Le Petite Mort- The Little Death

Whose there? Kevin? Are you screwing around?

Somebody was behind him. He could hear their footsteps, heavy and purposeful. Slowly Bobby tried to turn but his body was seemed frozen. So instead he twisted his neck and felt his jaw dropping. With his blurred vision Bobby saw the owner of the footsteps glaring at him with murderous intent.

“No man, please let me go,” he begged, dropping to his knees. The thing before him observed his prey blankly. Bobby knew he had come to kill him. Horrified, he broke down into sobs of terror.

“Holy shit, don’t do it, let me live!”

No mercy.

Bobby felt cold metal bite through his forearm and bones with one clean strike. The limb was torn from his body and thrown haphazardly across the ground. Bobby, writhing in pain, screamed his agony to the world. He tried to crawl away, blood gushing from the stump hanging onto his shoulder, but his attacker brought a heavy foot down on his leg to stop him. Its boot ground his flesh into the dirt. If he wasn’t utterly intoxicated Bobby may have called for help but now he just yowled like a strangled cat and thrashed helplessly.

“Liz…”

As his last word squeezed from throat Jason severed Bobby’s head from his body in a single, brutal swipe.

* * *

It was early next morning and Jomo was lying wide-awake in her sleeping bag, dressed in the strappy top and shorts she always slept in. She had been plagued with the most horrible of nightmares all night and was now trying hard not to think about them. Most involved her being sliced into pieces by a monster armed with a machete. No prizes for guessing who that was. Jomo now sorely wished she had never argued with Kevin over their summer vacation- she would much rather drink and sell her body than die by a desolate lake in the middle of nowhere.

She was jerked out of her miserable thoughts by a ray of sunlight beaming in through the tent doorway. The tape holding it shut must have been removed.

Quickly Jomo leapt to her feet and scuttled outside. She was surprised to find the air warm and windless. The lake, although not exactly sparkly clean, looked very inviting. Jomo felt sticky and in need of a wash. The coast seemed clear of peeping toms. None of her friends were up yet.

By the looks of the fire ashes and the discarded cans lying around they must have turned in pretty late. That meant they’d be in Dreamland for several hours. After dashing back to wrestle a towel from one of her various suitcases Jomo gingerly scurried down to the lake edge and slipped off her clothes. She felt self-conscious, even though nobody was watching her. She was still very jittery after last night’s scare, but now in the broad daylight she wasn’t sure whether or not it was all a nightmare. It hardly mattered now. All she cared about was getting cleaned up and dried.

The water was freezing cold but Jomo fearlessly plunged in up to her neck, keeping as far in to the shallows as she could. Her naked skin sprouted goose pimples from the chilling temperature. Even her lips, which were well above the surface of the lake, were probably turning blue. Jomo closed her eyes for a moment, enjoying the contrast of heat on her face and ice on her body. It was only after a few minutes she realised she was being watched. Angrily she snapped her head back towards the camp to see a pair of teenage boys reclining against Kevin’s car, their round faces lit with smiles reminiscent of kids at Christmas.

“Who the hell are you?” Jomo yelled, keeping herself fully submerged. Then she added, “Actually, what do I care? You’re just perverts. Well, screw you. I’m staying in until you leave.”

At a second glance she realised they were twins. They had matching grins and ruffled brown hair. Even their freckles looked identical.

“We’re not perverts,” the one on the left pouted. “We meant no harm, right Charlie?”

“Yeah,” agreed Charlie. “Actually, we were… guarding you. We know what Kevin’s like and we guessed you wouldn’t want him drooling over you.”

“Guarding me?”

Jomo shook water out of her hair, feeling slightly guilty for her accusation but suspicious all the same.

“Riiiight, gotcha. Kinda weird though- Kevin’s pals don’t usually do the whole protection thing. They go more for staring and saying creepy shit.”

“We’re not exactly pals,” the first brother said carefully. “We’re more like reinforcement.”

“Reinforcement? Well, that’s nice.”

Jomo reached for her towel. While the brothers politely looked away she wrapped it around herself and joined them by the car.

“Why are you here anyway? I don’t understand.”

“Kevin called us last night,” Charlie explained immediately. “He sounded weird. Maybe drunk-”

“Or stoned,” his brother offered.

