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It’s not as if Felix didn’t expect to be attacked by a freak in a mask wielding a pair of garden shears.
In fact, he had lived much of his life anticipating this on some level, neither the most nor least likely of survival scenarios he’d given thought to. Then, the summer after Felix’s freshman year of college, he let Sylvain drag him along to work as a camp counselor, a prime occupation for run-ins with sickos repurposing lawn care equipment with lethal intent. Felix revised his calculations.
(“Okay, but like how probable?” Sylvain had asked. “Like sixty-nine percent?”
Felix stared, then informed him flatly that anyone who had sex in a slasher movie was liable to die for it.
“But you don’t really believe that, right?” Sylvain, stricken, dropped the swim trunks he’d been folding. “Right? Felix?”)
They’d been cleaning the camp mess when it happened. It was late, and Sylvain was making it later, pausing to dance with a push broom to music from an absolute relic of a boom box. Felix, mopping where Sylvain had swept, realized too late his mistake in letting Sylvain set the pace.
Felix comforted himself with thoughts of Sylvain getting mosquito-bitten or possibly a rash of poison oak across his stomach. Sylvain was last to the uniform pick-up and only the women’s t-shirts—in a size small—remained. Instead of pursuing literally any other alternative, now Felix was forced to stare at a swath of Sylvain’s exposed torso for the whole season. Not that he had anything in particular against Sylvain’s stomach; it was just the principle of the thing. Felix worked the mop over a particularly stubborn patch of grape jelly adhered to the linoleum. Making fun of Sylvain’s eventual tan-lines might even be worth it, in the end.
“Ohhh shit,” Sylvain said suddenly, in a voice that raised Felix’s hackles.
He tossed the broom handle from one hand to another, dancing his way toward Felix as the song on the stereo changed. His hips canted back and forth; his face was a parody of seduction.
“I love you baby,” he sang, “and if it’s quite alright—“
“For the love of fuck, Sylvain.”
“What?” Sylvain said. “You don’t like 10 Things I Hate About You? That’s weird because you’re like, in it.”
“It’s almost midnight. How late do you want to be cleaning?”
“Yeah, because you have anything else to do.” Sylvain rolled his eyes. “Mercedes has weed, you know. If you wanna speed through this, we could go down to the creek after—“
“Shut up,” Felix hissed.
“Wow, you didn’t even let me—“
“Sylvain.”
Sylvain stilled, his face going serious as he studied Felix.
“Do you hear that?” Felix asked in a whisper.
“Yeah,” Sylvain breathed back. “Kind of a scraping…?”
There was no reason to be as disturbed by the sound as they were. No reason, save for all the hours Felix had put into watching horror movies and subsequently imagining this moment.
“Fuck,” Sylvain said, and they swung around to the darkened windows on the far side of the mess hall.
They watched a tall, indistinct shape lurch slowly past. The sound of scraping accompanied it, metallic and grating, like a shovel dragged along concrete.
Felix and Sylvain traded a look. “That’s no fucking fifth grader,” Felix said.
“You know how growth spurts can be.” Sylvain’s brow was furrowed. He held his broom in both hands and gave it a little swing, like a baseball player testing a bat.
Felix looked at the mop in his own hands. The noise was intrusively loud now, an unbearable, rippling tension preceding it.
Then it stopped. Just beyond the double doors, if Felix had to guess. There was a moment of wire-taut silence.
“God, if you were right about the supernatural killer thing—“ Sylvain began in a whisper.
A loud bang fell against the door, rattling the wood. Felix didn’t expect it to hold long. These fucking ramshackle cabins, out in the woods, exposed to the elements—
As another blow shook the door, Felix took his mop handle and, as he had wanted to do from essentially the time he could read, he Broke Glass In Case Of Emergency.
“What the fuck,” Sylvain called out. “Why do you get the fire safety axe!”
“Because I thought of it.”
The axe was a satisfying weight in his hands. Much better than the dinky mop. The doorframe coughed dust and splinters; the door was beginning to bow.
