How to Survive a Horror Movie

“Hey, it’s October now. Come over and watch A Nightmare on Elm Street.”

“Thanks,” she said, “but I told you, I’m visiting my grandparents out in Lone Camp. Remember?”

“Okay. I’ll see you then.”

“Okay,” she said. The call dropped.

That was weird, she thought. Maybe I should try harder.

Then again, even if she had been home, she wouldn’t have gone over. She couldn’t bring herself to watch another horror movie since she’d broken up with John. He was obsessed with them, had introduced her to the genre. The memory of John was accompanied by a familiar gloom that settled over her like a weighted blanket.

You broke up with him, remember? She reminded herself. He got…strange, at the end. You’re better off without him.

Then why did she still feel so heartbroken? She turned off the old farm road into the town of Lone Camp. The setting sun cast a blood-orange glow on the pale walls of the baptist church, the largest building in a ten-mile radius. She’d forgotten just how well Lone Camp earned its name. Its population numbered in the hundreds, and it was surrounded on all sides by arid flatness that stretched all the way to the horizon. The empty landscape was a barrier between Lone Camp and the rest of the world.

And that’s what Jamie wanted. A barrier between her and him.

As she turned down her grandparents’ dirt driveway, which was nestled among a grove of shady oaks, she frowned. No cheery lights shone through the trees, awaiting her arrival at the end of the path. She pulled in, stopped, turned off the car. Silence hung in the dusky air. Her frown deepened. Hadn’t she let them know she’d be coming? Even if she hadn’t, her grandparents were always home.

Jamie took in the still life bathed in her car’s headlights—the little farmhouse with blue vinyl siding, a couple of chicken coops off the right, the riding lawn mower parked awkwardly at the edge of the back lawn—and felt like she’d arrived on the set of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. John had talked her into watching that movie a month ago. It had reignited one of their favorite conversations: talking about why people in horror movies act so dumb. After seeing so many people stabbed, strangled, and summarily slaughtered, she’d thrown up her hands in exasperation. How could the victims hope to escape when they acted as if they had an IQ of two? Jamie had come up with a list of everything she would do differently if she were in such a situation and proudly dubbed it, “How to Survive a Horror Movie.”

Jamie fingered the Glock 19 she always kept in her car’s center console, remembering one of the items on that list. Rule three: always carry a real weapon. Hairbrushes and broomsticks don’t count.

But Jamie wasn’t in a horror movie. She was visiting her hick grandparents, for pete’s sake. Her fingers left the gun and traveled to her temple, rubbing it vigorously. She was being ridiculous. John had shown her too many horror movies.

Then she noticed that, behind the mower, grass waved gently in the breeze. Uncut grass. She felt her flesh go cold. Papaw would never leave a job half-done like that. Something was definitely wrong.

The list flitted through her mind. Rule one: always follow the principle, “better safe than sorry.”

Jamie grabbed the gun and stepped out of the car.

The cold surprised her. The breeze smelled like chicken poop and something rotten. She’d left her headlights on, so all she could see was painted harsh yellow. She slowly walked forward, hands sweating on the gun despite the cold.

The smell grew worse with every step. Jamie felt an urge to cover her nose with her t-shirt. It wasn’t the chickens, but a stench like meat left out in the sun. She stepped up to the mower, and her foot nudged something in the grass. Looking down, she saw a pair of boots jutting out from under the mower. Papaw’s boots. Worse, she could now see the grass around the mower was shining with flecks of red. The stench of rotting flesh washed over her like a wave, as did the horror as she realized what had happened. She was going to be sick.

The sound of glass shattering made her scream. She spun to face the noise, but was blinded by the headlights. Or rather, headlight. One had gone out. Another smash, and the second flickered off. The instant darkness was absolute.

Jamie’s mind went blank with terror, and then one sentence filled it. Rule five: always run away from, not towards, danger.

Jamie burst into a run, not towards her car but between the two chicken coops and into the trees beyond. She could barely see, but she pulled out her phone and switched on the flashlight as she weaved between the thick trunks.

Rule two: always call the police.

Still running, Jamie tapped 9-1-1 into her phone and pressed the call button. A little message popped up on the screen: no signal.

“What?” she said. She always had cell reception out here in Lone Camp. There was an old cell tower less than a mile away, out past the cornfield . . . her stomach dropped. The fire. Someone didn’t want her to call for help.

What now? The list came to her again. Rule four: never split up. Jamie had come alone, but her grandparents’ neighbors were just on the other side of the trees. If they all joined together, they could help her.

She redoubled her speed and soon came to the neighbor’s property, marked by a run-down trailer. The lights were off. She ran up and banged on the front door.

