4

4

“Mom, I’m so hungry!” Cameron whined from the couch.

“Baby, the food is finally here. I just have to unbag it,” Sidney said, unpacking the steaming boxes onto the coffee table.

“Can we watch a scary movie?”

Sidney hesitated, stalling by continuing to arrange the food on the table and extracting chopsticks and condiments from the brown paper sack. She kept her eyes down on her hands.

“Mom! Can we watch a scary movie?” Cameron repeated, louder and with an edge.

“Your daddy doesn’t like it when I show you scary movies,” Sidney finally replied.

“Daddy just doesn’t like scary movies.”

“Also true.”

“Please!” Cameron sat up straight and opened his eyes wide at his mother.

Sidney smiled, helpless.

“OK, bud,” she said, “but not a really scary one.”

“Yes!” Cameron threw his fists into the air.

He popped up from the couch and moved to snatch a box of lo mein and a set of chopsticks. He nestled back on the couch cushion as Sidney summoned the movie on the flatscreen.

“What’s this one about?” Cameron managed between ravenous bites. Noodles spilled from his greased lips.

“The Headless Horseman.”

“The Headless Horseman?”

“Yeah, he’s a ghost who chops off people’s heads.”

“Then why is he headless?”

“Cam, just watch the movie. It will answer your questions.”

Cameron’s eyes widened in the reflective light of the screen. “What’s it rated?” he asked.

“R.” Sidney shoved a large bite of orange chicken between her teeth, waiting to see his reaction.

“R?” Cameron practically jumped from the couch and dropped his lo mein. His fixed scowl from the morning drive and afternoon practice was finally replaced by a dazzling grin.

Sidney basked in the momentary glow of his bliss. She smiled in return. Yet as the bright, unnatural blood splattered over a jack o’lantern face on screen, she felt herself cringe as she gauged Cameron’s response. Was it too graphic? Was it too scary? Was she showing it to him too soon? Would Aiden lose his mind when he found out?

She straddled her emotions as the movie climbed through its plot. As heads rolled, she savored his screams and giggles of enjoyment. Yet she also felt the tension of worry, of self-doubt as it wound around her chest. She felt guilty for enjoying his horror indoctrination at this young age, and she felt stupid for doubting something so trivial as a scary movie. Somewhere in the contradiction, she wasted the night.

After the horseman dove through the Tree of the Dead and the credits rolled, Sidney tucked a protesting Cameron into bed. His breathing grew weighted before she even closed his bedroom door behind her. Clearly, the movie had not traumatized him enough to cost him sleep. She shuffled the Chinese leftovers into the fridge and upgraded herself to another, exceedingly more graphic horror movie, placing her laptop across her legs.

Sidney navigated to her website’s dashboard to unleash her article, ignoring the notification counts beckoning her from every window and application. She opened “Blood Baths: The Best Bathroom Scenes in Horror” and clicked the button to publish. Before she could even shift her attention to the accumulated comments and messages, her phone rang.

Only one person ever actually called her phone. Sidney chomped down into her lip without realizing it.

“Hi Mom,” Sidney said into the phone. She flinched against the device along her face as it felt unnatural against her cheek.

“Oh Sidney, I caught you. Is now a good time, honey?” Her mother’s thin, high voice drew a line along Sidney’s nerves.

“Yeah, Mom. I’m just watching a movie and working on my website.”

“Watching one of your horror movies?”

“Of course.”

“I don’t know how you stand that nonsense. Why would you want to be scared and disturbed all the time? How’s my perfect boy?”

“Cameron is good. He’s sleeping right now. He caught a pop fly at practice today.”

“I hope you don’t let him watch that scary stuff with you. Too much exposure to violence like that could turn him into a sociopath.”

Sidney stifled a sigh. She brought her fingers to her face and rubbed her forehead before pinching the bridge of her nose. “Was there something you needed, Mom?” she said through pursed lips.

“Actually, yes.” Her mother cleared her throat. “I got a call from your uncle today about some picture you posted, so I go online to see. Sidney Laurie, why are you naked and covered in blood on the internet?”

Sidney threw her head back and let it bounce on the couch cushion repeatedly. She pinched her nose harder this time, until it hurt.

“Mom, we’ve been over this.” Sidney heard the whine in her voice and how much it sounded like her son when he was hungry.

“I still don’t understand, Sid,” her mother began her speech. “Getting bloody is for a crime scene. It is not art. You can’t say it’s art. I know what Brady says, and he’s a very nice boy, but there’s no reason to produce obscene stuff like that. Honestly, Sidney, are you trying to embarrass me? Aiden could use these pictures in court if he really wanted to.”

“Mom, it’s not gross,” Sidney tried to interject. “And fake blood is not going to cost me custody.”