“Sylvain,” Felix said warningly. “You do not, under any fucking circumstances, get to die.”
Sylvain’s face was grimly amused. One day, Felix swore, he would get him to stop being eager if not vaguely horny about his own death.
“Back at you, sweetheart,” Sylvain said with a wink, as the door gave way with a spectacular crash.
Against the sudden plane of night stood a wretchedly tall figure, seemingly in the shape of a man. He wore a black hoodie beneath a rain slicker and in place of where a face should be there was instead a metal helm, forged to look like a human skull if a human skull also had fangs and fuck-off huge horns. He held a pair of large and ancient-looking garden shears loosely at his side, the tip dragging against the ground.
“Man,“ Sylvain said, very much as if complaining about being assigned dish duty.
A suspended second passed in which the three of them considered the sudden appearance of the other. Then the guy started to move: trudging at first, shears digging a track into the linoleum, then breaking abruptly into a sprint. He raised his shears in one hand like a knife, barreling directly at Sylvain between the rows of cafeteria seating. Sylvain, who in his fucking crop top was exposed like an Operation game board, all the quickest routes to his internal organs on display.
Absolutely fucking not, Felix thought. His sneakers squeaked against the floor as he dove to insert himself between Sylvain and skull man. With the handle of his axe he knocked the shears askew; skull man brought them back down again, and Felix answered with a parry. An axe was a far cry from his usual fencing foil, but a foil would’ve done jack shit for him here, so maybe fencing should take note.
The man huffed a ragged, frustrated breath. Red gleamed from the pits in the helm where eyes ought to be. Felix didn’t feel fear then, exactly, but a reasonable sense of danger, perhaps amplified.
There was a rush of movement behind the man. Sylvain leapt from a table and onto his back. He wrapped his legs around the guy’s torso and barred the guy’s throat with his broomstick, jamming it against his windpipe with lethal intent, his teeth bared in effort.
Holy shit, Felix had time to think, just as the guy grunted and flung himself backward.
They crashed against the cafeteria table; Sylvain swore; the man lashed out with his shears, forcing Felix backward to avoid their arc.
Faster than should’ve been possible, the guy was on his feet. Sylvain was still scrambling out of the wreckage of the half-collapsed table. Skull man opened his shears like he intended to lighten Sylvain’s load by a limb or two.
It must’ve been the stupid squeaking of Felix’s shoes that gave him away—at the last moment, the guy turned and deflected Felix’s axe, catching the head between the open V of the shears and wrenching it out of Felix’s grip. He flung it away almost casually.
Felix did sports, okay. More sports than anyone he knew. The guy was just freakishly strong. On par with Dimitri, even.
It was bad fucking news.
“Get up!” Felix yelled at Sylvain, who was, to be fair, already limping to his feet. “Run!”
Felix ducked under the snick of the shears closing on the space where his head had just been, sprinted forward and caught Sylvain’s hand as he ran for the door.
“No running,” skull man intoned behind them, his voice absurdly low and almost mechanical. “No pushing. No rough play.”
“Hey!” At the threshold, Sylvain forced them to a stop as he turned back to yell. “Hey man, fuck you! And fuck your Spirit Halloween get-up! It’s fucking July, you musty bitch!”
Felix squeezed his hand hard. “Sylvain.”
The glance Sylvain gave him, wild-eyed and desperate, told Felix this was not an act of stupidity but of bravery. All those fifth graders, rows of them, asleep in their beds. Whose fucking idea was it to put twenty year olds in charge of all that?
Skull man stood staring at them, head tilted as if he were confused. Felix inhaled.
He yelled, “Go back to Hot Topic, you’re gonna miss your shift!”
Sylvain made a choked noise beside him. Felix, absurdly, felt himself flush. Okay, so he didn’t do his best one-liners under threat of imminent murder, so fucking what.
Skull man’s head snapped back into place. Felix felt his reinstated focus, a kind of quickening. “Go,” Felix said. “Go!”
