If It’s Black, Fight Back

It’s easy to love horror movies when you haven’t experienced one yourself.

That’s it. That’s my opinion.

These days, I find nothing more relaxing than dumb reality shows where the only danger facing contestants is being sent to an “exile island”. As a teenager who had to grapple with the struggles of a dead mother, an absent father and an abusive sibling, I used to be a horror fan, though, especially as a teenager… but this fascination didn’t fully prepare me for the raw terror of being pursued by someone, not because my friends and I had broken some obscure rule, but simply because they felt the need to do it.

My own horror story happened last summer, when I received an email from Sandro, one of my two childhood best friends, who had moved to Paris to teach film studies while I had sought refuge in Canada, away from a toxic family that had gotten worse after my mother’s death. Sandro and Dorian, my other best friend (whose slight narcissistic tendencies had turned him into a second-rate actor in the US), were planning to meet up in our hometown. Their plan was to revive the horror marathons of our high school days as an attempt to recapture a fragment of our teenage years. This made me feel a bit guilty as I hadn’t been in touch with them for a while… and had yet to reply to their previous “Happy New Year” messages. But since I had been considering coming back home to help care for my injured father after a bad fall (if I’m being honest it was mostly because I had gone through a bad breakup), I ended up booking a ticket to the South of France. While the thought of returning home after a five-year absence was daunting, especially as I braced for my dad and brother’s disapproval over my dating of other women, the prospect of spending time with the childhood friends was something I was truly looking forward to, for my Tunisian heritage and, later, my sexual orientation had never been an issue for Sandro and Dorian. Our bond was forged over all-nighters playing Dungeons & Dragons on a messy table and playing video games on Sandro’s Sega Genesis. But nothing quite equated our horror movie marathons, where we’d huddle together, screaming into the night.

The high of nostalgia and expectation I was feeling as I was waiting for my friends at my dad’s small cabin in the mountain came crashing down by Dorian’s less-than-graceful arrival in his old 2CV, slightly inebriated and greeting me with a backhanded “What’s up? Still gay?” Sandro, all scrunched up in the tiny passenger seat, was grappling with his own issues and so began drinking almost immediately, his frustration culminating in him throwing an empty bottle into a neighbor’s yard. As I watched them unpack, our conversations, while covering the usual topics of work, movies, and games, steered clear of the deeper, messier truths that used to define our interactions. The once-familiar ease between us had faded, leaving us with a sense of strangeness and awkwardness.

My discomfort grew as Dorian made a racist joke about a character as we were watching Rumpelstiltskin. Turning to Sandro for support, I found him writing something in a notebook, until a sudden jump scare pulled a shriek out of Dorian. Sandro and I exchanged a glance but this time there was no laughter. As the junk food sat heavy on my stomach and as the next movie churned on, I came to realize that we had outgrown the old script, and that time and life have written us new parts, created new plots, in which we were no longer the main characters in each other’s stories. To me, that was another kind of horror story.

In a lot of horror movie the survivors can often make sense of what happens to them but I find that it’s not the same in real life: you survive something horrific and then life, ordinary, boring life, goes on and you just have to deal with it, feeling that you will forever be on the outside of normality.

We shouldn’t have gone on that walk...

It’s the thing that I kept telling myself after everything that happened.

We shouldn’t have gone on that walk...

Again and again. Like a mantra.

