A knife accompanies Jason when he returns. A knife, and a box. And other things, but Emily focuses only on the aforementioned. The gate unlocks, an upright shadow sliding through. Narrow shoulders crack as they curve inward, small knobs of bone on a small bone frame, trying to guard the precious little bundle in her arms. One karate chop from Jason and she'd shatter, disarmed. He approaches, his animalistic sniffing audible. Muscles in his neck shift, as if his jaw has dropped open, allowing him to smell better by letting air wash over his tongue. Beast.
There's a lot of blood, and a great big organ like a brain lies on the bed between Emily's legs, a brain that has been stomped on, the placenta. Silver flashes as a knife flies out of its sheath and into Jason's hand, turning so that its hooked tip points upwards. Swift, practical, expert. Impressive. The low light amplifies his bulk.
Emily falls over sideways, tree-like, not on her baby but in such a way that Jason would have to work to get to him. Laughably easy work. But not for today. The blade cuts through the umbilical cord instead. Lifting the large and fascinating organ, Jason studies it, tilting his head, while Emily studies him. He's still holding the knife in his other hand, and she prays that he puts it away, and goes away.
Unfortunately no, Jason does go away while she's tending to her baby and trying to make the box beside the bed into a makeshift crib…but then he returns. He walks over to it, arms hanging by his sides, to look down at the sleeping newborn in his ragged doll clothes and worn blanket. Trying her best not to give the impression that she fears he will do violence upon the infant, even though it's obvious that she considers him liable to explode into psychotic rage at any moment, Emily keeps as much of herself obscuring the little boy as possible, pinching and plucking the rough off cuts of fabric that are his blankets, shifting them around. The baby is a baby, so he doesn't look like much yet, except a perfect little baby, but she hopes beyond hope that something in his adorable appearance sets tender sparks flying in the recesses of his father's soul. There must be softer aspects to the murderer, as even the most evil men can never fully escape the latent love of goodness that is part of their nature. They can never fully destroy themselves while life remains. Even if he only becomes sentimental, or curious, or even ambitious to have someone he can craft into an apex predator like himself, that will be something that will craft a bit of protection for his son, maybe a large amount of protection, for him, and maybe for his mother too. Serial killers are not supermen, even they fall prey to attachments. The number of them who end up simping for and then being turned in by their female lovers is frankly, highly amusing.
The old status quo of absolute silence returns while he's looming over her, even though nothing can ever be the same again, Emily feeling like each word is part of an allotted amount, fixed, not to be transgressed, an amount she doesn't know the total for. To say something, to acknowledge what just happened, feels like getting up on a tightrope, and besides, too much of her mind is occupied with watching him, noting every little twitch and flicker. The sway of his body is enough to keep her heart pounding. Why is he standing here. Just go. Please, just go.
He's looking at her. He's jerking his chin. What. Somehow her mind got lost between the cracks, slipping from here and now, to a foggy nowhere, her memory retaining nothing of the past few minutes, as it has retained only singed snapshots of her first few days as Jason's captive. A sound here, an angle of ceiling there, everything overlayed with a greenish filter. Yeah, she's familiar with that phenomenon, memory leakage, she calls it. You end up with a moth-eaten jumper to show the police, or anyone else, full of huge holes you have to stitch over with guesses and conjecture based on before and afters, because your own brain blocked the incident out, making you sound like a liar, or a loon. Those memories never return. Your brain does it to help you, but it ends up harming you, because so few people understand. Usually it takes a few days for the process to complete, but her brain is doing it in real time now, it seems.
Jason jerks his chin again, one huge, luminous eye staring down at her from almost seven feet up. 'Over there.' is what she makes him say with her voice. Assuming he's telling her to go and sit on the bed, she very reluctantly complies, wobbling and collapsing on it as soon as she arrives there.
After staring for a little bit longer at the child, Jason pivots, then bolts at her across the short space. Too startled to scream, Emily flops backward, noodle boned, the brute pushing her into the centre of the bed, boulder knees slamming down on either side of her hips, dirty boots leaving mud on the mattress, Jason holding both her wrists in one of his hands so that she can't pull a knife out of his belt and stab him, his other hand rapidly divesting himself of unnecessary clothing, flinging his weapons out of reach of her. Even his best friend the machete is kicked out of bed. He knows his victim's body well now, there's no more awkward fumbling. What's that? She's just had a baby? …and? This is Jason Voorhees, one of the most fearsome and evil men to ever live, a man so deadly and ruthless that he need only be referred to by his first name, or simply as 'he'... this not a fairy tale Prince or a tame househusband willing to bow and scrape. Now that his cow has had her calf, he no longer has any reason to be so delicate with her.