They sprinted for the woods some thirty yards away with the sound of heavy footfalls and scraping metal dogging them. At least this man was committed to his theatrics: that ought to buy them time, and make their deaths artful.
As they reached the shadow of the tree line, Felix panted out, “I have a plan.”
Sylvain gulped air beside him. “Oh captain, my captain,” he said. If Felix had had time, he would’ve rolled his eyes.
The plan was thus: Sylvain still had his broom, and Felix scrambled for a serviceable branch. They’d hide behind trees, one of them to either side. When Murder Skull caught up, they’d jump out and pummel him.
Sylvain grimaced; if had a better idea, he was welcome to propose it, but they had only seconds. He gave Felix a nod. His face was grim and set as he wielded his broom. The indelicate footsteps drew closer. Felix tightened his grip on his branch, short and sturdy like a club. A twig snapped. Felix heard Sylvain’s intake of breath. The figure was upon them: in unison, they swung.
Felix’s blow landed squarely in the ribs. Sylvain’s knocked the man in the chin and snapped his head back. His helm went flying. Felix had a second’s appreciation for Sylvain’s considerable but rarely applied strength.
A mess of pale blonde hair, fine as spider web, obscured the man’s face. He lashed out with the shears and caught Felix in the bicep as he jumped back. Sylvain made a guttural, wrathful noise and brought down a vicious overhand swing aimed at the man’s head. The man caught it in his shears like an open mouth and clipped the broom handle in half.
Felix, who considered nothing too low a blow, took this moment to kick the man in the crotch.
The man doubled over with a wheeze. If Felix were armed with anything better than a branch, he might’ve taken the opportunity to try and kill him. Or at least that’s what he thought. He was nineteen. His brother Glenn had died at nineteen. If it was old enough to die, it was old enough to kill.
The man endeavored to straighten up, shaking his hair out of his eyes to glare balefully at them, shears in hand. Felix grabbed Sylvain by the wrist.
“Go,” Felix said.
“What?” Sylvain said. “Killing blow, Felix! Let’s get him!”
“Go,” Felix hissed. Sylvain’s doubt melted into something solid and trusting. Felix felt a surge of affection: poorly timed, but it was good to know he was capable of it.
They took off as the man staggered to his feet, twisting through the woods with only the moonlight stabbing down through the trees to see by.
“I know him,” Felix gasped as they ran. “I fucking know him. That’s Mercedes’ brother, Jeritza. He’s the fucking lifeguard.”
“Jesus Christ, is anyone doing background checks for this place?”
“Well they hired you, so.”
Sylvain huffed a laugh, ducking low under a branch. “Felix, we can’t kill Mercedes’ brother.”
“I know,” Felix said seriously. “He burned me a Linkin Park CD once.”
“That’s—“ Sylvain began, then sucked in a gasp as he went sprawling into the dirt.
Felix dove to his knees beside him. “Are you good?”
“Fuck,” Sylvain said. “I tripped. God, that’s embarrassing.”
Felix hauled him up and helped him limp a few feet into a clearing. “I’m okay,” Sylvain was saying, though Felix had no reason to ever trust when Sylvain said that.
“Fucking shit,” Felix whispered harshly.
Under moonlight, the blood gushing from Sylvain’s nose looked black and glossy as ink. Felix held Sylvain’s face in his hands, angry at the entire scenario, angry that Sylvain could be bleeding and still grinning at him.
“There’s blood on your teeth, idiot,” Felix whispered.
“S’not broken,” Sylvain said.
That made Felix angry, too. That Sylvain should know definitively what a broken nose felt like. It wasn’t fair to grab him and shake him but Felix wanted to. He pressed forward and kissed him instead, clacking their teeth together and tasting the godawful tang of Sylvain’s blood. Sylvain’s eyes went wide, then soft. Felix cupped the back of his neck, rooting him in place even as he pulled away. Blood pattered down onto Felix’s shirt and he let it. It was a stupid night all around.
“Felix,” Sylvain said softly, and Felix recognized it as a sentence unto itself.
“Yeah,” Felix grunted. “Whatever.”
