presented without comment.

Porcupine Tree – Nine Cats

Charlotte woke up excited for some part of her old life to make an appearance. Friends of hers from New York, Celia and Ryan Iver, were coming for the weekend with Ariel, their fifteen year old daughter. Every year they visited for Christmas because Charlotte didn't like packing up and going back to New York. She didn't know the words to explain the depth of her hatred for the toxic city.

They had communicated by phone several times through the year to plan for this visit and the day had finally come when they would be arriving from the airport. After her morning tai-chi Charlotte had a quick breakfast of eggs, toast and jam before throwing on a floppy sweater and jeans.

She savoured the drive through Crystal Lake to Fairfield to the airport downtown, refraining from turning on the radio so she could appreciate the last silence of the weekend.

Along the way she thought about her friends and the last time she saw them. She wondered if Celia still bleached her hair, if she still wore at least one item of designer clothing. She wondered if Ryan was still prematurely grey or if he gave into peer pressure and coloured it back to its original brown. She could hardly remember Ariel because every time Celia and Ryan had made plans to visit, Ariel's grandparents had insisted on her spending the holidays with them instead of with her parents and Charlotte. For some reason Ryan's parents hated Charlotte, though they knew her when she lived in New York. She couldn't be sure they ever liked her. The last time she had seen Ariel she had been nine years old. She was anticipatory to meet her again, particularly because she didn't like what living rich in the city had the tendency to do to the eggshell minds of children. More often than not their good qualities were trampled underfoot and forgotten.

Days earlier she had prepared the two guest rooms so she wouldn't have to rush later in the week. She knew that her home was substantially smaller than what the Iver's were used to in New York, but they had always said how much they loved Charlotte's little secluded set up. She hoped Ariel would like it too.

It had been almost a full year since she had them over for a visit, but this time she could feel a kind of awkward pressure in her head that she didn't understand. It was almost as if she was getting too used to the solitude the Crystal Lake cabin offered her. In a way, she didn't want to bring people into her home anymore, which was as worrisome a thought as it was appealing.

Carlisle scratched his chin, regretting not shaving. His skin was dry and irritated now. "What's your problem? None of these places have security alarms and they're miles away from town, let alone a police station. What's got your panties in a knot?"

Joel, his long-time petty criminal partner, had a vice grip on his coffee mug. They kept their voices low because they sat in a diner. True, they were in the middle of Podunk Nowhere, but they couldn't be too careful. Joel's eyes wandered nervously from table to table. "I don't like it here. You know the stories."

Carlisle threw back his blonde head and whooped with derisive laughter, mocking his friend's sensitivity to superstition. "And you wonder why I don't take you seriously."

Joel's eyes flared. "Shut your fucking mouth Carl! I just have a bad feeling. You don't have to be an asshole about everything." Carlisle sucked in his cheeks in a vain effort to appease his friend. Joel knew this was the closest he would get to sincerity so he didn't pursue it. "All I know is that there is an angry killer in these woods and you want to go there."

"First of all good buddy, we want to go there. You're just getting cold feet. Second, so what if he's really out there? You forget, people live in those woods and if they haven't been slaughtered yet our chances are looking pretty good. It's not like we're going to piss on his mother's grave or something, we'll keep out of the woods and that'll be that. Hey," he crooned jokingly. "we can get hookers when we're done. Y'like that? Does Joeley wanna hooker?" In better spirits, the two punched each other playfully from across the table. "So we're in the clear now?"

"Yeah," Joel agreed grudgingly. "As long as we go to a secluded house and nobody's home." Carlisle and Joel made their thoroughly dishonest living by stealing designer drugs from the medicine cabinets of wealthy loners and seniors. They had worked their way from California to Illinois and were not about to end their success streak so soon.

Carlisle winked at the teenage waitress and made her blush as they paid their bill and left.

The waitress frowned. She was hoping for a better tip.

Jason had watched Charlotte and her guests get into the truck and leave early in the morning. He was glad for this, because he didn't like the look of the teenage girl; he could just smell the filth radiating off her from across the lake. But it didn't matter now, they were leaving, and hopefully would not be returning.

