Bev and I ran screaming down the hall back into the restaurant and toward the nearby exit. We shoved past Shelly, the irate manager, who was hurrying to find out what the roaring and crashing noises were coming from her new bathroom.
"No! Run!" I yelled back at her, but she didn't stop, straight-arming her way through the bathroom door just as the guy with the chainsaw started it back up again. Her brief scream was cut off abruptly and the sound of the chainsaw changed to a horribly lower, labored pitch for a few moments before returning to its former high wail.
The people in the busy restaurant were mostly staring in shock. Some of them were standing and gaping uncomprehendingly at the roaring noise of a chainsaw inside the Dairy Royale, but they were not yet moving. The exit was right in front of us, but the line from the counter blocked it with kids waiting to order on someone else's tab. Why was there only one exit in this place?
"Move! Move! Get out!" I tried to push my way through the crowd with Bev at my heels. They saw the guy coming down the hall after us and panicked, pushing and shoving, jamming people into the doorway. I realized we were trapped and not knowing what else to do, ran around the corner and into the restaurant, losing track of Bev.
The people stuck in the doorway were sitting ducks when chainsaw guy got to them. He quickly swung his weapon through the crowd at chest height, opening up a bloody line across the screaming mass of people and effectively stuffing the doorway with moaning, writhing bodies.
Not even pausing, the guy roared and swung the chainsaw around the corner after me, shredding the 8-foot plastic ice cream bar that had stood there as long as I could remember. Mr. Dip's smile shot a three foot arc of sparks that illuminated chainsaw guy's sparkly face and shirtfront.
Snuffy, a fat redneck nicknamed for the perpetual wad of Copenhagen in his lower lip, stood and pulled a handgun from his extended waistband and aimed it right over my shoulder. I dove out of the way under a booth as the gun went off, missing widely as Snuff was jolted by the panicking mob. Plaster rained down over the dining room.
Our would-be savior was buffeted on all sides by people running and screaming around him as chainsaw guy advanced, grinning manically and swinging the chainsaw back and forth through anyone and everything he could reach, blocking the kitchen. Blood and guts spattered nearby tables and Snuff shot several more times, hitting the soft serve maker and exploding the waffle cone display before he finally got a shot close. Unfortunately, it pinged off the whirling chainsaw blade and through the head of a really annoying know-it-all from my chem class, spraying gray matter on a flock of cheerleaders running past. When she said she wanted to share her brain with those less fortunate, I don't think that was what she meant.
People desperate to escape threw chairs through plate glass windows, showering me with glass in my hiding spot and trapping me under the booth as they scrambled over my table to safety. Across the room, I saw a dumpy, middle-aged worker lose her mind completely and get stuck trying to dive headset-first through the drive-thru window.
The roar of the chainsaw was so close now as I cowered under that booth, trying to make myself invisible in the corner. Snuffy's legs backed toward me as he fired his last shot and tried to run. My booth shook as he scrambled onto one seat and tried to go over the table and out the window. His high-pitched scream above me as the chainsaw found him made me clap my hands over my ears against the painful sound.
The whole booth jolted around me and a waterfall of hot blood cascaded over the table edge onto my shoulder a second before his heavy body fell onto the seat right next to my head, his dying eyes finding mine for his last moments. The table vibrated and shook above me as the chainsaw cut into it. That's it, it's all over, I thought. This redneck's dead fish eyes are the last thing I'm going to see. No, I corrected, his chew spit dribbling onto my leg is the last thing.
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Suddenly I heard sirens. They chainsaw stopped. Psycho hopped up onto the other booth seat and out the window into the night. A golf ball-sized wad of chew rolled out of Snuffy's mouth and landed with a splat on my red cowboy boot. I rolled over and puked my guts out.
Later, I sat in the parking lot with a blanket wrapped around me, staring in confusion at a cup of hot coffee that had found its way into my hand. I don't drink coffee.
I'd been checked out by the EMTs and my dad was there to take me home, looking angry and lost a few feet away as I gave my statement to the police. He would handle this like anything else since Mom ran off with the local male stripper, with silence and a fifth of his old friend Jack.
TV crews from the big city showed up, but the reporters were all held behind a line of yellow police tape, able only to impotently yell questions and shove a microphone at anyone who passed close enough. At some point, the police chief gave a statement.
Some of the people made it out ok through windows, a few through the kitchen. Terrell and Ashley had ironically hidden in the bathroom. In all the running and people jumping into cars and scattering, the psycho with the chainsaw had disappeared. Poof, like smoke. As if I'd only imagined him. But I didn't imagine Bev lying amongst the black plastic-wrapped bodies in the parking lot.
*****
Months later, things were starting to get – well, back to normal wasn't right. Some days I didn't think things would ever be normal again. I'd been through a ream of therapists and they had all sorts of names for it. Whatever. I should have been the one, not Bev, not all those people standing in the doorway just waiting for ice cream. Terrell's condom clothed dick now functioned as escapism.
The funerals were over, thank God. Time to get back to the business of living, that's what people said. So, I went through the motions of finishing out the school year. Graduation was just one more memorial service.
