Psychological Short Story – Just Another Night with the Girls
Psychological Short Story – Just Another Night with the Girls
It was the fall of 2000. I had just met some friends and we were headed to the movies. I remember that night like a bad dream, mainly because Natasha and Alivia sat in the back seat of my little blue Ford Escort. Sandra and I were in front, we talked about whether to see Harry Potter or The Mask. We decided that we would split up, Sandra and Alivia were going to see The Mask and Natasha and I would see Harry Potter. If I had known what was going to happen, I never would have split up.
Natasha and I are in the middle of Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone and the fire alarms started to blare. We exchange confused looks because neither of us smell smoke. We follow procedure and evacuate the theater. Everyone had been standing in the parking lot for 20 minutes and still no more signs of life. It was in this moment when sheer panic and terror slithered through me like a snake threatening to strike my throat if I moved. I glanced at Natasha only long enough to see the tears streaming down her face. She had given up all hope on seeing Sandra or Alivia again.
I started to pay attention to the details of everything around me. The fact that there was no moon out that night, I was not the only frightened soul there, there was no smoke, or any signs of fire from the theater. I watched as a firefighter walked by and went to talk to the Sheriff. As he listened to the firefighter, a grim look of emptiness covered his face. The sheriff pulled out his megaphone, “I need everyone to leave the premises immediately. I repeat I need everyone to leave the premises immediately!”
This was the moment when I lost control of everything I had been holding back. I looked at Natasha and she nodded like she knew exactly what I had in mind. After a moment of indecisiveness I took off running back into the theater. I could hear the Sheriff yelling at me to come out but I kept running until I hit Sandra and Alivia’s theater. I took a deep breath and opened the door, only to find something I did not expect.
The movie was still playing but there was something in the air that did not feel right to me. I called out to Sandra, then to Alivia. No answer. The farther I walked down the aisle, I could see five people sitting in the front row. I ran down there only to find five dead people with sodas at their sides and popcorn in their laps. I looked at the faces, none of them were Sandra or Alivia. After taking in the scene I had to sit down. After a few deep breaths I got up and turned around. People said that if you have courage you‘d know it when it counts.
In that moment, when I saw his face, I knew I had courage. I swung at him and hit him in the left temple. It didn’t kill him but it gave me long enough to get away. I refused to leave until I found my friends. I took off towards the bathrooms and locked the door. I heard faint noises in one of the stalls. I walked to the third stall and pushed the door open. There were two small children in the stall, trying to cry quietly so they wouldn’t be the next victim. I got down, grabbed them and walked them towards the entrance where the sheriff and his men were waiting. I nudged the children out of the door. I turned to walk back to the bathroom when the sheriff stopped me.
“You don’t know what you’re doing with this guy. He is dangerous and has already killed a lot of people,” he searched my face for any changes in my decision. I shrugged it off and walked back into the theater.
I could hear Natasha scream when I walked back into the theater. I wanted to grab her and tell her to be strong but it would not have helped. I knew I had to have a plan before I went any farther so I headed back to the bathroom. I guess I could just find Sandra and Alivia, but what if he tries to kill them? What if he tries to kill me? Before I could come up with a reasonable plan, the lock on the door was broken. I heard the stall doors being slammed open one by one. I fought the urge to panic and stood my ground. When my door swung open I was relieved to see Sandra. She clung to me for about 10 minutes, explaining what had happened through the heavy sobs.
I picked her up and told her to get out of the theater because I was going to go find Alivia. She told me it wouldn’t matter because he had taken her into the film room and she was almost sure that she was dead. I shook off the thought of my friend having been murdered by some wannabe movie slasher. I walked Sandra to the door and made the sheriff take her so she would not follow me. This time he did not say anything to me, just nodded his head and looked away. I wanted to stop, to go back outside and wait like everyone else did. I wanted to cry and be scared like everyone else had been. Nevertheless, I could not stop until I found Alivia, and I would not stop.
I walked into the bathroom and tugged at a pipe under the sink. When it finally came off, I sat with my back on the wall and made my plan. It was carefully formulated, articulated, and precise. I would walk to theater four and sit down. He would see me and come after me, and when he did I would bash him in the head with the pipe. I promised myself I would not stop until I knew I had killed him. I walked down the lobby until I saw the sign with a bright green 4, I took a deep breath and walked inside. I made myself act like this had been a normal night and we had just arrived at the theater. I sat in the front row and laid the pipe across my legs. I kept replaying my plan in my head, so much that I did not hear the footsteps behind me. I grabbed my pipe and swung at the head first. Then, I started to beat the rest of the body with the pipe. When a scream escaped the lips of my victim, I stopped. This wasn’t the killer, this was Alivia.
I got on my hands and knees and apologized to her while she took her last breaths. I could not believe what I had just done, I killed Alivia. I dropped the pipe and turned around. Falling onto the seats surrounding me. I had given up and now I was going to let him kill me. I could feel my nerves relaxing and my body loosened up until the same pipe I had killed my friend with had struck me.
That was all I could remember from that night. The police and the nurses always wanted more information from me, but that was all that I had. I remember killing Alivia but I could never tell anyone because every time I tried, I only cried more. A few weeks after I got out of the hospital, the Sheriff paid me a visit. He told me that he knew how I felt and that eventually it wouldn’t hurt so bad. I only stared at him when he talked. Then he took an unusual tone about what he was saying. He told me that he knew what happened and he understood why I did not tell anyone. I asked him why he did not say anything. He only said because he had some skeletons in the closet that haunted him the way mine do me.
I was never sure what he meant until years later when he died. The local news had a story about him. When they went to clean out his house and donate his belongings, they found bodies in his basement. Among the bodies were Jamey Triedman, Lilly Shumante, and Brian Fletcher, the murderer that killed many innocent people the night I killed Alivia.
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