Episode 15: The Last Night of a Final Girl

*Click*

Voncid:  such a shame.

Luca: Victim is Adelaide Parks.  The Observers say they still feel something otherworldly around but can’t find where it is exactly.  

Voncid: tell the other agents to be careful, if the observers are still pinging then the killer may still be on the property.

Luca: Agent Sharp is with the little girl upstairs, she doesn’t have any idea what happened down here.

Voncid: the size of the home… I suppose the sounds of the struggle didn’t reach her.

Luca: looks like quite the struggle.

Voncid: Adelaide had a lot of fight in her.  I can feel it.  Her spirit is still on fire.

Luca: yeah.

Voncid:  The recalling should be an easy one, let's set up.

*Click, followed by a chime and whispers of magic*

Adelaide: Is Missy ok?

Voncid: Yes.  Remarkably.  Impossibly.  Thanks to you.  She might not even be aware of what transpired.  I have agents with her now.

Adelaide: Am I ok?

Voncid:  No.

Adelaide: How bad is it?  I’m on an athletic scholarship, do I (loses her thought, then finds it) I suppose they won’t kick me out because I got injured right?

Voncid: I wouldn’t assume so.

Adelaide: Well, it’s ok I guess, I don’t really like swimming anymore.  Don’t tell my parents I said that.

Voncid: I promise.

Adelaide: Giive it to me straight, how bad is it, I knew it would be bad, but I had to stop it.  Honestly, didn’t really think I’d live through it…

Voncid: You didn’t.

Adelaide: I thought maybe that was… I guess I was stalling.  Maybe eventually it wouldn’t be that… *she thinks about something here and begins laughing to herself.*

Voncid:  That is an unusual sound, given the circumstances.

Adelaide: *still laughing* sorry sorry, it’s just I thought of something really stupid and it made me laugh.

Voncid: no need to apologize.  Care to share?

Adelaide: Well I was… I was ignoring the inevitable and I thought about Elmer Fudd.

Voncid:  I don’t think I’m familiar with his work.

Luca: It’s a cartoon character. From the Looney Toons, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck…

Voncid: Oh, I liked them in Roger Rabbit.

Adelaide:  Missy loves them, so I’ve gotten familiar, I think she mainly likes how they prank each other so much.  

But Elmer Fudd has a bit he did a lot, where he will walk over a cliff or something and not realize it, only to keep walking on air.  Until he looks down.  Then he falls.  There’s a coyote that does it too.

I was doing that.  I kinda thought if I just ignored it long enough, didn’t look down, maybe I wouldn’t fall.

Voncid:  I can see.  There was a word for a dark humorous coincidence once, but the word is lost now.

Adelaide: zemblanity.

Voncid: You made that up.

Adelaide: William Boyd did.  My dad is a fan and adopted it.  It’s the opposite of serendipity.  It’s in a novel… what's the name?  It’s like hedgehog or something… 

Luca: Armadillo… I looked up zemblanity as soon as you said it.

Adelaide: Can I ask a question?

Voncid: Certainly.  

Adelaide: Why am I not panicking? Or crying or freaking out?

Voncid:  Waking the dead is a very emotionally jarring process for everyone involved.  Over long years of refining we’ve done everything we can to… take the edges off so to speak.  I manipulate parts of your mind in order to keep any trauma from the experience to a minimum.  

Adelaide: Not that I’m not enjoying your company, but why is this happening?

Voncid:  I was hoping you could tell us about what happened this evening. We’d like to find what you encountered that led to your death and we’d like to kill it.

Adelaide: How did you know about it?

Luca: We saw the images and videos Missy Davison posted on social media.  

Adelaide: I see.  Well I would love to kill my killer, I tried to do so pretty hard myself actually.  I’ll help however I can.

Voncid: How you can help is to simply open your mind, and tell us what you can remember about last night.

Adelaide: I was home for winter break.  I hadn’t managed to work up the nerve to tell my parents I wasn’t gonna go back.  Didn’t want to go back.  I’d done ok my freshman year, but… I just… it’s not important anymore I guess.

