The Butchering of Atticus Voorhees (1998 Words)
Oct 17, 2021 13:11:32 GMT -5
CJ Phoenix, Lissie Hope, and 4 more like this
Post by Regan Voorhees on Oct 17, 2021 13:11:32 GMT -5
“If my daughter doesn’t know how to act like a human being,” Mom began. “Does that make me a bad parent?” After burning thousands of dollars so that eleven-year-old Regan could get the best psychiatrist in Alabama, Mom was deadset on documented proof that she wasn’t a parental failure.
I was just as determined to deny her that proof. “Why would you say something so hurtful, Mother?” I asked, my deadpan betraying the emotional wound I pretended to have.
“She always does this shit,” said Mom, finally noticing doctor's slackjawed horror. Her tone adjusted accordingly, an attempt to fool the outsider. “I just worry about her.”
“We worry,” Dad interrupted. Their marriage was an unending, hate-fueled rivalry. His faux-concern would match Mom’s. His stupidity, however, would exceed. “Is it possible, and hear me out, that our baby was replaced by some sort of extraterrestrial lookalike?”
I sighed. Loudly. “I’m not a Midwich Cuckoo.” When his vacant eyes betrayed his lack of understanding, I expounded. “Read a book, Dad. It was even adapted to film twice as Village of the Damned.”
“Right,” Dad said, looking to the doctor. “How plausible was that movie?”
“Regan,” the doctor said, finally addressing me directly. “Would you like to talk about your most recent outburst?”
Outburst was not the term I would use. “I pushed a classmate down a flight of steps,” I explained. Best to leave out how crystal clear the sound of his ulna snapping still was in my brain, or the split-second smile I forced myself to hide when I saw bone poking bloodily through pasty skin. “He bragged about shooting a squirrel with a BB-gun.” A defense of the defenseless. Heroism, by definition.
“It’s a squirrel,” Mother said.
Dad had nothing to add, but tried anyway. “BBs hurt like a son-of-a-bitch.”
“You’re not helping,” Mom said, and the argument exploded. It always did when they both came to therapy. A personal victory for myself. Their virulence put on grand display for an impartial observer. The doctor was caught between his professional obligation to intervene and his fear of alienating affluent clients.
I saved him. “Doctor, I believe I may have anxiety, which is why I’ve been lashing out. Have you thought about my suggestion last week?”
The doctor clapped his hands. My parents’ stopped their bickering for the briefest of moments. The perfect opening to force my words through the mouth of a neutral party. “I think you should get Regan a pet.”
The suggestion hung in the air while my progenitors absorbed it. They stared at the doctor, then at me, then back to each other. When the argument began again, it continued for the remaining 49 minutes of the session.
Who wouldn’t choose pigs over people?
One might argue that the Great Smoky Mountains made a poor substitute for the Rockys, and in terms of Kubrickian grandeur, I wouldn’t disagree. But for the sake of proximity to home, the Meridian Hotel would serve as my Overlook, despite its lack of snow and abundance of people. Still, I held out hope for a vengeful ghost or two.
“Are the rumors true?” I asked, wasting no time once arriving at the front desk.
“Yep, that’s the murder suite,” said the desk boy. Residual acne kept him from looking mature, even in his ill-fighting tuxedo, the cut of which was either out of fashion or intentionally retro. “Over the years it hosted multiple suicides, two mob executions, and one sacrifice to Asmodeus. Most recently JJ Abrams stayed for a week while writing Rise of Skywalker.”
“How vile,” I said. A quartet of hooves clambered up, as a snout nuzzled my ankle. I crouched to scratch Atticus behind his ears.
The be-tuxed tyke peaked over the front desk, pimply face awash in shock. “I’m very sorry, Miss Voorhees,” he said, voice breaking. “But we don’t allow pets.”
His attempt to exert authority was quite literally laughable. After a quick chortle, I gathered Atticus in my arms and stood up, leveling eye contact that my opponent was unable to match. “Atticus is a certified emotional support animal,” I explained, tucking him under one arm so that I could fumble through my purse to produce his credentials. “Can’t imagine you would want a distraught guest.”