The school helped me line up a summer internship at the bank and I was saving my money to get out of this hell-hole of a town. One day near the end of June, I squashed myself into a corner of the bank's drive-up window to count change because the ancient coin machine had died, again. My co-worker Theresa came up beside me.
"Janie, you've got a visitor," she smiled at me. She was a kindly, middle-aged lady who'd taken me under her wing, reminding me to eat lunch and take breaks. I looked over to see Pretty Princess Barbie Ashley, standing at the counter, grinning at me as if we were best friends. She waived a book over her head.
"Janie, Janie! Our senior annuals finally arrived!" she said, loud enough for the whole bank to hear. Ms. Mitchell, the bitchy assistant manager just glared at me from her desk and tapped her watch to let me know she was timing my break. Ashley made it a habit to come by the bank a couple times a week to chat.
Her scrawny bird arm emphasized how skinny she'd gotten since the attack, but unlike me, she'd just bought a whole new size 0 designer wardrobe. I was sure I looked like her poor scarecrow cousin in my thrift store business outfit as she fake smooched my cheeks.
"Hi Ash," I forced a smile. Her dad, "Big" Earl Dixon, owned the bank and I had to stay on his good side. Which meant being nice to Ashley. The staff didn't call him the Earl of Dickdom for nothing.
Everyone hated his guts, especially Ms. Bitchell who was always worse when he was around. Usually Big Earl left the day-to-day running of the bank to the manager, but she was out at a conference that day so he was 'filling in'. Also known as making our lives hell.
"That's really nice of you, but I didn't buy an annual," I told her. Too many memories of friends who weren't here anymore. They were late because of all the changes that had had to be made. The school should have just cancelled them.
"I know, I was on the committee. But," she lowered her voice to a whisper that somehow still carried, "I knew that was just because you couldn't afford it, so I bought you one!"
"Well, gosh Ashley, thank you," I replied. She didn't seem to catch the thinly veiled sarcasm in my voice. She pushed the book toward me, back cover up. Some loser brainiac at school thought Psycho Killer by the Talking Heads was appropriate for our class song. The same song that had been playing on the radio right before the massacre. Dark humor is apparently a coping mechanism.
"Hey, did you get a call from that TV producer who wants to do a special on the Chainsaw Killer?" Ashley asked. I grimaced at the name the TV stations had given him after the attack. Totally lame, IMO. There were reward and wanted posters up all around the country with his grainy picture from a security camera next to the artist's sketch from my description. His face in the bathroom mirror was still burned into my memory.
"He said it would be very high-brow," she continued. "I gave him your numbers. Maybe it'll help them catch the guy." She seemed optimistic, but really, none of it helped. He was just so average. None of the logging companies recognized him and in the rural northwest, everyone and their brother owned a chainsaw. Some people thought he must have spent some time here, had something against the town, but no one knew him.
"No. Actually, I don't have a cell anymore." Someone kept giving my number to every TV station and newspaper in the country. "And my dad hangs up on those people."
"O.M.G! That must be terrible! How do you live without a cell phone? You poor thing!" she exclaimed so loudly that everyone in the bank looked our way. She dug around in her purse, not noticing the attention she'd brought us, and pulled out a business card.
"Here, you should call him," she put the card on top of the year book and pushed them both toward me. "We can do the show together, it'll be fun!" Her eyes glittered maniacally and I wondered, not for the first time, if Ashley was really all there anymore.
"No. Thank you, but that would really not be fun for me," I replied.
"Oh." She pouted. "Well, keep the card and think about it, ok?" I nodded and she beamed as if I'd just told her yes. I'd think about it all right, that very evening while I lit the card on fire and used it as kindling to burn the yearbook.
"Oooh, look at the time," she looked at her cell. "I've got to get going or I'll be late for my massage." As if on cue, her father stepped out of the manager's office.
"Ashley, I'd like to speak to you for a moment," Big Earl boomed across the bank. No one in that family knew how to be quiet.
"But Daddy, I..."
"No buts, Ashley. Get in here."
"O-kay," she glanced longingly at her brand-new gold Lexus, visible through the front window because she'd parked in the handicapped stall. She trudged into the office, leaving the door ajar.
I went back to my menial task at the drive-up counter and tried to seem like I wasn't listening to Big Earl interrogate Ashley about why she hadn't been wearing the diamond encrusted Rolex her parents had given her for graduation. I shook my head and looked out the window. It goes with everything! I recalled Ashley gushing.
The drive-thru was at the back of the building, facing a forested hillside and with a view of the dumpster at the back of the parking lot. A big rig had been parked there all morning. Probably a long haul trucker catching some sleep. I watched as a man in a plaid shirt, suspenders, and Romeos hopped out of the cab and into the parking lot. He glanced over at me and our eyes locked for a moment before he walked out onto the sidewalk toward town. He whistled, with his hands in his pockets, his sandy-brown hair blowing in the early summer breeze.
"Janie? Janie what is it?" Theresa asked. She crouched down next to me and I realized I was now kneeling on the floor, peering over the counter at the man walking down the street.
"Th-that's him," I stammered, pointing over the counter. "Theresa, that's him," I repeated.
***Hey all, thanks for being here! Please remember to vote and comment to help others find my stories. Cheers! -K***
