Final Room

01 | laurie strode

CHAPTER ONE | LAURIE STRODE

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          I'm covered in blood when I wake up. It's not mine.

          I sit up with a start before reminding myself I need to stay quiet, stay hidden, and pretend to be invisible as much as it's humanly possible. I have been playing dead since I was a child, a morbid talent that has always amazed my brother Xavier and terrified my parents, and it has proven to be quite useful. I can hold my breath for over two minutes and, even when I'm breathing as shallowly as I can, I manage not to move my chest too much.

          Only, the dead don't have teeth that chatter in horror and dread. They don't have heartbeats that can be heard a mile away, reverberating off the walls. They can't sob. They don't have to fight the urge to yell for help or for mercy—yell, plead, beg. They can only be dead.

          I'm alive. That much I'm certain of.

          I'm also hidden, tucked inside a storage closet with a broom threatening to fall on top of me, and it's not blood oozing down my neck. I'm overcome with cold sweats even though it's June and summer in Illinois, but the thick mess smeared down my temple, pooling under my jaw, is a gaping wound from when my head was slammed against a doorknob.

          I know I can't allow myself to breathe too loud and I even cover my mouth with my hand, trying my hardest to keep all sounds to a minimum, but I can hear footsteps echoing in the distance and there are only two living people in the entire campsite. One of them is sitting hunched inside a closet. The other has slayed all my friends and my boyfriend in cold blood.

          I'm next.

          When the floorboards outside creak, my throat expels the most pathetic whimper it possibly could, and, in the sepulchral silence of the cabin, it's more than enough to alert him to my presence. I press my back against the wall, wishing I could be smaller, wishing there were a way out of this, wishing there were a way to rewind, but, in this world, no one cares about my wishes.

          He slams the door open, no longer wanting to play cat and mouse with me, no longer taunting me about the destruction he's left behind. He saves me for last, yanking me out of the closet and tossing me aside like I weigh nothing, but I'm assuming that's all I am to him—that's what all of them were, mere sacks of meat and bones, but those were my friends. Those had been his friends once, too.

          In this world, that doesn't matter.

          This time, I don't escape. This time, the machete doesn't hit the wooden door, right where my head used to be, after I dodge it in time. This time, I'm hit.

          This time, the blood is mine.

          When I jump awake, I'm drenched in sweat, soaked like I've just gotten out of the shower. My throat is raw from screaming myself awake every single night and I doubt my voice will ever go back to how it used to be; it's lower, raspier, like I can't afford to take up too much space. Being quiet has helped me survive before, and it will keep helping me going forward.

          I'm good at surviving. It's all I'm good at these days—it's what I'm praised for, too, like this is some sort of exclusive, fancy club I've somehow weaseled my way into.

          The media just went with it; they didn't turn it into a high-profile case like O.J. or Ted Bundy, but people like to have something to talk about and it helps that my dad is a high-ranking detective. How could such a terrible thing happen inside his jurisdiction? To his own daughter, even?