Jesse ran through the galley at top speed. Her long brunette
hair was frazzled and a large chunk had been torn off, but she considered
herself lucky.
Five steps behind her Jackson was gaining fast.
While Jesse wore a skimpy bikini that befitted the partying
earlier that day, he wore something a little more practical. Plain black pants,
black shirt, and a cut-up set of dock-worker’s overalls that hid everything
about him except his height and face. On his face he wore a hockey mask.
In his hand he had the largest knife he could find. In that
very same galley, actually, about ten seconds before he’d started his killing
spree.
Jesse screamed while she ran, slowing only enough to knock a
chair behind her, then a tray of half-eaten food. She didn’t even turn to see
how well it worked but heard a startled grunt and the man behind her swearing
as he fell down.
“Somebody help!” she screamed as she entered the hall,
hitting the far side when she turned and bouncing to run down the narrow hall.
Five steps down the hall she heard her pursuer enter behind
her. He was panting and sounded furious. Jesse chanced a look behind her and
saw he was pulling his hand back behind his head. What she didn’t see was the
knife; her glance ended and she threw herself left at the next ‘T’
intersection. Even on the massive yacht she and her friends had been partying
on the actual hallways were narrow and not very long.
Something hit the wall just behind her but this she didn’t
turn to see. Jesse ran up the stairs two at a time until she was on the deck
and under a starry sky. This time when she was halfway across the yacht’s large
open area she did chance a look behind her and saw that the killer wasn’t
following.
Which was how she managed to trip, at full speed, over a
body.
“Steve!” she screamed as she recognized her boyfriend even
without his eyes. “No! Not you too!”
She screamed again when someone wrapped their arms around her,
but almost instantly she knew it wasn’t a man about to plunge his knife into
her chest.
“It’s okay! It’s okay!” Anna was saying as she pulled her
friend up and away from the body on the deck.
“He’s not here!” Kate told her as Jesse struggled to her feet
and did her best not to pass out in terror, “He’s not here!”
“I wish he was!” Deb said angrily, and Jesse saw her redhead
friend holding a massive wrench. “The worst mistake he ever made was just
assuming I died when he threw me overboard hooked that anchor by my bra-strap.”
Even in her terror that made Jesse laugh. Deb had been
stunningly drunk earlier and that was the only reason she hadn’t dismantled
their masked killer five minutes after he’d appeared, somehow, in the middle of
this lake. If Jesse could make him trip, Deb could break his arm.
“Now everybody get back to back!” Anna said as Jesse stood
and started to gather her faculties again.
“Why?” Jesse asked, about to panic, “Do you see him?”
She looked around the boat deck again and saw nothing but
Steve’s body, some party chairs, and enough bloodstains for a lifetime.
“No, but I’ve seen this movie before,” Anna replied as she
followed her own advice. Her grip tightened on a broken bottle of champagne
with jagged edges to use for self-defense. “These guys always pop up where you
least expect them.”
***
Jackson yanked the knife free from the wall where it had
stuck in the faux-wood. He was furious.
“That little bitch,” he mumbled angrily as he limped toward
the stairs.
More than just being angry at the brunette’s survival, he was
embarrassed about how she’d managed it. All the things she’d thrown behind
herself had barely slowed him down, but he’d twisted his ankle when he’d gotten
to the hallway without any debris at all to make it happen. It had thrown off
his aim enough that he doubted she even knew he’d thrown the blade.
“I’m gonna kill you all…” he said, aware that talking might
give away his position but willing to take the risk.
There were several hours til daylight and he’d have the boat,
and consequently his lake, free of these damn partying teenagers long before
then. Sure, it wasn’t technically his, but until some spring break tourists had
discovered it he’d been living there blissfully alone. Then these damn
teenagers began showing up.
His lake had almost been forgotten after he’d gotten rid of
several consecutive summers’ worth of campers.
The thought of more people coming and ruining his peace
almost made him as happy as the idea of being alone once more. It had been
surprisingly fun to stalk around this boat, yacht, really, and pick them off
one by one. He hadn’t realized how much he missed terrified screams and looking
into someone’s eyes as they slowly quit fighting him.
At the last step Jackson held up the knife and slowly moved
it around the corner. The polished metal acted as a near-perfect mirror and he
scowled when he saw his four remaining victims grouped together. This would
have been much easier if they separated out again.
He held back a giggle when he thought about the first two
he’d gotten, before the teenagers had even realized he was there.
Then his smile turned into a frown as his stomach seized. The
frown to a scowl, then a sickened expression of terror. Something was
happening.
