranging from dangerous to just bizarre; everything from hiding rocks in snowballs to scaring the other kids with roadkill they found. Billy seemed to lose all inhibition around Stu, and Stu lost all sense of self preservation around Billy. As they got older they gained some common sense and got in less trouble, and people forgave Billy as the product of a troubled household and Stu as just having been too childishly naive.
And yet none of their childhood madness ever really left them, just became more repressed as they learned its consequences, and that repression only pushed them closer together. The profound knowledge of each others’ every impulse and urge, an understanding that only they shared, that they could tell they would receive no sympathy for anywhere else…. It was only natural that they’d end up so attached to each other.
And then Billy was at Stu’s doorstep. The living room stereo was blasting. Fountains of Wayne. It was one of Stu’s mixtapes that Billy had heard enough times to have memorized. He placed a meaningless bet in his own head: The next song would be by Third Eye Blind. Billy pushed open the door without resistance and made sure to lock it behind him as he walked inside.
“Hey Stu?” he called out. “You here?”
“In here!” a voice called out from the kitchen. Billy followed it to the pantry where Stu was pulling out every chip and pretzel bag he could find. “You want some snacks for the movie?”
Billy realized he hadn’t eaten breakfast.
“Sure,” he said, taking a bag of pretzels.
Stu ran to the living room with his arms full of bags and soda bottles, gesturing with a nod for Billy to follow him. He dumped his haul on the coffee table and turned the stereo down right as Semi-Charmed-Life started and Billy’s mental bet paid out.
“What’re we watching first?” Stu asked, dramatically presenting the stack of tapes sitting next to the TV.
Billy shrugged. “You wanted me to bring Texas Chainsaw Massacre, so we’ll watch that first and then I’ll pick next.”
Stu’s brows furrowed for a brief moment as he processed the offer, and settled back down once he ultimately decided that Billy’s judgement was good enough for him.
“You got it, Billy.” He opened the case and went to put the tape into the VHS player. “Take a seat wherever you’d like. Want me to get you a beer?”
“I can get it myself if you need.”
“No no,” said Stu, heading to the garage with a flourish, “Allow me.”
He forgot to actually put the tape in the player.
Billy sighed and finished setting the movie up for him.
Stu returned with a case in each hand and added them to their stash on the coffee table before realizing he’d forgotten the bottle opener and excusing himself once more to find it. A minute or two of loud rummaging later and he returned triumphant.
He sat on the couch and put his feet up on the coffee table, pushing a bag of Doritos on the opposite side onto the floor. Billy moved over to give him some more space.
“Aw, don’t you wanna sit next to your buddy?” Stu whined.
“Thought you wanted more room,” Billy said, scooching back to his original spot.
Stu pretended to yawn and draped an arm around Billy’s shoulder.
“That’s better,” he snickered.
Billy smiled too.
Stu jumped up. “I made you laugh!”
“No you didn’t.”
“Nuh-uh, I saw it. You smiled!”
“Well, that’s not the same as laughing.”
“It’s still an accomplishment with you.”
“Fine,” Billy admitted. “I’ll give you that. Now start the damn movie, would you?”
Stu fake-groaned. “Alright, fine.”
Finally, the Chainsaw Massacre began. Stu and Billy were both silent through the introductory scrawl, eyes wide and grinning at the flashes of gore that preceded the opening credits.
They watched the slow burn of the first act with quiet fascination, nursing at their first and second beers in perfect, calculated timing, and the buzz set in right as Leatherface brought the first sledgehammer strike down on Kirk’s head. The boys cheered as his twitching body was dragged away and the sliding metal door slammed shut.
“What an iconic fuckin’ shot,” Billy said.
Stu nodded. “It’s a classic for a reason, man.”
They each had about three beers each by the time the credits rolled, which got them drunker than they should’ve given that they were too focused watching the movie to remember to pick at the snacks they had. The marathon continued without pause; A Nightmare on Elm Street was already in the player before the credits from Texas Chainsaw even finished scrolling past the cast’s names.
Billy chugged the rest of his beer and shut his eyes, trying to ease the feeling of his head spinning. He didn’t worry about missing any part of the movie; he’d watched it so many times that he could see Freddy Krueger assembling his trademark gloves in his head.
“Dude, you good?”
Billy blinked and awoke to Stu nudging him.
“Yeah, drank too much I think.”
“You wanna eat something?”
“Hm. Probably a good idea.”
Billy reached for a bag of chips, opening the closest one. The taste of the first bite jolted him to full alert. He looked at the bag: flaming hot Cheetos. Well, at least his head felt a little clearer.
