Harley Keener P.O.V.
Have you ever done something so bad that you wished you could travel back in time to prevent yourself from doing that bad thing in the first place? Have you ever felt guilty for doing something somewhat innocent, only for it to backfire spectacularly? I have. Have you ever heard of the horror movie April Fool's Day? No? If you haven't heard of it, April Fool's Day is a 1980s slasher movie that revolves around a group of college students who go on vacation to Muffy St John's mansion on some random island. Muffy had set up various traps around the mansion.
Eventually, half of the main characters end up going missing. As the film goes on, the two main characters, Kit and Rob start to realize that their friend Muffy has a twin sister named after the most famous fictional vampire slayers of all time: Buffy, who has been killing their friends. Only for it to be revealed at the end of the movie that the deaths that happened to the characters in the movie didn't actually happen. It was all an elaborate April Fool's Day prank done for laughs.
The ending of April Fool's Day was intriguing. It caught me off guard the first time I watched it. When I saw the ending, I thought to myself: What if I could replicate that ending in real life? It was a stupid idea. One that proved to be bad in all the wrong ways. This event would end up being the worst day of my life. This is the story of how a seemingly harmless bit of morbid fun at a friend's birthday party turned into a nightmare worthy of a horror movie. How a movie inspiration turned into a disastrous affair.
March 29, 2017. A few days before April Fool's Day.
Harley Keener was reading his favorite novel, the movie novelization of one of his favorite horror movie: April Fool's Day by Jeff Rovin. April Fools Day was a 1980s holiday themed slasher/black comedy movie that was released during a time where every single holiday was made into a horror movie. It's not a joke. Literally any holiday you could think of got turned into a horror movie, from New Years Eve in New Years Evil (1981) and Terror Train (1980), to Christmas in Black Christmas (1976) and Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984). Even holidays you wouldn't expect to have a horror movie like Mother's Day and Thanksgiving got horror movies. Why those holidays got turned into horror movies, nobody really knows or cares about.
Harley was reading his book in the school cafeteria. There were lots of kids around him. Harley was listening to Witchfinder General, a heavy metal band that almost nobody knew or cared about that was based on an old Vincent Price movie of the same name. Harley Keener was a high school freshman at the time. He's currently almost at the end of his sophomore year. A girl was sitting next to Harley. Her name was Mary Vonner. Mary had shoulder length ginger colored hair that was the color of blood. A fact that led some people to call her "Bloody Mary" due to how dark of a red her hair was. She was Caucasian. She had chocolate brown eyes that seemed to sparkle everytime you would look at them. Mary was wearing a long sleeve shirt with pants.
Mary Vonner was almost 16 years old. She would be 16 in a few days. Her birthday was April 1, April Fool's Day. Harley wanted to do something different for her birthday, something that had never been done before. Something spectacular that would break the monotony of Mary's other birthdays. It was always the same thing every year: a generic birthday party where nothing really special happened. It was always either a cookout or she woud host her birthday party at some fancy restaurant like TGI Fridays or Ruby Tuesdays. Harley couldn't even recall the amount of times he'd been bored or uninterested when he was at Mary Vonner's previous birthday partys.
The parties got Harley bored. There was never really any exciting for him to do at Mary Vonner's birthday parties. Harley wanted to change that. Question was, what would Harley do at Mary Vonner's sixteenth birthday party that would make it stand out from her previous birthday parties? A birthday party that was cool and different from all the rest. Harley put his book down and decided to talk to Mary about his plan for her birthday party.
"Hey, Mary. I want to do something for your birthday party on Saturday." Harley said to Mary.
"What did you have in mind?" Mary asked Harley.
"I want to throw a murdrr mystery style party in the same vein as Clue." Harley said to Mary. "I figured it be a great idea for your party."
"I would like a murder mystery themed birthday party." Mary said. "That would be so exciting!"
"Yeah. It would be exciting." Harley said. Harley wasn't interested in throwing some boring Clue style murder mystery style party for his friend's party. He wanted to replicate the plot and ending of the April Fools Day movie in real life. Harley figured if people could elaborately stage people murdering each other for fun in a movie, why couldn't Harley do the same thing in real life as well. Harley would soon realize that not everything you could do in the movies could play out the same thing in real life.
"Are you sure you want to do this for Mary's party?" Harley's friend Rodney Sett asked Harley. It was a few hours after school ended. Harley Keener and his friends were rehearsing their act for Mary Vonner's sixteenth birthday party. Their plan was to pretend to murder each other in the same way that the main characters from April Fool's Day did using fake representations of real weapons liie axes, knifes and guns. Their weapons would be made out of plastic and wood, with the exception of the firearms watch would be a combination of Nerf and prop guns. They would use blanks and dummy cartridges in lieu of actual bullets, as this was supposed to be staged, not for real.
