Playing the Part

You’re probably confused. Should I bother explaining? Honestly, all you’ll do is ridicule me. Oh well. All the people I would confide in aren’t exactly… around. If you have a few minutes, I can tell you a story that will drive you crazy. Trust me, I mean that. It all started because I was desperate. See, I’m an actor. Or, I was, at any rate. Except, I haven’t had a role in over 2 years. I had a part in one of those big movies, it was filmed for nothing and grossed way too much to be healthy for the average person to have at one time. I had been riding on that, but my addictions to fast cars, hot women, and cocaine wasn’t exactly feeding the piggy bank. It started to dry up faster than it took me to ruin an interns life on a set. And so, desperation set in. It started with the average frantic thoughts What if my wife leaves me What if my cars get repo’d What if they take away my house What if I run out of coke Yeah, those may or may not have been in order of importance. So I scrambled, reaching towards the bottom of the barrel for a part to feed the pig. You would think I’d find some Romantic Comedy or a Buddy Cop movie to satisfy me, but no. I found a Slasher flick. Yay me. Fake blood that makes you itch and make-up applied by kids that were practicing on mannequin heads 2 months ago. But something was different about this one, something just didn’t… sit right. It’s hard to explain. But, I brushed that away. I signed for the role of the slasher himself, a beastly fellow that was basically the offspring of one Mr. Myers and Ms. Voorhees. His story was stupid and convoluted, like every slasher flick ever. Something about an abusive father, an absent mother, some alcoholic bullies, that sort of thing. He was the victim of a previous slasher, which left him permanently scarred both mentally and physically. The mental scarring is simple enough to understand, I mean, he witnessed almost his entire town die. That would drive anyone crazy. The physical scarring was a ripped out left eye, 2 gashes on the right cheek that formed an X, and a missing nose. Yes, it is a ghastly picture. Yes, my beautiful face had to be altered with makeup and CG to make it. Yes, I was horrified. Yes, I was that desperate. No, apparently I’m not above that kind of work. It would take almost 2 hours in the dressing room to pull off this look, mind you. Half the time I was sleeping, and most of the time you only saw the slasher’s face for a millisecond! Oh, it was a gruelling process. After about 3 weeks of filming, we finally filmed the first murder scene. Up to this point it was all day-scenes that set the back-story, and the director didn’t think of shooting the night scenes when things started to get dark. It was a simple enough scene to pull off, the sorority girl back visiting from college would see me on the side of the road looking like a homeless man, would pull over to ask if I was okay, and then I would follow her home and murder her family off screen whilst setting a trap for her to stumble upon the bodies. If that sounds overly familiar, don’t worry, I know. The trap was a bit grisly, mind you. She had to walk into her parents room and see the dog lying on the bed in a pool of blood. She would run out of the room, but her father was now hanging upside-down at the entrance of it. She would then scream, back away towards the window where I was watching as the body of her mother fell from the closet. I would then jump through the window and chase her throughout the house until I cornered her in the bathroom and did the deed. Yes, I did get shivers. Luckily, the shooting process allowed the scene to be broken up in a variety of camera angles, so you never truly got the entire scene all together until it was edited. So no goose bumps. The thing that shook me was watching the trap play out. You feel a sense of entitlement knowing you’re playing the guy that put that together. Truth be told, I wanted more. Screening continued, more murder scenes were shot, and the movie was finished, but my yearning grew more and more throughout the course. I started small, mind you. Rabbits, stray cats, and dog here and there. I never dreamed of actually hurting anybody. Well, yes, I dreamed of hurting people, but those are just dreams right? I’m not crazy, no, not yet. About 3 rabbits, 2 dogs, and 15 cats (yes, my town had a cat issue) later, I found myself at peace. What a marvellous thing I had done! I vented my anger, got my gratification, and helped my town with the cat problem! Things were going swimmingly. And the revenue from the movie turned out to be smashing, it grossed something like 2 million dollars. I had a free ride for at least a year with me playing the lead role. Then they contacted me for a sequel. Oh yes, a sequel! A slasher flick II to go along with Slasher flick I, it was brilliant! I jumped at the chance to play the role again, and I felt at home in the makeup and prop clothes the character wore. I would creep up on stage directors and crew and scare them a bit for a little fun in between scenes, and I again watched the traps roll out and the bodies of the actors that played the part flop down. But something was amiss with the 5th murder scene. I was supposed to chase a young man through a gym until he fell down the stairs to the locker room. Now, usually in cinema, scenes like this would be shot with either padding or dummies, but the director wanted none of that. The plan was to make him fall slowly down the stairs and then speed it up in the editing room. It didn’t work that way. As I gave chase, he truly fell down the stairs and snapped his neck on the railing. He died instantly, the doctors say, and the sequel was cancelled due to the fees needed to pay off his family for the incident. But watching that body fall. Going Plop Plop Bang Down the stairs. It introduced a whole new concept to me, and gave me the urge one again. I had a feeling cats and dogs wouldn’t do it for me anymore, either. The first headline read: “Killer Recreates Scene From Grisly Movie!” It made me laugh. It was only one column behind a bunch of ads for cars you could never afford and appliances you only get one use out of, but it was still there. What I did was recreate the first murder from the Slasher flick I starred in, right down to the letter. It was brilliant, the shrieks were real. There was no pause for an angle change. There was no flood lights. There was no fat man sitting in the director’s chair. There was just me, 4 dead bodies and what was supposed to be a prop machete. You’d be surprised how easy it is. The moment where a living being becomes an inanimate object… it’s empowering. It’s addicting. It’s fun. I never stopped, either. I would recreate the scenes from the movies, then I would make my own. I would play this role until the day I died. With my machete and my makeup, I would stalk and shank and cause shivers. Every state across the United States, I’ve been to, and I’ve killed in. But you probably knew all this, I mean. You were the only one that followed me. The only one that almost stopped me. The only kill that ever got away. But now. Now you’re tied up. Now you’re tired, bloody, beaten, and stabbed. And, unless my watch is wrong, you’ve probably been dead for over 20 minutes now.