Billy felt himself spacing out again as Rod Lane was hanged with the sheets in his jail cell. That wasn’t too unexpected; it was the least bloody death in the whole movie. He thought about how peaceful it was to finally be alone with Stu, watching their favorite movies together, like they did as middle schoolers before girlfriends and Spring Break ragers swept his friend up. It was suspicious, almost…. It had been years since Stu turned down an opportunity to invite any less than five people over.
“So,” Billy prompted, “Anything going on between you and Casey?”
“Dude, I think she’s cheating on me,” Stu laughed. “She spends so much time at football practices, she’s gotta be going home with one of the guys on the team. It’s been pissing me off so bad, man.”
Billy gritted his teeth. The mention of cheating made him think about his parents’ divorce. He turned back to the TV. Johnny Depp was getting gored by Freddy Krueger.
Stu laughed. “Kinda makes me want to do that to her.”
Something clicked in Billy’s mind. He wondered if Stu had the same idea.
“And whoever she’s fucking, once you find him, right?”
Stu was howling with laughter. “Yeah, man!”
From that point onwards Billy and Stu could hardly focus on the movies. Every subsequent teenager getting run through with a hatchet or a kitchen knife was met with uproarious laughter at the mention of someone they held a grudge against.
During the final act of Hellraiser, when Frank Cotton’s pocket knife sunk into Julia’s abdomen, Billy nudged Stu.
“You know I always wondered how that would feel.”
Stu shrugged. “It’d hurt?”
“No, dumbass. Stabbing someone, not getting stabbed.”
“Ohh,” Stu said, laughing at himself. “Yeah, that makes more sense. Probably even better than punching ‘em.”
Billy nodded. “Yeah, with the force going right through them instead of stopping at the skin…”
“Man, the way you describe it makes it sound so…. So-“
“Fun,” Billy finished for him. He and Stu’s expressions had both flattened out and it felt like ‘fun’ wasn’t actually the word either of them was looking for.
‘Satisfying’, would be more accurate. Scratching their itch for violence.
‘Hot’, if you squinted. Something about penetration and symbolism.
Then he thought about all the times he and Stu practiced kissing each other for when they found girlfriends. Maybe ‘hot’ really was the word they were looking for.
Or maybe they’d each finished a six-pack and weren’t thinking right. Who could say.
“Hey,” said Billy with more confidence than he thought he had in him, “You wanna make out again? You know, since Casey’s been leaving you hanging. Thought you might need some extra practice so you can find a rebound once you ‘deal with her’.”
Stu giggled at the implications. “I thought you’d never ask.”
They awkwardly, drunkenly rearranged themselves on the couch; Stu sprawled out on his back across its length while Billy lay on top of him. Halloween was on the TV, its theme music mingling with the faint sound of Bad Religion’s “American Jesus” on the stereo that Stu had never actually turned off.
With practiced precision they joined lips and parted mouths. They knew how to tilt their heads so that their teeth wouldn’t awkwardly click against each others’, and to how to hold each other’s faces without getting their hands in the way.
“Bite me,” Stu whimpered. “Billy, please bite me.”
Billy pulled away. “You can’t ask a girl to bite you, you need to be all dominant and stuff.”
“But you’re not a girl,” Stu complained.
Billy cursed under his breath. “Well we’re… practicing for girls.”
”Then which one of us is the girl here?”
Billy cursed again. “Neither of us, I guess…. We’re— fuck, we’re both trying to out-man each other. That way we’ll both be really macho. Girls like that.”
“Okay. Easy.”
“The fuck do you mean ‘easy’?”
“You arch your back a lot,” Stu pointed out. “If a girl saw you doing it she’d think you’re gay.”
“If a girl saw either of us right now she’d think we’re both gay, dick.”
“Are we?”
“What?”
“Are we gay?”
Billy’s mind went blank. “I don’t know.”
They both sat in quiet contemplation, Stu still laying on the couch and Billy still straddling his lap.
“Don’t hate me, but I like you a lot more than the girls I’ve dated,” said Stu.
“I’m not gonna hate you,” Billy assured him. “I can’t hate you. We get each other.”
Stu let out a sigh of relief. “Well thank fuck. Do ya like me back?”
Billy rolled his eyes and laughed.
“Come on man, I wanna know!” Stu whined. “I don’t want to be stuck liking a guy who just wants me for kissing practice!”
“Yes, Stu, I like you back.” Billy leaned in and kissed him again, quick and close-mouthed, then bit down hard on the side of his neck.
Stu yelped. “Ow, ow, fu—ck yes! This is so much better than kissing a girl!”
And they were back to making out, screams and wet splattering sounds echoing from the TV punctuating whimpers and drawn-out whines.
“As annoying as it sounds we might still need to find girlfriends,” Billy said, “So people don’t find out about this.”
“Don’t worry, I can totally pass as a ladies’ man,” Stu assured him, wrapping his hands around Billy’s lower back.
“Yeah, too well. It’s annoying as hell watching you cling to Casey all day.”