The day she had come home with those three city-dwellers she had been gone for several hours, so he assumed she would be gone for the same amount of time now. They hadn't gone anywhere in the car for the few days they were here; they stayed within the realm of the lake. He was sure they were leaving now, probably by way of the airport. They seemed to walk as if expecting the inflexibility of concrete instead of soft dirt under their expensive shoes, so it was a safe assumption to think that they didn't get out to the country much.

At first, he tried to think of why she suddenly felt the need to break her solitude. They stayed inside most of the time and he wasn't keen on leaving footprints in the snow near all the windows so he kept his distance. He found a pair of ancient binoculars in the mines the other day, so he wasn't completely oblivious to the goings on in the small house.

The first night they were there it dawned on him that it was Christmas. Jason knew what the day was but he wasn't obsessed with the celebration. Some years he would cut down a tree and give it a few sparse decorations, but the sight of the naked tree made him feel lonely and small. The holidays offered him no comfort so he opted to treat it like any other day. That was why she had guests, Jason decided, because she was lonely. He knew that feeling all too well, and wished she wouldn't have to feel the cold emptiness of the world in all its hideous intensity.

This woman appeared comfortable with her solitude before the holidays came, maybe she was just as lonely as Jason when push came to shove. Maybe if he ever found the courage he could show her that she wasn't as alone as she thought. Maybe she could show Jason the same.

Hours later it started getting dark and Jason heard a car approaching. But in the dim afternoon light, he saw that it was a dark blue sedan, not the woman's beat up truck. Curiously, he stood stock still with a tilt in his neck as the car parked further down the road behind cover of some evergreen trees. Two men exited the car, talking loudly. Obviously up to no good. Jason was all to skilled at deciphering a motive.

One of the two seemed paranoid (for good reason) and was forever looking over his shoulder. The other was too assured of himself for his own good and walked with a swagger that made Jason want to cut his legs off at the knee.

But he wouldn't do that. No, they had already gotten inside and he would wait until they came back out to spill their blood. He was sure the woman would not appreciate blood stained ceilings like he would.

Not ten minutes later, Charlotte's truck roared down the gravel driveway. Jason saw this and was overcome with anxiety. Those men hadn't left. They were still inside. And very soon, she would be inside with them. Jason's blood boiled and his feet were already moving beneath him. Staining her home with blood that needed to be spilled was the last of his concerns now.

Joel heard a key in the lock. "Carl..." he whispered urgently. "Hide."

Charlotte stepped over the threshold and sighed, sensing nothing amiss. Truthfully, she was glad to be alone, but she wasn't at ease. This was because she was not alone and had no reason to feel relaxed just yet. As soon as Carlisle and Joel saw the oblivious woman enter, they forgot about hiding. They didn't need to hide now. They left their spot in one of the bedrooms and stalked up behind her. She was washing her hands in the kitchen sink, humming.

As quiet as the wind they sneaked up behind her. Not quiet enough, however. Charlotte realized that she was not as alone as she originally assumed.

Charlotte wished she had a hammer.

But the shotgun under the sink would do in a pinch such as this.

She whirled around with the boom stick in her hands, pointing it between the two intruders. She was all business before one of the men got spooked and fired a shot through the window. Charlotte screamed at him, "What the fuck is wrong with you?" The men exchanged anxious glances.

"Lady, put the gun down." The blonde one told her firmly.

She scoffed, not thinking of her safety in the least. "Fix my fucking window." Nothing more was said with three guns trained on three people. Charlotte did not want to come home to a Mexican standoff, yet here she was.

It was at this climactic moment that Jason thrust himself into the room, the screen door flapping uselessly behind him. Hearing the bullet pierce the window had caused Jason to assume the worst. His kill switch engaged because he feared that she had been shot in the scuffle and he wasn't fast enough to stop it.

He dwarfed the two assailants who were wearing the same expression of dumb awe as Charlotte. They immediately began to empty their magazines into Jason's chest. Charlotte held the shotgun at her side so she could cover her mouth with her hand in shock.

