FIVE
"There is a great beast loose in the world of men." - Garth Ennis, Punisher: Born.
The following evening comes quicker than Jamie would've liked. It's a dreamless night and an uneventful day of food shopping, a post office run, then shopping for the right shade of red lipstick and foundation that would actually match Jamie's pale skin. She's dizzy from smelling all of the perfume by the makeup counter at Macy's and she's grateful for the reprieve of Lindsey's place when they get there.
She looks at herself in the mirror after Lindsey finishes the final touches of her glittery eye makeup, dark hair curled with some pushed back. She finds she doesn't recognize the girl that looks back at her, the low cut of the angel costume somehow making the disconnect even worse.
Her introspection is interrupted when Lindsey shoves a shot glass of something clear in her face.
"Come on, you have to drink before we go out!" Lindsey pleads. Jamie sighs before relenting, kicking back the vodka before making a face at the burn of it in her throat, her nose. Lindsey barks a laugh at her, shoving a nip in her hand this time that Jamie kicks back in another go. Lindsey's arms wrap around her as Rachel teases at her blonde curls in a handheld mirror on Lindsey's big bed.
"You're such a lightweight!" Lindsey says, slurring her words from the drinks she's already had, holding Jamie's hand to take her to the kitchen to take more shots. It's only after her fourth that Jamie shakes her head at having anymore.
"I wanna wait until we get to the party!" Jamie exclaims, feeling the vodka's effects on her already as she hears herself giggle. Rachel steps into the kitchen with glitter in her curly hair and clad in a Little Red Riding Hood costume. Lindsey wears the barest semblance of a witch's costume, the dress riding up between her thighs in fishnets.
"You look so good, Rach!" Lindsey exclaims, latching onto the blonde. Rachel, their designated driver of the night, grimaces when Lindsey arms go around her. Jamie laughs, grabbing another nip to chug in one go. It burns even more and doesn't taste good at all, but she decides she wants to live for tonight, and if drinking herself into a stupor is the only way she can feel like she's in the moment like everyone else then so be it.
"I actually think Jamie looks the best. Do a spin, come on."
Jamie rolls her eyes but obliges, fluffing the dress for good measure.
Lindsey claps her hands and laughs, Rachel joining along with her before ushering them out the door.
"Come on, the party starts at nine, I don't wanna be there all night."
"Oh, Rachel, don't be a grandma."
"I am not! I just know the frat boys will show up sooner or later and I want to be there before they do!"
Rachel and Lindsey continue to bicker as Jamie reaches for her keys and cardigan off the hook, knowing it'll be cold later today. Cold wind assaults her as soon as she steps onto the front lawn, and she finds herself grateful she brought her sweater. She slides into the backseat as Rachel and Lindsey climb into the front, Lindsey cranking up the radio until the Hummer vibrates.
"I can't believe Jamie's going out instead of watching The Real World tonight!" Rachel teases over the sound of the radio as she starts driving down the road toward the intersection.
"Shut up!" Jamie exclaims with a smile. "You're just lucky I'm in a good mood today! Besides, Billy's going."
"Oh, now we know why you really went. You really haven't grown up since you were seven, huh?"
Jame's face burns.
"Shut up! He's just a friend."
"Mhm."
Jamie shakes her head as she feels the grin on her features widen, sighing fondly. The car seems to only shake more when they arrive at Ray's house, strobe lights going off from the inside. Jamie swallows at the sight of people on the front lawn, at the sight of boys and girls alike standing by the front door. Lindsey parks the car to let Jamie and Rachel out, following behind them after locking the doors behind them.
Lindsey's arms loop around Rachel and Jamie as they head inside of the house, appraised by the boys at the door. Jamie's immediately shoved into the hot press of bodies against each other, music blasted at full volume from a nearby speaker. Rachel and Lindsey dance with her for a long while, and Jamie actually thinks she's having a good time for once. It could be the booze, but she feels comfortable in her own skin and maybe that's enough, for now.
She feels a brush of a hand on her shoulder, and she turns around to find Billy there.
"Hey, Jamie," Billy says, speaking loudly over blaring music.
"Hey!"
He offers her a red cup, which she gladly takes. The contents therein are sweeter than the vodka shots, but she knows the punch is spiked with something that makes her nose scrunch. Billy grins widely at the sight of her.