“Ha! I knew it was making you jealous!”
“Shut up,” Billy said, gently batting Stu across the face with the back of his hand.
“You won’t have to worry about Casey much longer,” Stu hinted. “As long as you help me get rid of her.”
“You think we could get away with it?”
“You’re a smart guy, I know you could find a way to cover our asses.”
They didn’t lock eyes, maybe because they both had a bad habit of looking through people rather than at them, maybe because they were looking at each other’s growing smiles instead. For a moment they shared the same thought:
We really are meant for each other. No way could I ever joke like this around anyone else and have them still trust me. Or still trust them not to get me in trouble. No way could I talk like this and mean it around anyone else and know that they get it.
For a moment the world seemed to melt away. The punk song on the stereo. The end credits of Halloween on the TV. The light coming in through the windows that was just as likely a street lamp as it was sunlight, because fuck, how long had it been? The house was empty. The world was empty. There was not a single other person on earth. It was just Billy and Stu and a billion disposable scary-movie props. They were real. Undeniable. As much a constant in the world as the juggernaut slasher of any good movie who‘ll always survive for a sequel.
It was comforting to have someone else like him, Billy thought. Someone who thought like him for once, who felt as real as he was. He lay back down and felt Stu’s heartbeat against his chest. It was warm and gentle and made him smile again.
Human, it felt. Stu was the first person to really feel human to Billy. It was easier to love someone when they felt human.
“You know I really would kill for you, Billy,” Stu said. It was closer to ‘I love you’ than ‘I love you’ would’ve been for either of them.
“I would too. And I’d make sure we get away with it.”
“How?” Stu asked, with eagerness one would normally attribute to dirty-talk.
“I can’t know the specifics if we haven’t killed anyone yet,” said Billy. “But no one would know it was us. It’s like the number one rule of good horror movies: the audience never sees the killer’s real face.”
Stu laughed. “You think too much about movies.”
“You’re just as crazy about them as I am.”
“I’d watch a movie about you, Billy.”
“Oh yeah?”
“As long as you get a really sick mask. Otherwise I’d just miss seeing your face.”
Billy chuckled. “It’d be a lame-ass movie if the audience knew who I was just so you could see me getting covered in blood.”
“Fuck, now I really want to see that.”
The two laughed together, faces pressed close and reveling in the thought.
“That’s why we’d need to be accomplices,” Billy said. “I don’t want you just sitting back and watching while I have all the fun.”
“We could make a sick movie together,” Stu mused.
“Or a real-life horror story. The kind they make movies about.”
Stu grinned “Like Amityville Horror?”
“Yeah, like Amityville Horror.”
“I really wanna do this Billy. If I knew we could get away with it it’d be the coolest shit in the world.”
“Yeah, I’m just thinking who we’d start with.”
“Not Casey?”
“No, if you break up with her and she turns up dead three days later it’s over for us.”
Billy thought of all the people who pissed him off the most. Friends who got on his nerves too much. Teachers who had it out for him. Their creepy-ass principal, maybe. The rawest wound was still his parents’ divorce. He couldn’t kill his dad, that was for sure. Orphaning himself would just screw his life over more. The woman his father cheated with, though, was a different story.
“Mrs. Prescott,” Billy said.
“Her?” Stu asked. “What’s your plan for that?”
“It’ll be easy to cover up,” Billy explained. “She’s having a new affair every week, there’s gotta be tons of DNA on her. The chance that any samples the police take lead back to us would be slim, right?”
Stu laughed. “You’re so smart, man.”
“Her kid, Sydney right? She’s friends with one of your friends?”
“Yeah, Tatum.”
“We can start hanging out with her too, then. Get a closer look at what’s going on in their lives.”
“She can be your girlfriend,” Stu added. “For appearances.”
“Right, sure.”
Stu laughed. “You don’t look very excited about that.”
“It…. It’ll be fine. Don’t worry about it.”
“Come on, it’ll be fun, man! Cathartic and stuff.”
Billy smiled (Again!) “Right. You wanna make a scary movie?”
“For sure!”
“Not tonight though, don’t get ahead of yourself.”
“Right, right. We’ve still gotta plan.”
“Yeah. And we’ve got a marathon to finish.”
Stu turned back to the TV. Halloween had finished rolling its credits a long time ago.
“We still haven’t watched Videodrome,” he mused.
“Yeah,” Billy said. “That one’s really—“
“Hot,” Stu finished.
They both giggled as Billy awkwardly stumbled off the couch and towards the TV.
“Man, we really are crazy,” Stu thought aloud. “Hey Billy, you think all these horror movies are messing us up?”
“We were both already messed up way before we watched Friday the 13th for the first time,” Billy insisted. “And besides, movies don’t create psychos, movies just make psychos more creative.”