Crystalized: Part 4 - The Troopers

"Jason is not a sport. He's not an extracurricular activity, or a trophy or a game." Jerusha spoke evenly and strongly, her voice confident, instantly silencing all who might oppose it with its heroic righteousness. Her words made her powerful, a fierce warrior woman with hair like a battle flag and an aura that shone hard and bright as any maiden's shield. "Jason Voorhees was a human being. He was an innocent little boy who didn't want to die and sure as hell didn't ask to be resurrected by the power of his mother's love. Jason is just the unfortunate vessel of his mother's fractured mind. All of her shame and grief and guilt was too powerful to disperse once her body died, so it found a home in her son, and willed him back to life. Hasn't he suffered enough? He's dead, but he's still being piloted around by this madness. His body ages and decays and yet he keeps going. You're worse than Tommy Jarvis. He should have been left alone, but noooo. You keep poking him and stirring him up and pissing him off and then you act surprised when he comes after you. Why don't you just get your dental degree and go on safari, you soulless shitbag?"

It sounded great in her head. She spoke without a stutter or a pause, just as she always did in her daydreams. And while her headself spoke, she was hypnotizingly awesome looking, tall and Cosmo cover glossy perfect. The people she spoke to in her head never interrupted her, or answered her back or had anything to say at all once she was done and dramatically turning away and leaving them alone to ponder their inadequacies. They stared after her dumbly, awed into silence, and the day was saved. Hurrah hurrah, amen.

And then there was the real world, where she'd unspooled her daydream delivery in the three seconds between the time she knocked at the hotel room door and the time it was yanked open from within. It was 9:07am. They'd made good time leaving Providence at daybreak and pushing the speed limit the whole way, but neither she nor Gus had slept yet. She knew she wouldn't until all of this bullshit was over, but she'd be damned if this asshole was going to rest easy either.

Famous people (even those of the dubious, self-appointed variety) were unfailingly disappointing up close. They always had bad skin, split ends or were just a lot shorter than she'd assumed they'd be. Blake Beland was shorter than she'd thought - maybe five-nine on a good day. He also had lovely skin, acne free and smooth as a thousand stitched together babies asses. He wore no shirt and his torso was torpedo-sleek and impressive. She glanced at the tight bongo drum belly peeping above the waistband of his jeans before she could stop herself. Then she forced herself to look up at his face. Tired, confused, not very bright. His mouth was slightly open and he lacked a tooth on the left side of his jaw. Good. A flaw she could focus on. She took a breath, fully intending to unload her pretentious, long-winded speech upon him. But as her eyes flicked over his shoulder, checking the bed to see if it was empty (it was) she caught sight of herself in the bathroom mirror just over his right shoulder. One distorted half of her face, pale and unremarkable as unbaked bread dough, and always bigger and saggier than she thought it should have looked. Her hair - drawn into a tail of convenience just hours earlier - had attempted a half assed escape and had failed miserably, locks and loops and bubble-snarls poking out here and there, frozen in the act. Three more seconds passed as she struggled to free her clumsy tongue from the prison of her mouth. It utterly refused to do as she willed, clucking thickly and stupidly against her teeth. She stuttered once and produced a sound not unlike that of a bull moose who has been roused from slumber by a fiery case of diarrhea. Then her tongue finally ripped free of its moorings and she threw a tangled handful of inarticulate rage in his pretty face.

"You're an asshole!" she said, rather more loudly than she'd intended.

"Huh? Who the fuck're you?" He opened the door three centimeters wider, stopped, closed it two centimeters and then leaned a beefy arm against the frame. "You a cop?"

"Do I look like a fucking cop?" she asked in a lower tone this time. Her jeans were too long and she walked on them, causing the hems to fray into rat-chewed tatterholes. Her ancient Tool T-shirt had bleach stains and wear holes. Her sneakers had once been white and were now gray and scabby with dirt that was all that held the worn fabric together. She wasn't sure her underarm deodorant really was going the full 48 hours that the label had promised and she hadn't brushed her teeth since the night before. "Leave Jason alone." It was all she could get out.

