Final Girl (With director commentary)

Miriam Alex

GIRL tells the operator that the woman is lying

face down and throat slit, head hung in holy prostration. The time is 1 AM, when GIRL should have been home in her gauzy nightgown and lace bralettes, ready for close-ups. (Director #1: GIRL couldn’t stop crying—hair and make-up painted her face until she faded into paleness, into weathering moon.)

OPERATOR asks if she’s the killer. GIRL shakes her head. OPERATOR says he’ll send someone over to sanctify the kitchen, exterminate the ghosts like cockroaches. He suggests locking the doors, as if GIRL had not deadbolted her lips at the age of four. OPERATOR doesn’t believe her when she says she’s being watched—it is his seventh complaint that night, after all. OPERATOR only cleanses for time and nothing more.

The cherry-red phone hangs like a body. GIRL does not have enough fingers to count loss if it could be quantified. GIRL feels herself for plastic, disposability. GIRL is thirty percent sure she is an extra, but it’s too late now, silken wig stitched to scalp. Oh, the bodies they lost. GIRL knows casting is always unpredictable and clutches the dove so tightly it begs. (Director #1: I wanted to make her the killer, but Johnny thought that wouldn’t make for a good slasher. Johnny: It’s not my fault she isn’t the blonde seductress type, y’know?) GIRL is quieter than God.

GIRL drives home and purges the blood from her thighs. GIRL spot-cleans her body but keeps her makeup thick for the audience, even when her bathroom remains a crime scene. (Johnny: We didn’t even cut away when she threw away her tampon—makes the film gritty.) GIRL cuts her bangs until she is the unsolved angle, scissors glinting in the lamplight. GIRL smears blood on her door and asks to be saved. GIRL smears herself. GIRL hears knocks at the door until it shudders, bones and hot oil. GIRL is held by the throat. GIRL calls herself the aftermath. GIRL thinks about how to kill him, but he is too sympathetic to die now. He is not her. GIRL raises her palms, half for the gun, half for God/Camera/Director, and asks for forgiveness. (We though her openness to the killer really made her a sympathetic character. After all, she shouldn’t be asking for death, right?) GIRL shatters the window, every glint a flash lamp. GIRL, reviled.

GIRL is the last to die.

Miriam Alex is from southern New Hampshire. Her work is published or forthcoming in Frontier Poetry, Gigantic Sequins, Gone Lawn, and Uncanny Magazine. At the moment, she is likely playing word games on her phone. She hopes you have a lovely day