"I've never seen you so alive," Billy jokes.
"You can blame a little guy named Smirnoff," Rachel interjects from where she and Lindsey dance together. A guy approaches from behind Rachel, a tall shape in the strobe lights of the party, and Jamie's breath catches in her throat before Rachel squeals happily, arms wrapping around the lanky man.
"Tommy!"
Tommy Doyle pulls back with a smile on his features. Jamie wonders if it's fate, the four sole survivors of Michael Myers' brutality meeting tonight, on the tenth anniversary of the last time he roamed the streets. Had Michael let all of them survive intentionally? Or it had just been her?
She shakes her head and digs into Lindsey's purse, pulling out another nip to drink all of it in one sip. No use thinking of any of that tonight, she thinks, and carries on dancing with Lindsey beside her.
"Hey, I'm gonna go to the other wing of the house," Rachel shouts, "with Tommy. You guys stay here."
Jamie shakes her head, grabbing onto Rachel's wrist, visceral fear making her suddenly go cold. She feels like she's seven again, desperately latching onto Rachel to stay with her in the children's clinic. A lifetime ago, but it's so easy to revert back, especially when it comes to Rachel.
"You said-"
"Come on, Lindsey's right here with you. We'll be right back, okay? I know you and Lindsey hate weed, so unless you want to get hotboxed, stay here."
Jamie huffs.
"Fine. I'll stay down here."
Lindsey's arms wrap around her waist, her mouth at level with Jamie's head, and Jamie registers a sloppy, wet kiss on her forehead before Lindsey's away from her, pushing her gently toward Billy.
"I'm gonna go talk to Ray. You stay here, okay?"
"Linds, are you seriously doing this right now?"
"You'll be fine! I'll only be gone for a few minutes."
"You promised-"
"And I'll be right in the next room." She nudges her again, a crooked smirk spreading over her features as she gestures unsubtly toward Billy, "besides, you have company."
Before Jamie can protest, Lindsey slinks away through the hoard of Haddonfield's adolescents on the dance floor, leaving Jamie and Billy to their own devices. Jamie sighs, glancing up at Billy with a small, sheepish smile. Billy returns it easily.
"Looks like it's just us," he says. Jamie nods, sipping her drink, all of the confidence from earlier seemingly sapped without the energy of her friends.
"Do you-" Billy stammers, "do you want to go outside?"
"Yeah. I think I need some fresh air. Come on."
With her hand on Billy's wrist, she guides them through the maze of the basement until they reach the stairs, then the back door, where only a few stragglers remain. Too cold to stand outside, they stand by the open screen together with their drinks.
"I really do like your costume, Jamie," Billy breaks the silence between them. She clears her throat, nodding with a smile.
"Yeah. I like yours, too. I mean, not as creative as a pirate would've been, but it's still cool."
Billy groans as Jamie laughs. "Well, I wasn't trying to emulate 1989. I don't think you were, either."
"No. I wasn't. I never want to, not again. That's why I'm even here. I have to get over it. Or, well, try to live with it. Which I don't think I have."
"I get that. That's why I'm glad you came."
"Yeah, I am too, Billy."
The two of them go outside to sit on the steps for awhile before Billy digs out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, offering Jamie one. She shakes her head as she watches him light up, taking a puff from the cigarette with a hand clasped around the butt and exhaling a puff away from her face.
Tucking her knees closer to her face and knowing it's not quite ladylike in her dress, she leans to the side, closer to Billy. Closing her eyes, she listens to the gusts of wind blowing as it stings her cheeks, the muted sound of music from the basement, and the even more distant sound of chattering from the other partygoers. It's pleasant, especially from being so buzzed from the vodka earlier, and she's glad she can live here, in the moment, with Billy at her side.
Of course, she can't close her eyes for long without seeing him, and she opens them to find Billy flicking his cigarette butt to the ground and standing, offering his hand. Dread suddenly replaces contentment and she stands, knees trembling as she grabs onto the railing instead.
When Billy tries to wrap an arm around her to steady her, she shakes her head and pushes his hand away.
"I have to find Rachel," Jamie says, swallowing back bile.
"What?"
"I'm going to go find Rachel."
"She's probably-I don't know, fucking around with Tommy, you don't want to see that-"
"I have a bad feeling."