“I can’t believe it.” Sylvain brushed a strand of hair from Felix’s face. Felix braced himself for whatever sentimentality Sylvain felt compelled to deliver. With his breath against Felix’s cheek Sylvain said, “You said we couldn’t have sex because this would happen, and now look. I’m gonna die and we didn’t even get to do hand stuff.”
Felix clenched his jaw. “I’m gonna toss you right to him when he turns up, okay? So don’t act surprised.”
“Wait. Do you hear that?”
Felix froze, listening hard. No footsteps, but in the distance, the faint sound of running water.
“The creek,” Sylvain said. “We need to warn them. Then we can get the office key from Mercedes and call for help.”
“Bad time to be stoned,” Felix said.
Sylvain held the hem of his crop top up to his nose as they started through the undergrowth. “Yeah, well. It’s no black light posters and Dark Side of the Moon.”
Felix rolled his eyes, following Sylvain’s back and doing his best to step quietly in spite of the one million noisy as fuck highly breakable twigs in his path.
“This is so fucked up,” Felix muttered.
“I know, but look at it this way—if we live we’ll probably get, like, plaques with our name on it. A key to the city, maybe.”
“A key to Fhirdiad? So I can what, unlock the Elk’s Lodge? Maybe the tire store?”
“Nah,” Sylvain said. “Library basement, where they keep the cool renaissance woodcut porn.” He stopped to hold back a branch so Felix could make his way around it.
“I don’t really believe you’re a real person,” Felix said.
Sylvain smiled, his face and shirt both badly bloodstained. Felix’s gaze slid from Sylvain’s face to the path just beyond him, and ice shot down into his gut and through his limbs.
“No,” Felix whispered. “No, fuck, no.”
The body was propped up against a tree. Dimitri looked like he was sleeping, but his deep, unnatural stillness jammed Felix’s heart up his throat and made it hard to breathe. Felix dove for him, heedless of the noise, and shook him by the shoulder.
Nothing. Dimitri’s head lolled on his neck.
“No,” Felix repeated. It was the loudest thought in his head. Sylvain’s hand was on his back and he barely felt it. “No. I’m gonna fucking kill him.”
“Felix,” Sylvain said, voice wretched.
Felix shook off his touch. “We don’t call anybody,” he bit out. “We find that fucker and we kill him.”
Sylvain said his name again, desperately, but it was the softer voice beneath his that turned Felix’s head.
“Felix,” Mercedes said, picking her way carefully toward them. “Sylvain, you’re bleeding. What’s wrong?”
Felix heard Sylvain make a strangled sound. “Dimitri,” Felix cut in, but found he couldn’t say more.
Mercedes’ gaze found Dimitri’s slumped body. Her serene brow creased; she clicked her tongue. “Oh dear,” she said.
The understatement of it all fell badly upon Felix, about the same way a lit match might fall badly into some gasoline. “Oh dear,” he repeated. “Mercedes, do you have any fucking idea where your brother is this evening?”
“Well,” she said slowly, “he was here earlier, and then he went for a walk.”
Sylvain coughed out a single, hysterical laugh. “And where’d he go, on this walk?”
“In a circle, I suppose,” Mercedes said, raising her eyes to a point beyond the both of them. “Hello, Emile.”
Felix jolted and whipped around. In a gap between the trees Jeritza stood, sans skull helm, rain slicker, and shears. He almost looked normal in his black hoodie, save for his pale, strangely lucent eyes. He stared dispassionately at them, gaze flicking once to Dimitri.
“Stay back, Mercie,” Sylvain said, putting himself bodily between Mercedes and Jeritza, while Felix planted himself in front of Sylvain. “He’s a murderer. He tried to attack us.”
“What? You mean Emile? You must be mistaken.”
“He attacked us with hedge clippers!” Felix found himself yelling. He did not—would not—take his eyes off Jeritza. “He’s the one who killed Dimitri!”
