Take
By Mia Shade
Summary: A film that records a terrifyingly gory murder leads the team into Hollywood and its fascination with extreme horror, a genre that is known to cross lines--possibly into murder for profit. Is this the first real snuff film ever created?
Disclaimer: Criminal Minds is not mine.
A/N: Well, my friends, I'm back. Summer is often a time of writer's block for me, and after struggling like hell to come up with another Dose-type introspective piece, I realized that a casefic would get me back on track, and so here we are. I once again acknowledge Chuck Palahniuk for the inspiration for parts of my writing style; those of you who have read Invisible Monsters will recognize what I mean.
As usual, I love feedback and reviews. I'll have the second chapter up in a few days.
I am not including Gideon in this piece for obvious reasons. The events of season 2's finale are irrelevant here, so assume that all is well and Gideon has taken his leave already.
"The cinema is not an art which films life: the cinema is something between art and life. Unlike painting and literature, the cinema both gives to life and takes from it…" – Jean-Luc Godard, French filmmaker
--
Imagine your life as a movie.
Each time the door closes, each time your heart beats and there's that moment when it could very well stop, the director in your head yells cut!
Another heartbeat. Another scene. Another cut.
Everyone else is just an actor, working the character they've been given as an alternative to waiting tables at the high-end restaurants that pay less than the fast-food joints.
Everyone is just acting. Just putting on a ruse in order to survive.
That's why we like the movies. People putting on a ruse who are putting on a ruse—it's a double negative that makes a movie different from real life, more honest or more deceitful, but always something more.
More romantic.
More tragic.
More action-packed.
More witty.
In fact, there is only one area in which the real-life ruse wins out over movies, and that is death.
At the moment that the life leaves their body, everyone drops the act.
And that real real life—that is more terrifying than any horrific thing that can be imagined on the screen.
--
(STOP!)
Her hand on the remote hits the pause button so suddenly that she almost doesn't realize she's done it.
The film stops just as a hooded figure finishes with the girl, his knife glinting in the greenish night vision light as he steps away from the sorry little puddle that used to be a human being.
In that illumination all of the blood looks brown.
(they used chocolate syrup to simulate blood in the shower scene in Psycho)
Her heart beating at a million miles. Countless little sharp cut-cut-cut-cut-cut-cut-cut moments.
The director in her head is silent, as shocked as she is.
Jennifer Jareau tries to rise from her chair, but her arms are frozen in place and she feels like there's a magnet pulling her chest back, flattening her against the backrest.
Ohmygod.
Frozen in shock, paused, left pulsing on the edge of movement.
Waiting for the next action, for the start of the next scene. For the camera angles to be just right in order to make her proper entrance.
And JJ can't move.
For the first time in months, she's afraid, scared like back when she was fourteen and on her first date and went to see some incarnation of Freddy Krueger and her date's hand had been sweaty and no comfort and she had slept with the light on for weeks.
Monsters.
Nightmares.
JJ punches a button on her phone, waits for the pickup, and manages to choke out seven words:
"Hotch, everyone needs to see this. Now."
He knows her well enough that she doesn't need to say anything more.
Either that, or the director cuts the scene just before she says it.
--
Transcript: Scene 7 of "Valentine's Day", director unknown; actors unknown; distributor: Canary Dog Productions; courtesy of 24 Hour Entertainment Video
INT: Grey concrete room with no windows; a BRUNETTE GIRL is sitting on the floor, chained by wrist shackles to the ground.
GIRL: (sobbing) Please, please…(garbled)…p-please (pulls at her chains, causing them to rattle)
MALE VOICE: (off-screen, synthesized) Do you want to go home?
GIRL: I promise I won't tell anyone what you look like! I won't tell anyone where I was! I'll be good! I'll be good! I'll be good!
MALE VOICE: laughs) Sure.
GIRL: I promise! (begins to laugh) See? See? I won't tell anyone that I saw! (raises her head up, arching it back; she pulls her chains taught and then throws her head forward over them. A wet splat is heard)
MALE VOICE: Wow, look at her jump! (laughs)
GIRL: (raises her head to the camera, showing that the chains have gouged out her eyes; still giggling softly) I didn't see…I didn't see…I didn't see…I didn't see…I didn't see…(repeats for three minutes, twenty-seven seconds)
MALE VOICE: Well, if you want to leave me that badly, I suppose I could help you along…
--
"Wait—pause it. And tell me."
JJ's gulp of dread is nearly imperceptible, and in response to Hotch's order she clicks her remote, and the tape stops just as a hooded figure enters the frame from the left. The glint of the knife he holds is frozen in time on the screen, a nightmare always just about to come true.
JJ's still shaking. She's seen it. She knows what's about to happen.
(take a deep breath, and speak.)
"We received this tape from the LAPD, who got it from a Hollywood area video store, 24 Hour Entertainment Video," she explains. "It's a small store, mainly dealing in VHS tapes, and they also have a collection of independent and adult films. They claim to have received this in the mail four days ago from a new production company. The girl onscreen has been identified as twenty-two-year-old Erin Stokes, an aspiring actress and hostess at a Hollywood area restaurant who has been missing for seven weeks."
Hotch's eyes don't waver from the screen; out of the corner of her eyes, JJ sees Reid raise his coffee cup halfway to his mouth and then put it back down, his thirst gone.
Garcia's eyes are hidden behind her hands.
Morgan's face is stony and Prentiss' mouth is open slightly in shock—and they haven't even gotten to the worst part.
"And this production company…" Hotch prompts, impatient.
"The production company does not have an official address, and the phone number it provided to the store was a dead line. It was once a cell phone number but is no longer in use," JJ continues. Her heart feels dead in her chest, a limp black thing rotting there.
She begins the tape again and, when everyone else is watching, she turns away. She's seen it. Now, she hears it, and the audio alone is the stuff of nightmares.
The sound of the knife ripping through Erin's skin.
Her screams.
Her laughter.
That final, disturbing silence that is not silence, because through the stillness is the gurgle of blood as the killer steps through the pool of it on the floor as he exits to the left.
What demented god created this?
Garcia begins to cry silently at some point after the dismembering begins. The rest of the team watches in shock.
When the film cuts to black, Hotch turns back to face everyone else; JJ sees that the colour has completely drained from his face.
"But—there's never been a documented case of one," Reid's protest is soft. Hotch nods.
"I know," he replies. "And let's hope that this is just a very good horror film."
Reid adjusts his glasses. "It's so obvious—so conspicuously placed. It has to be a fake. Anyone making something real wouldn't be nearly so bold as to send them to a video store."
Prentiss' brow furrows. "What?"
Hotch sighs. "If this film is not a fake, then we may be looking at the very first snuff film to be purposefully released into the public."
"But we've seen films of people being murdered," Prentiss' eyes stray for a moment to Reid. "Lots of murderers have killed people onscreen."
Nobody sees how Reid and JJ's eyes meet.
How they both know it's a lie Prentiss is telling. In recent memory there was only Tobias.
"Most, if not all, have used the idea of a camera as a warning. As a tool," Reid says softly, his eyes flicking away from JJ to focus on the group. "For them, the camera is simply a medium to spread their message, which was the killing. For a snuff film, the murder itself is the medium. The art form."
Hotch turns back to the screen. "Somebody may have murdered this girl for the express purpose of catching the act of killing on film."
Garcia's voice is soft.
"The ultimate horror movie," is all she says.