I just felt so bad.  I felt like I had broken a promise or something.  I had worked so hard, studying and swimming and… you know push push push to get it and then now that I had it, and so many other people had wanted it, I just didn’t?  I was going to give it up?

I hated quitting.  I never ever quit.

Our family motto, what my parents drilled into me over and over at meets and training sessions and, hell, over the dinner table:  “Keep fighting.  No quitting.”

Anyways there’s this girl I had started babysitting my junior year of highschool when she was five.  Missy.  She’s almost nine now, and we got really close, so whenever I’m home I go let her parents have a date night.  I was actually watching her overnight, Friday night, to Saturday night so her parents could stay over for a whole day of skiing.

It started like always.  Missy tumbled through a litany of new interests, she was picking up hobbies and dropping them faster every year.  She showed me roblox, and a bunch of youtubers, honestly most of them were pretty tolerable which was a refreshing change from the last batch.  She had to show me this amazing movie she had discovered about a lonely robot, Wall-e, I know but it was new to her.

However, the main thing she was into at the moment didn’t surprise me.  Social media apps.  I was really apprehensive when she started flipping through her feed, but was pleasantly surprised it was full of puppies, kittens, cartoons, k-pop stars, things like that, but a lot-a lot of videos were just little girls like her playing with the filters.

I hadn’t ever really looked at these things, they were crazy.  They could stretch your face out, or do your makeup, we, we played with a filter that gave us freckles and then tried to recreate it with makeup.

We did not succeed.

Missy, uh, Missy said we looked like we had poop on our face, and she was pretty right.

The Davisons had a really nice house with a lot of big windows and it was always kind of creepy to sit in front of them at night.  As we sat there laughing and playing it had gotten dark and the big windows with the beautiful view of the lakeside had transformed into huge black squares that someone could look into, but we couldn’t see out.

I went into the kitchen where the smart house controls were, poured us some orange juice and hit the button to lower the shades.  The big opaque covers slowly lowered over the windows in the living room looking like a big robot slowly going to sleep.

Just before the shades had finished closing, when there was just a sliver of a gap left there was a… I don’t know, a sound… I don’t know what it was, but the shades started raising up again.

*Adelaide affects a higher voice when speaking as Missy* “Just hit it once, or they’ll open up again,” Missy directed.

“I did hit it once, must have gotten stuck.”  I hit it again and it started back down, this time they finished their descent and I started back into the living room…

When they started opening again.

“Quit fooling,” Missy said, “I’ve found a really good filter, and it’s super funny, come come”

I hit the controls again, watched the controller thinking maybe a button was getting stuck or malfunctioning, but it worked fine, the blinds shut… and nothing.  Missy was doing an impatient little dance from the living room so I jumped over the back of the big white couch and checked out her phone.

“What is this one?”  I asked

She just smiled and motioned for me to hold it up to my face.

At first nothing happened.  The screen showed an ever so slightly delayed image of my face.  I looked tired.  I guess I was.  I’d been getting extra sleep all week, but stress was eating into all my rest profits.*Sighs*  I could see the white couch back, the kitchen behind me, shiny fridge, pendant lights, everything seemed normal… but just as I was about to turn and ask her what it was supposed to be changing, the image of my face darkened, stretched, my eyes turned red, my mouth split open in this hideous toothy grin.

The skin started peeling up, exposing raw muscle underneath.

I was so startled I dropped my phone.

It was hideous.

Missy laughed and laughed.  “Got youuuu,” she squealed happily.

What the hell had that been?  I’ve seen filters that give you a spooky face, or make you look like a dog or something, but this was something else.  It was so realistic… too realistic, it was as good as any movie I’d ever seen, maybe better.

My face was starting to itch… 

I told myself it was psychosomatic.

“Missy, what the heck?  They have that on tik-tok?”

“No Addie,” she said with a lot of ‘duh’ in her voice. “It’s a new one.  I just downloaded it tonight.”

I backed out of the app and found a little button called Midnight Place with a logo I’d never seen before.

At least that made a little sense.  It wasn’t the kind of thing you would ever have seen on a mainstream program.  It would make people sick.

