Chapter Text
Randy stood with frustration grinding through his chest. Dewey and Gale’s lovers quarrel was really starting to get to his skull, and not just from that current moment, but all throughout the two’s presence at the college the last couple of days. It was obvious they were holding back from lunging at each other. Honestly, could they just go get a room and be done already? The tension was driving him nuts! It was especially irritating with them just sitting around in the schoolyard trying to put together the killer’s next move. His mind was trying to work things out, use his favorite movies as templates to gather the information and string them into a solid story, but their nonsensical bickering was ruining his train of thought.
He really felt the agitation stir when, once again, Gale’s phone started to ring. These damn bastards were very persistent, and they weren’t helping anything. His eyes rolled when Dewey retorted to Gale calling him “bonehead” with “phonehead” and he grabbed the device buzzing about like an irritating insect. He was younger than them and even he was more mature.
“Gale’s not here!” He called into the reciever. He was expecting the phone to hang up or someone on the other end to complain and beg, only to feel pure chills race throughout his spine at what responded.
“I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” A familiarly deep, hollowing voice spoke. Randy’s stomach dropped. “You three look deep in thought. Have you ever felt the knife tear through flesh and scrape the bottom of the bone beneath?”
Randy pushed his fingers up against the speaker as horrifying chuckles beat through his ear. He tried not to let it get to him, but he couldn’t help the pure fear spawn within him.
“It’s him,” he said.
“Who?” Dewey looked confused.
“The killer,” Randy reiterated. And that really seemed to have an effect. Any playful banter or annoyed words of false hate vanished from the tip of the tongue. Dewey and Gale’s faces both took up a pale complexion, especially as he warned them that the killer was watching them. All three of them got to their feet.
“Just keep him on the phone,” Dewey said.
“What do you want me to say?”
“I…I don’t know, just keep him talking.”
Dewey pulled Gale aside and the two ran off to search the grounds for anyone with a phone. It made sense, but the back of Randy’s mind was also keenly aware that it would be too obvious for Ghostface to just be lurking around in plain sight. If he was anywhere, it was somewhere hidden, and hopefully Dewey and Gale would be able to figure it out.
Not quite knowing how to “keep him talking”, as Dewey had ordered, Randy decided with the basic, absurd question, “What’s your favorite scary movie?”
“They’ll never find me.”
Randy’s heart raced as he looked back at the retreating forms. He was suddenly feeling very exposed, the fields around him keeping him open to any sort of attack. Then again, there were people around, and in broad daylight the killer would be absurd to attempt anything. But something told him that this Ghostface copycat didn’t exactly care for semantics.
“What do you care? Let them have their fun,” Randy said. He decided to try and put up a false facade of confidence, even though he was surely looking deadly terrified on the outside, just as he felt on the inside. “So, uh, what’s up?” And as his eyes looked around, he spotted a group of girls perched on the grass just some yards away from the street, notebooks scattered, and one with a phone pushed to the side of her head.
“What’s your favorite scary movie?” The voice threw back at him.
Randy’s feet took him forward towards the girl with the phone. “Showgirls, absolutely frightening. What’s yours?” He instantly found the girl was not the culprit, and he apologized briefly for trying to snatch away her device before his eyes went back to scanning the rest of the area.
“Wait, let me guess…The House on Sorority Row? The Dorm That Dripped Blood? Splatter University? Graduation Day? Final Exam?” The longer this went on, the more Randy was starting to feel this shield of pretend courage was actually starting to become real. The tension was still there but his mind was beginning to come up with many a witty line to throw at this son of a bitch. “Am I close?”
“Closer than you think.”
Suddenly, some douchebag ran straight into him out of nowhere. He yelled out in surprise and barely managed to maintain his balance, watching as the guy who’d ran right into him caught a football, blatantly ignoring the dude he’d just nearly shoved down. Not that that was really the priority with the creepy voice Randy was talking to.
“Too slow, geek,” the voice taunted. “Do you want to die?”
Randy almost laughed. Honestly, that was pretty pathetic for someone trying to act as a copycat of his hometown sociopaths. He’d heard a lot more frightening words spewed from his former friends’ mouths than this guy was coming up with, and it was almost sad.
“Is that the best you can do? Because Billy and Stu were much more original.”
His mind briefly replayed the traumatic moment that things really took a turn just a mere two years ago. “We all go a little mad sometimes, ” claimed Billy, face falling into a glow of evil before one loud bang! echoed throughout Stu’s home and a spark of pain scattered through Randy’s chest. He could almost feel the fresh agony. His hand came up to briefly touch the spot he’d been shot. It had taken him months to not let loud noises get to him, oftentimes sending him into a full blown panic attack. Sydney had really helped.
A moment of silence occurred before the killer spoke again.
“Why are you even here, Randy? You’ll never be the leading man.”
Anger stirred in him. Of course he knew that! He was never destined for that kind of role. He was the go-to know-it-all that everyone inevitably turned to when they didn’t know what else to do. And he was perfectly fine with that. But just the bastard’s obnoxious teasing scratched at him in all the wrong ways.