Back then, though, it had seemed like the best idea. After hours of watching movies and eating garbage, we all needed to stretch our legs and mainds, otherwise we knew we would all fall asleep, ruining the basic principle of our nuit blanche. So, still a bit drunk, we jumped the fence at the end of the gravel path leading to the house and ascended the deserted winding route du Mont-Agel that went up its namesake limestone mountain with its bone white rocks, bushes of thorny bramble and thick leaved holm oaks. Embracing the mountain’s warm stillness, we walked, silently at first, the regular rhythm of our footsteps as our soundtrack while Monaco’s glittering mosaic of light below us slowly shrunk out of sight. This soundtrack was soon replaced by the stridulation of crickets along with the regular rush of the hidden highway below. Despite the heavy discomfort I felt, I started to grin because this was, to me, the soundtrack of our youth. Sandro and Dorian felt it too as we started to talk again, craking jokes about the road seeming steeper than it used to be, before our conversation led to the horror stories we used to scare ourselves with as we walked the same road as we did as teenagers. We recalled the time we had discussed that a man walking out of the woods wielding an axe could only be “un bûcheron à la bourre”, or the time we had decided to walk through the forest without our flashlights, and how, eyes wide with terror, Dorian had clutched a pocketknife to point it at every shadow. Then, just like that, the years momentarily seemed to melt away as we returned to that past I had missed so much, back when I had felt normal. Then and there, for a moment under the stars, with the scent of laurel and thyme and the soft breeze coming from the sea, we were the same three friends we had been. This is what I want to remember from that night. Not what came after.

We arrived at a lookout which extended from the Italian city of San Remo to the French city of Nice, with its ballet of landing and departing planes. Taking in a sight I had not seen in more than five years, I sighed deeply, realizing how much I had missed the Italian coastline twinkling softly in the distance like a strand of bioluminescent plankton. I had also missed gazing at the cruise ships drifting silently on the horizon, their light-drenched decks and portholes like floating islands. I was staring at the inky expanse of the sea when Dorian suddenly stood up, swaying slightly.

“Watch this,” he said, peeling off his shirt.

Sandro and I exchanged a glance in amused disbelief. Even though I could still feel the effects of the alcohol in my system, I couldn’t help feeling slight embarrassment at Dorian’s behavior, which hadn’t seemed to have changed since the last time I had seen him. Discarding his clothes in a messy pile, his naked figure outlined by the faint city lights below, he trotted over to the stone wall separating the road from the slope, sitting down with his legs spread wide, head thrown back in abandon.

“What the hell, Dorian?” Sandro said.

“There’s a car coming!” Dorian replied, barely containing a laugh.

Looking at the road behind us, I saw the bright glare of headlights coming down the Mont-Agel.

“Oh, shit, okay!” I scoffed as the lights grew brighter.

Although I would have wanted to see what was about to happen, Sandro and I only had the time to quickly hide behind the parapet wall.

As I lay on my belly in the dirt, my nose almost touching the sole of Sandro’s left shoe, I tried to picture the people in the car as a couple on a romantic drive. I imagined their conversations halting as they turned the corner, their eyes widening at the sight of a naked man sitting alone in the dark, his legs spread apart. The thought made me choke back a laugh.

The sound of the car grew louder and the lights above us on the few trees and bushes, stronger. Then, unexpectedly, I heard the crunch of tires on the gravel road as the car slowed down. In the shadow of the parapet, looking at the soles of Sandro’s shoes, I waited, unsure whether to intervene or let the scene unfold somewhere above us.

The laughter that had bubbled within me froze as I heard the car door open, followed by the mumble of voices which, although unintelligible, carried a strain of confusion, maybe even surprise. Then, came a sound that sent chills running down my spine: the crunch of gravel shifting, followed by something that sounded like a struggle. There was an audible grunt and a sickening thump, followed by a clumping sound. Then I heard Dorian make a sound I will never forget, a sound that should not have come from an adult, certainly not from a friend. I felt a tightening in my stomach and my body went cold as I realized that something had gone very wrong. Then the sounds stopped, leaving a hollow silence in their wake, broken only by an occasional sound of feet shifting on gravel. In that moment I stopped thinking about Dorian and started praying that whoever had attacked our friend wouldn’t start looking over the parapet.

I don’t know how long I waited behind the wall… but after what felt like hours, the car door clanged shut, the sound echoing in this summer night. As the vehicle slipped away with a lazy crawl, I finally tapped Sandro’s shoe and rose from my hiding place, an icy shiver racing down my spine. As if from a great distance, I saw Sandro get up and up and brush the dust from his pants, his eyes wide, his complexion eerily pale in the dark.

