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FOR THE FINAL GIRLS
EXT. MOTEL – NIGHT
It always opens with a dead girl. Any slasher fan worth their salt can tell you that: Drew Barrymore in Scream, Michael’s sister in Halloween, that camp counselor and her unlucky boyfriend in Friday the 13th. The girl must be pretty. Even better if she knows it.
A girl, a knife, a monster in the shadows—this is the recipe. And God, is it perfect. Too sacred, almost, to defy.
Almost.
Because there—waiting in the red glow of the old Coke machine, the one they stuck out here in hopes that this would be a nicer place—is my first departure from the form.
He’s early. He’s the type to be: floppy blond hair, blue eyes, a slight piggish tilt to his nose, the sort of face that’s no doubt booked him at least one tourism commercial. A face that’s easy to trust—with every reason to trust the world around him.
Maybe tonight will serve as a lesson.
I step into the light.
“Hey there!” He gives a cheery smile as soon as he sees me, extending a hand. “How are ya?”
We make our introductions, the Southern politeness sliding out of me as easily as the words to an old nursery rhyme as my blood thrums with nervous excitement. If he thinks it’s strange to be meeting this late, he doesn’t show it. And if he suspects what’s coming …
“So,” he says. “You said you needed me to sign something?”
Eager to get on with it. He may be polite, but it is past his bedtime.
“Yeah, let me grab it.” I reach for my bag, fumble through it like the kind of person he wants me to be. Easy. Friendly. A mirror of himself. “Sorry to make you do this so late. We realized we never got your release form, and with shooting tomorrow and everything, we just want to make sure everything’s in order.”
“Of course, totally! Excited to get started.”
He flashes another smile, just as I’m putting on my best frown. I pause, digging deeper as if to make sure.
“Well, darn. I think I must’ve left the papers.” I laugh, embarrassed. Self-deprecating. “Not even the first day, and I’m already screwing things up.” With a sigh, I glance in the direction of the trees, the road just beyond them. “I actually live a little ways down. I can walk back and grab them. Unless you wanted to tag along…?”
“Yeah, sure,” he says, that smile still plastered on, hoping to reassure me in the wake of my mistake. “I wouldn’t mind a walk.”
I give my first real smile of the night.
“Well, then, I guess I wouldn’t mind the company.”
I lead him away from the motel, from its faded light, and toward the shadowy embrace of the pines. Louisiana pines, the ones that gave this little town half its name—rail-thin and tufted green only at the very top, more concerned with height than with beauty, stretching up and up to the open sky as if to prove what they’re capable of when left well enough alone.
Something this boy could learn from the pines, in fact: the value of silence. But he insists on chatting away as we walk, rattling off his other film credits, his courses, all the things he thinks will make him special enough to do what we’re all here for: making a movie. Telling a story. Using light and sound and the moving image to capture some little glimmer of humanity, a kernel of truth.
“We can cut through here.” I nod at an opening between the pines.
He follows me in without a hitch, the shadows deepening, curling around us. I take a moment to breathe it in—the sap, the night—before I come to a stop.
When I turn to face him, he’s watching me with that same genial expression, the light behind it dimmed only slightly in confusion. He doesn’t know. Not yet.
“You watch a lot of slashers?” I ask, sliding my camcorder out of my pocket.
He eyes it as I turn it over in my hands. Small, vintage, and a little shitty. Harmless.
Perfect.
“Uh, not really,” he says, lifting his eyes from the camera. “I watched a bunch to prepare for this one, though, so I can kind of see the appeal now.”
“What changed?” I lift the camera now and press Record.
His eyes fix on the lens.
“Sorry, are you…?”
“A little cast interview,” I lie. “For marketing.”
He nods, still watching the camera. Calibrating, trusting, searching for evidence that this is like every other moment of his life. Safe. That I’m just an odd bird, a glitch in the screen.
“So, what changed?” I press.
“I, uh…” He swallows. Still uncomfortable, even as he tries to be my good little actor. “I don’t know. I guess I used to think the violence was a little cheap, or something, but I can see the fun in it, right? Guessing who’s behind the mask, and all. It’s kind of like a game.”
“A game,” I echo, grinning. “You’re not wrong. Only, I’d push back against that specific word. ‘Game.’” I step closer. “There are similarities, of course. Games have rules. Games are about winning. But ‘game’”—another step—“implies an element of fiction. A game is something that can end at the click of a button, as soon as the lights come on. That’s not what this is.” I stop, close enough to feel his quickened breath. “There are rules, and there’s a winner. But this…” Close enough to taste his fear. “It’s as real as it gets.”
The moment I live for: when they understand, finally, what’s about to happen.
When he sees the knife in my hand.
For a breath, he freezes. No fight. No flight. Just pure panic in his eyes.
And then survival instinct catches up with him. He runs, but it’s too late now—I bear down, shoving him to the ground with a thud. There’s grunting, shifting, kicking, and then—then—the give, the blade sinking into the soft meat of his stomach.
