Fur coats are broken out of whatever hole Jason keeps them in for most of the year. The spare one is far too heavy and long for Emily, so he goes through his store of pelts and creates custom editions, two coats for her, as well as a tiny one for the baby, along with fur blankets for the cell. As is proper, the man and male baby wear black bear fur, while the girl receives a coat made from several ermines, and another utilising bobcat. Being given more coats than is pragmatic causes Emily to aim a half quizzical, half suspicious look at Jason's back when he turns around, thereby in time to notice him sneaking a stealthy stare at her over his shoulder. Flushed skin and awkwardness descends, for one of them at least. It's not like staring is anything unusual, it's just that he's previously always been open about it.
For winter patrol Emily is able to high step through the bright snow in shoes, her old hiking boots. Having her feet shod, especially with shoes that come from a time when her life was relatively sane, makes her feel fully human again, which correspondingly sends tremors through her world, her emotional stability unavoidably dropped, landing on its head. People wear shoes, people live in nice warm houses with nice warm families, but she wears shoes, she's a people, but she lives like an animal in a stony pen, forever waiting for an unusually quiet bull to exert his mating rights over her. No nice warm family, only shame, shame, shame. When the backlog of it hits, it's almost too much. If someone can treat her the way she's been treated, by man after man and person after person, then she must be filth, unworthy of life. How dare she even be upset about it. She ought to submit.
The black bars encircling her vision leap towards each other, leaving tiny holes for sight. An excessive breathing rate remains hidden under the exertion of trooping along after Jason, who struts around his winter wonderland with as much trouble as a moose does. Must be nice to be so tall. Must be sweet, dude, until one inevitably trips. She heard that abnormally tall people often have health issues related to their height, but if Jason is afflicted by any of that, he never gives hint of it. Even his messed up skull and eye and what have you, don't seem to bother him, beyond making him extremely angry and insecure, that is.
While pondering everything Jason, she veers off the path slightly, a barking grunt from the man himself serving as a finger snap to realign her attention with reality. He glares at her, machete in hand and pointing at the ground at a tense angle. She knows that if she gets out of this, machetes are going to feature prominently on an extensive trigger list. Machetes, hockey masks, hockey, snow, summer camps, plants. Once she's retaken her spot, he lifts it, pointing at a tree, the blade glinting in the sharp reflected light. Adrenaline and the pulsating black bars make it difficult for Emily to understand, but she eventually manages to make both her eyes look at the same thing at the same time, and focus. Eagles, he's drawing her attention to a pair of bald eagles noisily renovating their nest, arguing over a twig. Very white picket fence, very American Dream. The slow motion world of extreme stress gets her stuck staring at the sight, before she pays it forward and points out the birds to Kevin. "Look, Kevvy. Eagles. These ones like fish. I think they poach from your daddy's lake." The baby peels off in giggles that cause the birds to look down at the furry humans, their yellow eyes perpetually furious.
Snow shifts and a movement out of the corner of her much gentler eye makes Emily lower her lashes, blocking Jason out. A powder blue shadow falls across her, the air warming slightly. The long hunk of deadly metal shifts hand to Jason's left so that his right, the one that always leads in bouts of strangulation or fondling, floats through the frosty air, covered in insulating animal skin. There's no way to tell what it intends, as like the predatory birds, Jason's eyes are never soft, but always on the watch for gain. It lands on the baby's fur covered head, and a violently trembling Emily almost breaks apart, pieces trying to separate and fall to the snow. The gigantic hand does not suddenly twist or squeeze or bring its brother over to clamp and smash and pop. Although she's yet to see him do such a thing to a human skull, some things don't need to be demonstrated before one's eyes for their existence to be entirely credible regardless. Kevin makes a sound very like the beginning of a word. The hand rests for a moment on the child, before taking off again, flying higher to perch on his mother's head. Its weight makes it felt even under the homemade fur hat she's wearing. Carefully, she catches Jason's gaze, but the inhuman mask interferes and colours in more of her vision with black madness, leaving only one eye still able to peer out. Quickly, she looks away. People don't wear hockey masks outside of the rink. Crazy psycho murder killers wear hockey masks outside of the rink, and she's here, trying to be a single mother to a crazy psycho murder killer's baby. The patch of snow she's staring at begins zooming in and out, back and forth, wildly.
The day trip includes a stop at the lake, now frozen, where Jason provides refreshments by means of a battered water bottle, and looted protein bars. As before, he stares intently at Emily while she eats, but as he himself eats plenty, and much like a wolf does, she puts this antisocial habit down not to perpetual hunger, but to some sort of quirk generated by his socially deprived upbringing.