The host forced a chortle of his own. “Definitely not,” he said. “You might haunt the place.”
I gave a final, retaliatory chortle. “If I were a ghost, I would haunt somewhere much nicer. I don’t suppose you have a hedge maze?”
“There’s a corn maze,” the idiot offered.
“Pass,” I said, turning my back to him. I only made it two steps before I stopped in my tracks. A pair of twin girls eyeballed me from across the lobby. Something about them sent a chill up my spine.
“Ick, children.”
For the sake of my Execution promo, everything in my room was coated in sheets of plastic; the bed, the chairs, the dressers, the windows, the walls, my plastic coveralls. Goggles, too, because when laying out a spread of knives, safety first. A metal table sat center of the frame, an object for the camera to focus on and remind the viewer of the gruesome task ahead of me.
Despite the discomfort of my plastic prison, my red lipstick was flawless as ever. The frictionless plastic-on-plastic contact caused me to slip off the bed and chairs whenever I tried to sit down during rehearsals. This time I would stand. The better to dominate the screen.
“You probably think this is my fault, Addy. When a person gets pushed to extreme behavior, they rarely attribute it to their own mental weakness. Now that some time has passed and I’ve had time to reflect, I agree that Joey running you over was a bit much. I'm sure we both agree. But you’re the one who chose to take personal issue with my success. If it weren’t for you, I would still be the Cruiserweight Champion.”
I took a butcher knife by the handle, squeezing it. The thumb of my other hand ran down the blade, studying the sharpness. The bitter memory made me want to press my thumb into the steel until I felt it bite into my flesh. A momentary distraction from the loss.
“It feels like an eternity since your meddling began, Addy. Honestly, I never thought you would be able to keep it up this long. But your persistence paid off. All those months I was at the top of Cruiser Clash, you just kept chipping away at my pedestal until it finally crumbled. The two of us were left in the rubble, both without a championship for all our troubles. When you beat Atara for my title, I was irate of course, but I think taking it back from you eight days later might be my favorite Action Wrestling memory. In retrospect, I should’ve sent a card. See? I’m capable of acknowledging my failings. So full disclosure, my bad.”
“I pride myself on my icy disposition, but I confess: Addy, you’ve gotten to me. Simply beating you in a wrestling match, it just isn’t enough. I want to hurt you. Badly, gruesomely, irreparably. I want to do things to you that will traumatize little Nevaeh until I’m waltzing through her nightmares. Effective as it would be to smack your noggin with a meat tenderizer, I refuse. You’re going to feel every nanosecond of agony that I can visit open you. I’m going to rub your face through the cage until the entire front row is covering in shredded Addy.”
“This is what you thought you wanted. You never understood who you were dealing with. If you had my advantages, you would’ve used them just like I did. Not doing so would be stupid, and despite your multitude of failings, you’re not an imbecile. I came here because I knew my money could only go so far. In the end, I would earn what I got with my blood and sweat, my fists and wits. I wanted to enter an arena I had no place in and find a way to succeed. So many girls dream of being princesses. This little princess dreamed of being a killer. Are you my fairy godmother, Addy? Because my dream is about to come true.”
I set the butcher knife on the table with a metallic clang and collected the snorting bundle of joy shuffling around my feet. Atticus did not clang when I set him on the table like some unknowing entrée.
“We’ve both proven our willingness to go pretty fucking far in the face of true adversity. Just a little bit farther now. Soon one of us will break and this will all be over. But first, I need to eliminate a potential weakness. One you’ve exploited, in your efforts to get under my skin. Congratulations, Addy. You pushed me to the brink. Now let's topple over together.”
Again, I took the butch knife, squeezing the handle, seeing my plastic-clad reflection in the exquisite steel. Atticus looked up at me with those bright, kind, unknowing eyes.
“Goodbye, Atticus.”