Without realizing it, he dropped the knife and fell to the
ground. Jackson doubled over in sudden pain.
“What was that?” Jesse cried out, looking toward the stairs
she was sure the killer was about to exit from. Where she’d been moments ago.
Deb began to shush her, but Anna waved her silent.
“No, I heard it too!”
All four women traded glances. As one they crept forward,
each holding an improvised weapon.
“I swear to Odin if you get me killed I’m gonna haunt you
forever,” Deb said when the others naturally let her take the lead.
At the top of the staircase she took the turn wide so no one could
leap out and surprise them. There was nothing but a pile of clothes and a large
knife.
“What is-?” Deb asked rhetorically as she crept forward.
There was a clear view of the staircase and obviously no one
was coming. Was this a trick?
“That’s it! That’s the mask he was wearing!” Jesse said,
losing her calm and picking up the Halloween mask.
It even had blood on it.
“Wait….” Deb told them all, nudging aside the knife with her
foot, “Everybody back up! It’s gotta be a trick!”
Jackson cowered in what used to be the sleeve of his murder
outfit. He’d almost screamed when the brunette that should be bleeding to death
in the galley lifted his mask upward at a nauseating pace. It was sheer luck
that kept him from being spotted but the teenagers were as blind and
unobservant as always. And it was even more lucky that the angry redhead made
them all start backing away and looking in every direction but down.
“I gotta get the hell out of here!” he said as the group
slipped away back toward the open deck.
Whatever had happened to him may have made him half an inch
tall but it hadn’t made him stupid. Or any less determined to kill them all.
“I’m just gonna have to improvise,” Jackson told himself as
he ran to the edge of the stairs and leapt down.
The fall was several times his height but at his size the
impact didn’t feel like anything at all. Each step he dropped down easily
though he knew getting up would be far more difficult.
One thing at a time.
Even at half an inch tall he found he was surprisingly fast. But
that didn’t solve the strength problem. He practically flew down the hallway
and back to where he’d twisted his ankle. Jackson knew killing them all would
get him back to normal. It had to.
At the galley, behind a door held open by an amputated hand,
he found all the cleaning supplies and tools he needed to set the yacht ablaze
and drive the teenagers into the freezing cold lake.
Where they better drown, he
thought as he looked up at the bottles covered in warning labels.
“Now how the hell do I get them down from there?” he asked,
just as he heard noises behind himself.
“He chased me from here!” Jesse said to the group, guiding
them carefully into the galley. “I ran and threw all this stuff behind me, but
he chased me through the kitchen and everything and-“
Deb hushed her gently as Jesse’s voice started to raise,
remembering the stress of her flight and at the pain of seeing the body on the
ground, blood still wet.
“Did he have the knife before that?” she asked, keeping her
eyes scanning everywhere at once. Deb paused only for a moment when she saw the
body on the floor, but only a bare moment. The killer wasn’t going to sneak up
on her a second time.
Jesse nodded and kept her eyes up as they walked into the
kitchen. This time it was Anna who bit back a scream when they saw the hand
that still clutched the handle to the janitor’s closet.
And Jackson bit back a scream when he saw the door come open
suddenly. If he’d been full sized he would have had a fight on his hands. All
four teens were there with some kind of weapon in hand. But at half an inch he
merely soiled himself and darted reflexively into the vent next to him.
“Nothing here,” said Deb, whose eyes flickered briefly toward
motion. “Maybe a rat in the vent but not that asshole.”
“Asshole?” Jackson said furiously as he ran down the vent,
trying to pretend he was still in charge of the situation, “I’ll stab you right
in the asshole!”
But even as furious as he was he knew the teens had done him
a favor; there was no way he was going to be able to start a fire with those
chemicals at his size. Then he approached the next open vent grill and squeezed
through.
“Next best thing?” he asked himself as he looked at the
ship’s electrical fuse box.
Deb signaled down from three with her fingers. On her final
fist pump Anna threw open the door to the electrical room. Deb rushed in with
her pipe in hand and ready to swing at anything that moved. Instead there was
barely enough room for her on herself, let alone a murderer.
She backed out lowly when it was obvious there was nothing in
there. Another flicker of motion caught her eye toward the air vent, but this
time it was obvious it wasn’t a rat.
“What the hell?” she asked aloud, leaning toward the vent but
not seeing anything moving.
“What?” Jesse asked nervously. She and the other three girls
were looking in every direction behind them to ensure no surprise attacks from
the rear.
