“I need to talk to you,” I hissed into my best friend’s ear as I came up behind him in the busy school hallway. Stu was lolled against my locker, showing a small group of people who all crowded around him something which was tucked away in his own locker – probably a porno magazine or dirty video knowing him. He turned around to face me with a grin, that inane smile which made him look like a lunatic more than anything, before feigning a pout as he closed the small metal door and spoke.
“Aw, Billy, you’re…you’re not breaking up with me, are you?” He gasped, unable to wipe that stupid look off his face as the group of people around us laughed. None of them seemed to notice I was not in the mood for jokes this morning, especially not Stu, who was always making light of every situation. This was not one I was going to let him goof over though.
“Fuck you, are you gonna listen or what?!” came my seething reply.
Before I noticed she was there, my girlfriend, Sidney, latched onto my arm and stroked my shoulder. I tensed up and felt my stomach twist and coil; it was nearly painful registering she existed today with what I now knew. Of course, she wasn’t to know, she wasn’t even to blame, but it didn’t make it hurt any less.
“Billy, what’s wrong?” Sidney asked softly.
Unable to even look at her, I shook free her off and gripped Stu’s arm tightly, dragging him away from the gaggle before I lost my temper and shot every last one of them in the temple with a number two pencil. The laughs stopped, only to be replaced by muttering and probably a snide remark or two. I don’t even fucking care.
I ignored Stu’s questions and continued pulling him through the halls until we were outside and I could maneuver him into my car.
“Are we skipping?” He asked excitedly, settling in the passenger seat and turning to me as I gripped the steering wheel tightly. Squeezing the life out of something – even if it wasn’t alive – made me feel better.
“No. Just fucking shut up and listen, will you!?”
“Billy, what the hell is wrong? You’re being psycho, man.”
“Psycho isn’t even a start,” I mused, staring out of the windshield onto the street as the last few dozen students hastened towards the school before the bell rang and classes began. “Why didn’t you answer your phone last night?”
“I was at Casey’s,” he shrugged, trying to lighten my irritable mood. “What’s the big deal?”
I took a deep breath and relived the previous evening to him.
-
After school that night, I’d gone home with Sid. I much preferred spending time with her than with my dad who was still spending every minute of the day bitching about my mom. They had recently separated and he was bitter, I was as well, but at least I shut up about it once in a while. Separated is a loose term, it was more of a case of my mom leaving in the middle of the night without so much as a fucking goodbye and calling up the next weekend to ask how I was. Fine, great, dandy; even. Bitch.
Sid and I were making out in her room, slowly removing each other’s clothes and making her bed creak when her dadaccidentally walked in. Rather than putting up with his dark looks, I tried to explain that we were seventeen and had been dating for a year – there was nothing wrong with what we were doing. He didn’t take kindly to this and forcefully reminded me it was against the law and told me to leave. Sid apologised and tried to calm her father down, but I decided to leave before it got any worse. I trudged down to my car and angrily kicked the tire before unlocking the door. I barely had it open when a man approached me out of nowhere and asked if I was Billy Loomis.
I looked him up and down, though he didn’t seem like much, I couldn’t be sure if he was an undercover cop or something. Maybe Sid’s dad had called the police on me. All for kissing his daughter? Paranoia, but I had to be sure. I denied my identity and tried to get into my car before it went any further, but he stopped me.
“Look, I know you are. I’ve got something to tell you,” The man said. He had some sick, desperate look on his face, which told me maybe I was just being paranoid.
The guy was some twenty something loser, he actually reminded me of my friend Randy; only more pathetic. He was just some overgrown geek; glasses, backpack, adult acne, someone who couldn’t possibly have anything to tell me unless it was about my flies being undone. Unlikely, given my fatigued sex life. I was about to tell him where to shove it when he caught my attention.
“Don’t you want to know why your mom left?” He said with a confident smile to his words.
Turning to him, clutching my key so the grooves dug into my palm. “What the fuck are you talking about?” Worse came to worse, I could always punch him with it, leave a nice hole in his face and speed off.
The man refused to tell me while we were parked outside my girlfriend’s house, saying it wasn’t private enough and as much as I wanted to leave him stood on the sidewalk; I knew he must have some sort of information. I let him in my car, but told him if he tried anything funny I’d kick him out while on the highway, but he seemed honest enough. He introduced himself as Roman Bridger and told me he was an old friend of Sidney’s mom’s who had something he needed help with.
“How do I know you’re not just some pervert who’s gonna try and rape me as soon as I stop the car?” I asked cynically, keeping the corner of my eye on him at all times as I drove towards town.
“I’m not. Look, drive right outside the police station. We can stop there and I’ll tell you. I’m not gonna do anything there, am I?”
He had a point. I did as he said and we were pretty much silent until I pulled up outside Woodsboro’s sorry excuse for a police station and parked up, hoping he’d now cut the bullshit and tell me what was going on. Part of me now wishes I could just go back to that moment, tell him to get out and not have to worry about what he told me.
