CHAPTER 15

HITCHHIKER I

“You need to be more careful, Bet’ti,” Sa’ra said as she frowned at her.

“I know,” Betty sighed. This woman was starting to get on her nerves. Betty had never been a fan of unsolicited advice. More so when that advice came with a heavy dose of condescension.

“That last town before I met you is a bad place, especially for young men and women.” Sa’ra sighed. “So many young ones go missing there.”

Betty had a sneaking suspicion that there would be fewer missing kids from now on. Hat-on-Field was definitely going to be a safer place without that sick little trio of women. Even more so when she realized she had removed two dangers from the town. The women, and herself.

“I know, I know,” Sa’ra said, noticing Betty’s smile with obvious irritation. “I’m just a nagging woman.” She shook her head, “The young never listen, do they?”

“It’s not that; you remind me of my aunt,” Betty said lightly. She scanned the road ahead, looking for a nice, quiet place to ask Sa’ra to pull over. “Hey, can you let me out over there?” Betty pointed to a small trail that led off into the forest. Her Shift Form was counting down to only ten minutes; she had to be quick about this.

Sa’ra pulled over, giving Betty a grumpy look. “I remind you of your aunt, so you jump out? Didn’t you like her?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Betty grinned as she fished Stabby out of her backpack, “I ate her liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti,” Betty laughed as she jabbed Stabby into the woman’s neck.

Sa’ra screamed and tried to push Betty away as she climbed on top of the woman and slammed Stabby into the woman over and over again.

Fifteen minutes later, Betty was just about finished wiping down the pickup. Sa’ra had bled like a stuck pig, which Betty had to admit was her own fault. She had been a little too happy with her quote and had gotten carried away.

It was not exactly her style, but sometimes you just had to do a call out to the greats, right? Betty searched the glove box, corpse, and the vehicle's bed but found nothing. She remembered her actual aunt telling her to hide her purse and slipped a hand under the driver’s seat.

With a beaming grin, Betty pulled out a large purse. It was quite the treasure trove, with a lot of money inside.

It had taken her ten minutes to clean the vehicle, but she figured it was a good enough job for now. She flipped Sa’ra’s body, which she had placed in the truck bed while she cleaned, over her shoulder and walked a decent distance into the woods.

After a little walk, Betty came to a nice, fast-flowing river. She unceremoniously tossed the corpse into the water and bent down to clean her hands and face. Wow, she even had some arterial spray in her hair!

Betty chuckled as she washed her hair clean of the blood. There were so many aspects of being a Slasher she had never even considered. No wonder ‘ole Jason hung out by a lake. Blood was a bitch to get off!

Her reflection in the water was strange. It was not just getting used to looking at the reflection of someone else, as she was Form Shifted at the moment; it was that the mask was on her face.

She had never even taken it off. It just seemed to fade away when she didn’t want it on. Betty was just considering whether to wash her clothes and mask clean when the blood started to fade. It was amazing. The stains seemed to be pulled into the cloth, leather, and whatever the mask was. In less than a minute, she was all clean.

“I fucking love these things!” Betty laughed in the quiet forest.

Too quiet.

Betty stood, peering around. Not a sound anywhere around her. Betty pulled Hacky and Slashy from her pack, stalking quickly and quietly through the trees. Her Senses flared, finding nothing.

She stood there for a moment, tense and confused.

Then she laughed, a high, deranged laugh.

The forest went silent when a predator was around.

And there was one.

Her.

Betty laughed again, feeling the power in her muscles and the blood pumping in her veins. She stomped one of her hooves, thrashed her tail, and roared into the forest.

Squirrels flew frantically from the trees as she laughed even harder.

Betty was the predator now, and the rest of this place better recognize.

Betty was still chuckling as she came out of the forest, weapons tucked into her backpack once more.

This was turning out to be a hell of a day!

=============

Bastard magic sleds! Betty grumbled to herself as she walked on through the mid-day sun. She had spent almost an hour trying to get the damn thing to move and then trying to get it to stop.

All she had managed to do was prove that she had no idea what she was doing. She had even tried her Investigate skill on the controls. A fat lot of good that had done. Once she did get the damn thing moving, she had failed the steering bit and slammed into a tree.

Just because she healed from being thrown through the windshield and into a tree didn’t mean it didn’t bloody hurt.

And now she had less than four minutes left on her Shifted Form.

She continued to grumble to herself as a figure up ahead came into view. Betty sped up.