The people who would be participating in the fake murder sceme at Mary's party were: Kristi Plack, A 12 year old kid who lived nearby from where Harley lived who was a friend of Harley's sister Emily, Rodney Sett, a 15 year old kid who was one of Harley's friends from school. He was Caucasian, Monty Christo, who waa named after the novel by Alexandre Dumas and Lexx Petri, An Asian-American friend from Harley's school.
Lexx was 16 years old, had short black hair and pale blue eyes. Monty Christo had one regular eye and one artificial eye. Monty used to wear contact lenses over his eyes to help him see better, as he was a bit myopic. The contacts irritated his eyes a lot. He started devoloping glacouma and cataracts in his eyes. Things got so bad that Monty's vision eventually stopped altogether. His glacouma got worse. He had to have his right eye removed to avoid spreading the infection to his other eye. He had an artificial ocular implant installed in his right eye. It was bionic. Monty Christo's bionic eye could capture images that could be downloaded to his phone.
Kristi Plack was Caucasian. She wore a green hoodie over green baggy sweatpants. She had long brown hair. Rodney Sett had wavy red hair. He had blue eyes. Back to the story, Harley Keener and his friends were rehearsing their fake murder sceme for Mary's birthday party. They decided to use fake blood squibs to simulate actual blood. That way when somebody got hit, the fake blood squib would burst, simulating real blood and the fact they were bleeding, even though they weren't really bleeding. They've been rehearsing this for a few days. Harley was going to video record the entire prank using a GoPro body cam attached to his shirt collar. He would then post the video to TikTok, if everything went well.
"Yes, I'm sure I want to pull off a fake murder prank at Mary Vonner's birthday party. You got a problem with it?" Harley said to Rodney.
"Yeah. Why in the hell are we doing this? Couldn't we get into trouble for doing this?" Rodney asked.
"C'mon. What's the worst that can happen?" Harley said. He was confident that everything would go as planned and that there wouldn't be issues. Harley was doing this for pretend. It wasn't like Harley was going to actually murder all of his friends for real. If the characters of the April Fool's Day movie could pretend that pretending to murder themselves for laughs was okay, why couldn't Harley and his friends do it and be okay too. Harley and his friends spent over two and a half hours rehearsing their party stunt. Harley had a feeling that things would be okay come Mary Vonner's sixteenth birthday party.
April 1, 2017. Mary Vonner's sixteenth birthday party.
Harley Keener was outside in the backyard of the Vonner family house. There were many people at Mary Vonner's sixteenth birthday party. Harley, his sister Emily and his mother were all at the party. Harley was dresseed in the same attire Ash Williams wore in the Evil Dead movies: a blue long sleve button-down shirt with jeans. It was a beautiful day outside. Pop music was blaring through the stereo. Harley watched as people were at their tables, talking to each other. Harley had hidden blood squibs and rubber padding over his entire upper and lower halves of his body. Harley also had fake plastic 9mm pistol painted blood red that looked almost identical to a real gun.
The gun had blanks and dummy cartridges in it. Harley also had a plastic chainsaw and a polyurethane bladed knife with a orange blade. Harley and his friends had set up semi lethal and harmless booby traps all over the premises. Harley and his friends got into their positions, getting ready to pretend slaughter Mary Vonner's party guests and her family. Mary was going to be Harley's last victim. Then, as Harley was about to "kill" Mary, his friends would pop out of the blue to announce that the thing was a prank. They would laugh it off and everything would go smoothly. That's what Harley hope would happen.
Harley waited for everybody to get into their positions. Harley hid himself behind a hedge. He watched Mary talking to her friend Sabrina Wedd. Sabrina talked to Mary about their plans for Spring Break.
"What are you going to do for Spring Break, Mary?" Sabrina asked her friend.
"My family and I are planning on going to the beach for Spring Break. Probably visit a few locations." Mary said. "How about you?"
"I'll probably go to the park or do something like that. I don't really have any major plans." Sabrina said.
"Why don't you have any plans?" Mary asked Sabrina.
"My family doesn't have the money to really go anywhere." said Sabrina.