It’s exhilarating, even now—never failing to amaze me, the thrilling mundanity of this, the guts and flesh and breath. I keep the camcorder trained as I swing again and again, the euphoria fading away to industry, making sure the movement stops, that the deed is well and truly done.
Finally, he’s quiet.
I catch my breath. I rise.
A slow smile spreads across my face.
I’ve broken the rules, but it’s all for a good cause. The highest of all. Because, I think, as I wipe the blood from my camcorder with my sleeve—isn’t that the point of mastering conventions? You earn the right to break them.
And that’s when the real fun begins.
CASTING CALL: SWAMP CREATURES (Independent Feature Film)
Inspired by classic slasher films of the 80s and 90s, Swamp Creatures follows a group of horror-loving friends as a masked killer wreaks havoc on their small Louisiana town. We are casting the following roles:
SAM (lead): Female, 18. Like the classic “final girls” of the genre, Sam is brave and resourceful, but also vulnerable. There’s nothing she won’t do to protect the people she loves—even if it puts her face-to-face with a terrifying killer.
RICH (lead): Male, 18. Sam’s boyfriend and a charming, confident film buff. While a bit of a bad boy, Rich also has a heart of gold.
ANNA (supporting): Female, 18. A band geek and horror fan, Anna is the artistic one of the group. Though she can be sarcastic, Anna loves her friends and is determined to catch the killer.
BRITTANY (supporting): Female, 18. Cheerleader Brittany can be a bit of a mean girl, but there’s more to her than meets the eye.
BILL (supporting): Male, 18. Bill is a popular jock who can seem a bit shallow, even though he’s devoted to his friends—and especially his girlfriend, Brittany.
ELLIOT (supporting): Male, 16. A teacher’s pet and a bit standoffish, Elliot doesn’t quite fit in with the rest of the group.
MR. TORRANCE (supporting): Male, early 30s. A teacher at the local high school.
New Message From Jason Hooper
Hello Hazel,
I am the writer and producer of Swamp Creatures, an independent feature film shooting this summer in Pine Springs, Louisiana. I came across your résumé on StageSite, and I think you could be a great fit for the role of our “final girl,” Sam. If you are interested, please submit a self-taped audition according to the attached instructions.
Hope to hear from you soon!
Best,
Jason
1
Fifteen Years since I’ve been to Pine Springs, and as much as I don’t remember about this town, there’s one thing I can say for sure: it’s pretty much a shithole.
Take the motel. Outside, a light flickers over a grimy letter board that reads WELCOME GUESTS—only I guess it could also be WELCOME GHOSTS, because the U and the E are missing. Given the general vibe of this place, there’s some room for interpretation. There’s
I adjust the duffel on my shoulder, careful not to jostle my headphones. They’re my graduation present from Mom, blissfully soundproof and therefore my most treasured possession. They’re also dead, or else they’d be blasting music loud enough to tune out the swampy quiet of this place.
The Pine Springs Motel looks like anything else you’d find off a highway two hours west of New Orleans. Aesthetically, it’s somewhere between a strip mall and a prison: two long stories lined with rooms, all tucked under a flat, dilapidated roof, the only colors somewhere on the spectrum from beige to brown besides the deep green of the trees that ring the building and lot. It’s the kind of place where you would park an RV—somewhere in-between. Somewhere barely worth mentioning.
And it’s the beginning of the rest of my life.
Okay, that’s melodramatic. But maybe that’s just baked into actors, our fundamental flaw. Still, at the risk of being earnest—a disease I try my very best to avoid—I can’t fight the little jolts of excitement zipping down my spine as I make my way up to the office door. Because here, however shitty, is where I’ll be staying as I shoot my first-ever feature film. And it will be good. It’s got to be.
I can still count the worry lines on Mom’s face as she helped me pack up the car.
You sure you want to do this, Haze?
A question that has a million meanings. Are you sure about this gap-year thing?
Are you sure you want to go back there?
It’s not that Mom wants me to give up on acting, not specifically. She’s worried about me. And deep down, we both know she’s worried about the memories still lurking here.
Something snaps in the shadows. I spin to look at the trees, but there’s nothing there. Probably a squirrel or a nutria, whatever the hell else is hiding in this swamp of a town.
Or maybe I’m letting the ghost stories get to me. Which feels ironic, in a way. Because you can’t be afraid of ghost stories when they’re all about you.
WELCOME G__STS.
I give the sign one last look before I open the office door.
Inside, it’s just as drab as the exterior: beige walls, grimy carpeted floor, not much space for anything besides two scratchy-looking chairs, a mostly empty shelf of brochures, and a check-in desk, behind which sits a middle-aged white woman with cat’s-eye glasses and the biggest cup of gas-station soda I’ve ever seen. A battery-powered fan putters away beside her, doing its best to fight the muggy heat that’s crept in from outside, even this late at night.