“Hey,” she shouted. “It’s me, Jamie. The neighbor girl. My Papaw’s dead! Someone
is—we need to—”

The sound of metal scraping on dirt made her stop. She turned.

There, not thirty feet away, a dark figure was approaching. As it drew nearer, Jamie saw it wore a white mask—she recognized it as a flimsy plastic reproduction of Michael Myers’ from Halloween. The scraping sound came from the shovel that the man dragged behind him. It drew a trail of blood in the dirt.

Jamie couldn’t believe it. This couldn’t be real. This was straight out of a movie. The scraping of the bloody shovel filled her ears.

Rule six: always kill the killer when you have the chance.

“S-stop,” Jamie said, half in a daze. She raised the gun with a shaking hand. “I’ll shoot. I mean it.”

The man didn’t stop. So Jamie gulped and pulled the trigger. The bang of the gun was deafening. The man jerked to a stop. But he didn’t fall. So she pulled the trigger again. And again. And again. It took four shots before the man fell, face-forward in the dirt. He didn’t move.

Jamie’s ears were ringing. She fell to her hands and knees. She vomited. Then she wiped her mouth, and shone her flashlight on the prone figure. His mask had shifted when he fell, revealing a swath of pale skin underneath. Something about the crook of his jaw looked familiar.

She crawled over and pulled the mask away. It was Tony. She stared in disbelief.

A crunch of dirt from behind her. She whirled, gun in one hand and flashlight in the other, only to see—

“John?”

“Don’t shoot,” he said, hands jumping upwards. “It’s me.”

Emotions rushed through her. Relief. Surprise. Nausea. Embarrassment. Confusion.

“What are you . . .?” she asked as he walked up to her. He knelt in front of her, a sympathetic expression on his face, and gently tugged the gun from her grip.

“. . . doing here?” John finished her question for her. “I just came to admire how well you stuck to your list.”

“What?”

John gave her a wry smile. “I saw the whole thing. I figured you’d run this way, try to call the police. I thought you would bring the gun too, but the fact that you actually shot him? That was awesome.”

Wordlessly, Jamie stared down at Tony’s lifeless face.

“Ah, yes, you went on a date or two with my friend Tony,” John said. “He’s a bit of a sociopath. It was easy to convince him to have some fun by pretending to be interested in you, but even I was surprised by how far he was willing to go. Just to make sure you were still on your way, he called you from the cell phone tower out in that field. Then he let the fire do its job. Crazy that an old wooden tower like that had been standing so long anyway.”

Jamie looked at John and saw it. There, in the back of his blue eyes: the reason she’d broken up with him. Behind a charming exterior hid a numb void of darkness, more heartless than any movie villain she’d ever seen.

“I have to hand it to you,” John sighed. After examining the gun’s magazine to make sure there was still ammo left, he slid it back into place with a click. “You would have survived a horror movie. But this isn’t a movie, Jamie. This is just what you get for breaking up with me.”

He pressed the cool barrel against her forehead.

“I’ll admit, it was kind of fun,” he said. “I thought about your list, then I came up with my own. Not a list of what victims in horror movies should do to survive, but what the killers should do—after all, they’re all idiots.. Like, they always work alone. They never plan ahead. They always use weapons that take effort to use. And they always wear a stupid mask.” He laughed. “I wasn’t going to make any of those mistakes.”

“You forgot one,” Jamie said. She felt her fingers curling into fists.

“Oh?” John asked. He let his smile slip, transforming his face into a cold mask of hatred.Jamie realized for the first time just how ugly he was. “Just what did I forget, love?”

“The bad guys in horror movies always think their victim will be an easy kill,” she said. In a flurry of motion, she swatted the gun away and punched John in the throat. He made a gurgling sound and aimed the gun again, but Jamie shoved her flashlight in his eyes, blinding him. He fired the gun once, twice. Then silence.

John leapt to his feet, scanning the ground. Her body was nowhere to be seen. He growled, then roared, “Where are you?”

“I’m right here, you stupid prick.”

John turned just in time to see Jamie swing the shovel with all her might. It hit him in the temple with the force of a baseball bat. He crumpled.

Jamie dropped the shovel and put her hands on her knees to steady herself. After what felt like a long time, she picked up her gun and walked down the driveway, away from her two boyfriends-turned-killers.

She felt a thousand things. The adrenaline slowly draining from her, the horror of losing Papaw, the shock of discovery that both Tony and John were killers—and in cahoots, no less. The surprise that she’d had it in her to defend herself. Amidst it all, she realized she didn’t feel so torn up about the break up anymore. The gloom was gone. In fact, she thought with the smallest smile, it could certainly be said that she had dodged a bullet or two with that one.

She would have to start a new list: “How to Survive Your Psycho Exes and Their Friends.” First item: never date anyone who’s into horror movies.