Mercedes laughed. Felix could barely process the sound. “Dimitri’s not dead,” she said. “He had one of my edibles, then about twenty minutes later he said he needed to be alone. I did warn him about the dose, it was fairly heroic. Go on, check his pulse.”
Sylvain’s footsteps hastened to Dimitri. Felix’s heart slammed against his ribs, adrenalized and terrified of his own slim hope as the seconds stretched out. He couldn’t help it. He turned to look.
“He’s alive!” Sylvain called out, voice strangled by relief. “Oh, god, boss. You scared the hell out of us.”
Dimitri, seeming unsure how his head fit upon his neck, blinked molasses-slow up at Sylvain, then garbled something unintelligible.
“Don’t even worry about it,” Sylvain said, patting him on the shoulder, but he cast a look at Felix that said he was very much worried about it.
“Your edibles are very strong,” said a voice close to Felix. “He should have been more careful.”
Felix jumped; Jeritza had approached soundlessly, crossing the gap between them with freakish swiftness.
Mercedes moved to stand beside him. Felix flung out an arm to stop her, but she only sighed and stepped around it.
“He’s dangerous,” Felix hissed. “Mercedes, you can’t trust him. He was wearing a fucking skull helm!”
“His hobby is collecting unique armor,” Mercedes said, with a note of reproach. “Really, Felix, I thought you’d be the last person to judge that.”
Sylvain, at Felix’s shoulder, said, “Mercie, it was an honest-to-god fight. He attacked us. He kicked down the dining hall door.”
“Oh!” Mercedes said, with sudden recognition. “Oh, that explains it. He gets testy when his blood sugar is low. Don’t you, Emile?”
Jeritza nodded. “I get testy,” he repeated, his voice like the sound of a door opening in a haunted house.
There was a crinkle as Mercedes retrieved a packet of peanut M&Ms from her fanny pack. “Here.”
Jeritza, the man who had very nearly decapitated Felix an hour beforehand, carefully tipped back an entire mouthful of M&Ms and crunched down on them at once.
“What the fuck,” Sylvain exhaled.
“Look,” Felix said, in what he thought was a remarkable show of restraint, considering he wasn’t tearing anyone apart with his teeth. “There’s blood. How is that not proof?”
Mercedes frowned. “Yes, Sylvain, how did that bloody nose happen? It looks painful.”
“I—“ Sylvain began, only for humiliation to pass over his face. “I, uh, tripped. But I was running! From him!”
Even Felix was unconvinced by that. He turned and thrust out his arm to show off the gash on his bicep, which, now that he looked at it, wasn’t quite as impressive as it had seemed while he was actively trying not to be killed.
“He attacked me with garden shears, Mercedes. He’s not safe to be around. You have to listen.”
“Where would he get garden shears? He’s a lifeguard,” Mercedes said, seeming nonplussed. “Now look, it’s been a long night, and I think—“
Jeritza, deadpan and still munching, leaned down to whisper something in her ear that made Mercedes’ brow crumple.
“Oh, I expected better from the two of you, I really did,” she said. “Emile says you made a crack about his job at Hot Topic? I’ll have you know he was laid off recently, and to poke fun is just unkind.”
It was like all of Felix’s neurons were firing at once but straight into a brick wall. He turned to Sylvain, whose mouth hung open dumbly.
“Mercie—“ Sylvain tried, voice weak as water.
“No,” she said. “I’m sorry, but it’s late and we’re all tired and we have to be up early to prep the Happy Camper Waffle Bar Bonanza. I can’t listen to any more baseless accusations. These are called boundaries, and I must enforce mine.”
Felix looked Jeritza in his terrible, stoic, crunching face. “If you hurt her or anyone else I’ll take you apart.”
“Yes, I’m sure,” Jeritza said in a monotone. But there was a shade of something else in his voice when he met Felix’s eye and said, “I would never allow my sister to be hurt. Ever.”
The insane thing was Felix believed him. Maybe you could take the measure of a man by how they tried and failed to kill you.
Sylvain took this last opportunity to stress to Mercedes that if she needed anything, anything at all, at any time, to come and find them. He was about one instance of kneeling in the dirt from begging.