“Or sick.”

“Anyway, he said he found a body in the woods he was camping near and wanted some more guys around to help find the killer to give him a good kicking. So he thought we’d be useful to have around. We said maybe we weren’t right for the job, but we came anyway, just to persuade Kevin to get his ass out of here. Right, Carl?”

“Yeah. He’s gotta be crazy camping here. He must have known about Voorhees- he’s not exactly a state secret. Everybody calls this place Camp Blood, for Christ’s sakes. Nobody ever comes down here ‘cause of Jason. He kills everybody who comes near. Which means you guys are next on the list.”

Jomo’s jaw dropped.

“So you’re saying Kevin knew about Jason before he brought us here?” she gasped.

Charlie and Carl exchanged meaningful glances.

“Well, it figures. He’s a selfish douche bag,” Jomo snorted, remembering her encounter with Kevin the night before. She touched her face lightly in recollection and was surprised to found it still hurt. “He won’t let any of us leave. I tried to hit the road last night but he stopped me. He hates me for some reason.”

The twins nodded in sympathy. They both reclined against the car roof simultaneously, which looked slightly creepy and bizarre. Their elbows left marks in the grime covering the paintwork.

“Yo, get off my car! Fuckin’ tards!” Kevin’s slurred tones blared across from where he was standing beside his tent. For once he wasn’t wearing shades. His eyes were bloodshot and had black rings beneath them. Jomo took immense satisfaction in how ill he looked.

“Oh, it’s just you two,” Kevin muttered grumpily.

He lurched over, hair ruffled. Jomo decided to go and get dressed before they had another fight. She wasn’t a violent person and was afraid of what Kevin might do if too provoked. It was best to keep clear, at least until she had kicking boots on…

* * *

Several hours later Jomo, the boys (excluding Bobby, who appeared to be missing) and Becky were lying in the grass beside the lake, drinking soda and talking lazily. Or rather, they were talking and Jomo was half-listening. She wasn’t in the mood to communicate and besides, Becky and Kevin were being awkward with her. Even through breakfast, which had been pita bread the twins had brought with them, they had been sullen and abrupt when addressing her. Liz would probably be the same but she was still asleep. It occurred to Jomo that Bobby might be in there with her, but after getting up to check on him she saw that he was gone. She felt that familiar lurch in her stomach. She didn’t want to think the worst, but it was difficult not to after yesterday’s fiasco.

Still, she was used to putting a brave face on things. She ran back to the others with a fake smile. She found them all complaining about their various ailments such as skull-cracking hangovers and, in the twins’ case, sleepiness. The sight of her happy face set them all groaning. Perhaps a look of dread would have worked better after all.

“I swear you’re like a fucking werewolf,” Becky whined, dipping her feet into the lake water. “Last night you were being weird and creepy now here you are, chirpy Little Miss Sunshine.”

“Then I guess I’m gonna put a cloud across that sunshine. You’re brother isn’t in his tent. Where is he?”

“How should I know? I’m not his baby-sitter. He’s probably taking a leak.”

“For three hours? Yeah, that’s likely,” Jomo snapped. “I bet you fifty dollars he’s been attacked by Voorhees.”

“Cool it, Jomo,” Kevin said quietly. Jomo immediately obeyed. “Since you’re obviously not gonna stop freaking out for this whole vacation, I might as well make you happy for once. Me, you and the twins’ll go looking for Bobby. How’s that?”

“Wonderful.”

Jomo couldn’t keep the ice from her voice. Charlie and Carl grinned and pretended to shiver, but like faithful dogs they got up from the ground. Then the four of them walked in silence across to the wooded area Kevin claimed Bobby had vanished into, although he had been so drunk it was hard to say if this was really true. However, by some miracle he was correct. After a couple of steps a hideous stench hit Jomo’s nostrils. She recognised it from the last corpse they had witnessed, so she knew Bobby was dead even before they found him. When they did, she neither screamed nor threw up. She got angry.

“See what your dumb-ass stubbornness did?” she bawled in Kevin’s face. He was so white he looked as if he was made entirely of chalk. “One of our best friends is dead! Because of you, you fucking asshole! He didn’t deserve this, you did! Now look at him!”

