I Was a Teenage Slasher

by Stephen Graham Jones

And, to Mr. and Mrs. Joss? I understand why you had to move away to Georgia. Completely. The only eyewitnesses to this tragedy were the perpetrators, right? That’s not whose college exploits and weddings and births you want to read about in the Press-Reporter for the next decade. That’s not who you want to stand in line behind, to pay for your gas.

But, really? It’s less about survival, more about who you’re holding when that big irradiated shockwave blows you to ash.

Old slashers may not die, but they can, if they’re careful, if they’re conscientious, stop killing.

The world’s so much simpler when you’ve got a chainsaw in your hand, isn’t it? A chainsaw or a machete or an axe, that’s the elegant solution to every problem. And I wouldn’t get caught, either. My kind don’t.

I won’t trot any excuses out either, though. At least give me that. No, I couldn’t have undone centuries of prejudice then and there, and in Texas of all places, in West Texas at that, in 1989 on top of that, but that doesn’t mean I had to just stand there toeing the grass and licking my lips, either. I’m ashamed of the bodycount I drag behind me, yeah. But I’m just as ashamed of my behavior on my own lawn, the morning after the first massacre.

We all want to hide, don’t we? To not have to be constantly navigating between our true self and people’s expectations twenty-four seven?

It’s six minutes of my life, tops, but some memories you don’t measure in minutes or miles, but by how much of yourself is still in that moment.

“Dogs do hate your kind,” Amber said. “And hate’s just––” “Fear turned inside out,” I finished for her, mockingly.

she was telling them that their perpetually bullied son had himself been socially more advantaged than someone else––than us. Which is sort of nothing, but it’s sort of everything, too. What it meant was that what had always been happening to Justin, it was just the natural order of things. It’s how it goes in high school.

Live with a thing for half your life, you spend a lot of time poking holes in your own story. The rest of your time’s spent filling those holes back in, with more story,

I’ve even come to like the country music Red won’t budge on, when he’s here. Not Barbara Mandrell––if she ever winds up on the radio, I have to book it out of the front office, find something to do for thirty minutes or an hour.