The figure noticed her approaching and turned to wave. When she waved back, they turned away again before looking back at her. She took her chance, Slasher Stepping as he looked away.

Another two Steps before he looked back.

Betty started to sprint.

The man turned to run, shouting out in shock when he saw how close she was.

He ran for the brush along the side of the road; Betty guessed he was either panicked and not thinking or thought he would be faster through the brush.

Either way, he was toast.

Betty slammed into him, tackling him to the ground and pinning him. She pushed on the back of his head, driving his face into the dirt as she pulled Slashy from her backpack and slit his throat.

Betty sat on the corpse two minutes later as she went through his stuff. His backpack was much better than hers. She could get everything in there from her backpack AND her duffle.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

She patted the corpse amiably on the back of the head.

“Thanks, buddy! This is some handy stuff you had here.” Betty set about transferring her meager possessions to the new, larger backpack. It even had a couple of long, large sections, one on either side of the pack. They were just the thing to hold Hacky and Slashy.

Betty clipped the waist strap on, delighted to find a small pouch on it full of money. She was starting to feel quite rich at this point.

Maybe she could find somewhere nice to sleep when she got tired.

Her head snapped up, her eyes gleaming.

A Motel.

Oh, yeah. She liked that idea.

Two hours and another dead stranger later, Betty was sitting in the bed of another Pickup as it wound its way through the countryside. She whistled to herself as the wind picked at her hair. It was very relaxing.

The elderly couple driving had said they knew of a roadside hotel that wasn’t too far away. Of course, they couldn’t help but offer the young, motherless girl a lift.

As she watched the alien world go by, her mind drifted.

She thought idly about the people she had killed in the last few days. Those revolting women had obviously been up to something. They had unknowingly confessed to a murder where she could hear them. That practically demanded that she kill them.

Plus, if what that Sa’ra’ha woman had said was true, they had been taking teens out as well. Everyone had to have a hobby, she supposed. It certainly excused their kills.

It had been a strange experience, however. First, that woman had tried to capture her in some kind of sex dungeon; then, her husband had hurried Betty away. He had even been thankful. That could not be normal.

The second woman died in a damn accident, of all things. And as for that third woman, well. Those pictures had been pretty damn dark. She definitely deserved what happened to her.

As for her husband… bad luck?

She chuckled to herself, imagining the spoiled teen opening her eyes that morning to see Dad’s severed, gagged head on her pillow. Some therapist was going to make a bunch off that one.

Every cloud, and all that.

The jogger didn’t count. If you jogged in the middle of the night, you actively wanted to get murdered.

In short, she could dismiss those kills as fair game. It was the last couple that gave her problems. Sa’ra had seemed like a nice enough, if annoying, woman. As for the man, she patted the new backpack; she never even knew his name.

He just happened to be a handy way to reset her Shift Form countdown.

Betty was a little worried about how unworried she was about those two kills.

Shouldn’t she feel bad?

Betty frowned.

Thirteen counselors, the man at the campsite, three evil women, one husband, one jogger, and now three strangers today. Betty looked into the cab at the old couple.

Three so far today.

Her count was sitting at twenty-two kills. Was that why it was becoming so easy to kill?

Did she lose her humanity when she became a Metamorph?

Betty sighed. This was all over her head. What did it matter anyway?

She shook herself, pulling herself together. Betty was a Slasher now, and as much as she hated to admit it, it was a far better life than she had before.

She tried to imagine what it would be like to go home now.

What would she do if she ended up back in the living room of her apartment right now? Betty chuckled to herself. For a start, she would disembowel that bitch across the hall who always made sarcastic comments about how Betty was dressed.

Betty blinked. She really would do that. It would be silly not to, really.

She was a killer, so she killed.

Betty hung her hooves over the side as she slid down, laying on her back in the bed of the pickup. Did she want to be an avenger? Someone who killed the guilty, or sinful, or whatever. The idea of evil hunting evil was an absolute classic in the halls of horror.

All Slasher moves were morality tales, after all. The teens who smoked, drank, had sex, or were just lazy were the first to die. The ‘good girl’ was always the Final Girl. When you got right down to it, Slashers were just Grimm’s Fairytales with an 80s or 90s twist.

Slashers were walking judgment.

But there was another version. Beneath the thin veneer of morality that the writers used to make the kills ‘acceptable’ was the truth of the Slasher. The core fear that made them all the more scary.