“Putain...” he said as he looked up at me.

My mouth dry and my throat tight, I struggled to form words.

“We... we need to get help,” I managed to stammer.

“We can’t leave him...” Sandro said, vaguely pointing at Dorian’s pale shadow sprawled at our feet. I was glad for the darkness that enveloped us, for it veiled the harsh reality of our friend’s lifeless body.

“We don’t have a choice, we can’t carry him,” I said.

Sandro then picked up Dorian’s clothes and, without looking directly at the body, checked his pulse before doing his best to cover his nakedness.

“Okay…” he said as he got up.

Then, without a backward glance, we began our silent descent, too stunned to even think that whoever had killed Dorian might still be around. My legs felt weak, shaking with every step as if rebelling against the weight of my body. I wanted to lean on Sandro, to feel connected to him somehow, but as our feet echoed on the still warm asphalt, I found that I didn’t even have the strength to lift my arms. Then, as we rounded a bend, our gazes locked onto a small beige RV parked precariously at the road’s edge, its lights turned off. Sandro made a sound, like a hiccup, and I felt an icy jet of fear run through me as I realized there hadn’t been an RV on our ascent. Before I could say something, I heard hurried footsteps heading toward us from behind.

I didn’t even have the time to think “putain” or to realize someone had been waiting to ambush us when my instinct kicked in, propelling me over the parapet and sending me plummeting into the dry, prickly undergrowth below.

My landing was a brutal meeting of skin and thorns, my right ankle buckling under the impact as I landed on some loose rocks. As I grappled with the brambles that lashed at my clothes and skin, I caught a glimpse of Sandro’s silhouette tumbling past me with a choked-off grunt.

Merde… I thought in terror, barely aware of the pain.

I looked back and saw, above us, a shadow looking down at us from the parapet. Staring at our assailant, I froze, keeping my breaths shallow and my body rigid to blend into the dark landscape, my heart pounding wildly and echoing in every cell of my body. Then came a throaty chuckle from the road above, followed by the sound of a door snapping shut. It was followed by the purr of the RV which started to trundle down the road again, its lights still turned off. I tried to move, but the brambles had weaved a trap around my pants and hoodie. Some distance away, I noticed Sandro, fighting to free himself.

“Sandro!” I hissed, straining to keep my voice hushed. But he seemed deaf to my calls.

Once he wrestled himself free, he scrambled down the slope, his descent a chaotic mix of tumbles and hurried strides. I gritted my teeth, tearing myself from the thorns as they clawed at my skin, drawing blood and I tried to follow Sandro, calling after him, but I kept falling on my knees.

We were almost back at the road when I noticed the RV creeping out of the darkness of the road. Its unhurried pace was deliberate, as if the driver, anticipating our desperate scramble onto the road, was waiting for us to emerge.

Taking a moment to catch my breath, I found shelter in the shadow of an ancient oak tree, the tempo of my breath matching the frantic pace of my thoughts, in which only one sentence somehow kept popping up, again and again, like singsong. A song my ex-girlfriend had taught me the only time we had gone camping together north of Toronto: “if it’s brown lie down! if it’s black fight back!”.

“Think, think...” I urged myself, memories of countless horror movies playing out like some perverse highlight reel. I knew that whoever was after us was just a human – not a bear, and I needed a weapon to fight back, so I looked around in the dark, finding only a branch that felt somewhat sturdy. It was far from ideal, but still had potential to inflict harm. I then surveyed the residences perched on the slopes below us, but all their lights were off. Further away, the grand villa resting just below my dad’s house had its light on like always, but its high fence and sheer distance made it an unattainable, at least for now. In the hectic blur of this moment, my only certainty was that we needed to reach the village of La Turbie and that, because of the rugged terrain, the main road was our only choice.

