[Pride 2021 Short Story] A Night of 1,000 Slays: A Queer Slasher Short Story

All my friends were dead. Somewhere in a sea of Halloween party goers who descended on the town of Athens for the weekend, they were bleeding out in the streets. 

Nobody cared.  

You’re so committed to your costume. It’s impressive! Some drunk sorority girl shouted as I cried running past her to the next person who was too high to know what day of the week it was. 

The cloaked person stalking my friends and I remained a mystery, as did the reason for our calculated deaths. Nobody else around us was dropping dead. It was just us. 

As I stumbled through the front door of a bar on Main Street, blood covering my hands, my clothes, and my face, the bouncer looked at me with suspicious eyes. 

“ID?” She said. 

An hour ago, I would have argued with her, but now, I was focused on getting inside, somewhere safe. I pulled out my wallet, the one thing I hadn’t lost tonight, and handed her my driver’s license. She stared at it and back at me. Her eyebrow shifted, and she handed it back. 

“Nice costume.” 

I pushed past her and into the crowd. My eyes scanned the room for anyone who might know the difference between corn syrup and actual blood. Quickly, I resigned myself to an uncomfortable truth. It was a straight bar. Women in sexy Halloween costumes paraded around me, with the men looking like they chose whatever happened to be on their floor and threw it on to be a jock/frat guy/douchebag stereotype. 

This was hell. 

Yes, there was a killer chasing me down, after brutally murdering my friends, but to die in a straight bar on Halloween was unconscionable. 

“Fuck.” I said to nobody in particular. 

A smoke machine pumped out fog across the bar, giving it a manufactured eerie vibe that fooled nobody but didn’t seem to matter. Cheap Halloween decorations hung from the walls. The music matched nothing around me. Top 40 remixes were blasting through the speakers. The bass rumbled my chest. 

I looked around, and I saw him, a notably queer boy working behind the bar. His Freddy Krueger inspired crop top, booty shorts, and careful attention to cosmetics told me I’d found my ally. 

I pushed through the crowd, stumbled to the bar and locked eyes with the bartender, who gave me a quick once over. He finished pouring a beer and glided over to where I stood. 

“Love the look,” he said motioning with his pointer finger up and down at my entire body. “It’s very Final Girl chic.” 

“Yeah, not a costume. Real blood. Friends are all dead. Someone is trying to kill me. I need help.” 

He laughed, “Commitment. I love it.” 

“It’s not. I mean, I’m not. Jesus fucking Christ, do I look like I’m joking?” 

“Oh my god, that’s blood! Why would you cover yourself in blood? What the fuck is wrong with you?” 

“I didn’t choose to be covered in blood. I need to use a phone. I lost mine. Please, help me.” 

“Come around the other side of the bar, there’s a room in the back we can use.” 

To my right, a bright flash of strobe lights went off. There they were. The cloaked person stood across the room on the dance floor. They pointed their knife at me. They fought through the crowd, knocking people out of their way. I looked back to the bartender. 

“Shit. That’s the person who is after me.” I said, pointing. They were gone. 

“Okay, follow me, I won’t lose sight of you.” 

Almost to the end of the bar, and suddenly I spotted them. Coasting through the crowd, hunting me, stalking me, waiting for a moment to run at me with their knife out and ready. Their black hood hanging over their face, obscuring my ability to see who they were. I wasn’t going to make it to my new friend in time. I had to do something. I shoved myself into a drunk frat bro, who toppled over into a handful of people. He stood up, but the group he’d knocked into were pissed and started screaming at him. The commotion blocked the path between me and the killer. I ran. 

The bartender grabbed me. “C’mon, this way. Jesus, you know how to make a damn scene don’t you. Drama queen.” 

“It’s not fucking funny,” I said. 

“I know. Humor is my defense mechanism. My therapist and I are working on it. Okay? I’m Blaine, by the way. If you’re going to get me murdered, you might as well know my name.” 

“Great, Blaine. I’m Matthew. Can we go now?” 

Blaine pulled me through a side hallway lined with people waiting for the bathroom. We reached a door marked “employees only,” and Blaine pushed a code into the door’s basic lock mechanism. He pushed the handle and flung the door open. We fell into the room. Blaine pushed it closed and slid a deadbolt lock into place. 

The room was a disheveled looking office space. A busted couch sat along the far wall, a desk was covered in papers with a computer that looked like it was made before I was born, and a small card table in the middle of the room. 

“We should be safe here,” Blaine said. 

“Is there a phone here?” 

Blaine shoved some papers off the desk revealing a phone. He picked the phone up. He looked at me with panic in his eyes. He pushed down on the receiver several times. 

“It’s dead?” I asked. At this point, nothing was a surprise. 

“Yeah, I don’t understand. It was working earlier when I opened the bar.” 

“What about your cell phone? Is that somewhere?” 