Jason's machete sailed horizontal and silent, and that was the end of Joel and Carlisle. Their heads fell artlessly and bounced feebly once of twice upon contact with the floor. There was a very long moment of silence before Charlotte finally tore her eyes from the headless assailants to observe her saviour.

"Are you okay?" she all but cried in her hysteria, taking in the bullet wounds which were oozing a dark and viscous substance. "They just shot you! You... didn't even flinch..." Finally she begins to realize, "That didn't hurt at all did it?"

Her facial expression defied definition. Past the sound of her attempts to catch her over-extended breath, there was no noise at all although gradually, when her heartbeat slowed and no longer drowned out all external noise, she listened to Jason's stunningly even breath as it began to be a model for her own. Slowly she lowered her hand from her mouth, realizing that the floor was soaked with blood. This fact was at the very back of her mind.

Jason stood, with his looming presence, in her cottage for the first time. To save her. Or simply to kill the two robbers. Maybe they had trespassed in his forest. Or maybe, just maybe, he took it upon himself to save her life a second time. He seemed to expend as much effort beheading the two men as he did guiding her through the trees that night anyway.

He had to have been close enough both to know she was in danger and to have arrived in the nick of time. For whatever reason, knowing this comforts her.

"You really should stop saving my life, Jason. It's bad for the image." She would never be able to explain in words why she would say something like this to Jason Voorhees, but in the moment it was all too much.

He huffed a laugh, which caught Charlotte off guard as well as intrigued her. He didn't make a sound, but the holes in his mask cut the sharp little exhale like a cheese grater. Smiling stupidly and unsure of herself, she motioned to the bodies decorating her floor. "Can we get rid of these now?"

Jason nodded and made a strange gripping gesture at the top of his head, his way of telling her to pick up the severed heads as he knew she probably had very little experience dragging a body. She seemed to understand and nodded in reply. She looked at the dead men with typical trepidation, but banished her wariness to some other plane, and delicately gripped the men's heads by the hair. She looked back to Jason for council; he had one of them slung over his shoulder and held the other by the ankles in one large hand. He stuck his chin out in the direction of the door for her to go first.

It wouldn't be long before it was pitch black outside with the last of the afternoon light disappearing behind the crystallized treetops. Charlotte held the heads a fair distance away from herself, as they were still bleeding enough to be disgusting. She kept looking back to Jason for guidance and to double check that he wasn't going to kill her, though she doubted it at this point.

Droplets of blood fell to the snow on either side of Charlotte's path and she began to shiver as the adrenaline washed out of her blood.

Once they were a little ways into the forest, Jason dropped the bodies in the snow with sugary thuds so Charlotte stopped as well. He nodded to the severed heads indicating that she could drop them now, and she was all too eager to do so. He wasn't in a hurry to dispose of the bodies so he decided to see her home safely; they walked together in complete silence.

Charlotte half ascended to the patio whereas Jason stood at the foot of the stairs. She looked quite conflicted when she asked, "You remember me, don't you? I was lost and-" He gave a nod and it cut short her speech as if he had covered her mouth with his hand. His presence was overwhelming, even at a small distance.

"Will you stay for a while? I have to thank you somehow. Please?" Charlotte let her irrationality get the better of her; she reached for Jason's hand, unaware of what she was doing. When their skin made contact they both jerked away; Charlotte, because she was terrified of making one wrong move that would end with her bodily fluids painting the deck; Jason, because he knew from experience that touch meant a very narrow range of things, the most prevalent aiming to some ulterior motive. He fled slowly.

"At least let me feed you," she pleaded adorably, quickly forgetting her indiscretion as she felt her panic rise when Jason took another step. He stopped, and maybe only in her imagination did his head tilt as though considering this offer. A bird on the lake squawked and startled her; she whirled around with her hand on her heart to see a heron skim the water and fly off. Catching her breath a second time as she turned back expecting to see Jason, she was substantially disappointed to be staring at a flight of empty stairs.