That bastard probably knows that… I thought.

My gaze sought out Sandro again. A desperate urge to get closer to him tugged at me again, but the menacing presence of the RV held me in check. I knew that we had to keep hiding and I was ready to wait until morning even if it meant crouching uncomfortably for the next five to six hours. But then, as the RV ascended the road, momentarily out of sight, Sandro burst into a sprint.

“Sandro, no!” I yelled. But it was too late. The RV, which had somehow already turned, was bearing down the road, rapidly closing the distance between them.

I didn’t see what happened to Sandro because as soon as I saw the RV going after him, I threw my stick and ran like the wind, barely conscious I was doing so, not even aware of the pain in my ankle. At that moment, I didn’t feel like I was abandoning my friend. I wasn’t thinking about anything, really. I simply ran, my eyes fixed on the road, my brain on fire, until I climbed over the garden’s gate and found myself, in a daze, on the gravel driveway leading to my dad’s house.

The guilt came later, after the sun came up and they found Sandro’s body on the side of the road, beaten to death, and strangled with barbed wire.

A sharp pain shooting through my twisted ankle, I pulled out my small Nokia phone as I limped toward the house, its familiar weight a faint comfort in my sweaty, shaky palm. I tried calling my dad and then my brother, but each attempt ended in failure, my dad and brother trying, I assumed, to teach me a lesson. As I stared at the useless piece of plastic, feeling an overwhelming fatigue slowly wrapping itself around me. All I longed for was to find a hidden spot and fall asleep.

Think... Think... I thought, flashes of scenarios coursing through my brain as I was fumbling with my keys to open the metal security door. As I entered the house and its familiar scent of coal and mildew, I immediately rifled through the tiny kitchen’s drawers, looking for potential weapons to defend myself, but I uncovered nothing but a cache of worthless items: old batteries, humid box of matches, obsolete leaflets from pizzerias that had closed ages ago, and a graveyard of flies. The bathroom offered no better.

As I hurried back into the living room, I realized that, unlike the front door, the double-sided door was not secure against determined intruders. I muttered a “merde” at my dad for never having it properly secured because it was too costly to upgrade, even after two break-ins. I then rummaged frantically through Sandro and Dorian’s bags, which had been discarded on the living room’s sofa-beds, but found nothing of use, except Dorian’s car keys. As I felt the cold metal against my fingers, my mind sparked a half-formed plan to try driving his Citroën 2cv, but I quickly dismissed the idea. The car was an old relic, and I had never learned to drive. I growled at myself and tried to focus on the present moment.

Ok, réfléchis... I thought as I stood in the middle of the room, trying to calm my breathing.

My eyes fell on the DVD case of Predator, which had been voted out of our selection for the night, and I had brief mental images of Dutch bending huge branches and making traps. The Predator might have been stronger than him, but he had defeated it by using his surroundings... But I had neither the time nor the skills to dig holes, cut trees or sharpen sticks to stop the killer getting into the house. I then thought about home invasion movies, but remembered people often had large knives or guns at their disposal. Then, for some reason, my brain made a random connection: I thought about the Micro Machine races my brother and I used to have around the pool when we were kids, then had an image of the Wet Bandits, Harry and Marv, slipping on the Micro Machines in Home Alone. This is when it hit me:

Home Alone... I must set traps like in Home Alone.

The idea seemed absurd and yet, so fitting. I knew I couldn\'t outrun the murderer and that if I had to face him physically, the odds would not be in my favor. The traps might have been cartoonish in the movies, but it had always occurred to me how lethal they would have been in real life. When you think about it, it’s ironic that, in the end, it’s not a horror movie that saved me, but a family movie.

