Final Girl

"What was that?"

The night sounds normal to lakeside had stopped. Summertime cicadas and bullfrogs sat still beneath an oppressed quiet.

"It sounded like the back door," he whispered, sliding from the bed and into his jeans.

"Do you think it's Andy and Debbie fooling around?"

"Why would they come to our cabin for that? They have their own."

There were definitely booted footsteps in the hallway.

"Shhh," she said, suddenly glad the lamp was off.

Breath held, they froze in place, eyes glued to the bedroom door.

Silently, she put her umbros back on and slipped into her Reeboks. Kneeling, eyes never leaving the doorway, she felt near her suitcase until she found her purse. The reassuring hardness of her keys silently pressed against her hip when she put her neck through the strap.

There was the unmistakable sound of the other bedroom door being flung open. Quiet was a brittle thing, shattering with the gunshot of splintering wood.

Knowing that hiding was wasted energy, Trish stage-whispered to Rick. "Oh my god, do something!" Not waiting on his reply, or watching to see what he did, she turned to the half-opened bedroom window. Without needing to lift the glass, heedless of the screen, she scrambled out and through.

Concentrating on moving quickly and quietly, she pretended not to hear Rick jump into the hallway and shout a challenge to the intruder. She had no way of knowing that the sounds of the little Ford Pinto starting to life (on the first crank of the key) didn't carry into that cabin by the crystal clear lake.

Trish wouldn't find out until much later that Rick had died valiantly, if oddly. No one ever mentioned just how or why it was a closed casket funeral.

What Trish did know was that the moonlight was bright enough to drive without headlights. She never once looked back or hit the brakes. When her tires met asphalt, she flicked on the hi-beams and punched it to 80 until she reached the sheriff's office.

While she often mourned the loss of her friends, she never lost a minute of sleep over her actions on that Friday.

For the rest of her long, happy life, what she could never quite explain was why the sight of hockey players in goalie masks sent shivers down her spine.