Maul Rats: A Slasher Novel

by Ivy Tholen

My poor cousin Michelle had it way worse than me, though. Her best friend Jenny died the previous year. She stepped off a curb at the local mall and a speeding car mowed her down. She died on the scene, and Michelle had a front-row seat to the carnage.

The crush died when Jenny did. He watched her body slam onto the hood and fly into a statue of Robert E. Lee. For a second he thought she might be okay, then Ryan kept driving and crashed into the statue, cutting Jenny in half. She kept screaming even after the car sliced her in two. After that, he couldn’t look at Michelle without picturing the pieces of Jenny’s body slopping into the street.

“Horror is like a big spiderweb. Older movies influence new ones, trends are ripped off and run into the ground, everything references everything else. One hit like Halloween spawns an entire subgenre, then Elm Street comes along and puts a new spin on it and that gets ripped off. Slumber Party Massacre 2 and Hello Mary Lou Prom Night 2 also both obviously stole from Freddy. And Halloween wasn’t even the first slasher to knock off a bunch of teenagers, it was just the first with a big box office. Black Christmas, Peeping Tom, Psycho, and a whole mess of Italian Giallo came first.”

“All these shirts are XXL,” Carmen said. She showed Kimberly the label of a Hole t-shirt. It had two big cherries on the front with the word AWFUL written in scratches behind it. Kimberly snatched it and flipped it over. TASTES LIKE CANDY was printed on the back, along with two neat rows of tour dates. Kimberly ran a finger down the list and landed on Houston. Someone had taken a glitter pen and underlined the date. Kimberly dropped the shirt on the ground like it had bitten her.