He went over to a small set of lockers tucked in the corner of the room. He opened one of the doors and pulled out a bag covered in pride patches. It was a rainbow explosion with a dusting of glitter and a few unicorns. 

Blaine rooted around inside the bag and pulled out his cell phone. He started tapping the screen, becoming more aggressive with each tap. His brows furrowed on his face. 

“Why wouldn’t I have a signal right now? Christ!” 

Of course, I thought. Of course, there wouldn’t be a signal. This was a horror movie, and I was going to die. 

BAM! 

Something pounded against the door. The killer had found us. The door shook with each slam against it. The deadbolt rattled in place. It wasn’t going to hold. There was nowhere to hide. This was it. This was the final stand moment. 

Deep breath, I thought, trying to remain calm. 

“Fuck this guy,” I said. I grabbed the card table and flipped it over. I grabbed one of the table legs and ripped it from place. Blaine stared at me with an open mouth. I yanked a second one off and tossed it to him. 

“Use this. When he comes through, we fucking go to town.” 

BAM!
BAM! 

In the pause between their attempts, I slid deadbolt open. A moment later, the killer slammed the door open and crashed through the doorway. I hit them straight in the face. Blaine hit their chest. They fell backwards and toppled onto the ground. I shoved the door closed. 

“What do we do now?” Blaine asked. “I don’t want to kill someone tonight!” 

“We find out who it is, and why they’re after me.” 

I pulled the hood back from their costume, revealing their face. Blood covered the lower half, as it gushed out of their nose, but I still recognized her. 

“Becky?” I said. 

She spat blood at me. 

“What the fuck, Becky? What is going on? Why are you doing this?” 

“Who is she,” Blaine asked. 

“She is a friend from school. We had a few classes together and went to a couple parties together. What the hell?” 

Becky sat up. I kicked the knife away from her, holding my table leg in my hand. 

“Of course, you don’t even know what you did. Everything tonight was about you, and you don’t even know why. Typical. Fucking typical!”

I met Becky in our first semester of college. We had three or maybe four classes together, and otherwise only occasionally bumped into one another at parties. To say we’d held a conversation was being generous.

“Well then, enlighten me, Becky.” 

“You remember that Sigma Alpha ABE party last year, anything but clothes? You hooked up with my boyfriend, Henry. The cheating I could deal with. He admitted it, and he wanted to fix things. After that though, he came out as bisexual, which is such bullshit. Nobody is bisexual. It’s a phase to get to gay. We broke up, and he ended up with my best friend, Jocelyn. They’re already talking about getting married. I keep telling her that he’s going to leave her for a man, and she called me a bigot. Can you believe that?” 

Becky attempted to push herself up off the floor. 

“Don’t move. I hit you once, and I’ll do it again.” 

Blaine stood on uneasy feet, swaying back and forth. “You did all of this because your boyfriend was bi, and you didn’t want to admit that you were being a little biphobic?” 

“I’m not …” She screamed. “He isn’t. The point is that Matthew here ruined fucking everything. I lost my boyfriend, my best friend, and everyone else I hung out with. So, he had to pay.” 

“Becky,” I said, “It’s 2021. Your motive is shit. People are bi. Get over it.” 

Outside the door, loud voices and banging on the door cut through the conversation. 

“Athens Police! Open the door!” 

“How did they know?” I asked Blaine. 

“Oh, there was a panic button under the desk. I hit it when she started pounding on the door.” He flashed an innocent smile. 

The door flew open, and several officers rushed in behind Becky. “It’s her. She’s killed a bunch of people tonight, and she’s trying to kill this guy!” 

I watched as Becky made her final move. She grabbed the knife off the floor and lunged towards me. I swung the table leg, hitting her in the head as two officers tackled her to the ground. A third officer grabbed the metal rod from my hand and pulled me away.

Two officers put Becky in handcuffs and dragged her out of the room. A third officer took my statement, as I did my best to recount all of the events of the evening. The adrenaline wore off and emotions caught up to me. In between sobs, I listed off all the names of friends who had died throughout the night. Blaine stayed in the room with me, holding my hand. The officers asked him several times to leave, and he refused. 

“Alright, Matthew, we are going to have follow up questions in the morning, but for now, go home and get some rest. You’re lucky to be alive, based on everything you’ve told us. We’ve got alerts out to all officers and are looking for your friends. With any luck, maybe some of them will still be alive.” 

“They aren’t, but I appreciate it.” I stood up and started towards the door. 

“Where are you staying?” Blaine asked. 

“We had an AirBnB somewhere. I don’t even know where it is. I’ll find it, I’m sure.” 

Blaine grabbed my arm. “Nope. You’re not wandering this town tonight, after all of this. Let’s go. I refuse to let that happen.” 

The two of us walked through the streets, with no real destination in mind, as police began shutting down bars and sending everyone home. 

“Hey,” Blaine said, “I’m sorry for everything that’s happened, but at least you didn’t die in a straight bar. Could you imagine?”