Through the window, I scanned outside for any unusual movements, each heartbeat echoing in my ears like a war drum. Everything seemed calm, and the eerie silence of the night was punctuated only by the wind rustling leaves. I then opened the front doors and cautiously went to the shed, my senses heightened with fear and anticipation. It was inside that dark, moldy space, amid the old, folded chairs, bags of fertilizer and cobwebbed corners, that I found my makeshift arsenal: hedge clippers, their rusted blades still somewhat threatening, along with a few other tools. As soon as I had dropped everything on the living room’s rug, I rushed to the pool shed, where I grabbed a container of motor oil that I quickly spread around the house, the pool and the stairs leading from the terrace to the front door. I also found some powdered chlorine, which I remembered inhaling once when I was about ten, and thought I could use it as a defensive weapon.

Once I was back inside the house, I considered my options and decided to try to electrify the security door, despite my rudimentary understanding of it all. The killer would have shoes, of course, but what if he touched the door bare-handed? Would it work? In a surge of boldness, I put on thick garden gloves, ripped the cables from the room’s light fixture, baring the wires with trembling hands, then attached them to the metal bars of the security door. I plugged the other end into the wall socket, praying I wouldn’t shock myself in the process.

Finally, preparations done, I retreated into the shadows of the house, straining to hear any sign of the killer as I ran my fingers over the cool handles of the hedge clippers, the chlorine container at my side. I was as ready as I could be and yet I couldn’t help feeling like a helpless mouse, waiting for the cat to appear.

The white light from the streetlamps flickered as if on cue as he emerged from the shadows, a silhouette clutching an axe in one hand, and a bolt cutter in the other.

My jaw was so tense that I thought my teeth might shatter. The killer’s advance was relentless yet relaxed as I watched him come closer. Not a single whisper of noise escaped him as he moved with obvious intent toward the door, his eyes white blurs under his cap, his arms and shoulders twisting and jerking, like a boxer entering the ring.

He had put his right foot on the first step of the stone stairs when his shoe betrayed him, skidding on the slick patch of oil. A startled grunt filled the silence as he tumbled down, his weapons slipping from his grip and clanging against the steps.

“Salope...” he muttered as he rose with a pained grunt, his silhouette taking a more solid shape as he reclaimed his axe. I yearned to say something in return, to show him that I was not afraid, but my throat was so tight that I couldn’t speak. As he got up I noticed how mundane the man who had murdered my friends seemed: in his fifties, tanned, stout, he looked like the type of man you might have seen complaining at game of pétanque on a tranquil Sunday afternoon.

As he started to move toward the house, I braced myself for the sizzle and crackle of the electrified bars, but he chose to head toward the double doors of the house, instead, as if he knew that their only defenses were two metal bars on the inside, leaving the outside exposed.

“Merde...” I murmured, my gaze tracking his progress from one of the barred windows as he walked along the gravel path on the side of the house.

My stomach churned as the sudden rhythmic hacking of the axe against the doors started, slow and methodical at first, until it intensified. I looked around again uselessly and, with nowhere to hide, realized that this killer’s inevitable break-in entry would trap me inside. His silence was only broken when he managed to splinter the door wide enough to leer through.

“Ne t’inquiète pas, j’arrive...” he sneered.

“J’t’emmerde, connard!” I yelled.

A swift handful of chlorine caught him off guard, plastering his face and eyes. “Salope!” he howled in agony, his weapon falling to the ground as he retreated from the breached door.

Seized by a surge of adrenaline, I flung open the remnants of the double doors and, my fingers wrapping around the handle of a rake, charged outside and stopped when I saw that he was at the pool’s edge, frantically trying to wash the burning chemical from his face.

My heart pounded hard as I raised the rake over my head and sprinted toward him, screaming in fear and hate. Just as I was about to strike, he twisted around, face dripping and eyes half-shut in pain, and intercepted me. Propelled by inertia, we plunged into the pool, entangled in a violent, twisted embrace, my sense of orientation lost as I found myself upside down in the dark. All that was tangible in those confused seconds was a hard, struggling body wrestling with mine in a desperate attempt to breach the surface. I lashed out at him, my nails raking his oily, rubber-like face but, as fatigue set in, he managed to keep my hands away from him and hit back, his own blows thankfully slowed down by water. He then reached for my hair but I managed to intercept his hand and bit down hard, my teeth hurting against the texture of his calloused palm.