“Checking in?” she asks. I detect a light Cajun accent, and also the clear implication that this is an inconvenience. Although I guess that’s fair. Judging from the pile of half-done scratch-offs on the desk, DEB, MANAGER—according to her name tag—had more exciting plans than my arrival.
“Yeah,” I say. “Lejeune.”
I pronounce it “Luh-JUNE,” and Deb gives me a look. Probably, she also knows that the correct Cajun pronunciation is “Luh-JERN,” but at some point, my ancestors must’ve gotten tired of correcting people, because “Luh-JUNE” is how Mom and I have always said it. But if Deb minds that much, she doesn’t say. Instead, she takes a long slurp of her drink to gird herself for the hardship of searching my name on a computer that might be older than I am.
“Hazel?” she asks finally.
“Haze. But yeah.”
Deb eyes me over her glasses like she doesn’t approve. Of nicknames or of me in general, I couldn’t say which. I could try to tell her that “Haze” is what I’ve always been called, or that “Hazel Lejeune” sounds too much like a scrapped character from Gone with the Wind for my liking, but I don’t think Deb seems like the type to care.
To prove it, she takes a fifteen-second slurp of soda before digging around her desk to find my key.
“Room six,” she says, handing it over. It’s an honest-to-God key, with a ring and everything—like a prop out of Psycho. Which is kind of cool, actually.
“You one of them movie people?”
The way Deb says it, “movie people” might be synonymous with “hosts of a flesh-eating parasite.”
“Yeah,” I tell her with a little rush of pride. Even if Deb clearly doesn’t want us here, I can’t help but feel excited knowing that I’m a part of it. The movie people.
Deb huffs, settling deeper into her seat. “Out-of-towners are always looking to dig up all that Pine Springs Slasher stuff.”
My grip tightens on the warm metal of the key.
She frowns. “Puttin’ y’all up here to—”
“Do you need anything else from me, or am I checked in?” It comes out ruder than I meant it to, but it works. Deb drops it.
“Just your ID,” she says.
I must have finally pushed Deb over the edge, because when I hand her my license, there’s no soda slurp involved—she barely glances at it before handing it back.
“Hazel Lejeune,” she mutters, almost to herself. “Swear I heard that somewhere before.”
I snatch my license quickly, my heart jumping. There’s no way she can know—but then I’d guess stories in Pine Springs run river-deep. I wait for her to put two and two together, for the moment that proves coming here was a mistake.
Deb goes back to her scratch-offs. I let out a little breath of relief.
I’m already halfway to the door when she calls, almost like an afterthought, “Welcome to Pine Springs.”
She doesn’t say “welcome back,” but I can’t help feeling the echo of it as I step out into the muggy night. Even if I was too little to really remember, this place feels familiar: the darkness, the quiet, a waterlogged weight to the air that seeps into everything. The walls. My bones.
I’m not sure yet if it’s really a welcome or something else—a creature catching a familiar scent. Flashing its teeth in the moonlight, hungry for the taste it’s been missing.
* * *
The door sticks. I have to give it a hard shove before it finally swings open to my room: small, with cream walls and burgundy carpeting so dark that the shade could definitely have been chosen to disguise spilled blood, which, all things considered, is sort of awesome. There’s one full bed with beige covers, a desk, a rickety chair, a TV, and a hulking AC unit, which is what really grabs my attention.
Dropping my duffel on the floor, I walk over to the AC and crank it up. It gives a mildly concerning wheeze, but the cool air still comes, and I sigh with relief, flopping back onto the springy bed.
The drive from Pensacola to Pine Springs was a little less than five hours, but I’m used to a trek. We’ve only been in Florida for the past two years—usually the longest we’ll spend somewhere before packing it all up again. Before that, we were just outside of D.C. Before that, a stint in Chicago. The moves are always for Mom’s work: she’s in sales, and she’s good at it, which means there’s no shortage of promotions and companies trying to poach her from each other. Sure, she could stay in one place and climb the ranks there, but that would take longer, and anyway, she doesn’t want to. It’s important to see the world, she tells me. To experience new things. And it is.
But I also know the other reason for the moves, the one we don’t talk about: Mom is scared of what will happen if we stay somewhere too long. If the past catches up with us.
And now I’m running headfirst back into it.
The Pine Springs Slasher. The name feels as tangible as the damp in the air, sticking to my skin, and I can’t help myself. It’s like picking a scab or scratching an itch, the urge to pull out my phone and look it up.
The familiar headlines are all there, fifteen years later: FIVE PINE SPRINGS SENIORS MURDERED. TEACHER CONFESSES. CAL DUPRE, THE PINE SPRINGS SLASHER, BEHIND BARS, LEAVING A WIFE AND THREE-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER TO DEAL WITH THE FALLOUT.
I scroll through them all like it’s a compulsion—like maybe if I read them all, they won’t be true. Like if I read them all, I’ll understand. I keep scrolling even as everything in me screams to chuck my phone away and put on a movie, the scarier the better. That’s what I usually do when I get like this: distract myself with the most gruesome, terrifying film I can find.