“Fuck you!”
His eyes latched onto a man walking past Gale’s news van, a phone plugged onto his ear. Randy made a rapid sprint as the next words grinded through his skull.
“No matter how hard you try, you’ll never be the hero, and you’ll never get the girl.”
And of course, the innocent passerby was once again nothing but a normal student. Again, Randy briefly managed an apology before returning his attention to the phone. It took a lot in him not to react to the stinging words.
He hated to admit it, but he knew the killer was right. He wasn’t the kind of character in a movie to become a hero. He wasn’t someone who would win over the heart of the badass leading woman who’d experienced severe trauma only she could possibly carry. All he would ever be was the nerdy best friend who kept the story going. He’d started to accept that fact, but it was like a wound was being quickly reopened and his continuous love for Sidney was released again to experience only heartbreak by truth. She’d never love him back.
“Wrong guy, dead boy.”
“Oh yeah? Well, let’s redirect the moment, Mr-I’m-So-Original,” Randy challenged. His feet began to pace him back across the street, and for some reason…he didn’t stop. His head felt the urge to remain in that position, right in front of the news van where his eyes could clearly get a good, long perspective of the entire field; but his gut was telling him to move . Don’t stop, just move. He wasn’t even sure why. “Where’s your innovation, huh?” He started, pacing into the grass as he started making a return for the bench he, Gale, and Dewey had been at before. Again, his stomach clenched in some sort of warning, something he considered a tell to keep heading that direction.
“Why copycat two highschool loser-ass dickheads? Stu was a pussy ass wet rag, and Billy Loomis- Billy Loomis? What the fuck? Jesus! What a rat-looking, homo-repressed mama’s boy! Why not set your goals higher, huh? You wanna be one of the big boys, huh? Manson? Bundy? OJ? Someone with a higher IQ than that of two weaselly kids? Go right ahead! No one is stopping you!”
Okay, so he knew in retrospect that he was probably getting a little too cocky. He was well aware of that. But every word just came up from his stomach, chest, and out of his mouth without a single ounce of attempted hold-back. He didn’t even care that he was receiving strange looks from the surrounding students who heard small remnants of his rant as he walked by. He couldn’t hold anything in. And all the while, his feet kept pushing him forward, and forward, until he was back beneath the shade of the tree from minutes before. He took brief notice that Gale and Dewey had yet to return, though he was sure that with as much pride as he’d put into the long spew of an insult he could wait a bit longer.
When quiet was all that replied to him, Randy scoffed. For someone so keen on recreating a murder spree from several years ago, it seemed the guy was mostly just big talk. Surely him calling Stu and Billy names hadn’t dug so deep? Unless his implication that the person was reaching far too low for serial killing standards had gotten to him.
The silence stretched longer. For a second, Randy actually worried he’d been hung up on, but the lack of a buzz to indicate such told him that wasn’t the case.
Then, the killer finally, after moments of eerie pause, spoke once more.
“You are reeeeeally going to regret those words, Randy,” he said, anger obvious even through the modulator. And with those simple words, the horror geek felt all of his smugness drifting away to be replaced once more by fear. An underlying panic settled in. His eyes danced around the clearing, but he couldn’t see any sign of the killer coming to attack him. It was only when they started talking further that he realized that wasn’t his intention. At least, not at that precise second.
“Don’t think you’re getting out of all of this alive. Soon, I’ll make sure your guts are splayed out all across the ground for everyone to see. But I’ll keep you alive to feel every slice, stab, and cut into your frail little body, until you’re nothing but skinned flesh flying from the top of the flagpole. You better enjoy every following minute, because they will be your last.”
A beep alerted his brain that the call had been ended.
But Randy could only care about the pure, deep-seeded dread coiling in his stomach.
It wasn’t an image he could ignore. In his head, he could see his gut-less body hanging in the wind at the top of the school’s flagpole in place of the American flag, everyone below looking with horror and disturbing intrigue at the sight. Like the faint memory of a bullet striking his chest, he vaguely felt a metal blade fig deep into his stomach and twist, churning his insides and repositioning his guts. He saw the last thing he’d ever see being a white mask with lifeless black eyes staring into him as he slowly drained of consciousness, losing any chance he had at continuing a normal, happy life. He’d seen things like it so many times in his favorite scary films. Halloween, Friday, Texas Chainsaw, but knowing he’d likely become one of the numerous victims of a massacre felt truly frightening.
He didn’t want to die. But this Ghostface seemed very, very intent on making sure he was going to.
And with this horror plaguing him, his hand fell from his face, keeping it against his ear useless with its relentless dial tone pulsing the empty other end. His eyes kept still on the open phone within his fingers like the killer would just jump out of it and grab his face.
He didn’t even realize Dewey and Gale were back until they were shaking him.
“Randy, what did he say?” Dewey, frowning in both concern and cop-like curiosity, asked him.
And, well…that was a loaded question.