Before stalking into the treeline to check for threats, Jason places down a canoe and points at Emily, then at it. You know, who even needs words? Who invented them? Why? They just pollute the environment. She conducts entire conversations with Jason in complete silence. It's perfectly normal. Obeying her captor as she always does, Emily sits, primly arranging her dress. With the bars over her squinting vision, it's very difficult to appreciate the fabulous sight of the lake, so large, so beautiful, so much less touched by filthy tourist hands. Difficult to delight in the clear air, although from the safety of his loving mother's lap her son is having an ecstatic time exploring the sights and smells of his first winter, his face transfigured with wonder. Skeleton trees cast grasping shadows across a field of bone white. Bloated clouds lazily float by on their backs across a crystalline sky, complacently looking down at petty human drama. A small animal roots around close by, probably twitching a fuzzy pink nose. No incessant cacophony of cars, no smog, no squawking crowds or spam calls.
The bristly paintbrush appearance of the leafless trees sets her thinking of Jason's hands again, and Jason's arms. The world at large likes to downplay the power of the human frame, at least as compared to other animals, but the world at large usually never has cause to go against it at a serious level. Human arms and hands, human strength, very underrated killing equipment, capable of tearing apart other creatures, just add rage. Limbs and appendages so finely formed, so flexible, executors of boundless human ingenuity. Most of Jason's nigh preternatural ingenuity is expressed towards her in the very basic forms of hold down and beat. Not too much beating anymore, Jason's gotten bored of it, or something. She rubs a thigh, the last place to receive a big black bruise from his fist. There was no reason for it, not one she could discern. It left her unable to walk properly for a few days. Even though he hasn't smacked her like that for at least a fortnight, the constant expectation of it makes it almost impossible to enjoy the reprieve.
A familiar itchy weight oozes across the back of her head. There's no need, no good reason to look around when she already knows what she'll discover, but Emily does so anyway, finding what she expected, Jason, standing amongst the trees in a hyper aggressive pose, watching her, his machete free of its makeshift holster, the tip of his bow jutting past a thick trapezius muscle. At first she tries to pretend that he's enjoying the view, but common sense informs her that he's probably not too great a fan of the lake, or anything here, actually, and her eyes meet his directly, so no, he's definitely staring at her. She turns back around but takes a mental image of him with. Under his fur coat he's wearing his thin, orangey, 'summer' shirt, a favourite. It shows off his toned physique better than any of his other shirts, partly because it's full of holes, but she doubts that's the reason for it being his favourite. If he wasn't so hideously ugly, he could be Instagram beautiful. He could be a fitness influencer, if he would just put down the machete for five minutes. No one cares anymore what you do in your free time.
Ringing white noise collects in her ear canals as she imagines his hard abdomen rising and falling with the deep, calm breaths of the hunter studying his prey. Stomach acid and bile follow suit, climbing up her esophagus. How many innocent people has he murdered? And for what? To avenge an equally murderous mother? It doesn't even make sense. But when does it ever. Revenge is never satisfied. It would consume the entire universe if it could, its parameters continuously expanding.
The gorgeous lake is, in her mind, violated by the revolting blot of bodies, hundreds of them, all piled up on the bottom, errant pieces frozen just under the surface. They appear on the shore too, lying like beached whales in various stages of decay and ruination, mouths open, glassy eyes staring, if they have eyes at all, grey blotchy guts spilling across the thirsty earth. What does Jason do with the bodies? Emily still isn't sure. The pantry stash of corpses gradually empties out, but to where, she doesn't know, doesn't want to know. Hopefully six feet under, but maybe her hallucination is correct. Closer and closer the dead approach the only two living persons, apart from Jason, for miles around. They aren't the vengeful sort, they simply silently display their wounds to her sight. That's bad enough. Emily's ragged breathing disturbs her son, who whimpers, his tiny hands covering his eyes. Mercifully, her own vision cuts out completely before a well preserved little girl corpse manifests on top of her feet, its pink birthday dress still intact, its head missing. She can't see it, but she feels the weight, and her lungs expand, blood vessels swell, her tongue waking from its long hibernation. Enormous dizziness attempts to cast her into the sea of dead.
A squeaky crunch from behind the canoe defiles the quiet, snow being pressed down, a pungent smell of blood and sweat forcing its way up Emily's nostrils. The air displaced by a large hand moving through it slams into her cheek, still icy. Abruptly her vision returns, now set to unnaturally intense HD, every single colour exaggerated, every single particle sharp as a blade, her hearing and sight far ranging, her mind running at a hyperfast autopilot. Her brain spins a probability wheel and makes a split second choice.