"How long can you live your life based around your weird premonitions, Jamie? Come on-come back to the party, with me-"
She feels especially dizzy now, shoving him away, trying to grip onto the door and get away from Billy. Billy steps toward her, gripping her arm more insistently now. This time, she shoves him as hard as she can, heart racing as she sees spots dance across her vision.
"Billy, stop it, alright? Leave me alone!"
When their scuffle garners attention around them, Billy finally backs off, leaving Jamie to feel her way through the house alone, ignoring his calls for her. There's a few stragglers as she gets further west, but she pays no mind to them, leaning against a wall constantly for support. It's harder to get down a hallway when she comes across it, not remembering the house feeling so big and not realizing how nauseous she is until she's in the middle of the hall, feeling ready to throw up.
She preserves until she reaches the end of the hallway, twisting the doorknob open. With the lack of support of the door, Jamie feels her knees give out from under her and she falls hard onto the floor, hitting her knee on the sharp side of a bedside table.
First, Jamie registers the sharp pain in her knee, then the sting of the bright light from the lamp nearby; then, she registers the metal of blood that she'll never forget, right up her nose.
The room's covered in it, all over the bed. Panic makes her go cold as she crawls, failing to use the bed's comforter as leverage to stand as she feels herself getting more and more woozy. Her lip quivers as tears fall, making it even harder to see, knowing she doesn't want to see the body situated on the chair nearby, as if waiting for her to join them. Glancing to her right, she finds a body still groaning and blonde, curly hair.
"Oh, Rachel!"
She almost collapses on top of Rachel, blood staining the pretty white fabric of dress as she sobs, holding her sister's head between her small hands as she coughs up blood. All of the medical textbooks in the world couldn't prepare her for this-the nightmares couldn't, either.
Rachel reaches a hand feebly up to cup her cheek, smearing blood over it. Mascara steaks her cheeks as she pushes her forehead against Rachel's, not caring about the blood or the cold fear that sits in the pit of her stomach, making her heart pound like a jackhammer against her ribcage, so fast that she thinks her sternum will break with the sheer force.
"I'm so sorry, baby!" Jamie says, voice more slurred than she realizes. There's so much blood she can't even figure out where it's coming from, but she doesn't care, too stricken about the state of Rachel in her arms.
"Jamie?"
Jamie glances from Rachel to Billy in the doorway, where a stark white face steps in behind him.
She doesn't have it in her to scream when his neck goes red with blood, too, the line fine like ribbon until blood starts pouring. She can see the tendons of his throat when it opens and his body's heavy when he drops to the floor, mouth open with a scream that can't quite come out.
Glancing down at Rachel, she swallows and tries to stand, apologizing with every gulp of air she manages to take. Rachel's dirtied nails claw at her, desperate to keep her there, keep her safe, but Jamie knows she can't stay, not when it's just the two of them.
She thinks she's going to be sick and doesn't know if it's the stink of blood-metal or whatever had been slipped in her drink earlier, but she's woozy, especially while she's looking at him.
Michael cocks his head in the doorway, his good eye especially black in the yellow light.
The first thought that comes to mind is to use the lamp nearby, but when Michael steps toward her, she grips onto the locked window and claws futilely
"Michael! Wait!"
Michael stops and looks at her, the distance between them smaller. She feels her vision getting even more spotty as the adrenaline fights off whatever else is in her system, leaning heavily on the door as she trembles once more. Rachel reaches for her on the floor between them and her lip quivers again, remembering the angel-faced boy from the pictures her mother had left her, remembering the man who'd looked back at her in the attic ten years ago now.
"Don't-don't. Please, don't-"
She feels herself falling to the floor, hyperventilating as she loses control of her knees when they buck. Michael steps toward her and she tries to scream as a burly arm wraps around her lithe form, hefting her up ungracefully. Small hands grasp at the bloodied fabric of Michael's mechanic's uniform as she hears the glass of the winder shatter, feels cold air hit her skin like pinpricks.
The last thing she remembers is looking back at Rachel looking back at her, hands reached out toward her, eyes wide, blood pouring from her open mouth as she coughs. It's all of Jamie's worst nightmares in the span of five minutes but she's helpless to stop it, just as helpless as she'd been ten years ago with it'd been the two of them in the attic and she'd been laid out like a lamb to the slaughter.
Apologies for the length between updates and the short length. Please let me know what you think!