I inserted a camera cut, of course. Then a flash of the same room, blood on the plastic covering the furniture, floor and walls. Enough gore to account for a small pig. A price paid, a weakness eliminated.
“I suppose rum would be appropriate,” I told the bartender, his tuxedo a much better fit than the desk boy's. A true professional, he served me a drink and made no small talk. From my seat at the bar, I examined the other milling, happy patrons of the Meridian and their sickening interactions. Thinking of what it would take for me to enjoy their company, I snickered into my cocktail.
I stopped myself at one drink, enough to numb the emotional frazzling of my hotel stay. Exiting the lounge, the twins haunted me again.
“Aren’t you that vegan lady?”
“Fuck off, girls,” I offered, not even granting them a side glance.
During the walk back to my room, I felt like there was an ax in my gut. Addy thoroughly succeeded in getting under my skin. A rare feat. A vacation from AW television wasn’t enough to cleanse myself, nor was a heinous act. My best solution? A second heinous act. One could hardly have an Execution Cage without an execution. Once again, a Voorhees would be a butcher.
After climbing the stairs to the second floor, I rounded a corner and the long, empty hallway gave me a perfect glimpse of an open door and the occupants therein. My stomached churned.
Never one to kink-shame, I reminded my fellow guests of common fucking courtesy. “Shut. Your. Door.”
The aging furry obliged. For the rest of the walk back to my room, I wondered where I might find an ax.
Happy snorts greeted me when I opened the door. When I took the napkin from my purse and revealed the leftover broccoli from dinner, the snorts crescendoed. Atticus munched gleefully on his treats, while I gave his ears a scratch. Another apology for the terrible act I considered, all for the sake of gaining an edge against an enemy. But those eyes and their bottomless well of unconditional love stayed my blade. A bandaid on my thumb covered the subsequent prick I gave myself with that same blade, a reminder of my misguided deed.
The plastic wrap from my promo was now a massive, translucent ball occupying a chair in my breakfast nook. The fake blood was visible, but a generous tip would stop the cleaning lady from asking any unwelcome questions.
In work, in the ring, there’s no limit to how far I would go. But outside of it? A lady must have some moral reservations.
Regan Voorhees. A shining example of humanity. How fucking embarrassing.
I was just as determined to deny her that proof. “Why would you say something so hurtful, Mother?” I asked, my deadpan betraying the emotional wound I pretended to have.
“She always does this shit,” said Mom, finally noticing doctor's slackjawed horror. Her tone adjusted accordingly, an attempt to fool the outsider. “I just worry about her.”
“We worry,” Dad interrupted. Their marriage was an unending, hate-fueled rivalry. His faux-concern would match Mom’s. His stupidity, however, would exceed. “Is it possible, and hear me out, that our baby was replaced by some sort of extraterrestrial lookalike?”
I sighed. Loudly. “I’m not a Midwich Cuckoo.” When his vacant eyes betrayed his lack of understanding, I expounded. “Read a book, Dad. It was even adapted to film twice as Village of the Damned.”
“Right,” Dad said, looking to the doctor. “How plausible was that movie?”
“Regan,” the doctor said, finally addressing me directly. “Would you like to talk about your most recent outburst?”
Outburst was not the term I would use. “I pushed a classmate down a flight of steps,” I explained. Best to leave out how crystal clear the sound of his ulna snapping still was in my brain, or the split-second smile I forced myself to hide when I saw bone poking bloodily through pasty skin. “He bragged about shooting a squirrel with a BB-gun.” A defense of the defenseless. Heroism, by definition.
“It’s a squirrel,” Mother said.
Dad had nothing to add, but tried anyway. “BBs hurt like a son-of-a-bitch.”
“You’re not helping,” Mom said, and the argument exploded. It always did when they both came to therapy. A personal victory for myself. Their virulence put on grand display for an impartial observer. The doctor was caught between his professional obligation to intervene and his fear of alienating affluent clients.
I saved him. “Doctor, I believe I may have anxiety, which is why I’ve been lashing out. Have you thought about my suggestion last week?”