An unearthly shriek vomits forth from powerful vocal chords, pulling in decades of anguish and terror from the environment and reforming it into a single ice pick of a howl, an ice pick wielded by a banshee, who slams it into Jason's sternum, destabilizing him for a split second, so much so that he flinches, and covers his ears. Screams are music, unless he didn't mean to generate them. Moving faster than even he can for a very short time, Emily bolts, spinning around him and away into the woods, her run a bouncing gallop, like a (pregnant) gazelle. Leaps and bounds cover distance, and for her it's impressively swift, but once Jason understands what has happened and rights himself, it becomes much less so. His own running style is less wolf and more lion, less about endurance and more about the short, sharp, brutal dash. The muscular ambush and bone crunching kill. No fear of the face to face. Very quickly he gains on her, even though they are both hampered by the snow and she has a head start and the power of love on her side. His breathing remains unruffled, his heart rate low. No warning breaks past his lips, no calls to watch out or stop. He'd rather die than speak to a nobody.
The sentinel trees are endless, and Emily has no plan, all her imperatives scream that she get away from the lake, run towards civilization. In reality she is heading deeper into the slumbering forest, towards the densely foliaged area Jason used to inhabit as a callow youth, the parts he knows better than all the rest. Blessedly for her, the traps here are fewer and farther between, and an angel guides her steps so that those that are here, she skirts by mere millimetres.
A snarling Jason is within arms reach when she breaks into a slightly open patch, and immediately leaps into the air, to land in a tight ball. Her pursuer skids to a sudden halt, his arms held away from his sides. A hiss and a low humming growl becomes the only soundtrack to the world, a mountain lion turning from its kill. Emily is closer to it than he, and exposing her neck in her efforts to shield their child. He could drag her away, and potentially trigger an attack while one handed. With his machete already drawn, he could leap over her, but if she decides to stand up at the wrong moment, she'll kill them both, or at least herself, and as he watches she tries to do just that, slipping and falling onto her side when the animal mock charges. Wrong, wrong, make yourself big, never show fear, never turn your back, never run, carry a weapon in the woods. Make noise. The girl is doing none of that, and has forgotten about him entirely. How. The human brain can only handle one life-ender at a time, and apparently she considers an overgrown feline to be more of a threat than the Jason Voorhees.
"Don't move."
Though she hears the earth shaking command, ground out in a gravelly rumble, Emily still doesn't take her eyes off the cat. It charges again, for real, aiming for her face, claws spread wide, scattering snow across her, its teeth conical shards of yellow death made to clamp around, and through the prey's neck.
A machete leaps into the air horizontally, a piece of loose wrapping fluttering from its handle. Jason pinches the tip of it while its still hovering, using the immense store of energy in his arm to fling it. It flies over Emily's head, cartwheeling, to crash blade first into the shoulder of the animal, knocking it sideways. Shrieking, it flip flops back and forth, tail lashing, claws gouging away snow down to the soil beneath. Again it leaps, for him this time. Ah ah ah. A boulder fist barrels into its face, breaking its jaw. Hooked claws pierce bear skin, but Jason barely feels it, throwing the lion off himself. Not done yet, he drags Emily away by the collar, dumping her up against a tree, before materializing more throwables out of his clothing, knife, cleaver, axe head, arrows, knife. Chasing the beast when it attempts to crawl away, he turns it into a pincushion, not ceasing until it stops moving, a wide but hidden grin bringing manic fire to his eyes.
Emily isn't done either. The dam having broken, she continues her attempt to flee, even trying to wrestle Jason when he catches up, failing of course, so much so that he issues one of his nasty laughs while pushing her face into the snow and twisting her arm behind her back, his fingers leaving streaks of blood on her cheeks. Still, he doesn't hurt Kevin.
Somebody's in the doghouse that night, and it isn't Jason. Clothing rights are revoked, manacles return, punishment is applied.
Bad days return and swallow up Christmas, the New Year and part of Spring, but Emily manages to give her baby a Christmas gift in the form of extra long playtimes and extra smoochy kisses, rolling last year's mystery bauble across to him over and over again. There's been a regretful demotion from housekeeper back to bed slave, and this time Jason is even more horrible than before, her heavily pregnant state not slackening his fury one bit. His revenge is no longer cold and clinical, no longer the sort he might apply to anyone falling into his power, but more like targeted bullying. Sometimes he'll shove her around the small room, hissing the command to run, laughing at her inability to do so while he has the keys and control of her child. He'll pick Kevin up, and simply hold him, or hug him, his freakishly strong arms slowly closing over the soft body so laboriously grown, an eye gleefully narrowed at the baby's mother, threats and could-bes manifesting almost corporeally in the space between the warring parents, driving Emily into panic attacks, and even once, into a faint. He seems to resent her for having 'made' him speak, but will keep poking the rotten tooth regardless by whispering things in her ear that turn her bones to dust and her heart to ash. No explanation is offered, or necessary, for her actions, and while Emily apologises for causing him inconvenience, she doesn't apologise for running.