“Very funny,” I said, knowing that if I made a big deal of her pranks she would keep doing more.  “We should probably turn in for some sleep soon.”

Missy whined a little and pleaded for us to actually make a few videos we could post.

“Ok,” I agreed, “But on regular apps, not creepy nightmare ones you downloaded off the dark web.”

We loaded up one that put masquerade masks on us.  I followed Missy’s direction to behave like I was at a fancy party.

“I’ll get us teacups,” she said hurrying to the kitchen to get them and coming back a few moments later.  “Now sip, sip like a fancy lady!”

I held the camera out and got us in frame.  Little Missy got a fancy pink mask and I got a bright yellow one.  We started play acting like we were at a party when a third mask popped in.

It hovered at eye level in the middle of the kitchen behind us.

I jumped, spun around.

There was nothing there.

“You wrecked it,” Missy said.

“There was an extra mask,” I started to say but Missy waved it away.

“Oh that happens sometimes, it’s just, it had a mistake and gets stuck on something.  Again again.  I want to post it.”

We tried recording the video again, but the same thing happened, only this time in a different place.  A third mask appeared suspended in the air, behind us, in the kitchen.

This time I finished the video without making a fuss, I was a little freaked out, but I certainly didn’t actually think anything was wrong… not really and I didn’t want to scare her right before bed.

We shared a few more silly laughs, but all along I couldn’t help but glance back over my shoulder at the empty kitchen.

I put Missy to bed, read her a chunk from some Tall, Dark and also a vampire tween book she was into.  I remarked that vampires had already gone full circle, she said she didn’t know what I meant.  Then I kissed her goodnight.

As I descended the stairs, I could hear a whirring.  The blinds were going up again.

I forced myself to stay calm.

I checked the reflections in the big glass windows. The kitchen was empty.

But then I thought of the floating mask.

A little pit of fear started working its way into my stomach lining.

It was dumb.  There wasn’t an invisible person in the kitchen.  That was a really stupid thing to be afraid of.  There are so many actual things to be afraid of.

Still.

I pulled up my phone, snapped some pictures of the kitchen.  Checked them.

Nothing but glossy marble and stainless steel.

So I pulled up instagram and flipped through to reels and scrolled over to a different filter, this one made it look like you were burning, like the human torch.

I passed it back and forth, aiming it over my shoulder.

All I could see was myself slowly crackling with fire.  The filter didn’t catch anything else.  I recorded it and watched it back.

I saw something that I hadn’t noticed before that sent a chill down my spine.

It didn’t have anything to do with the filter, but in the kitchen, where the big butcher block of knives was.

One was missing. *Slashing*

I… I had never been stabbed before, I don’t think a lot of people have been I guess.  It’s… hot.  It burns.

The image of me in the application crackling and burning fell to the ground as I felt a red hot pain in my side.

I whirled around.

Nothing.

I didn’t see anything.  I didn’t hear anything.

I grabbed at my side and could already feel blood soaking into my sweatshirt.

I jumped back, up, over the big white couch leaving a red line over it.

I couldn’t believe it.  I still couldn’t believe it.  It couldn’t actually be happening.

A red smear appeared in front of me on the couch, then another.  Long sharp red wedges.

Like what would be left behind if you wiped a knife clean.

Gregory Greenwood: Can you see me yet?

Adelaide: I couldn’t, I wanted to run, to flee screaming from whatever was happening, but Missy was asleep upstairs.  I promised to protect her.  I Promised.

Keep Fighting.  No Quitting.

Something clicked in my mind, or maybe cracked… things changed after that, I still don’t feel the same.  Decided two things: first that this was indeed happening and that denying it, even for another moment was going to get me killed.

And second: I decided that I was going to kill him, whoever he was, he was going to die tonight.  Missy was in danger, I was certainly in danger, but I vowed this invisible mother fucker was going to die first.

I tipped the couch over.  I didn’t know where he was exactly but I knew he was in front of the couch.

The couch was big, but I had a lot of adrenaline and some pretty significant time in the gym on my side.  It rolled over and I heard something fall.