The doctor clapped his hands. My parents’ stopped their bickering for the briefest of moments. The perfect opening to force my words through the mouth of a neutral party. “I think you should get Regan a pet.”
The suggestion hung in the air while my progenitors absorbed it. They stared at the doctor, then at me, then back to each other. When the argument began again, it continued for the remaining 49 minutes of the session.
Who wouldn’t choose pigs over people?
(´・(00)・`)
The Butchering of Atticus Voorhees
(Best paired with Al Bowlly’s “Midnight, The Stars and You” and a Red Rum)
One might argue that the Great Smoky Mountains made a poor substitute for the Rockys, and in terms of Kubrickian grandeur, I wouldn’t disagree. But for the sake of proximity to home, the Meridian Hotel would serve as my Overlook, despite its lack of snow and abundance of people. Still, I held out hope for a vengeful ghost or two.
“Are the rumors true?” I asked, wasting no time once arriving at the front desk.
“Yep, that’s the murder suite,” said the desk boy. Residual acne kept him from looking mature, even in his ill-fighting tuxedo, the cut of which was either out of fashion or intentionally retro. “Over the years it hosted multiple suicides, two mob executions, and one sacrifice to Asmodeus. Most recently JJ Abrams stayed for a week while writing Rise of Skywalker.”
“How vile,” I said. A quartet of hooves clambered up, as a snout nuzzled my ankle. I crouched to scratch Atticus behind his ears.
The be-tuxed tyke peaked over the front desk, pimply face awash in shock. “I’m very sorry, Miss Voorhees,” he said, voice breaking. “But we don’t allow pets.”
His attempt to exert authority was quite literally laughable. After a quick chortle, I gathered Atticus in my arms and stood up, leveling eye contact that my opponent was unable to match. “Atticus is a certified emotional support animal,” I explained, tucking him under one arm so that I could fumble through my purse to produce his credentials. “Can’t imagine you would want a distraught guest.”
The host forced a chortle of his own. “Definitely not,” he said. “You might haunt the place.”
I gave a final, retaliatory chortle. “If I were a ghost, I would haunt somewhere much nicer. I don’t suppose you have a hedge maze?”
“There’s a corn maze,” the idiot offered.
“Pass,” I said, turning my back to him. I only made it two steps before I stopped in my tracks. A pair of twin girls eyeballed me from across the lobby. Something about them sent a chill up my spine.
“Ick, children.”
(´・(00)・`)
For the sake of my Execution promo, everything in my room was coated in sheets of plastic; the bed, the chairs, the dressers, the windows, the walls, my plastic coveralls. Goggles, too, because when laying out a spread of knives, safety first. A metal table sat center of the frame, an object for the camera to focus on and remind the viewer of the gruesome task ahead of me.
Despite the discomfort of my plastic prison, my red lipstick was flawless as ever. The frictionless plastic-on-plastic contact caused me to slip off the bed and chairs whenever I tried to sit down during rehearsals. This time I would stand. The better to dominate the screen.
“You probably think this is my fault, Addy. When a person gets pushed to extreme behavior, they rarely attribute it to their own mental weakness. Now that some time has passed and I’ve had time to reflect, I agree that Joey running you over was a bit much. I'm sure we both agree. But you’re the one who chose to take personal issue with my success. If it weren’t for you, I would still be the Cruiserweight Champion.”
I took a butcher knife by the handle, squeezing it. The thumb of my other hand ran down the blade, studying the sharpness. The bitter memory made me want to press my thumb into the steel until I felt it bite into my flesh. A momentary distraction from the loss.
“It feels like an eternity since your meddling began, Addy. Honestly, I never thought you would be able to keep it up this long. But your persistence paid off. All those months I was at the top of Cruiser Clash, you just kept chipping away at my pedestal until it finally crumbled. The two of us were left in the rubble, both without a championship for all our troubles. When you beat Atara for my title, I was irate of course, but I think taking it back from you eight days later might be my favorite Action Wrestling memory. In retrospect, I should’ve sent a card. See? I’m capable of acknowledging my failings. So full disclosure, my bad.”
