Bloody Helen
A/N: I loved the dream sequence in the new I Know What You Did Last Summer, and I've grown attached to the idea of Helen as a spirit of vengeance. So have this lil fic I hammered out.
This wasn’t his fault. She was an overbearing bitch and she brought this upon herself.
At least that is what Harry Melton was going to tell himself to stop himself from hyperventilating, his hands covered in blood from the messy hammer that lay by his side. He stared at the body, his own eyes wide and wild from disbelief. And rage. The rage was still there. The twisted black mattes of hair blended with the torn black sleeves of her shirt, little pieces of gold woven in from her broken jewelry. This mound of flesh and hair and cloth was once a person. A person he loved. A person he lost.
No. A person he killed.
Gina was his girlfriend for fifteen years. They never married for many reasons. One being that he didn’t want her to inherit his debts. And there were so many debts. Some debts can never be repaid. Some debts are more than money. Some are blood. Some are a dark and twisted secret shame you can never come back from. Some are never supposed to see the light of day again.
And yet, people get curious. Too curious. And those secret shames come back and twist your insides. Violate the person you thought you were. Gina was never supposed to find out. She just had to stay away from the lockbox that was carefully hidden amongst a pile of junk in their garage, rusted over time and covered with dust and cobwebs. She had decided to rearrange things without telling him. That was her first mistake. Cleanliness. It got you closer to God like that old saying. What a bitch. She knew he wasn’t religious.
And then she opened the box. Finding the photos. The records. The clippings of a life gone by. A shame he no longer wanted to remember. And it was like a bomb went off. Truth be told she didn’t even get upset. She didn’t scream or cry. She just… asked about it. It wasn’t her burden. It was his. And it was too much. He didn’t know why he did it. He just didn’t want the secret to exist in anyone else but himself. So mindlessly he grabbed the hammer. Screaming. Crying. THWACKING.
And now this is where we find ourselves. Harry, on the floor of the garage, covered in blood with his knees to his chin and back to the sliding door. Just… staring at a pile of mush and ripped flesh and fabric that was once his world. After he came to, he stood, slowly approaching… trembling. He passed by a mirror, broken and split in two from the scuffle, a splat of blood on the bottom. He barely noticed the vision of the young girl in it watching him. Staring.
“Gina…” He whimpered, reaching out to the mangled vision on the floor. His breath hitched, then he wailed for a moment before stumbling back. And then he noticed the mirror.
There, in the reflection, stood a beautiful young girl in a white slip dress with a shiny bejeweled tiara on her head. The sash on her chest said ‘Croaker Queen ‘96’. But where the mirror cracked split her face in two. One side a stunning vision of a buxom blonde, the other a bloody skeletal face. And in her hand hung a hook.
“Harry…” A lilty little voice rang out from the glass. A flash of light. Thunder. Was it supposed to rain? Harry shivered and closed his eyes. Oh god. The post murder hallucinations had started. Another flash of lightning and he opened his eyes. The ‘Croaker Queen’ was gone.
He rose to his knees and started to formulate a plan. He had to… do something with the body. Wrap it in something maybe? He opened the door to his house and headed to the bathroom. Shower curtain. Yes… like plastic wrap. That should work. He was once again so wrapped in his own thoughts that he failed to notice every picture frame on the wall was the beautiful blonde, head turning to watch him as he passed.
When he got into the bathroom, he smelled a faint hint of sea brine. Funny, they weren’t super close to the ocean. He lived in North Carolina sure, but moreso inland. He’d never smelled the sea this far in. He just peered at the counter that was covered in little decorative candles and figured… maybe the scent was from them? His heart sunk a little at the sight. Gina loved candles.
He shook off the thought and began to unhook the shower curtain before another whisper lilted in the air.
”Harry.”
It seemed more aggressive. But again he thought he was just going crazy.
But when the candles on the counter lit by themselves, casting an eerie orange light in the room, Harry started to second guess that.
“Men that murder their girlfriends rarely meet a good ending.”
Okay that definitely was a real voice in the air this time. He was unsure of what was happening so instead he backed toward the bathroom door. But he found it was locked. No. Some force was holding it shut.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
A clanking of glass. From the mirror. Harry was hyperventilating again, yanking at the door with all his strength.
“Fucking piece of shit OPEN!”
And then the most horrifying sight he’d ever beheld in his 46 years of life. That girl, the ‘Croaker Queen’ that he thought he’d seen before… She started to CRAWL out of the mirror. The tiara on her head bleeding. The flesh on her body beginning to rot.
“I didn’t want to die either. You did a bad thing, Harry. And whenever a woman is unjustly murdered like I was… I will be there.” Her voice was clear, and booming now, a mix between a sultry feminine and a demonic rasp.
Henry screamed.
When the police discovered the bodies, Henry’s guts would mostly be on the outside of his body. Fully disemboweled, throat slashed. An ‘I’M SORRY’ written in his blood on the mirror. A letter admitting guilt to killing Gina would be found on his coffee table. As for Gina’s body, a single white flower lay on her corpse. It would be the most bizarre case in North Carolina history, even moreso than the multiple murders in Southport.
But it would not be the last time vengeance would be enacted from beyond.