Jeritza hadn’t looked away, so neither did Felix. The pair turned to leave, an act which Felix could see no way to prevent. Jeritza paused, blinked once, slowly, and said, “Goodnight. Let us participate in recreation together again sometime.”
The curse word that would contain how Felix felt in that moment had not been invented yet.
As he helped Sylvain drag Dimitri to his feet, he stared after Mercedes and Jeritza, burning with his own uselessness while feeling at the same time vaguely concussed. Mercedes was saying something to Jeritza, and though Felix couldn’t hear what, her face in profile was grave and focused. It was not an expression Felix had ever seen on her before.
“God,” Sylvain said, supporting one side of Dimitri, who sagged like a marionette between them. “Did I take gas station salvia? Is that what happened tonight?”
Felix blinked. Mercedes’ face was no longer legible in the dimness of the woods. His eyes itched with how late it was and the crash from all the adrenaline was making him feel burnt out and shaky.
It felt like a long walk back to camp under Dimitri’s weight. They didn’t bother with making Dimitri seem presentable or even conscious: they agreed that any or all of them being fired might be for the best, ultimately. Dimitri murmured a thank you as they heaved him into his bunk, so presumably he’d be fine by the morning. Maybe more fine than any of the rest of them. Felix sighed and wrestled Dimitri’s muddy Kirkland sneakers off before covering him up.
He did a lap around the room, shoved a chair under the doorknob and checked the locks on the windows, for all the good it would do if Jeritza got hangry again. In the bathroom mirror, Sylvain dabbed at his nose, wincing on each pass, until Felix commandeered his wad of wet paper towels and had him park his ass on the counter.
He swiped carefully at the crusted blood. Most people didn’t think much of his bedside manner and they were right. But he was still a man who applied himself with precision. Sylvain slumped gratefully toward him, eyes sliding shut while Felix worked.
“That all happened.” Felix said at length, tossing the paper towel in the garbage from where he stood. “I’m not crazy.”
“You’re not,” Sylvain agreed. Felix stepped into the V of Sylvain’s legs; Sylvain drew him close and buried his face in Felix’s hair briefly, breathing against him. He laughed mirthlessly, almost to himself. “Maybe,” he said, “maybe he was just trying to bond. Maybe that was him showing interest.”
Felix’s skin crawled. He thought of Jeritza hitting his crisp pronunciation of recreation and wondered whether Sylvain wasn’t right after all.
“I don’t know what the fuck we’re supposed to do tomorrow,” Felix said.
“I do,” Sylvain said. “Waffle Bar.”
“Waffle Bar with a maniac.”
“I have one solution,” Sylvain said seriously, then waited for Felix to grunt his interest in hearing it.
“Hand stuff,” he proclaimed. “No holds barred and some holds required, smoke ‘em if you got ‘em, baby—“
Felix put a hand over Sylvain’s mouth. “Does this count?”
The visible half of Sylvain’s face considered it. He nodded. Felix pulled his hand away with a sigh.
“Meet me back here tomorrow,” Felix said. “Ask me again then.”
“Sure, if we’re both alive then.”
“I plan to be,” Felix said. “If you need more incentive I don’t know what to tell you.”
Sylvain yawned and slid off the counter. “It’s just, you know what they say—hand stuff today, gone tomorrow.”
Felix scoffed, but back in their room, his hand shot out to grab Sylvain before he could climb into his bunk. He pressed forward to kiss Sylvain, quietly, boxed in against their ancient creaking bunk bed.
“You know,” Sylvain said, “of anyone in the world to face down a homicidal ex-Hot Topic employee with, I’d choose you, every time.”
“Hm,” Felix said. “I’d choose Megatron.”
“Man, what the fuck,” Sylvain said, on a disbelieving laugh.
When he laid down, he left room for Felix to crawl in beside him. Felix pressed himself to Sylvain’s back. Probably he wouldn’t sleep, but it was a nice thought, the pair of them, and tactically useful, too: to be there for someone, to have someone there.