Good Girls Don’t Die – Part Three
Good Girls Don’t Die – Part 3
We didn’t have to wait long for our quarry to arrive back at the hunting cabin. It was only a day after we arrived when Laura spotted headlights moving through the winding gravel path that lead back to the main road.
Part of me knew that we would not be kept waiting long. If his collection of trophies told me anything, it was that our killer needed to satisfy some sick power fantasy he’d concocted in his twisted little mind. It also told me that he was no longer satisfied with taking only the scalps of his victims. There was only one head mounted in the tiny back closet, which could not have been more than a couple of weeks old. Our aspiring young Ed Gein would need fresh supplies to bolster his collection.
In the meantime, we’d each taken turns washing ourselves down with soap and a cloth. It didn’t make us look any less like corpses – the dirt camouflaged the worst of the decay – but at least we felt a little bit more human.
All three of us opted not to wear any of the spare clothes lying around. Laura wrinkled her nose at the thought of wearing a man’s week-old laundry, but I think she was just as put off by the owner of said clothes as the rest of us. Better to be naked than to smell like the man who’d put us in our graves.
Besides, what was the point of trying to look presentable? The thought of seeing the fear in his eyes when he finally laid eyes on his handiwork was too good of an opportunity to pass up.
I flicked the lights of the cabin off as soon as we saw the lights. I hoped that the driver of the truck hadn’t noticed the lit windows of his private cabin through the stand of trees. I suppose it didn’t matter much if he suspected someone was waiting for him or not. What was he going to do, kill us? Again? I got the sneaking suspicion that even if he shot us, it wouldn’t make much difference. I had one bullet hole in me already, and I seemed to be doing just fine.
Heather picked up a hunting knife and a crossbow up off the table and handed them to us; compliments of our murderer’s gun cabinet. Laura took the hunting knife, and I took the cross bow, which felt heavy and unwieldy in my hands. We figured at least one of us should get the honor of shooting him, and I won two out of three rounds of rock-paper-scissors.
I wasn’t at all sure if I could hit a moving target with the unfamiliar weapon, it had taken me nearly thirty minutes just to figure out how to load the damn thing, but I was still better off with the crossbow than one of the guns. We test fired a few of the guns shortly after arriving, which is a lot more difficult than it sounds when we did not have an instructor. A firearm seemed appealing right up until I realized that big guns have kickback, which makes aiming difficult, especially for a beginner. The crossbow was much lighter in comparison, and did not have nearly as much recoil, so that became our weapon of choice.
Laura and I took our weapons, and hid in the cabin’s closet sized bathroom. We left the door open about an inch, just enough to see the main living area, but not wide enough to be spotted in such poor light.
Heather remained seated at the table. She could hardly move around on her own, so after much gesturing, and a rousing game of charades, it was decided that she would act as the welcoming committee.
She slumped in the chair, letting her features go slack, and her head lean forward until her chin rested on her chest. Her right arm lay draped across her lap, while the other arm hung limply at her side. We left a single lamp lit in the corner, for added dramatic effect.
It’s just a corpse, officer, nothing suspicious here.
The interior of the cabin lit up as the headlights of the truck settled to a stop by the front windows. Even through the walls of the cabin, I could hear the roar of the engine, and the abrupt silence that followed when the headlights winked out.
I wish I could have seen his face; the terror and the confusion when he noticed the single lamp shining like a beacon in the night. It was a clear indicator that someone had invaded his little sanctuary.
Had they seen the bloodstains on the table? Did they poke around inside his precious trophy room?
My jitters turned to eager anticipation at the thought of his moment of panic. I grinned as I ran my finger along the smooth varnished wood stalk of my weapon. This was going to be like a scene straight out of a B horror flick, and it was going to be glorious.
Laura and I pressed closer to the bathroom door when we heard the front door open. Heavy hiking boots shuffled across the dusty wooden floor, followed by the sounds of a struggle, and a mewling whimper.
“Shut up, you just shut up!” hissed the voice from my nightmares. Memories of the hours before my death flooded back so fresh, and so vivid, that I could smell his damp rancid breath.