Jomo pointed hysterically at Bobby’s spread-eagled body. One arm and his head had been removed and were nowhere to be found. The twins were staring at him in morbid fascination, only half-believing this was real. Jomo didn’t blame them for thinking this, even after all the talk of Voorhees that morning. The headless teenager sprawled on the grass in broad daylight look unreal and out of place. The twins almost seemed to expect him to yank down his sweater, reveal the head he’d been hiding beneath and yell ‘surprise!’ but ofcourse he didn’t. He stayed there, twisted and gruesome, without moving an inch.

“Ain’t my fault he’s dead,” Kevin said defensively. “Just bad luck. I should’ve stopped him coming out here alone, I know…” he cast a sick, regretful glance at his headless friend “…but me and Becky were kind of busy.”

“Oh shut up you pathetic little shit,” Jomo shouted in his face. She was afraid for a moment that he would lash out but instead he cringed back. “Make yourself useful and go get that plastic sheet thing from the camp. Tell Becky and Liz what happened, and don’t forget to mention it was your fault. You, with your swollen head, wouldn’t let us leave and so you’re to blame for this. Tell them that. And when you come back, the twins and yourself will wrap Bobby’s body up in the sheet. Got that?”

“You’re a bitch.”

“Yes, yes I am. But at least I’m not an indirect murderer. Now do what I say or so help me I will strangle you, Kevin Kentwood!”

Kevin looked mutinous, but he didn’t argue. He mumbled ‘sorry’ over Bobby’s corpse, then sprinted off towards the camp. He returned shortly with the plastic sheet rolled up under one arm. Jomo noted that he had the look of somebody who has just escaped with their life barely clinging to them by a thread. The twins noticed too and smirked, although they both looked slightly ill.

“What happened to you? Did Bobby’s ghost come back to get ya or something?”

“No. The chicks went physco on me, just like old Jomo did. Liz kinda broke down and Becky hit me. She wants out, but I told her we ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

Jomo could have screamed at him again or called him any amount of names, but she didn’t. She had calmed slightly and besides, the way Kevin was looking at Bobby assured her that behind his selfish, angry exterior he was thoroughly upset about this disaster. She hovered sickly beside a tree as the boys levered Bobby’s limp corpse onto the plastic mat and started rolling him up in it. They’d have to bury him at the camp, maybe have a little funeral. Then ofcourse there’d be the problem of telling his folks what happened…

“Shame his head ain’t here,” Kevin said gloomily, wiping a smear of blood on the back of his jeans. Charlie was vomiting in a nearby bush. “He ain’t Bobby without it. Can you see it lyin’ around anywhere, Jo?”

He had addressed her quite politely. Jomo smiled weakly and shook her head, wondering if this tragedy would jerk Kevin out of his general assiness at last.

“No, ‘fraid I can’t,” she answered quietly. “But I have a theory. It might be wrong, so don’t attack me. I think maybe Bobby’s killer- that Jason Voorhees guy I saw and read about- took his head with him, kind of like a souvenir. He’s obviously a real sicko; he’d do something like that. And I’ll feel bad if we don’t bury Bobby with his head. He really will be ‘rotting in pieces’ if we don’t find it for him. So I’m gonna hunt the guy down and bring Bobby’s head back.”

“Are you nuts?” the twins cried together. “He’ll kill you!”

“No he won’t,” said Jomo, voice shaking unsteadily. “Not if I’m quick. He might have a house or something somewhere in these woods. What if he put the head down in it somewhere? If he did, I could grab it and run, saving my ass and Bobby’s head too. Two worms with one stone, as they say.”

Kevin reached over and grabbed Jomo’s hand. His palm was clammy. He was afraid for her. Jomo should have felt touched, but with a cold look she pushed his arm away and tried to look brave and determined. Then, with a deep breath, she turned her back on the three boys.

She started to walk away but Kevin yelled at her.

“Aw come on, Jomo, they’re right. Don’t go, ya stupid bitch. It ain’t worth it.”

That insult slipping from his mouth was enough to encourage Jomo to leave. She shook her head at him in silent disgust, took to her heels, and began to run in search for Bobby’s head. An unusual prize, but a treasured one to her all the same…