I ignored the pain in my side, got to the kitchen. 

Keep fighting, no quitting.

I knew the kitchen really well.  I knew where it was.  

We baked cookies all the time.

I grabbed up a big bag of flour, tore it open and swung it around wildly.

The little white particles erupted into the air… and coalesced around the shape of a man coming towards me.

I lunged forward stabbing my fingers and my freshly painted fingernails forward.  Pink and green, alternating, as Missy had insisted early that night.  It was a wild guess.

I got a little lucky.

I felt something soft and heard an awful howl.

The flour outlined shape grabbed at its face and staggered backwards.

Gregory Greenwood:  You bitch, you bitch, my fucking eye.

Adelaide: red blood was soaking into the white flour, out in between his barely visible fingers.  As I reached up for one of the hanging copper pots I felt a new pain in my stomach and I realized he’d gotten me again with the knife.  I didn’t have time to think about it.  All I could think about was getting my fingers nice and tight around the handle… lining up the flat bottom of the pan and swinging.

The sound *clanging*  it feels a little gross to say this but it was so satisfying.  This loud… “ponnng”.  Then there was a thump and a shape fell in front of me, into the downy flour snowfall.  He splayed out making a sort of flour angel.

Gregory Greenwood: *Gasping* No one can see me

Adelaide:  Part of me wanted to run, I thought about it, but my chest really hurt and I could already feel myself getting lightheaded.  If I ran, I might pass out.  He could still get up.

Gregory Greenwood:  No one… no one can see me

Adelaide: He kept saying it over and over again. *Gregory continues repeating himself in the background* All I could see was the dusty outline, but even that was starting to disappear, like how the knife had disappeared.  I realized that whatever he was touching vanished too.  So… it was only a matter of moments before he was gone.

*we hear the sounds of violence as Adelaide kills her assailant, bangs and glass breaking. As she rises into a bit of a frenzy*

So I hit him again.

Keep fighting…

I hit him again.

No quitting.

Again.

Keep fighting.

Again.

No quitting.

I couldn’t see him anymore except where I was hitting him. The blood kept disappearing.

I dug around with my hands, his head felt like a big broken eg.

I tried to call out to Missy… but I think, maybe my neck had been hurt?  Everything hurt suddenly as the immediate rush of the horror started to wear off and my voice was raw and raspy, and really quiet.

I tried to stand up, but my legs gave out and I fell onto the kitchen floor and… I remember being kinda proud of myself.  I fought for it even when I wanted to run.  

Keep fighting, no quitting.

That stupid fucking motto kind of ruined my life.  Maybe it cost me it in the end, maybe I could have gotten away, maybe…  I guess there’s no way to know… but it might have saved Missy, so I… I don’t really know where that leaves us karmically.

Voncid: I’ve never met someone other than madmen who honestly thought they had an answer to that particular question.  Rest a moment, I think I have one more question.

Luca: Yeah, holy shit he’s been right over here all this time, I almost stepped on him…

Voncid:  Interesting.  Hmm… a spell.

Luca: a spell?

Voncid: yes.  I’m not sure exactly the craft, but it’s strong work.  

Luca: I think I found his pocket… 

*we hear rustling.*

This is probably his wallet… but I can’t see it… so weird.

Voncid: give it to me.

*we hear a hum water running*

Begone… 

Yes. His wallet. Let me see… Gregory Greenwood.  Address is in the area… he looks about her age.  I wonder if they knew each other… I would be willing to bet they did.

Have Mayberry run his information.

Luca: sure thing.

*We hear Luca leave.  Voncid crosses to Adelaide waiting patiently.*

Voncid:  Adelaide are you ready for that one more question?

Adelaide: Sure.

Voncid:  If I could… prolong your existence, would you be willing?

Adelaide: you can make me alive again?

Voncid: I did not say that.  I have a very unwise idea that I should certainly not be even considering.  I should let you rest, I should respect that forbidden arts are forbidden for a reason…

Adelaide: *Interrupting* sounds like quitter talk to me.

Voncid:  Hmm, let’s discuss this further, you and I.

*Click*