Don't Fear the Reaper (The Indian Lake Trilogy, #2)

by Stephen Graham Jones

Her fingernails aren’t painted black, and her boots are the dress-ones her lawyer bought for her. The heels are conservative, there are no aggressive lugs on the soles, and the threads are the same dark brown color as the fake, purply-brown leather.

Justice for Jade!

“Adrienne,” Jennifer repeats, nodding to herself. “That’s good. Pretty.” Letha’s just watching her, now. “You really are different, aren’t you?” “What? How?” “The old you would have opened up a can of trivia about that name.”

“Adrienne King played Alice in Friday the 13th. That’s still buried in your head. In your heart. I know it is.” “You must be thinking of some other girl.” “Sorry. I just… you look just like her. Like who I always knew she could be.”

“Same thing Columbus saw, from his ship.” Letha looks over for explanation. “Something that wasn’t his,” Jennifer clears right up.

you’ve gone from being the final girl to…” She has to stop to cover her laugh with the back of her hand, then shake her head in apology for that slip. “Now you’re the adult who doesn’t believe this is really happening.

As Karl Marx says, History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce, which is to say: all these episodes of violence eventually become cartoons. Time mollifies, multiple tellings codify, and then history repackages.

It should have been dead long ago, she knows, but souls are like livers: they regenerate and regenerate, until you’ve finally poisoned them enough that the only thing they can do is kill you, take you down with them.

All he’s got are bullets, and authority, neither of which has currency in the slasher.

And she’s right ofc

“I like that it’s not Linnea.” Jennifer asks the question with her eyes, and Letha answers: “ ‘Adrienne’ is Adie’s middle name. Her first is—” “Linnea?” Letha nods, looking away. “You’re now officially my hero,” Jennifer tells her.

“You really named her ‘Linnea’?” “Linnea’s a survivor.” “She dies in every movie.” “Her characters do, but she goes from movie to movie,” Letha says. “She never dies.”

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