Spring waxes on, and Jason 'acquires' or locates within his huge storehouse of items previously owned by his many, many victims, suitable items for his baby. Number one is a proper cot, a nice vintage rocker which Emily deeply cleans as best she can, and wishes she could accessorise with flowers. But since giving birth she has not been allowed out of confinement, neither she, nor her son, who still lacks a name, either first or last. Thinking of him as Something Voorhees is too heinous for words, but Voorhees is certainly the name he's going to have applied. Jason has not indicated in any way, shape, or form, the name he wishes to bestow, and might very well be content to let the child continue on nameless.
Number two consists of baby clothes, for babies and not dolls. In blue, because boys wear blue. That's what Mother taught him, and that's what Jason holds to. The clothes are not forty years old, but much newer. As always, Emily doesn't inquire as to where the supplies come from, but unlike that first day, she tries to have Jason view his son as much as possible, moving so that he's visible when she's changing his clothes, an activity Jason will stay and watch if in the area. He's yet to touch the child, his interaction consisting solely of staring. Staring when he brings Emily food. Staring when she nurses the boy. Staring when he comes to empty her buckets. Staring before and after forcing himself on her. Sometimes coming to stare at random times of the day.
He doesn't like the baby crying though, Emily realising this with a shock like being plunged into icy water. Jason really doesn't like it, and will become noticeably agitated, leaving if he's on the other side of the bars, or bristling and glaring if not. Emily develops a fear of her own child's cries as a result, doing her best to quickly soothe him by quick application of breast, hunger being usually, but not always, the problem. Unfortunately she resorts to semi-smothering him whenever he takes a millisecond too long to quiet down, her eyes all the while glued to the wrathful man lurking far, far too nearby.
Number three are reusable diapers, and a baby bath, i.e, a plastic tub. A tub Emily sees can also be used for momma's hair care and other cleaning needs. All the bleeding and stuff from the birth has stopped now, and Jason has returned to not caring overmuch about her physical state, although the new manacle is a better fit so that it doesn't cause the same level of damage as the original, and she still receives hacked up vegetation with her generous meat meals. Although heating water himself is crossing the line, Jason does see the utility in not bathing a newborn in freezing water, so he installs a kettle and battery setup in her boudoir so she can boil water. The appearance of a working kettle in his store of junk on a day he felt good also has him lobbing a bag of purloined coffee onto the ground near the machine, coffee he had been using himself, but never bothered to make for Emily as it's difficult to torture someone with it.
All in all, the captive mother of his, so far only known child, receives a slight upgrade in living environment, if you ignore the lack of sun and fresh air. An ancient Turkish carpet even appears. Jason continues to sleep with her at night, in the former straitjacket manner, but God help her if the baby wakes him, because then he takes his annoyance out on her. But him sleeping with her has actually, hideously, become preferable to the alternative, because on the increasing number of days when he's away all night, the total silence, total darkness and heavy air so far back in his warren is enough to frighten one out of one's wits. It's like being buried alive. On those days the fairy lights stay on, and Emily tries to will him to return.
Summer boils into being, and today is his birthday. Not the baby's, the baby was born in March, and now it is June of the same year. June the thirteenth. Jason's birthday. Incidentally, also the day Emily and her lucky friend decided to go hiking, the day they ceased to matter to the world. They had parents, and family, and friends, but if you go missing, it's not like the movies. You're not found.
Emily doesn't know it's Jason's birthday, of course, or even that it's been a year, because in all that time there have been roughly twenty words floated between them, all from Emily's side. At this point she is sure he will never speak to her, and that hurts, that hurts bad. Not because she wants his attention (although she does) or wants to speak to him (which she does), but because she knows for a fact that he can articulate himself in something more than grunts, he simply chooses not to speak to her, the same way she chooses not to speak to cockroaches…but she has spoken to cockroaches before, when surprised or icked out by the annoying little trash gobblers, but to Jason she has not even attained the rank of world's most hated insect. She's somewhere on the level with furniture, unliving, inanimate, objects people use, but which no one in their right mind speaks to. The man even speaks to himself on occasion, not in her direct presence, mind, but when he's out of sight and moving around his lair, his vicious voice like that of an evil god. This is his most underrated ability, the slow and deliberate eroding of the mind.
A year of the silent treatment combined with the other abuse becomes too much on the morning of his birthday, when she finds that he's in an unusually relaxed mood, Emily loses control and pleads for him to speak. During the night she heard him muttering in his sleep about unspecified 'idiots', and she wants to make him acknowledge her son by giving him a name. It seems to her that that will prevent him hurting the little boy, if he has to think of him as a person and not as part of some easily disposable category. The fact that Jason doesn't know her name, is of less importance. "Jason." she says against his scarred and twisted lips. "Please speak to me. Give me a name for the baby."