“Uh, nothing, I just thought I saw…never mind. There’s a mice
problem on this damn boat on top of everything else.”
With that said she backed into the hallway and the quartet
continued to search the ship room by room.
Jackson was losing his mind. It seemed like every room he
managed to get to through the vents was immediately raided by his to-be
victims. The electrical room had seemed a good option, until he realized he was
physically incapable of causing anything fire related. The fusebox was both
inaccessible to him and under lock-and-key.
Engine room!
At a dead sprint he ran, following the sounds of machinery,
until through the final vent cover he could see a well-lit massive motor. It
was dead at the moment, thanks to him, but anyone with basic mechanical
knowledge could fix it in about ten seconds flat.
“No dumbass teenager’s fixing that,” he said as he climbed
through the vent and fell two feet onto a workbench.
No going back up there either,
Jackson thought as he looked for any way he could sink the ship and finish the
night’s gruesome task.
“This is it, the last place he could be,” Jesse told the rest
of the girls, and they all nodded. They were sure they’d searched every room
that was reasonable and hadn’t found anything. It was almost more disturbing
that the killer was apparently naked; Deb was hoping he had a breakdown,
stripped naked and jumped in the lake.
Anna rested her hand lightly on the door handle, waiting for
Deb’s nod to throw it open one final time.
Jackson saw his final opportunity to kill them all and walked
to the edge of the bench. He peered over the edge and wasn’t sure if that fall
would be as painless as the stairs had been.
Then the door flew open and the four teens entered fast, the
lead redhead yelling out angrily and all of them moving like flying mountains.
Jackson shouted in surprise too and fell backward onto his
back. They flowed past him, overlooking him and making sure the rest of the
engine room was clear.
“Fuck!” he said as he jumped back to his feet and took off
running toward the wall. There he could hide behind a toolbox and wait until
they left before finding a way to sink the ship.
Something clear slammed down in front of him, making him
scream before he ran into it, hard. Recoiling from the invisible force he
turned and sprinted right, only to realize whatever was stopping him was
circular, perhaps ten relative feet across. A clear plastic drinking cup.
Currently held down by the world’s largest and angriest
redhead.
“I knew it!” Deb yelled as she held the cup down with one
hand, “I knew I saw you, you little bastard!”
The other three all hefted their weapons, sure the
confrontation they’d been hunting for was here. But instead they saw Deb
holding a cup down over a bug.
“Damnit Deb!” Jesse said, but her aggravation didn’t last when
she walked to her friend.
“What the f-“ Kate
said as she leaned forward. “Is that what I think it is?”
Jackson railed against the clear plastic but it was no use.
His rage was only increased by the faces of his victims leering down at him,
first appropriately terrified, then curious and confused. And finally amused.
“Wait wait wait,” Jesse said, barely holding back a laugh,
“There’s no fucking way that’s who I think it is.”
“I don’t know what happened,” Deb replied, not bothering to
hold back her laughter, “But that’s him alright!”
“That explains why we found the clothes and knife!” said
Kate.
“And he didn’t go completely nuts and jump overboard either!”
Anna added.
“This is what I thought I saw in those other rooms.”
Jackson flipped the redhead off, then tried to punch his way
through the plastic once more. He screamed in frustration when this simply made
her laugh, and the rest followed suit.
“Look at the little bastard now!” Deb laughed, “Not so tough
now are you? Can’t even fight your way out of a shitty plastic cup!”
This time when he rushed the side of the cup Deb shifted it
toward him and sent him sprawling backward. Sudden wind when she moved the cup
stopped his attempt to jump to his feet again. He looked up from all fours at
the girls and rushed toward them, screaming angrily and determined to kill them
all. Somehow.
Instead Deb easily slipped the brim of the plastic cup under
his feet as he sprinted, knocking him face-first down on the inside of the cup.
Before he had a chance to right himself she stood the cup upward and he fell
with a short scream to the bottom. This time he stayed down, stunned, looking
up at the cup’s opening.
He bit back his first actual terrified and humiliated scream
as she lifted the cup upward. Suddenly he was miles above the floor and in
front of what should have been faces twisted in their own terror. Not laughing
at him.
The little man was raging against the side of the cup, and
all the girls couldn’t help but laugh at him.
“No way we were running from that little bitch!” Anna
laughed.
Her laughter only stirred him on and Deb was surprised to see
that his hands were actually making small imprints in the cup. He climbed an
inch high and she giggled, shaking the cup slightly and making him fall back
downward.
“Back upstairs!”