"Pffft. Fuck off." He drew the words out over several seconds, not a drawl but a weary sigh of dismissal. The door shut in her face. So much for her heroic speech. She knocked again, harder.

"I was dispatched with Senator Ainsworth's team!" she shouted through the wood.

"I don't give a fuck!" he yelled back, distant, probably heading back to bed. Where he would sleep peacefully for another few hours. Fucker. "Tif turned eighteen three days ago, bitch!"

"Her dad cares about her! I don't! Leave Jason alone!"

He didn't answer, but she heard a stereo snapped on and recognized Iron Maiden playing at tympanic membrane shattering levels. Great. She'd never be able to hear The Trooper again without unsavory assholic associations.

She had to give them fair warning. She had to, otherwise she couldn't live with herself. Unfortunately, she was severely socially inept and couldn't speak without stuttering to anyone with the exception of Gus and her cats. Somewhere between her brain and her lips, her ability to speak took an off ramp into Aphasiaville.

She clumped sullenly back to the parking lot, her footsteps thuddy and horse-clumsy. She felt like a soggy bale of hay trying to pass herself off as a girl. She hadn't run in years and knew if she tried, she'd be gasping with a hot stitch in her side before five steps could be completed. She was a soft, awkward sponge, pushing mid forties and too fond of baked goods. Once upon a time she'd been twenty three, 120 pounds and could run four laps through the park without sweating. She'd had the stamina of a coked up jazz musician on a weeklong bender. She'd never been The Pretty Girl, but she'd been sleek as a chrome bullet and just as hard to slow down once she got going full force. What the hell had happened?

Gus, who was her age but looked younger and weighed less and could have modeled socks for a Lands End catalog if he chose to do so, was sitting in the car, listening to The Misfits. He didn't care for metal much. He also refused to age and grow decrepit at the same rate she was, but she loved him like a brother and so felt no real desire to slam his face into a brick wall despite his stubborn youth.

"That didn't take long." he remarked, already reaching for the ignition key.

"Oh shut up." she muttered.

"I think I saw Tiffany Whatshername outside while you were in there." he said, swerving in a semi circle towards the exit and gunning it up the highway towards the old campgrounds. "She was talking on her phone and smoking. I almost asked her for one."

"Why didn't you?"

"Menthols." His face screwed into a catbutt pucker of distaste. "She didn't see me. No idea who she was talking to."

"Someone with a name that ends in an "i" I'm sure. Except they don't dot it, they draw a little heart over it."

"Somebody didn't make the pep squad."

She smiled. "Any diners between here and the lake?"

"Shouldn't you know?"

"I haven't been up here for 30 plus. But I need food before the sun goes down." They had six full hours and a handful of odd minutes before sunset. She planned on being inside the barricade long before Blake and his bandwagon had finished gelling their hair and squeezing their muscle shirts down over their oily abs. She wasn't one hundred percent sure that this was going to work, or that she'd survive the night, but she was unenthusiastic about life anyway. Not suicidal, just exasperated. Weighing the options - machete or heart attack? Machete or cancer? Machete or hit by a RIPTA bus in Wayland square? - either way, she had to go sometime, some way. Better Jason than an impersonal disease or an overly buttercreamed cupcake from La Salle's bakery.

She looked up at the sky. The rain had dried up, and the clouds had been smeared with the sunlight into a child's fingerpainting: colorless and uninspired. She wondered if he was awake out there, wandering, searching. Or was he dormant without anything to hunt? The deer and bears up here did not fear him, for he offered them no threat. Animals and children were exempt from his wrath. But she was no longer a child. Was he capable of remembering? Of mercy for a one time friend? Should she have brought a cat for defense?

She prayed then, not to God but to a dead woman named Pamela. She had a feeling it had been Pamela who had paved the way for her somehow, speaking to Jason in a voice only he could hear. Please let him hear you again. Please be on my side. I'm on his, after all.

To be continued...