The core fear behind the really great Slashers was randomized death. The fact that death could come for you, no matter what. It was the person in the wrong place at exactly the right time to end up dead.

Betty finally realized why the kills in the little village had been so unsatisfying. They had been so quick, so easy. Those counselors had been given time to really FEEL the fear. They KNEW they were being hunted.

Those women? She had killed them too fast. They never knew how fucked they were.

And the kills today? Someone would notice the line of dead bodies, and the story would spread. The ones she killed today were barely able to register the danger they were in, but the story would spread. For years anyone driving this road would fear the ‘highway killer’ that had stalked these roads.

Betty grinned to herself as she enjoyed the sunshine.

When they dropped Betty off at the base of a winding road leading up a mountain, the couple asked her if she was sure she wanted to stay at such a remote hotel. Betty grinned at them and decided these two could live.

She waved and started up the hill; her Slasher Senses enough to hear them as the floating pickup pulled away.

“You should have warned her, Pa’tt,” The old woman complained.

“Why,” The man replied, “She ain’t exactly dressed for the road. I bet she’s meeting some poor boy out here.” He gave a low chuckle. “Dressed like that, she ain’t exactly the shy type.”

Betty stopped and turned to watch the pickup.

“Still, you know they say that place is bad luck.” The woman harumpfed.

“We mind our business, Mar’t’ha.” The man said happily.

“Well, she was a little easy looking,” The woman sighed and then laughed.

Betty’s eyes narrowed.

The next time she met a nice old couple, they were definitely getting Slashed.

“Judgmental old pricks,” Betty grumbled as she started to walk up the road to the old hotel.

===========

The place was not quite what she was hoping for. In her mind, Betty was hoping for a line of rooms with a creepy old house looming over them. Maybe a cute but psychotic attendant as well.

What she got was a pretty group of hexagonal, of course, chalets with flowers planted around the outside. Each one of them sat at one face of the wide, paved hexagonal parking area.

Or was it the landing area? Betty noticed the trees had been cleared above the spot to allow the flying vehicles in and out. Three of the chalets had a vehicle in front of them; the others seemed empty. Each wooden building looked well cared for, sporting window boxes and small chimneys. It was kind of a cute place, actually.

Off to one side of the little cluster of buildings was another, larger chalet with a glowing sign rotating in the late afternoon air.

The Rest Stop Inn

Betty carefully looked around, and seeing the coast was clear, Slasher Stepped into the scrub and bushes around the top of the hill. It was just enough to keep her hidden if she was careful.

A slow circuit of the place confirmed there were no other roads, and Betty also discovered a familiar-looking device in a small metal shed behind the main Chalet.

“Hello there, little one.” Betty grinned as she smashed the relay with Hacky.

Job done.

She completed her circuit, finding and destroying an antenna-like device on the off chance they had something like an emergency radio out here.

The wind was starting to whip up a little as she walked into the main building and up to a smart little desk. It had a bell on it. One of those little ones you rang for assistance.

Betty rang the bell and smiled at the polite young woman who came out to greet her.

“Evening. Would you like to rent a cabin for the night?” She asked while peering over Betty’s shoulder. “Just you, Miss, or do you have a larger party?”

“Just me,” Betty said, “And yes, please.”

Betty paid the nice young woman, and she escorted Betty out to the nearest cabin to the road.

The inside of the chalet did not disappoint. It had little lace doilies, a real wood fire, and a large bathtub and shower. The bed was enormous and looked like heaven.

“You seem pretty busy,” Betty chatted amiably to the girl, who introduced herself as Ja’net.

“We are, we are.” She grinned. “I was worried I'd get bored running this place for the weekend alone, but it’s been nonstop since this morning.”

Betty did some quick calculations in her head. They had a ten-day week, three of which were the ‘weekend,’ which meant… “Day one is almost done now,” She smiled as she popped her backpack on the chair by the fire.

“Don’t say that, or I’ll be swamped overnight.” Ja’net chuckled.

“Ooops,” Betty grinned.

“Don’t jinx me; I want this to go well!” Ja’net gave the place one last look over, handed Betty the key, and stepped out.

“What’s the worst that could happen?” Betty giggled. “Just remember, if you’re not dead, it’s going better than expected.”

“I guess,” Ja’net said with a nervous laugh. “Call me if you need anything.”

“See you later, Ja’net.” Betty grinned as she closed the door.