Against his will he was taken upstairs, through the hallways
that should have been covered in blood and over one of the bodies that he’d
successfully dropped before Jesse had escaped him. Onto the surprisingly
well-lit deck where he’d snuck up on two teens mixing drinks that they had no
business drinking on his lake. And their loud music.
The bastard redhead dumped him onto a table still sticky with
cheap beer and hard liquor that no one there was capable of actually
appreciating. His nose told him it was good scotch that had been carelessly
spilled.
“You bitches!” he screamed, grabbing a toothpick longer than
he was tall and charging at the nearest teen, the one he thought was named
Anna.
“Oh my god!” she said with a laugh at his pathetic charge. A
finger flick stopped his rabid charge and sent him flying backward.
There was a faint, tiny furious scream while he scrambled to
his feet. All four teens leaned forward, curious, unafraid, relieved. Amused.
“I’ll kill you all!” he screamed again, but this time when he
got to his feet Jesse leaned forward and blew a fast puff of air directly at
him. It wasn’t enough to knock him down but it was close.
“Hard to believe this little thing almost killed us all,” she
said with a hoarse voice.
“Got enough of us,” Kate said, killing the mood almost
instantly.
“Not us though,” Deb said, flicking him again and sending him
toward the edge of the table. “You didn’t get us!”
“But what happened to him?” Jesse asked, looking between her
friends who all shrugged. “Did someone else do this to him? Should we be
worried?”
“I’m not worrying about shit,” said Deb, watching their
attacker look around for a weapon on the table. It was obvious he would still
do anything to try and kill them.
“Except maybe the why,” she added.
Jackson tried to sprint to the side of the table, intending
to leap downward, escape these four, and pursue any means necessary to kill
them all. Preferably a deus ex machina that involved returning him to full
size. With a larger knife.
“Slow down there, douchebag,” one of the girls told him
before slapping the table hard enough to make him stumble and fall.
“Here,” another said, and something massive slammed down onto
the table in front of Jackson.
He screamed in fear despite himself and felt part of his
spirit die when he heard his own cry. Especially when he realized that the
building-sized obstacle was a half-empty bottle of whiskey. Jackson saw his own
reflection, eerily twisted and lengthened.
It only renewed his hatred for those who’d put him here.
I’m gonna ki-
Another object slammed down far to his left, but not far
enough away that it didn’t make him shout. And he did scream when more things
slammed down all around him and before Jackson had a moment to settle himself
he realized he was completely surrounded. Cut off. Trapped on a sticky round
table by–
“Just imagine how he’s gotta feel,” Deb said, leaning forward
to get a better look at him. She made sure to put all her loathing and contempt
into her expression. “Half an hour ago he was busy jerking off to killing us,
and now he’s the same height of his dick.”
Kate giggled as he flew into yet another rage, screaming
obscenities in a voice that sounded like a mouse squeaking.
“I don’t know about that,” she replied, “He’s half an inch
tall now and I can see his little weiner.”
She held up her fingertips and held them close together.
“He’s probably still taller now that he ever was long!”
All of the girls laughed again but Jackson refused to cower
in front of them. They couldn’t ever see that he was shaking inside.
“No wonder he wanted to murder everyone!” Jesse said as she
shook off the last of her earlier fear, “Every woman he’s ever met probably
laughed when he took his pants off!”
Jackson looked for a way out, any way out, but nothing
presented itself. He tried to run toward a space between half a bottle of vodka
and an empty toolbox but someone’s finger easily redirected him backward until
he fell from the leftover stickiness of a spilled drink.
“Think this whole thing was about that little dangly bit
between your legs?” Deb asked, laughing.
She’s the worst, if I kill her then the rest
will-
“I kinda wanna eat him.”
All the girls looked at Kate, surprised.
“What?” she asked innocently, “I can’t think of a better way
to get rid of the evidence of this bastard than to let him burn to death in
someone’s stomach!”
“I’m sure this has nothing to do with your oral fetish,
right?” Anna jumped in with a giggle.
“Well thanks to this pathetic little thing,” she gestured at
Jackson who couldn’t help but cower slightly at her approaching hand, “My usual
boy toy is now…”
The levity left the situation when they realized what she was
about to say. They’d been so overwhelmed by the novelty of the little man that
they’d almost forgotten then were still on a boat of corpses.
“I don’t know,” Deb said, turning back to the little man,
“Burning to death in stomach acid might be too good for this piece of shit.”
“We could all shit on him?” Jesse suggested.
“No! Fuck you all!” he screamed, more than a little horrified
that they were all nodding at the suggestion.