When my lungs finally screamed for oxygen, I tucked my legs to my chest, planting them firmly against his, and catapulted myself as far away as I could, hitting my head against the pool’s edge. The force of the impact briefly stunned me, but I managed to claw my way out of the pool. Using what little energy I had left, I then lurched forward, my body exhausted, my shoes slipping on the slick oil-slicked floor, but didn’t make it into the house. Faster and nimbler that I expected him to be, the man managed to pull himself out of the pool and grasp my hair as I passed by him. He then yanked me backward abruptly with a satisfied grunt, causing my legs to skid out from beneath me. Luckily, I landed hard on my back, making him trip over me. Carried by his forward momentum he stumbled clumsily forward and tried to grip the front door’s metal bars to steady himself, making a guttural, animal-like sound as the current suddenly surged into him.

Stunned by the pain in my back and head, I got up slowly and watched as his body convulsed violently in a grotesque caricature of pain. Yet, as the electricity suddenly subsided, he remained kneeling, panting heavily but still conscious. Then, with my heart pounding and my head hurting, I saw myself snatch the largest flowerpot within reach and, summoning the last dregs of my strength, slammed it down on his skull with all the force I could muster. He made another guttural grunt, followed by an abrupt, wheezing exhale. His body shuddered once, then slumped, a motionless, shadowed heap in the moonlight.

I looked at him for a while, unable to see if he was breathing or not and not wanting to go near to find out. As the rush of adrenaline slowly evaporated, I started to feel the desire to collapse and to surrender completely to my exhaustion. Yet, I was wary. Even though the killer was down, years of watching horror movies had taught me better than to trust the stillness of a seemingly dead killer. So, I moved mechanically toward the axe he had dropped near the pool and came back to him. As I stood over him, the axe at the ready, I noticed that he had lost his hat and that his ear, meaty and ordinary, was flecked with gray hairs - just regular, human hair. I started to hesitate and was about to let go of the axe when I had a sudden, nauseating mental image of Dorian’s crumpled, bloodied body and of Sandro running as the RV was rushing down the road after him.

“Fuck you...” I said in English as I raised the axe high and brought it down on the man. Once, twice, thrice. Each impact met with a disturbing resistance, as if his body was tougher than any human had the right to be. Finally, the adrenaline having finally run its course and leaving me shaky and hollow, I let the axe slip from my hands and let my body crumple onto the ground, convulsing with sobs. I cried for the terror I felt rushing back through me, but also for the loss of my friends and for the normalcy that, I realized, had been ripped away from me.

I walked to the village in a daze, my mind zoning in and out of conscious thoughts. I didn’t even realize I had made it to the gendarmerie until I found myself in front of a mustachioed man who had been reading a newspaper when I suddenly appeared in front of him. And, just like that, I was saved… or rather, I had saved myself. I told the gendarme on duty what had happened in a droning, empty voice as he took notes, sometimes adding a “vous êtes certaine? Oh là là...” A couple of people came by some time later, including a local doctor. My dad only came much later, but not my brother.

I kept to the truth, mostly. I explained that all I did was run, hide, escape until I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t explain how Dorian had been drunk and naked and that it may have triggered the guy. I owed it to him, I think.

Then, well, life continued with no satisfying ending for a whole, with no fade to black and a cool upbeat music and I realized I had to continue living with images and feelings from that night violently coming back to me at all moments of the day and night. Since I wasn’t allowed to return to Canada just yet, I reluctantly moved in with my dad for an indeterminate amount of time. Our strained relationship turned into a paradox of awkward distance and unexpected care, like when he started recording reality TV shows to watch with me. His demeanor toward me had also somewhat softened, as if my recent ordeal had redeemed me in his eyes… but I didn’t know what to do with it. For some obscure reason, my brother remained distant and angry. During this time, I also took driving lessons and successfully obtained my license, often finding myself wondering if having it sooner would have made any difference.