My eyes found Laura’s, and we shared a moment of silent understanding. Not only had he come back to the cabin, but he brought another victim along for the ride.
“Oh, hell no,” I mouthed to Laura.
That was when he finally noticed Heather sitting at the table. I swear that I have never heard a man howl like that before in my life. It wasn’t fear, not entirely. The sound also carried subtle undertones of confusion and anger. It was the same sound a fox trapped in a snare might make as it comes to the decision to chew off its own paw.
“Who did this?” he demanded. “Show yourself!”
“Well, if you insist,” Laura hissed, readying her wickedly sharp hunting knife. “Shall we then?”
“Showtime,” I agreed with a satisfied nod.
The next few minutes played out like a scene from a horror movie. Laura opened the door with sweet agonizing slowness; taking great care to make the hinges creak as loudly as possible. There we were, two naked cadavers, standing before the man who hunted and killed us for the simple pleasure of the hunt. His handiwork stood before him, pale skinned and bare skulled, like angels of death.
“No, no, no, no,” came his panicked chant. He whispered so soft that I barely heard, “This can’t be happening.”
Heather raised her chin to stare the man dead in the eye. Moving with more grace than I would have thought possible, she placed a hand on the edge of the heavy butcher’s table and rose to her feet.
He stepped back a step, nearly tripping over the young girl cowering on the floor behind him. She shivered on the floor, eyes full of tears and smeared with running mascara. She could barely make more than a muffle scream through the dirty rag stuck in her mouth as a gag.
Our killer seemed to be torn between raising his hunting rifle, and groping for the door handle to escape. His eyes were wide and wild; a mighty wolf suddenly reduced to a scared little doe.
I find it strange that, in the moment, I didn’t feel afraid of him – not one bit. Was this really the man from those awful memories that kept looping through my head? He wasn’t nearly as tall as I remembered, and he had the build of a string bean. He was young too, come to think of it. The facial hair he managed to grow was thin and patchy; a far cry from the beard I remembered.
Watching his hands shake, and sweat break out across his brow, I almost wanted to laugh. He made some big talk about survival, but he crumpled like tinfoil when faced with the consequences of his actions.
“Stay the hell away from me,” he spat, fumbling to pull his gun up to a readied position. “You all just stay the hell away, or I’ll shoot.”
“Been there,” sniffed Laura.
“Done that,” I finished. “It’s our turn now.”
To his credit, he made good on his promise. He did shoot, though he missed spectacularly. In his haste, he failed to brace the gun stalk against his shoulder. Turns out, a hunting rifle is a long-ranged weapon, which is shit at close range when things you are trying to shoot are bearing down on you. Go figure. The recoil sent the shot wild and missed all three targets by a wide margin. The wasted bullet hit a wall somewhere behind me with a dull thunk.
I pulled the trigger on my crossbow, releasing the arrow with a satisfying twang. I hit my target, though not where I was aiming. I was trying to go for the center of the chest, but he moved, and the arrow caught him in the abdomen instead. The fletched end of the arrow stuck out of the lower right half of his stomach like a pin in a cushion. Within seconds, a deep maroon halo spread outward from the wound, soaking the olive-green cotton shirt and turning it black.
Far from a perfect shot, but I guess almost counts in crossbows as well as in horseshoes.
He staggered for a moment, seeming like he might still try to run, but the strength drained from his body along with the blood soaking his clothes. I could pinpoint the exact moment when his knees turned to Jell-O. His body seemed to float for a few seconds- waiting for gravity to take its natural course – before slumping to the floor.
Laura gave me a sideways glance and shrugged, “Works for me.”
Heather gestured one blackened finger towards the girl shivering on the floor.
“Oh, right, shit I’m sorry,” Laura scurried forward with the knife in hand, ready to help.
The girl’s eyes flew open wider – if that was even possible – as she began to scream through her gag. Tears streamed freely down her face, causing her makeup to run down her cheeks in fresh thick grey and black streaks. Her long red hair – a snarled mess from the stress of her ordeal – clung to the damp tear tracks on her face.
Her wrists and ankles were bound, so she the best she could do was squirm on the floor. She pushed with her feet until her back was up against the wall, and she had nowhere else to go.