She stood watching the empty space enamoured by thoughts of admiration for his stealth and confusion aimed at her poignant disappointment. She sighed slowly only to suck back every last bit of oxygen in a heart stopping gasp when she turned to enter the door and saw Jason standing quite silently in the way, watching her with faint curiosity as she caught her breath a third time.

"The Anopheles mosquito couldn't hold a candle to you." Jason's head tilted in confusion but Charlotte was too drained to explain properly.

"Nevermind." She brushed off the reference but she couldn't brush off her self-indulgent smile. Jason took one large step over the threshold and Charlotte followed in a few more steps. "Are you hungry because I'm... not. Anymore." There was blood everywhere. Her nose wrinkled at the sight and the overwhelming stench of it, gazing around the affected area with apprehension. "Damn it. I have to clean this. I mean you probably don't mind, but I do. How do you feel about lasagna?" He remained silent and didn't gesture yes or no, he simply sat down at the table. "Neutral, huh?"

Jason hadn't smelled tomato sauce in an eternity and his mouth watered. The woman (it occurred to him that he didn't yet know her name) was obsessively scrubbing the mess of blood, which Jason found to be redundant considering he was often bathed in entrails, but then, they obviously didn't live the same lives. He made sure she wasn't going to look at him and to be safe he turned away so only his back would be visible from her angle before he lifted his mask only slightly, just enough to eat. The lasagna was incredible, rich, and filling. Even the fork tasted good.

Jason wiped his mouth with the back of his hand before lowering the mask back into place again. He burped, surprising himself. Charlotte heard this satisfied noise and smiled at the floor, hoping the pungent smell of ammonia didn't affect the taste of the lasagna.

When she was no longer disgusted by her floor she scrubbed her hands and warmed up some lasagna for herself. Her stomach was growling quite angrily for having been neglected. The echo smell of hot food triggered a similar rumble in Jason's stomach. Again, though she wasn't sure why, Charlotte couldn't completely suppress a smile. "Still hungry?" But Jason did not want to lift his mask again so he shook his head in decline.

He didn't want to rush necessarily, but he couldn't stem his curiosity. Still, he let her eat before getting her attention again. He tried to gesture for a pen and paper by miming writing on the palm of his hand; Charlotte seemed to understand after a moment and a tangible moment of realization.

"Oh! S-sure..." Hastily she rummaged through a few drawers for a pad of yellowish paper and a pen.

Jason accepted them and immediately began writing, WHAtS YOUR NAME

In some corner of her mind, Charlotte was expecting some strange, unknown question rather than such a simple and predictable one. She answered calmly, "My name is Charlotte."

Finally, he knew her name. It was gentle and soft and suited her well. This nearly tripled his curiosity for her. He had spent so much time becoming familiar with her mannerisms and now that he was faced with an opportunity to hear first hand, from her own mouth, who she was, he hadn't the faintest idea where to begin.

tELL ME ABOUt YOURSELF

Charlotte smiled strangely at the clear but immature script, then her gaze rose to Jason. "There isn't much to tell," she said in a peculiar tone. She didn't say it like a disguised wish for encouragement, she said it as if telling what there was to tell would be utterly exhausting.

WHy DO yOU LiVE ALONE

Her lips press together thoughtfully and smeared tomato sauce over them. "I was married. See the wedding ring tan line? But he died."

Jason could have put a little more tact into the phrasing of his next question, but he thought she would understand that his curiosity was getting the better of him. Rather, that he was allowing it. WHAt KiLLED HiM

She regarded the floor. "The city. Indirectly, of course. But I had to put the blame somewhere... Heart attack. Too much business is bad for the heart, not to mention the mind. When Albert died... I sold the big apartment, I sold everything," She laughed at something and interrupted herself. "I sold my life insurance, even. And I had this place built. I would have gladly done it myself, but I don't trust myself not to overlook something important... My thoughts are so... non-linear right now. Sorry. We made good money, if that means anything now," she added with a twang of sadness for some unclear objective. "And even before his life insurance paid off I would have had more money than I knew what to do with. For the first little while, waking up in this big, lavish cave was absolutely no comfort. It made me feel worse, if anything. I stopped feeling human, in a way. I felt like a piece of furniture, or like a crumpled piece of paper, just existing without much else to do. I forgot what grass felt like under my toes, which really scared me. It wasn't even a conscious choice that I made, I just bought the property here without thinking, I hired contractors and everything and eight months later I moved in with a few bits of new furniture and that was it."

