It’s a classic story. There’s a murderer on the loose and he’s wearing a mask. But there’s a party tonight at your best friend’s ex-boyfriend’s house, and you’ve put on a new dress for a change.
An old story: the girl in the red hood cuts open your belly with the knife. You stuff yourself with stones.
An older story: the sphinx tells you that you were born of prophecy. You can’t shake its stink off you. But you tell it your father is still alive.
New veneer! Let’s make it bakery themed. He chops them up with a breadknife and grinds their bones into flour.
The home makeover show devolves into ghost story. You strip off the wallpaper and the haunted house is still a haunted house.
Something more experimental. You peel the hangnail and it unspools your skin, then fat, then muscle. You can’t stop because there’s still some you left on you.
The sphinx asks the riddle: how many women must raise you for your mother to no longer be your mother? You skin the wolf and wear its bloody pelt like a coat. You are still the girl in the red hood: you can’t eat raw meat.
You burn down the haunted house and it’s still a burial ground.
Try psychological. The cult plasters images of the holy wolf around your bedroom. The demon is a symbol of something that a demon symbolizes. Its leader bakes stone into bread, but it’s still hard when you swallow. They don’t pursue when you escape. Leave the ending open-ended: in the forest around the compound, howling.
We film in stop-motion. Your flesh becomes clay, and the children make stick figures that look like you, over and over again.
There’s no other ending. You take off his mask. The burns mar his face where you slammed it in the oven, but he was always the murderer. He puts the mask back on and grabs the rusty breadknife. Your red dress is caught in the door. You were never the final girl.
The sphinx asks the riddle: how many stones for the wolf to no longer be the wolf? You keep putting them in you anyway.
Here: the oldest horror story. You look in the mirror and you recognize the face.
Nico Escalona (he/him) studies chemistry, which he likes to think of as the study of names and transformations. What most intrigues him are the inhibitors: the factors that prevent change and cause stagnation. You can follow his writing at @iconicography.
photo by Timothy Eberly (via unsplash)
Crow & Cross Keys 