I suppose running up to a person with a knife while looking like a zombie was bound to have that result. In the spur of the moment, it was easy to forget our freakish appearance.
Laura disregarded – or ignored – the girl’s obvious fear. She didn’t pause or slow down as she yanked the dirty rag from the girl’s mouth.
The young woman let out a short scream, then descended into jabbering hysterical tears, “Please don’t eat me. I don’t want to die. Oh please, don’t kill me.”
I wrinkled my nose. Despite technically being a zombie, I felt zero desire to feast on the flesh of the living. In fact, the thought of taking a bite out of a human brain set my stomach roiling. I am not a particularly squeamish person, but I was never a fan of those mainstream zombie shows, too much senseless gore for my taste.
“We’re not here for you,” I explained as I kicked the hunting rifle away from our murderer’s outstretched hand. The gun skittered across the wooden floor, and settled well out of reach against the far wall. “In fact, one could argue that today is your lucky day. You don’t get to end up scalped and buried in a shallow grave. Congratulations.”
Laura stepped forward, and in one smooth motion, she scored the duct tape on the girl’s wrists, “What’s your name?”
“C-Catherine,” she answered, still shivering with fright.
“Well, Catherine, you just stay put for a minute while we take care of this creep,” Laura thumbed over her shoulder at the man still trying desperately to pull himself toward his gun.
Once upon a time, I think I would have argued for calling the police. I would have said that only the justice system could judge him, and punish him for his crimes. That was before I was on the receiving end of his depravity so needless to say, my perspective had shifted.
We didn’t give a second thought as we went to the grim task of dispensing our vengeance upon a man whose name I never did bother to learn. We knew he was guilty, and that was enough to strip him of his status as a human being. He was a rabid dog. Thinking of him in that way made it easy to end his life, but not before we got even.
It was Laura’s idea to use the razor-sharp knife to cut an incision line across his forehead from ear to ear. He screamed, and tried to run, but I grabbed hold of the crossbow bolt and gave it a good twist. I could feel resistance as the barbed metal tip grated its way through his intestines. A fresh gout of blood erupted from the wound, and his body went ridged from shock and pain.
In the end, I was the one who got the honors of taking a fistful of greasy dirty blonde hair and pulling it free of his head – one of the perks of being the de facto leader of the group. The clean cuts created by the knife pulled apart starting at the middle of his forehead, and then moved outwards like a zipper. He screamed and screamed until his voice gave out, leaving his mouth to gape in a silent tableau of pain. Blood trickled down from the cut, though it seemed like a small amount when compared to the wound to his stomach.
As we all know, the human body can only take so much punishment before going into shock. I count myself lucky that I’d been either dead or unconscious when my murderer took his prize. He, on the other hand, was not so fortunate. He clung to consciousness for a while as I slowly peeled the scalp away from his skull. I was nearly done my work when his eyes rolled back into his head and his body went limp.
He dropped to the floor, arms playing out like a ragdoll, the top of his scalp attached by only a sliver of skin at the nape of the neck.
When it was done, the three of us stood over the body and watched as each intake of breath grew ever shallower. Each rise of his chest weakened and slowed, like a motor running out of gasoline. Eventually, we couldn’t tell if he was breathing at all, and none of us were willing to get close enough to check for a pulse.
Heather nudged me with her elbow. She nodded toward the crossbow, and then toward the body. When I did not understand her meaning, she made a mock gun with her thumb and forefinger, and then pointed it at her bone white temple.
“Oh,” I mumbled as I nodded in understanding.
“What?” asked Laura.
“She is saying that we should shoot him in the head,” I held up the crossbow to demonstrate the point, “so he doesn’t wake up.”
Laura snorted, “Shoot him in the head? What is this, The Walking Dead?”
I shrugged, eyeing the body suspiciously, “We woke up, didn’t we? It couldn’t hurt to be certain.”
Laura rolled her eyes, “If it makes you feel better, go for it.”
I didn’t hold a grudge against Laura for her dismissive tone. After all, she didn’t see the head in the closet. If this strange phenomenon could happen to us, what could keep it from happening to him? While the thought of that scumbag waking up dead seemed like a fitting punishment, I also did not want to deal with him a second time. He didn’t deserve a second chance. I was going to make sure he stayed dead, and that would be the end of it.