“I pride myself on my icy disposition, but I confess: Addy, you’ve gotten to me. Simply beating you in a wrestling match, it just isn’t enough. I want to hurt you. Badly, gruesomely, irreparably. I want to do things to you that will traumatize little Nevaeh until I’m waltzing through her nightmares. Effective as it would be to smack your noggin with a meat tenderizer, I refuse. You’re going to feel every nanosecond of agony that I can visit open you. I’m going to rub your face through the cage until the entire front row is covering in shredded Addy.”
“This is what you thought you wanted. You never understood who you were dealing with. If you had my advantages, you would’ve used them just like I did. Not doing so would be stupid, and despite your multitude of failings, you’re not an imbecile. I came here because I knew my money could only go so far. In the end, I would earn what I got with my blood and sweat, my fists and wits. I wanted to enter an arena I had no place in and find a way to succeed. So many girls dream of being princesses. This little princess dreamed of being a killer. Are you my fairy godmother, Addy? Because my dream is about to come true.”
I set the butcher knife on the table with a metallic clang and collected the snorting bundle of joy shuffling around my feet. Atticus did not clang when I set him on the table like some unknowing entrée.
“We’ve both proven our willingness to go pretty fucking far in the face of true adversity. Just a little bit farther now. Soon one of us will break and this will all be over. But first, I need to eliminate a potential weakness. One you’ve exploited, in your efforts to get under my skin. Congratulations, Addy. You pushed me to the brink. Now let's topple over together.”
Again, I took the butch knife, squeezing the handle, seeing my plastic-clad reflection in the exquisite steel. Atticus looked up at me with those bright, kind, unknowing eyes.
“Goodbye, Atticus.”
I inserted a camera cut, of course. Then a flash of the same room, blood on the plastic covering the furniture, floor and walls. Enough gore to account for a small pig. A price paid, a weakness eliminated.
(´・(00)・`)
“I suppose rum would be appropriate,” I told the bartender, his tuxedo a much better fit than the desk boy's. A true professional, he served me a drink and made no small talk. From my seat at the bar, I examined the other milling, happy patrons of the Meridian and their sickening interactions. Thinking of what it would take for me to enjoy their company, I snickered into my cocktail.
I stopped myself at one drink, enough to numb the emotional frazzling of my hotel stay. Exiting the lounge, the twins haunted me again.
“Aren’t you that vegan lady?”
“Fuck off, girls,” I offered, not even granting them a side glance.
During the walk back to my room, I felt like there was an ax in my gut. Addy thoroughly succeeded in getting under my skin. A rare feat. A vacation from AW television wasn’t enough to cleanse myself, nor was a heinous act. My best solution? A second heinous act. One could hardly have an Execution Cage without an execution. Once again, a Voorhees would be a butcher.
After climbing the stairs to the second floor, I rounded a corner and the long, empty hallway gave me a perfect glimpse of an open door and the occupants therein. My stomached churned.
Never one to kink-shame, I reminded my fellow guests of common fucking courtesy. “Shut. Your. Door.”
The aging furry obliged. For the rest of the walk back to my room, I wondered where I might find an ax.
(´・(00)・`)
Happy snorts greeted me when I opened the door. When I took the napkin from my purse and revealed the leftover broccoli from dinner, the snorts crescendoed. Atticus munched gleefully on his treats, while I gave his ears a scratch. Another apology for the terrible act I considered, all for the sake of gaining an edge against an enemy. But those eyes and their bottomless well of unconditional love stayed my blade. A bandaid on my thumb covered the subsequent prick I gave myself with that same blade, a reminder of my misguided deed.
The plastic wrap from my promo was now a massive, translucent ball occupying a chair in my breakfast nook. The fake blood was visible, but a generous tip would stop the cleaning lady from asking any unwelcome questions.
In work, in the ring, there’s no limit to how far I would go. But outside of it? A lady must have some moral reservations.
Regan Voorhees. A shining example of humanity. How fucking embarrassing.