The speech left her exhilarated and exhausted. She felt as though she could talk forever just for having someone to listen unconditionally. However, she couldn't think of anything to say. Except one question that she phrased with extreme caution.

"May I ask you a personal question?" After half an eternity of terror and anxiety for lack of response, she got one. Jason nodded. "Are the stories I've heard about you true?"

WHAt HAVE yOU HEARD

"From the locals? They say you live alone in what used to be Camp Crystal Lake, on the far side of the lake, opposite town. Anyone who trespasses there, you kill, to keep it sacred, I think. Or to preserve your mother's memory... Supposedly you drowned as a child at the camp. The counsellors weren't paying attention and the other kids thought you were a freak and pushed you into the water. They let you drown... Some people say they went so far as to hold you under." She addressed him with foolish hope in her eyes, hoping it was only hearsay. "That can't be true. Is it true?" Jason nodded shallowly, noting the revulsion poisoning her features. "That's disgusting." He only hoped she didn't say that out of pity, though she didn't appear to. She was genuinely disgusted.

Jason waited patiently for her to continue, which she did only after examining Jason's mild body language. As long as he wasn't angry at her for listening to the town gossip, as if she had any choice in the matter. It seemed every time she went to the grocery store it was all anyone could ever talk about: the drowning, the cruelty, the mother, the beheading, the legends, the lies. "They say you're nothing but a mindless killer," she said in a hollow voice, specifying they.

DO yOU tHiNK iM StUPiD

She rose an eyebrow at the paper. "Well that is a stupid question," she teased sarcastically, but it was a fleeting act. She smiled gently. "No. Of course not. You're like a guardian of the forest. Waiting in silence for the peace to be broken so you can restore it again."

This charmingly fairytale-esqe answer stirred Jason's memory to a question he had. He wrote quickly before he forgot, iN tHE FORESt yOU WERE HURt HOW DiD it HAPPEN

Slightly surprised that he would ask, Charlotte paused before answering, "The night before I ran into you I spent the night in this barn. A wolf found me and bit me. I would have died if I..." Somehow, she was unable to finish while replaying the grisly incident in her mind. Eventually, her line of sight rose to Jason again, who was tilting his head in confusion. "I heard it howling and found a hammer to defend myself with. You can imagine the rest."

Her tone was oddly defeated, like she had not acted in defence and had simply killed an animal for no reason. She was berating herself endlessly and uselessly for saving her own life.

Jason wrote out very slowly, DONt FEEL BAD FOR tHAt

She couldn't respond. Jason thought she either didn't understand what he meant or she was simply overwrought. He didn't think too much of it. Good people often think less of themselves for doing the right thing more than bad people think highly of themselves for doing the wrong thing.

He wished it didn't seem so impossible to comfort her. Abruptly he stood, the floor creaking under him. Charlotte seemed to understand and smiled warmly at him. "Good night Jason." He could literally not remember the last time someone had wished him good night. It would have been his mother, but he couldn't recall the exact scenario, or the tone of voice or the phrasing. He nodded shyly in her direction before leaving quietly.

She went to the bathroom to brush her teeth. After her eyes passed over the mirror, Charlotte had to retrieve her jaw from the floor. She was drenched in blood. Not so much her arms, but everything from her scalp to her shoulders was red and sticky.

Grimacing, she peeled her clothes off and thoroughly scrubbed herself pink and clean with far more ardour than when she scrubbed the floor.

any thoughts? comments? questions? throw an author a bone because reviews make me write faster

The little comment about the Anopheles mosquito being silent is my obligatory ode to Naked Lunch: "... under the silent wings of the Anopheles mosquito. (Note: This is not a figure. Anopheles mosquitoes are silent.)" The more you know. *rainbow tailed shooting star*

till next time

xoxo