“And you’re never going to find a new husband posting naked pictures on the internet. What man wants his woman flashing all her goods all over Facebook?”

“Mom, I don’t need a new husband.”

“And what are you teaching Cameron? Do you want him to grow up to date women who take their clothes off? Strippers. Do you want him dating strippers?” Her mother’s tone contorted in the thick disapproval Sidney knew well.

“Well, if he’s going to be a sociopath, it sounds like that might be the perfect woman for him.”

“Sidney!” Her mother’s voice cracked.

“Come on, Mom. Strippers?” Sidney cradled her forehead in her hand.

“OK, fine. Maybe that was a little dramatic.”

“A little?”

“But you see what I mean.”

“No, Mom. No, I don’t.” Sidney squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to let her mother hear the irritation edging her breath.

“Well, we will just have to agree to disagree, dear.”

“We have agreed to disagree, Mom, so we don’t really need to keep having this conversation. I’m going to keep taking and posting the pictures; you’re going to keep disapproving. I don’t think we need to go in the same circle every time.”

“I just want you to be safe, dear. You never know what kinds of weirdos are out there watching on the internet.”

Sidney rolled her eyes hard, gritting her teeth. “I know, Mom. I will be careful.” Her voice fell flat as her lips just made the practiced shapes, as her face contorted in all the irritation her mother could not see.

Her mother finally dropped the tired topic and proceeded to babble on about Sidney’s uncle’s new girlfriend and her cousin’s assumed prescription pill problem. Sidney sat trapped beneath her laptop, her phone dangling against her earlobe as the Netflix description page of her horror movie mocked her. By the time her mother released her from cellular bondage, irritation roiled under Sidney’s skin. She dropped the phone to the cushion beside her and glared at it, disgusted.

Sidney picked up the remote to scroll to another horror movie in her ever-expanding queue. The thin weight of exhaustion unrolled itself over the length of her skin, packing down on top of her eyelids. She shook her head against the sensation and against the crackling edge of her annoyance, focusing back on the screens shining their truths on her face.

She clicked through internet tabs and parsed the accumulating reactions and comments on her “Blood Baths” post.

This bitch obviously doesn’t know anything about horror, but at least she looks good naked.

Psycho is the only movie to consider for best bathroom death scene!

Maybe you should go on a diet instead of sitting on your fat ass watching horror movies.

Great article! I love your story. Come check out my website.

Well written, girl. You know your horror.

You can’t write Final Destination in the same sentence as Psycho. Only Candyman can be listed as comparable. The Final Destination franchise is just death scene porn.

Get the most followers for your website! Click now!

Looking hot! I want to lick every drop of that blood off of you!

That chick would be hot if she wasn’t on the rag in every picture.

How brave of you to post these pictures! You look amazing.

The comments continued and duplicated, branching along the same deeply-worn veins. Horror adoration, sexual innuendo, body judgment, shaming—an awkward blend of tired and flat extremes. Sidney liked and responded to the neutral and positive comments. She lingered on the words, dwelling on the warmth that spread across her chest at the admiration. She read and reread the pleasant responses until the phrases began to lose meaning. Yet she stumbled on the negatives, on the hateful words, on the trolls. Those responses were sharper and conjured a sinking nausea in her stomach. She forced herself to read past them, deleting each entry and blocking their senders on social media.

As she shifted to her draft of her Nightmare Film Festival movie reviews, her messenger chimed.

Oliver: It’s been too long since I’ve seen you.

Sidney: You’ve never actually seen me.

Oliver: You know what I mean.

Sidney: You saw me this morning.

Oliver: Too long ago. It’s been a whole long, shitty day of work since then.

Sidney: I’m sorry. Bad day?

Oliver: Make me feel better?

Sidney leaned back and contemplated a selfie. She did not feel attractive. She felt the exhaustion of the day drawing wrinkles in her face. She felt the worry overexposing her son to horror and how much Aiden would hate it creasing deep lines in her forehead as the weight of her mother’s judgment accumulated under her eyes. She reached for her discarded phone, and it vibrated in her palm. She had a direct message on Instagram.

Max: Your last article was great, and your pictures are . . .

Sidney tapped her nail on the cell phone case as she nibbled the edge of her lip. She rarely opened direct messages from unknown friends or followers. She had been scarred by too many uninvited pictures of genitalia or generic and disgusting come-ons or indications on how desperately she needed Jesus.

She tapped Max’s name to view his profile. A page of bright tiles appeared, Max’s face gracing the majority of them. He was attractive. She felt a subtle jolt looking at his images. Pictures of him with his dog on hiking trails mingled with horror memes and movie posters. She swiped back over to his message.