Suddenly, from the hedge burst Harley wearing a porcelain mask weilding a plastic chainsaw. The plastic chainsaw buzzed to life as Harley cut into Sabrina's flesh. Fake blood came out of the squib that was embedded into her skin. Sabrina screamed with terror. Harley then put the plastic chainsaw away and pulled out his fake Airsoft 9mm blood red pistol. He aimed the firearm at the girl. Sabrina had greenish-blonde hair and her skin was white. Harley fired at Sabrina. The dummy bullet cartridges hit Sabrina's body, puncturing the fake blood squibs. She fell down to the ground, writhing around in mild pain. She played dead. Mary screamed and freaked out. She didn't know that her friend was shot by dummy bullet cartridges. She serioiusly thought that Harley had really killed her friend.
Harley started chasing after Mary with his gun and knife. Harley was high witg euphoria. He was very haoppy that his April Fool's Day movie inspired plan was coming to fruition. Harley then went after a boy and proceeded to engage in melee combat with him using a thick tree branch. Harley started to beat the living crap out of the boy with a thick tree branch. The boy was screaming very loud, loud enough to possibly break the sound barrier. Harley enjoyed hearing the boy scream. He tape recorded the boy's screams. He was planning on making a trap remix of the boy's screams to use as the ringtone to his phone.
Harley continued beating up the boy. The boy was at this point crying profusely. Large bruisees started to form on his body. He was in a lot of pain. Harley beat the boy so badly that there was real blood starting to form from his body. Harley was a bit taken aback by that. He hadn't expected to hurt the boy so bad to the point that he would start forming bruises on his body.
Harley stopped beating the boy up with the tree branch. He told the boy that it was part of a prank. He sprinted past the boy. There was a body camera attached to Harley's shirt collar that was recording everything live. Harley ran wildly through the house, shooting and stabbing various people along the way. He felt powerful. Like nothing could him. He eventually fake murdered everybody except for Mary. Red fake blood stained Harley's clothes.
Everybody around him was knocked out with fake blood all over everybody. Harley took off his porcelain mask. Mary backed up against the corner of the living room. She was cowering with fright. Harley stopped advancing toward Mary. Mary was so filled with fear that she could barely speak. Harley was just about to tell her that he didn't actually murder all of her friends and that it was all a prank, when suddenly he heard a loud noise coming from behind him.
Harley suddenly felt intense pain on his back. He felt something really warm coming from his lower back area. Harley pressed his hand to the warm area. He soon realized that he was bleeding from his back, near his kidney area. Harley felt sharp pain coursing through his body. He turned around to see Mary Vonner's father holding a .38 caliber revolver in his left hand. It was then that Harley realized that he'd been shot in the back by a real bullet fired from a real gun. The blood dripping down his lower back was his own real blood. Not the fake blood that on his body.
"GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM MY DAUGHTER, NOW! YOU THINK IT'S OKAY TO HURT AND MURDER INNOCENT PEOPLE AT MY DAUGHTER'S BIRTHDAY PARTY? I don't think so! " Mr. Vonner yelled at the top of his lungs at Harley. Mr. Vonner had no idea that it waa all staged and not real. He didn't know that it was a prank set up by Harley.
"It's a prank!" Harley screamed at Mary's father. Harley's friends suddenly appeared beside Mr. Vonner. They happily proclaimed April Fool's to Mary. They then noticed Harley's injured body. They were beyond shocked upon seeing Harley laying on the living room floor.
"This was all a prank?!" Mr. Vonner asked. "None of the people were actually murdered?"
"Yes!" Harley said to Mary's father. "It was all a prank."
Mr. Vonner took a moment to soak the information in. He had no idea that this was all a prank. He thought that Harley had actually murdered all of the people at his daughter's party. He didn't it was fake.
"Did you know what Harley did was a prank?" Mr. Vonner asked his daughter.
"No. I didn't know that Harley was going to pretend to murder all of my friends and family as a joke." Mary told her father. She turned toward Harley. "I thought that you were actually murdering my friends. I had no idea that it was all a fucking elaborate prank! You should be ashamed by what you did. Murdering people is not a joke. It never has and never will be. You have ruined my birthday! What if it wasn't fake and you actually murdred my family and friends for real? Then what?" Mary said to Harley.
"I had no intention of actually murdering you and all the people at your party. I'm not that type of person." Harley said to Mary.
"Yeah. Well I have no intention of me being your friend anymore. I hope you live with what you did to me for the rest of your life." Mary said to Harley. Harley was started to get delirious from his gunshot wound. He realized in that moment the difference between fiction and reality. He realized right then and there that maybe trying to replicate the ending of a horror movie in the real world wasn't a good idea. He should've never have tried to copy a scene from the April Fool's Day horror movie. Harley was fortunate that he survived being shot.