Abby’s Best Role

When the front window shattered, Abby backed to the center of the den. Terror rattled her nerves. What creature was going to attack this time? A stale breath of January howled into the cabin. Her skin prickled from the frosty chill. Abby picked up the bloody axe and hugged it to her chest.

The broken window stared back at her, a black hole with jagged teeth.

“I’m not going out there!” she yelled. “You’ll have to come in and get me.”

Something ran past the window. A hairy, skeletal blur. She followed its silhouette in the windows as it rounded the cabin then disappeared behind the wall with the fireplace. Above the mantle a mounted buck head stared down at her with glassy eyes. She hated this dusty cabin. She cursed herself for coming out here. No, it’s not your fault, Abby. How could you have known what was waiting for you?

From a side window came hissing laughter. Her spine stiffened at the chinking of more glass. The beast was toying with her. It wanted her to come outside. Well, Abby wasn’t stupid like those bimbos in the movies. She knew not to reach for that rattling door, knew not to explore the woods at night to find what was howling. No. Better to stay put and wait for the monster to come to her.

From outside sounded a thunder of metal being ripped from its hinges. The cellar door. Now the thing was trying to get through the basement. It made a racket below the floor.

Abby gripped her axe and held steady. She didn’t back down from a fight. Mother had raised her to take on every challenge life threw at her. When Abby was a child, Mother had played horror movie after horror movie, teaching her the difference between strong movie heroines who survived and stupid girls who got slaughtered. Mother’s favorite movie, I Spit on Your Grave, played every Friday night in her old VHS player.

“You want make it in Hollywood, Abby? You’ve got to think like Jennifer Hills, who made those bastards pay. You’ve got to be tough like Ellen Ripley, and channel your inner Sarah Connor. No one messes my little star.” Mother had taught her how to defend herself in the cruel, cruel world.

Scraping echoed below Abby’s feet. Then electrical crackles like a pissed-off bug zapper. The lights flickered. Faded to black. Moonlight lanced gray beams through the windows.

Abby backed away from the basement door that concealed a crooked stairway. Her bare feet stepped through lukewarm puddles. Her back ankle brushed against a stiff, clawed hand. She kicked it away. Four mangled bodies lay in bloody heaps across the den floor. There was only one creature left alive. The stairs beyond the door creaked against heavy footfalls charging up the steps.

Abby tightened her grip on the axe.

A body plowed through the bolted door. Wood shards flung across the room in a splintered storm.

The thing, a black lumbering shadow in the moon’s glow, stood at the doorway, heaving. It hobbled towards her, arched like a hunchback. Its dark flesh bristled with spiky fur. Blood oozed from a gash in its thigh. Its head, with curved horns, entered a crossbeam of light, revealing a muzzle with sharp teeth. The beast stopped midway, scanning the lifeless hulks scattered about the room. “You killed my crew, you fucking bitch!”

“They got what was coming to them,” Abby said.

“Christ, we were just making a movie . . .” The creature crept closer, its brow bleeding neon-green blood. “You played along, bitch. You played along!”

“No. I wasn’t acting then. I told you all NO over and over, but you wouldn’t listen.” Her breasts still hurt from all the hands that had groped her. Her lower body ached from all the nasty, nasty things they did to her. She felt dirty inside, violated. Wielding the axe, Abby stood her ground. “Now back off, Beast! Or I’ll chop you up like the rest of ’em.”

Its face sprouted red flaming eyes. “We were only having fun with you. Then you went psycho on us. You got no clue how the movie business works.”

She spoke in her Academy Award winning voice, “I’m not like other actresses. I’ve got a brain. I’ve got talent. I told you I won’t do nasty scenes.”

The creature growled, “I’m going to kill you for this!” It shape-shifted into a six-foot-tall alien. Its skin bruised to a metallic black, sleek and silver-shiny in the nightglow. Drool dripped from four rows of teeth. It raised a long-fingered hand toward her. “I’m going to break your fucking ne―”

She swung the axe, lopped off its hand. Acid shot from its knobby wrist and melted a hole in the floor that opened into the basement. The alien hobbled back, screeching. A long spiny tail ripped out of its back, swooshed, whipping the air, knocking the mounted deer head off the wall.

Anger burning like Ellen Ripley’s in Aliens, Abby charged her assailant, axe held at twelve o’clock. The xenomorph swatted at her with its one remaining hand. Its spear-tipped tail swooped over its head, lashing at her. Air hissed past Abby’s ears as her head dodged the attacking tail. Its elongated head shook wildly, denying her the chance to strike it.

“Not me!” it shrieked. “You won’t get me.” The second set of teeth snapped outward.

Side-stepping its bite, Abby angled around its left, forcing the alien to back into the hall, where its tail had no room to whip at her. It stumbled back over a corpse that had a pumpkin-shaped head, and fell to the floor.

With a maniacal scream, Abby pounced. The axe blade bit into the alien’s chest, severing the breastbone. The creature screamed in agony as it shape-shifted into a man with bulging eyes. The movie director, Jimmy Glick.

In a flash, Abby remembered him taking her to the cabin in the woods where a film crew of four other men had been waiting. They were supposed to be filming a horror movie with her as the lead heroine among a cast of supporting actors. She had been shocked to discover that she was the only actress in the movie. They had given her a drink that made her head feel strange. Then the five men taunted her. They each put on monster masks and did horrible things to her as one man circled with a video camera. While the men tortured her for hours, Abby had closed her eyes and escaped into the movie world inside her mind, drawing strength from Jennifer Hills, Ms. 45, Laurie Strode, and all the heroines who had battled killers and monsters on the silver screen.

Jimmy Glick looked up at her helplessly. Red drool spouted from his lips.

Abby pulled the axe blade out of the bloody furrow. “Never underestimate a woman with talent.”

The director screamed as she brought down the blade again and again and again . . .

When Jimmy was nothing but severed parts, she dropped the axe, her arms shaking with adrenaline. She walked over to a mirror on the wall. Resembling the actress in the movie Carrie, Abby’s blood-soaked reflection smiled back at her and said, You’re going to be a famous movie star, Abby Albright. No matter how much people try to take advantage of you, no matter how much they put you down, YOU are a star. She began clapping and tearing up. “If only the cameras had been rolling on my best performance.”

She hummed as she lined the mantle above the fireplace with severed hands, feet, and various limbs that stood propped up like anatomical sculptures.

Abby stepped back and admired her trophies. “They aren’t Oscars yet, but they’re a start.”

∼ Brian Moreland

© Copyright Brian Moreland. All Rights Reserved.