Max: Your last article was great, and your pictures are gorgeous. You’re so beautiful, and the blood is so unnerving. It’s the perfect contradiction.

Sidney: Thank you, Max! That compliment means a lot to me. That’s exactly what we were going for.

Max: It works! It works really well.

Sidney: Thank you again!

Max: You’re very unique. A horror-loving girl as attractive as you. And such cool concepts for the pictures.

Who comes up with the ideas?

Sidney: It’s really a collaboration between me and the photographer.

Max: Who thought of the blood bath?

Sidney: That was me. To go with my article.

Max: Brilliant. Really brilliant.

Heat flushed along Sidney’s skin into her typing fingertips. She felt the words in the shape of her keystrokes, the same way they might feel on her lips and tongue as they leapt out of her mouth. She absentmindedly gnawed on the inside of her bottom lip, bringing more blood to build on the tingling sensation spreading over her. The exhilaration of anonymous flirtation—safely long distance, comfortably a dead end—buzzed on her synapses.

Part of her wanted Max to materialize on the couch cushion beside her to act out all the flattering words he would send, the same way she frequently wished to conjure Oliver or Adam. Yet the rest of her was equally content to recline on the unconsummated tension that could exist in a limbo untainted by real life.

Sidney alternated between the conversation on her phone and draft film review on her laptop, the smile from the compliments still wriggling on her lips when she typed about the cinematography balanced against graphic violence or the believable character arc of the serial killer.

Oliver: Where are you, gorgeous?

She giggled to herself, realizing she had completely forgotten Oliver’s request. Max had distracted her mind from its usual multitasking. She lay back against the couch cushions and snapped a quick picture to send to Oliver.

Oliver: There you are. Hello, beautiful. How is your night going?

Sidney: Good. It’s been a long one. Still have a lot of work to do.

Oliver: I would love to be there to distract you.

Sidney: You’re already distracting me.

Oliver: What are you working on?

Sidney: Reviews from the last fest. Just went through the comments from my last article.

Oliver: Everyone telling you how hot you are naked and bloody.

Sidney: If only just that.

Oliver: You are hot as fuck naked and bloody. Let me come take a blood bath with you.

Sidney: Real blood or fake?

Oliver: Whichever you want.

Sidney’s temperature crawled up another degree. Once again, a seething part of her wanted the online personality made flesh beside her.

Adam: Working yourself to death.

Sidney: You know me.

Adam: Don’t die. I’ll miss you too much.

Sidney: You’re sweet, but I’m just a voice in the computer.

Adam: You’re so much more than that.

Between the three building conversations, Sidney typed away on her review. She kept her eye on the word count as it climbed toward the optimal length. Enough to fully assess the movie, not too much to lose the reader. She wished she was more of a writer, that the words flowed more naturally off the wrinkles of her brain. She had to dredge the sentences out of her skull and edit them over and over, but her streaming chats distracted her from the struggle.

Adam: How are you?

Sidney: OK

Adam: Just OK? What’s wrong?

Sidney: It was just a long day. Late picking up my son from baseball. Then some mom making weird comments about my pictures. Then watched a horror movie with Cameron.

I think maybe I just showed him the movie to win him back. Maybe I shouldn’t have.

Adam: Was it too scary for him?

Sidney: Didn’t seem like it. He really enjoyed it.

Oh then my mom called to shame me.

Adam: So there’s the real problem.

Sidney: Yeah, maybe.

Adam: What did she have a problem with?

Sidney: Everything. My uncle saw the blood bath pictures. It’s gross. I’m going to fuck up my kid.

Adam: Don’t listen to her.

You’re amazing.

The pictures are art and sexy as hell.

And you’re a good mom.

Sidney took a deep breath and let it stretch her lungs. She held it in and released her head back. Then she exhaled in an awkward burst. She drummed her fingers on the edge of her laptop as his words sunk into her brain.

If only he knew her well enough to be trusted.

Sidney keyed in the concluding sentences of her review and opened the gallery Brady had sent from their blood bath shoot. She clicked past the leading image Brady had released first and the selection she had included in her article. A pulsating, defiant instinct had her gravitating to the most graphic and revealing picture of her splayed and stuck to the bottom of the empty bathtub. She wanted to print it out poster-sized and hang it in her mother’s dining room.

She took a breath and scrolled deeper into the gallery. She settled on one of the final dry shots Brady had taken. She was reaching unnaturally over the edge of the white basin. Her body contorted in strange angles, and her eyes bugged out from their sockets. Her face was terrifying, yet her bare hip drew a suggestive line through the image, her bloodied skin cresting curves from the edge of the tub. The perfect balance on the line.

Sidney selected the image and began sharing.