A warm gust of air from his wide nose, the same nose she is sure her nameless child has inherited, sweeps down the lower part of her face. Heavy lids open and an eyeball audibly spins in its socket, gazing coldly into her from a millimetre away, remaining at the same time at a million miles distance. For an instant she thinks he might respond, if only with a single negative word, but then his horrible snarl returns, bunching his thick skin, and his forehead crashes into hers, tilting her head back, two sets of small teeth, the only small things about him, biting down on the flesh under her lip. The pain is mind numbing, literally mind numbing, it burns like fire, or ice, and then it passes beyond pain into white hot agony, and then into monotonous groaning. No wild yelp or scream emerges from her throat to gratify him, so Jason lets go before his teeth meet through torn flesh, pulling back with a mouthful of Emily's blood as a consolation prize. Human blood is never hot unless it sprays from the neck or you stick a hand inside a rib cage, and then it's not really the blood that is providing the warmth. Everything is always disappointing, always, every day of his life. He never quite achieves it, whatever 'it' is. Satisfaction, that is, ultimate satisfaction. His mother is never happy. He's never happy.
All throughout that savage attack, Emily doesn't cry, crying is for when you're at least a little safe, have at least a little breathing room between you and your tormentor, but there is no space between her and Jason, and she fully understands that he's a sadist. Crying in pain only gives him the extra steamy jollies, and the only way she has to spite him, is to deny him his jollies.
After swallowing his daily mouthful of fool's blood, his eyes rolling into the back of his head for a moment, Jason resumes kissing her.
Like a certain red and impish comrade of his is sending him gifts, doomed victims always invade Jason's territory on his birthday. It's gotten so that he expects it, lays special traps, haunts favourite bushes, eats extra food and bulks up in preparation. It's difficult to predict whether he'll receive a few scattered hikers, or a mixed group of campers, or both, if he's been an extra good boy that year. Hikers are fun to stalk, but otherwise boring. They tend to be introverts, and alone or in pairs, sometimes with an animal. They don't piss him off, usually, and sometimes he'll even let one escape after having his way with them, so they can keep the taboo on this land going. Not that taboo ever stops the latter type of victim. No, young campers are another story. They're extroverted, loud, promiscuous, flagrant in their beauty. They don't have to pop out of bushes in order to force people to like them. They steal his weed. They also litter. They remind him of the bad days, when people like them could bully and leave him flailing around in a lake. Oh yeah, they also did his mom in. Campers never receive mercy, but occasionally they do get lucky.
This year is a Camper Year, and the usual shenanigans play out. Down in her underground bunker slash cave, Emily knows nothing about it until she looks up from the cot to find a terrified young face staring back at her through the bars. The shock distorts her vision, but she discerns a female shape, huge eyes showing all white around dark irises, long, dark hair reaching a trim waist. The girl, who is around Emily's age, is wearing a typical summer vacation outfit, the sort of outfit that would deem her 'tainted' in Jason's eyes. She pants and shivers like a rabbit faced with a stoat, having wound up down here by accident, and subsequently being stunned and petrified by the uncanny sight before her. A girl in a monster's dank cage. And a baby. The level of disaster has just gone up by many notchs as the camper reconsiders what could happen to her if she doesn't find a way out. For a few seconds neither speaks, and then Emily finds her voice, but the word she intends to say disintegrates in her mouth, so that it emerges in a faltering moan. "Leeurgh!"
She meant to say 'leave', but the fear that Jason might be present and hear, corrodes it. Nonetheless, the meaning is understood, and the rasping voice of the girl in the cell acts as a frightening spur to action. Without attempting any heroics, the camper dashes back the way she came, disappearing out of sight almost instantly.
Emily prays, and listens, listens hard for the next few hours, but hears nothing. Slight resentment arises over the lack of attempt to help or even to speak to her, but it's only slight, as she perhaps understands better than most why conventional wisdom is not always wise…And she perhaps sees herself as some might see her, despite the incontestable presence of bars and manacle. Everyone knows what happens to a girl in captivity.
Jason, like most people, has become more and more efficient and powerful with age, whatever that may be (and he looks to Emily to be between thirty-five and forty. A crazy age to one as young as her), and so his spree only lasts half of his special night. The sad curse of success. More clean up than party. Much more clean up. He returns the next morning, checks that his property is unharmed and where he left it, then leaves again, going for a dawn dip in the lake. Unfortunately it takes more than that to clean dried blood and when he returns properly, his bed partner observes the rusty marks on his neck and chest and hands, and quickly discerns that he's guilty of at least two or three new deaths, but probably more. He's been hit in the arm with something sharp, so spends a few minutes tending to the wound, sewing up the gory hole in a massive bicep, a seething look in his eyes. Emily shivers, imagining that whoever inflicted that paid the price for their presumption.
It would be foolish to ascribe a feeling of remorse to him, since he clearly isn't overly plagued by that destabilizing emotion, but when he dips a finger in antiseptic and then touches that finger to Emily's lip before getting down to business with her, she is tempted to see something in it. Never mind the rape and the bite, the laziest possible piece of aid is the thing that matters. A dangerously loose tile on her mental roof tries to fall off and brain her, but she holds it down with all her might. She'd like to ask about the dark haired girl, but doesn't, can't, eventually forcing the encounter from her mind.