At close range, the bolt had enough power behind it to pierce through both layers of skull, and lodge itself into the floor below. The entry wound on his forehead was just above the scalping line, which revealed a deep crack created by the impact of the bolt’s metal tip.
“Feel better?” asked Laura as she gave Heather and me a pointed look.
Grinning, I kicked the corpse, “No, now I feel better.”
*
And this, dear friends, is where we come to the epilogue of this revenge story. What became of the three dead women who woke up in the woods that night? What happened to the frightened girl who nearly became yet another victim? We couldn’t stay in that cabin which was filled with nothing but misery and blood. It was time to bite the bullet – so to speak – and venture out into an unsure future in the outside world.
Once the initial waves of hysteria passed, Catherine agreed to drive with us into town. We figured the best way not to get shot on sight was to bring someone who looked relatively normal with us. Besides, she owed us one for saving her life.
We fashioned makeshift clothes out of bedsheets, and left the house looking like we were on our way to a Halloween themed toga party.
I told the others to wait in the car while I took care of one last thing. While the girls piled into the truck, I went back into the closet with a loaded crossbow in hand. I did not have the time to stay and search for the graves of the girls yet unaccounted for, but at least I could put one poor soul out of her misery.
She was right where I left her. Eyes blinking blindly over glass orbs, whose unnatural gloss made her, appear to be on the brink of tears. Who knows, maybe really she was crying. I try not to think too hard about the possibility.
I tried my best to look hopeful when I returned to the car, but killing two people in one day can really bring down a person’s mood.
Laura waited patiently in the driver’s seat with the engine idling. Catherine was huddled in the passenger’s seat, lost deep in her own thoughts, and eyes fixed straight ahead. Heather sat in the back with the window rolled down all the way. I knew it was not for personal comfort, but for the benefit of the other passengers in the car. Even after a thorough washing, a corpse still smelled like a corpse.
I climbed in the back seat next to Heather, too distracted to care about the smell, and adopted the same vacant expression as Catherine.
“How about a little music for the road?” Laura chirped as she reached for the dial on the dash.
A local news station buzzed through the old truck speakers, occasionally drowned out by white noise. It was a wonder there was any cell or radio signal out in those woods at all.
“…authorities have issued a statement that everyone should remain in their homes and lock their doors,” said the disk jockey. “They haven’t said why, of course, but we all damn well know what is going on. When there is no more room in hell, the dead shall walk the Earth. This is the end of the world everyone, so if you believe in a god … I would start praying.”
The car sat in stunned silence as the DJ continued to report the news as the story developed. Much of his information was coming from unofficial sources, and eye witnesses. If I didn’t know firsthand, I would have thought that he was a raving lunatic.
Laura’s one good eye found my gaze in the rear-view mirror.
“Let’s go,” I murmured. “If hell is out of room, I suppose any old place will do.”
My bare skull tapped against the window as I leaned my forehead on the glass. I paid the sound little mind as I watched the trees fly past.
Every now and then, Laura would absently seek through the available radio stations. The local radio stations I recognized were no longer playing music, and instead reporting on the developing situation. The world, it seemed, was in a state of utter panic as the dead began to shamble out of their graves. People joked about the zombie apocalypse all the time, but I don’t think this was how anyone imagined the end of the world.
My name is Jenna, I am a dead woman, and this is my afterlife.
Author’s Story Note:
Look everyone, I have finally managed to complete this story, which ended up being three times longer than originally intended! I ended up enjoying writing this story much more than I ever anticipated. I enjoyed creating my trio of dead women, and journeying with them on their quest for revenge.
I left the ending open, with my girls driving into an uncertain – and possibly post-apocalyptic – world. I still feel like there are so many places their story could go, and I might explore those adventures in later projects, but for now we will leave it here.
I hope you all enjoyed this three-part short story series. Don’t forget to check out my other creations here at Twisted Tales Studio, and check out my Youtube channel if you are a horror fan, who also happens to enjoy gaming and comics.
Cheers!