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" IT'LL BE ME. "

alexa, PROLONGED EYE CONTACT by bo burnham

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"I've decided to temporarily assist you in your investigation." Dad declared to Sam and Richie outside of the door, who we'd followed to Mindy and Chad's house.

"Thank-" Sam started, and I held up a hand to her face as I walked past.

"Don't think about it." I didn't care that she was trying to be genuine, I didn't want to hear it.

"Tatum," Dad warned, and I turned and smiled at Sam. I didn't say anything, I just smiled at her.

"Guys!" Mindy smiled brightly upon opening the door, but only wrapped me in a hug.

I felt special now.

"How do you know so much about the Stab movies?" Richie asked Mindy as we all came into her house. Everybody else was here-Brielle, Laina, Wes, Liv, Chad, and Amber, all from right to left with where they sat on the couch. While Mindy explained to Richie about her late uncle, Randy Meeks, I speed-walked over to squeeze in between Laina and Wes. Laina gave me a side hug after shoving Wes away before he could do the same. Brielle basically climbed over her sister to give me a kiss on the cheek.

"What's your dad doing here? Is everything okay?" Wes asked, his voice more hushed than it usually is.

"Sam meets murder." I went with the bare minimum for my response, but on the plus side, Wes instantly seemed to understand the context of this entire situation.

"I agree." Laina whispered, and I laughed and shook my head.

"Oooh, suspects!" The world's dorkiest mother, Martha Meeks-Martin, came in with a tray of snacks. "My brother would be so proud," she declared upon setting the tray down on the coffee table.

"Hey Martha," Dad's voice was soft and sweet as the short and stout woman straightened herself back up.

"Dewey!" Miss Meeks' voice was full of excitement as she hugged Dad, and I smiled at this sweet moment. "Hi! You look..."

There was a lot of awkward nodding to make up for a lack of words, and I pressed my lips together, feeling bad that Martha couldn't find any words to describe my dad. He looked nice for his age, he looked nice and put together today. He's been doing very good-there had to be at least one nice thing that she could find to say about Dad.

"Yeah," Dad gave up his hope of Martha saying something nice; I slumped back into the couch and pulled out my phone, sending Dad a text that read 'you look nice.'

"How's the wife?" Martha had asked Dad, and it was a synchronized cringe throughout the entire room. How is she the only one who doesn't know?

"Okay, Mom, we're good, thank you." Chad came in with his expert defense again, and I gave him a thumbs up as he looked my way.

"Alright, kids. Have fun." Without looking at either of the twins, I knew they were both dying of embarrassment. She was the sweetest mother in the world, don't get any of us wrong, but sometimes she can be a bit much. Sam anxiously looked around at the entire group, clearing her throat to have our undivided attention.

"I asked Mindy to call everybody here because..." A beat. "I have something to tell all of you."

"Let me get this straight." Chad was the first one to speak out of all of us once Sam was done with her trauma dump. "You're saying that you're the daughter of Billy Loomis and, what, that one of us is the killer?"

"The killer told me he knew my secret." Sam was becoming an enigma. "He attacked Tara to lure me back here."

"Then why immediately go and murder some douchenozzle that was stalking Liv?" Chad asked, and Brielle straightened up, holding her hands out in a way of telling everybody to hang on.

"Why are we saying that this piece-of-shit-killer is a guy?" Brielle asked, raising an eyebrow. "It's twenty-twenty-two, Sam. Until we know the killer is either male or female, lets refer to them with gender neutral pronouns. Don't complain, don't say anything. Just listen to me." A beat. "Oh, and Mister Douchenozzle was our older brother."

"The fuck's that got to do with significance?" Chad is a dumbass, but it's okay, because he's our dumbass.

"Brille and Laina Macher, Chad. Vince Macher?" Amber seemed to take it as a personal offense that Chad hadn't put the pieces together yet. "They're all the nieces and nephews of Stu Macher."

"Well, hang on," Wes sat up, "backtracking here, but why does it have to be one of us? Maybe it's Deputy Dewey here. No offense."