I tried to find out more about what had happened, of course, but nobody quite knew. The man who had killed my friends was, by all accounts, not a serial killer, nor was he considered a monster by those who knew him. There was no clear link between him and us either, except that he had been part of a team of gardeners my dad had hired the previous year to cut some of the property’s trees. The only peculiar detail about him was that about six months before he attacked us, his wife and him had been brutally assaulted by a group of three people, two men and a woman, and that his wife had not survived. The police theorized that, in his disturbed mental state, he might have confused us for those who had attacked him. I was not given the specifics, but I pictured walls plastered with frenzied drawings and newspaper clippings, like a scene straight out of a thriller movie.

In the end, it took me almost a year to get over that night... but like a final girl, I eventually did. I might have been bruised, battered, and forever scarred but, as cliché as it sounds, I discovered within me a strength I never knew I possessed. But that sense of newfound resilience was put to the ultimate test about two months later when I saw him, my friends’ killer, walking the streets of Menton.

Please understand that this wasn’t a case of catching a fleeting glimpse of someone who resembled him from the corner of my eye. No. It was him, unmistakably him, walking freely, alive and well. I didn’t know how it could be possible, but it was. Had the police lied to me when I had been told he had died? If so, why was he not in jail? I had been told that he had been buried discreetly by his family, but maybe he hadn’t been… after all, I hadn’t seen his body again after I left the house that night.

As I stood there, paralyzed by fear as he passed by me and walked down the busy street, my brain went in overdrive. I started to wonder if someone can survive repeated axe blows… and I remembered how his body had felt hard, almost like cartilage, when I had used the axe against him and started to wonder if he had been wearing some kind of armor. More importantly, I hadn’t decapitated him so it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that he could have survived… and in a classic horror movie mistake, I realized that hadn’t checked to confirm he was truly dead before fleeing the scene. All I knew, with a certainty that gripped my very core, was that it was him. So, I trailed him at a safe distance as he moved through streets lined with blossoming orange trees, living his life in peace.

I eventually found out where he lived and day after day, meticulously documented every detail of his routine. I scribbled down everything, from the mundane things he bought at the local market (carrots, leeks, chicken, and saucisson) to his more unsettling purchases: a small axe, a rake and rolls of large garbage bags. As I watched him work in his garden two days later, I didn’t buy into his act of gardening and raking his leaves because it was all too convenient. In my mind, there was no doubt that those bags were meant for something far more sinister than mere garden waste and that there was something darker lurking beneath the veneer of his ordinary life. I even felt like he was taunting me, especially when he nonchalantly added cleaning products for pools, including chlorine, to his shopping basket the very next day… even though he didn’t have a pool.

Days turned into weeks of following him, gathering proof, and it all led me to tonight, sitting in my dad’s car. Shrouded in darkness, I am observing, waiting while he’s having a party, of all things. I see lights flicker and hear laughter spill out from his house and I imagine him surrounded by people who see him as a friend. This thought makes me feel anger, violent anger toward him because while he basks in the warmth of his seemingly normal life, I am out here, still living in the shadow of what he has done to me and my friends. But I also find a strange peace in knowing that this won’t last… At some point in the night, the laughter will die down, the lights will go out, and he will be alone inside his house.

And as I sit here, with my heart racing in a mix of fear and anticipation, I feel myself smile as I imagine the look on his face when he sees me, the final girl, breaking through his door.

Once this is all over, once I’ve finished what he started more than a year ago, I’ll allow myself to relax and watch the last two episodes of ‘Love is in the Field’ that my dad recorded for me. I’ve been saving them for a special occasion… and this night will be just that.

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