“No good,” Anna countered as she held up a hand, “I cleaned
myself out because I thought tonight was anal night.”
At the sound of that, or perhaps at the idea of his pitiful
demise being so casually discussed, Jackson began screaming at them again. If
they could have heard the things he was saying at full-size they all would have
been terrified. Instead…
“Geez, guess he never got laid before?” Anna said when she
saw his reaction.
“Probably why his hillbilly-ass came after us in the first
place,” Jesse added on, “Ten bucks says he lives in some shitty cabin in the
woods over there and got jealous we were actually gonna get some.”
“Makes sense to me,” Anna continued when Deb stepped aside
for a moment, obviously looking for something, “If I looked like this douchebag
does I’d have ran away from society too.”
Jackson tried to yell upward that he’d been a happily married
man for years but their words were starting to cut deeply.
“Honestly he looks like an alarm would go off if he got
within five hundred feet of a school!” Jesse said, starting to laugh gain.
He wilted under her words.
“Or a store that doesn’t sell underwear with holes in it
already,” Kate piggybacked with her own giggle.
“I’ve got a better idea!” Deb called from behind them.
The trio of teens turned as one to their angrier friend who
had successfully rallied them to fight back. She was holding something shiny.
“I say we carve up the little bastard with his own weapon.”
In her hands was the massive knife he’d been hunting them
down. That had fallen in place where he’d shrank not far from where they were
now.
For a moment Jackson saw resolve waver on his captor’s faces.
His victims’ faces. Their eyes flickered from him to the knife in the redhead’s
hands. Then to the body laying on the deck not far away.
“Works for me,” Jesse said as her eyes turned hard and back
toward Jackson.
All the rest shrugged in agreement.
“I saw what he did to Dave, my only concern with this is that
he won’t suffer enough,” Anna said.
“Oh, I’ll make him suffer.”
The redhead’s eyes flashed with sadistic glee as she leaned
forward toward Jackson. He turned and tried to run but there was nowhere to go.
In a panic he held up his hands as the knife approached,
painfully aware that less than an hour ago he’d gutted some jock who begged the
exact same way. Its point was incredibly sharp and he knew in a moment it would
easily take him apart.
Distant noise drew everyone’s attention, and for the first
time in his life Jackson was happy hearing the beating blades of a helicopter.
“Is that? That’s them! We’re rescued!”
The moment was past, Deb saw, and part of her was relieved.
All of her was relieved, really, but she didn’t lose her mind to optimism the
way her friends did. Before she jointed them in jumping up and down to get the
police helicopter’s attention, she opened the toolbox.
“Your unlucky day you little fuck!” she told the little
murderer when she held up what she’d found.
When her friends came back, ducking under the wind of the
helicopter and looking for their killer, they found nothing at all.
“Relax!” Deb yelled as a police officer began rappelling down
to the boat deck, “Just tell them we knocked him overboard!”
The remaining three friends were all too happy to agree to
this suggestion. It was obvious Deb had something up her sleeve.
“But what really happened?” Jesse asked Deb as the officer
approached.
“I think I saw him fall overboard!” the redhead replied with
a wink.
Twenty minutes later all four of the survivors were safe on
shore in a shack that the police had commandeered while they awaited
ambulances. It was ancient but warm and out of the elements. There wasn’t any
space to take individual statements from the survivors but they all agreed on
the big points and it was pretty obvious what had happened.
Old Jackson, a local legend, had a copycat killer. And these
four had survived him. Somehow.
Per the girls he had a mask, dark clothes that made it hard
to say exactly how big he was and was bizarrely fast. Had survived several
injuries that should have killed him. He’d also somehow overpowered each of
their boyfriends and several career shipworkers, all of whom had been
outstanding athletes.
“Really tiny dick,” Deb said with certainty.
The officer writing everything down paused awkwardly and gave
her a look.
“Now’s not the time to be funny, ma’am,” he said.
“Right, sorry,” she agreed.
As the quartet were loaded into a large police van, once the
medical teams had cleared them of injury, the beach grew quiet once more. A
final police officer looked out at the water, seeing that the boat, the
horrific crime scene, was being carefully piloted back to a more appropriately
sized pier for a full investigation. Then he left as well.
The beach was almost deserted.
Waves gently lapped at the sand, unseen by almost all. In the
distance an owl hooted gratefully at the return of silence.
One particularly large wave rolled further onto shore then receded,
leaving behind a curiously sharp object. And a very tiny, but very angry, man
duct-taped to the handle.
With a cry of effort he freed one arm from the tape and began
working on his other.