Roman did know Sid’s mom, Maureen, though not in a friendly sort of way he first explained. He reached into his backpack, pulled out a video camera and a tape then handed them both to me and told me to play it. Again, this is the sort of moment where I wish I’d given up and told him to leave, but curiosity got the better of me and I slotted the tape into place and pressed play. On the small screen which twisted out of the side of the camera, a shaky movie started to play. A man and woman writhed together on the floor, moaning, shaking, fucking. The camera zoomed in on the figures faces and the focus adjusted to show Sidney’s mom on the bottom. I blinked quickly, unable to tell if this was some sort of joke or if I really was seeing footage of her being rode like a show horse.
I was about to question Roman, only my words were cut off once the man in the video tipped his head back and swore. I was faced with the digital face of my father, plain as day, calling out as he thrusted into my girlfriend’s mother.
I slammed the screen shut and hurled the camera into this stranger’s lap, unable to believe what I’d just seen.
“No. No! Get the fuck out of my car,” I snapped, staring at Roman like he’d just appeared in my passenger seat out of nowhere.
“Billy—”
“I SAID GET OUT!” I screamed, leaning over him to open the door. He grabbed my shoulders and held me up so I was looking him straight in the face.
“I’m sorry, but you deserved to know. She’s a slut, Billy, a slut and she broke up your family.”
The words sunk in slowly through my numbed skin, how did this even happen? Why did my dad cheat in the first place? A thousand questions buzzed through my mind as I pulled away and rested my forehead on the steering wheel.
“It’s not just him, she’s with other guys. I have proof. She’s used half this damn town, I’ll bet, and you can stop her.”
“What?” I asked dryly, not looking up.
“Stop her. Revenge, Billy, don’t you want that?”
“I…I don’t know,” I sighed. “How do I know you didn’t…fix that? Why’d you fucking film it?!”
“I make music videos, my—Maureen used to be a client and she fucked up,” Roman explained. “I came to see her when she was with another guy called Cotton Weary. She refused to…pay me back, so I decided to blackmail her. Maybe get evidence and use it so she’d play along rather than hurt her family. It’s got way past that though, once I saw her with your father and heard your mom left when she found out, I thought it wasn’t fair on you. You’re the one who deserves pay back.”
I’d been angry before, but the rage that simmered through my veins and under my skin was unbearable. I lashed out suddenly, hitting the window with the full force of my forearm, causing a surface crack to spread along the glass.
“WHY?!” I blared. “Just…why?!”
“Billy, listen to me,” Roman said soothingly, placing his hand on my shoulder. I recoiled slightly, but he didn’t move it. “Use this anger, use it. You can get your own back. On her. On him. Just get rid of her.”
His instance was unnerving, why did he want me to get revenge so badly? All because of some music video? Sid’s mom had never been in a music video I’d seen, and it couldn’t have been that long ago, Roman could only a few years older than me.
“What does it matter to you?” I sneered, sitting up finally and flicking my hair from my face.
Roman sighed and rubbed his jaw before answering. He seemed conflicted, his eyes darting around the car and finally settling on me.
“Look, I lied, ok? Maureen is…my mom,” He said gravely, looking into his lap. “She gave me up for adoption, and I spent years looking for her. When I found her a few weeks ago, she said she didn’t want anything to do with me. Said she already had a family, and I wasn’t part of that.”
My eyes widened at his words, he had to be playing the fucking run around, this doesn’t happen. Not in Woodsboro.
“You’re shittin’ me, Roman. Get out, I can’t…this is my girlfriend’s mom.”
“Watch the fucking video, Billy! I wouldn’t make this up. Come on, she made your mother abandon you, just like she did to me. Don’t pussy around, fucking assert yourself.”
He had a point. I didn’t like it, but it was true. She did have something coming to her, the fact she’d fucked men over and ruined their lives up until now with no retribution was…unjust. Wrong. Fucked up.
-
“No way, you’re makin’ this up,” Stu said, shaking his head back and forth like a broken circus prop. He’d been pretty much silent as I gave him the details of mine and Roman’s meeting last night, but now he was gonna give me some unneeded feedback. “This is SIDNEY’S mom!”
With my hands still strangling the steering wheel, I faced him, meeting his eyes to get my meaning across as seriously as possible. “Yes, Stu, Sid’s mom. Sid’s fucking…whore of a mom.”
He was having none of it, he turned away and fidgeted, stretching out his gangly legs in my shitty little car; sat right where Roman was as he made me watch that damn video.
“No, man, this woman’s given me milk and cookies, I can’t—”
“Yeah!” I bellowed, interrupting him, flipping around in my seat to face him and leaning in close to his face “and she gave milk and cookies to every guy with a dick, and it made my mom leave.”
For once in his life, Stu was speechless. He knew I had the better of him, he knew there was no fighting me on this and it was simply a matter of being my best friend now; he had to play along. A long silence followed my remark, one where Stu continued to process all I’d told him, I could see the cogs in his tiny mind whirring with the effort.
“So…what are you gonna do?” He muttered, pulling on the sleeve of his jumper nervously. Stu wasn’t used to such intense situations, if he couldn’t make a joke out of it, he was lost.
“We are gonna kill her.”