I grabbed a fry from the snack tray and tossed it at Wes. He picked it off of his lap and ate it, so I hit him with a pillow. Dad held his hand out in my direction, a plain way of telling me to calm down for a moment. Probably because he wanted to hear Wes out, which was admirable, but I was still upset about it.

"None taken," he began, "but what's my motive?"

"You got stabbed, like, a billion times, got dumped by your famous wife, and crawled into a bottle, I think it's safe to say you're on the suspect list."

I didn't expect Wes to go that low, or to dig that deep, but he did, and now I felt way too many mixed emotions. Why did he have to say all of that like...how he said it? He could've said it in a nicer way, but I'll just dismiss it this time because the stakes are raising in this game.

"Well maybe you're the killer," Dad challenged, "because that...cut deep."

"That would make sense." Brielle suggested, and everybody turned to face her. "For Wes being the killer. I mean, he's not just a love interest, he's the love interest to a direct legacy kid-" she motioned in my direction, everybody glanced at me. "And his mom was part of a shitty inferior sequel, so..."

"Hang on, who's Stu Macher?" Liv was a little bit slow.

"Billy Loomis' accomplice," Dad explained, "a real...loonytoon."

"Okay, okay," Sam straightened up, "so the first three attacks are all on people related to the original killers."

My eyes widened with an unexpected realization; "Oh my God, they're making a requel," Mindy's voice and my own said the same exact thing with the same exact delivery.

"A what?" Sam asked, and Mindy and I exchanged a sigh before she went on.

"Or, uh, like a sequel, fans are torn on the terminology." Mindy didn't exactly explain yet, but I knew she was getting there.

"Okay, Mindy, can you please speak English?" Chad asked.

"Okay," she was oddly adorable with all of this, "remember the Stab movie that came out last year?"

"Oh yeah!" Liv pointed in Mindy's direction. "The one the Knives Out guy directed, right? You know, I actually really liked that one."

Usually, I found Liv annoying, but just because she deserved a couple of brownie points right now, I gave her a non-sarcastic thumbs up, and Brielle gave her a pat on the back.

"Of course you did, you have terrible taste." Mindy wasn't just talking about Liv's taste in movies, but Liv's taste in men and women as well.

"I hate you." Liv stated pointedly, and I pressed my lips together.

"The point is the hardcore Stab fans hated it. They go on 4Chan, and Reddit, all they're talking about is how Stab 8 pissed on their childhoods. How they crammed in social commentary just to make it elevated, how the main character is a Mary Sue!"

You don't understand, I could listen to Mindy rant about horror movies for forever.

"What's a Mary Sue?" Richie asked, like the stupid sort of manchild he is.

"You really don't wanna know," Brielle, Laina, and Wes said all of that in sync for a very clear reason to anybody who knew Mindy.

"What's wrong with elevated horror?" Amber finally spoke up again. "I mean, Jordan Peele fucking rules."

"Uh, obviously, but that's not Stab. Real Stab movies are meta-slasher whodunnits, full stock!" Mindy was very passionate about all of this, I was waiting to pitch in when need-be.

"Come on, it's just a movie!" Sam argued, clearly missing the point.

"No it's not," Mindy shook her head. "To some people the original is their favorite thing in the world-the movie that made them love horror! That mom or dad showed them when they were ten that bonded them together. And God help anyone who slightly fucks with that special memory, who makes a movie that they think disrespects it." The brunette stood up slowly. "It sounds like our killer is writing his-their own version of Stab 8, but doing it as a requel!"

"Which is?" Dad asked for more clarification, which was entirely understandable.

"See," she clasped her hands together, "you can't just reboot a franchise from scratch anymore, the fans won't stand for it. Black Christmas, Child's Play, Flatliners, that shit doesn't work! But you can't just do a straight sequel either, uh, you gotta build something new-but not too new, or else the internet goes bug-fucking-nuts. It's got to be a part of an ongoing storyline, even if the story shouldn't have been ongoing in the first place. New main characters, yes, but supported by and related to legacy characters."

All eyes fell onto Dad and myself, both of which were about as legacy as it gets. Legacy survivors. Liv was the only person who looked to Brielle and Laina, both of whom gave her a smile and a wave. I, however, looked down from an indescribable sense of embarrassment before looking back up at Mindy as she talked again.