So much bad treatment cumulates in a bad outcome, Emily goes into premature labour after a punch fractures a couple ribs. A pale blue eye does a rare thing, briefly de-escalating from some form of psycho, down into the same sort of aghast expression a truly normal man would display in this situation. Immediately, all the wellsprings of pleasure he'd been lapping at for the months since that chase through the snow, dry up, close shop, bar him from entrance. Jason leaves the room, leaves the lair, leaves the house.
He returns though, after looking for someone or something to kill and finding nothing but a lone fisherman. He returns and dumps the body in his shrine to his mother, before diving back down below ground, fingers compulsively ghosting up and down the blade strapped to his leg, wild thoughts chasing their fellows through the dark forest of his mind, hacking each other up, only to rise from the grave and repeat the cycle. He should get rid of all three of his captives. All they bring is trouble, annoyance, anxiety. Keeping prisoners is like keeping a venomous snake inside one's pillow. Why? Why do this to himself? Beauty and a reliable source of fun and games is not worth it. Most of the games aren't even fun, he feels like he's going through the motions, growing weak and indulgent. No, he'll end this little experiment, make it quick and clean, he supposes he owes the girl that.
Still, the executioner drags his feet, taking the longest route possible to his destination, trudging, snatching a book from the book pile out of habit, taking an hour to sharpen every single one of his weapons, going back to whine to Mommy, spending time being castigated by Mommy, checking the perimeters of the camp, dispatching another fisherman and stealing his shit, making his above ground bed, digging pebbles out of his shoes, crafting patties out of mystery meat, smoking a joint on the island in the middle of the la-
By the time the doting father shambles along the secret tunnels, 'accidentally' getting turned around at every opportunity, Emily has had her baby, and a purple kidney bean rests on her chest, another mass of placenta lying where it landed. The exhausted mother isn't breathing too well, or looking too well, and something twinges in Jason's side. A stitch from all that slow trudging.
Swollen eyes open a crack, and something about his demeanour must clue Emily in to what was recently going through his mind, as she tries to back away, only to cry out and clutch her sickly coloured ribs with her free hand. There's nothing she can do to escape so she becomes immobile, falling onto her side in a loose foetal position.
Letting his weapon clatter to the ground, Jason approaches, reaching out for her bony shoulder to roll her onto her back. Unable to do anything but slightly move her eyes, Emily watches him perform the same service he performed the previous year, cutting the umbilical cord. Once that's done he covers her up to the chest with their duvet, places a new pack of mixed baby blankets on the bedside table, and leaves, taking the placenta and machete with him.
"She's a she." wheezes Emily later that night, powerful painkillers from who knows where making her a bit less wary. Her clothes have returned, Jason replacing them when she fell asleep after he administered the first round of pills. He looked at his hands holding those clothes like all people look at him, confused, horrified, stunned. He must have caught something from the lake water. A brain parasite. The children who come here, the bullying sort, are always scaring each other with brain parasites. They used to call him a parasite, simply because he was ugly and weird and at the camp for free.
He shakes his head, clearing the past from it. Back in the present he responds to Emily's words by pinching a bit of her dress between thumb and finger. They're lying in bed, but not in straitjacket position, because of her ribs. No, he's lying on his side, masked, while she's lying on her back. It's too dangerous to leave her unmanacled, as she might get it into her head to be violently angry with him, so when she gets up to attend to the newborn, chains rattle. Watching her nurse the child sets off another internal twinge, still painful, but also exciting, somewhat like the feeling of having it rain while he's crouching in a bush spying on a randy couple. This is a different sort of excitement though, the same sort he felt when he first touched her pregnant stomach. He's not stupid, he knows what the townies call this emotion, but he's not going to entertain the idea in relation to himself, he who is above these weak mortal creatures and their absurd vulnerabilities.
The baby has her fill and is placed in a second cot, Emily hobbling into bed, and almost immediately falling into a doze. Of course Jason made no reply to her statement, she'll have to choose a name herself again, probably just as well as there can only be one woman's name squirming through that putrescent brain matter of his. Naming her 'Pamela' might act like a protective charm however. Emily very carefully turns onto her undamaged side, hoping to suddenly fall asleep pondering her next step. There's no way she can survive much longer, surely, but the idea of leaving her children behind and alone, brings forth the rotting fingers of panic to clutch at her throat.
She's one millimetre off the peace of sleep when a surprisingly warm hand slides down her arm, and hot breath tickles her ear, a question asked almost too softly to be heard, even at such close range. Already through the sparkling yet subtly twisted gates of Dreamland, where both sweet and sour sights await her, she responds with two words.
"It's Emily."