"Not quite a reboot, not quite a sequel. Like the new Halloween, Saw, Terminator, Jurassic Park, Ghostbusters, fuck, even Star Wars! It always, always goes back to the original!"

"Are you telling me that I'm caught in the middle of fan-fucking-fiction?" Sam asked, and I couldn't help but roll my eyes.

"Not just in the middle, Sam," Mindy made her way over to our side of the couch. "You're the star."

"So, not to put like, too fine a point on it, but according to requel rules...who's next?" Liv actually asked a useful question this time.

"Going by the pattern, whoever it is has to be connected to someone that came before." Mind seemed uncomfortable now-like all the attention she'd been getting finally struck her.

"I'm starting to regret coming here..." Dad exchanged a genuinely worried look with me, and I pressed my lips together to give him a sad smile.

"Jesus," Wes sat up, "my mom was a character in one of them-"

"It'll be me." I mumbled, kind of hoping nobody would hear. But everybody did, and in a stunned silence, they all turned to me.

"What're you talking about?" Dad's eyebrows furrowed together. "I won't let that happen, it won't...be you next."

"Sheriff Judy and I were talking about it a bit last night, and then I was doing more thinking about it, and...according to requel rules, and the attacks that have happened so far, it's going to be me. Think about it! The first attack was on an indirect descendant of Billy Loomis, who was the last person to die that night. The second to last person to die that night was Stu Macher, and as we all know, Vince was Stu's nephew. The people that got taken down before Stu? Well, besides Mom and Dad, who survived, was Tatum Riley. My late aunt, Dad's sister. Through a doggy door. Whether these killers are going down the list from last to first, dead or survived-but-attacked, I'm fucked. I assure you."

"Tatum." Dad probably wanted to say a lot of things right now, but he was at an understandable lost for words.

"Well, actually," Mindy's tone scared me, "whether the killer is following the pattern she's talking about or not, there are still the o.g horror movie rules, so she's dead either way."

"What do you mean?" Dad asked, and I shook my head.

"Lets stay on task, please-" I begged, but Mindy was too far gone.

"Let me stress this: Tatum, Wes: both of you are dead. As we already know, Tatum is the daughter of Dewey fucking Riley, and sure, no one might care about Wes's mom, but...there's the non-virgins die rule, so...bye guys."

I was mortified by Mindy's words. Was she wrong? No, and under any other circumstances, I would be fine with her making that joke, but my father was sitting about five feet away from us. Amber was holding back laughter, I had a hand over my O-shaped mouth, Brielle and Laina were also holding back laughter, Wes had his hands clasped in front of him and was trying to not look in one person's direction. In fact, just about everybody in that room wasn't looking in Dad's direction yet; I was too scared to see what his reaction would be. Honestly, no reaction might be more terrifying, but that didn't matter, because I wasn't going to look.

"Guys," Sam was obviously at a loss for words.

I think death would be better than this agony right now. I saw Wes's head begin to turn in Dad's direction, so-because of peer pressure-I started to turn my head in Dad's direction as well. I noticed everybody else was subtly doing the same. Dad looked just as mortified as I felt; with one eyebrow furrowed and the other one raised, he was staring Wes dead in his eyes. He clearly didn't know how to react to this information, and that became more obvious once he dramatically shrugged and no longer was looking anybody in their eyes.

"Guys, hate to be this dude, but...maybe Mindy's the killer, and this whole-what, elaborate monologue is just to cover your tracks." And now it was back to wanting to murder Richie.

"I think it's pretty clear who the killer is at this point." Mindy said with a slight scoff.

"Who?" Sam asked, and a part of me began to pity her.

"You."

I no longer pitied her at all.

"It makes perfect requel sense," Mindy kind of sounded like an asshole now, but it was a fair accusation to make.

"That actually does make a lot of sense." Chad seemed to be reluctant in saying his words, and I couldn't help but nod in agreement.

"Fuck this." Sam mumbled as she stood up and walked out of the house; Richie was following her within five seconds like the little bitch that he is.

"You guys wanna get ice cream?" Brielle asked after a couple of awkwardly silent minutes.

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