Chapter 4: S#1. The First House on the Right (3)
by fnovelpia
The Smiths had spread gas, and I lost consciousness after inhaling it.
I should have guessed from the name ‘Smith’…
It was my mistake to overlook the horror movie rule that the more common the name, the more dangerous the person.
When I opened my eyes, I was already in the basement of a house.
Nancy, tightly bound with rope, sat in front of me.
My body was shackled with iron chains.
I felt like a caged beast in a zoo.
“Nancy, Nancy! Snap out of it!!”
“Ugh, Summer…? Where are we…?”
“Those damn bastards gassed us and locked us in the basement. Are you okay, Nancy?!”
“Ugh… I, I’m okay……”
“No, you shouldn’t be okay.”
We were trapped in a basement, tied up by a crazed couple who treated a shriveled corpse as their daughter.
It’s not okay to be okay.
Nancy struggled, but the tightly tied ropes didn’t come loose.
It was the same for me. The iron chains were securely fastened.
Suddenly, we heard someone coming down the basement stairs.
It was Mr. Smith, wearing a lab coat.
In horror movies, a white lab coat is the trademark of a mad scientist.
Mr. Smith approached me with a sly smile.
“Summer. I’ve specially tied you up with iron chains. Thought you might break the ropes.”
“Hurry up and explain why you did this.”
“This is a bit embarrassing. Other people usually try to negotiate, saying, ‘If you let me go now, I won’t tell anyone,’ or ‘I’ll give you all the money I have, just spare my life.'”
“I’m not stupid enough to do that. I know well enough that negotiating with a madman doesn’t work.”
Mr. Smith slowly walked to a desk in the corner of the basement.
It was a desk piled with ominous laboratory equipment, including flasks and beakers filled with a green liquid.
“Nancy, and Summer. As I said during dinner, I was a professor. I taught biology at a college. Everyone respected me because I was diligent and capable.”
Mr. Smith picked up two syringes.
In the dark basement, the green liquid in the syringes glowed faintly like the eyes of a demon.
“But everything changed after my daughter died. I threw away my tenure and buried myself in this basement to immerse myself in my research. Curious about the research?”
“It must have been about resurrecting the dead. To bring your dead daughter back to life.”
“……Summer. You have good intuition.”
It was all too familiar. I’ve seen it countless times before.
Parents committing taboos to reunite with their deceased child is a cliché theme in horror movies.
“I conducted experiments on young people who got lost in the woods, just like you.”
“……”
“I brought them to this basement, killed them, and injected them with drugs. But so far, not a single one has come back to life. Only failures, nothing but failures! Can you guess how I disposed of the accumulating corpses?!”
Of course, I dumped them in the lake!
Mr. Smith laughed.
The images of the zombies we met in the forest flashed through my mind.
They were all soaking wet.
“The zombies in the forest… were they all your doing?”
“Yes. But until you guys showed up, I didn’t even know it myself. As I said, the experiment never succeeded once.”
So, all of a sudden today, the corpses that were sleeping in the lake woke up…
This might be related to how I got sucked into a horror movie.
But now was not the time to think about that.
“I don’t know why, but anyhow, my experiment has succeeded! This is a miracle!! Now I can bring my daughter back to life!!!”
“……”
“Before administering the drug to my daughter, I’ll have to test it on you one last time.”
Mr. Smith crouched in front of Nancy with a syringe in hand.
Nancy struggled desperately.
“Stop it…!!”
“Shh, be quiet, miss.”
Mr. Smith took a handgun out of his lab coat pocket.
One hand holding a syringe. The other holding a handgun.
A bizarre combination.
“Listen well. One of you will be killed before the drug is administered, and the other will receive it while still alive.”
“…”
“I want to give the choice to the blonde beauty, not the tough guy. What will it be, Nancy?”
“I… don’t know… Please, just spare me…”
“Choose quickly! Will you take the injection after death, or while you’re still alive?!”
Nancy sobbed and shook her head.
Death followed by injection vs. injection while alive.
Quick death vs. slow pain.
Either choice led to death.
But dying without pain would be far better.
“Uuuugh… Even if I beg for my life… Mr. Smith, you’re going to kill us anyway, right…?”
“Yes, miss. I’m sorry. You two are now subjects of an experiment. That’s your fate.”
“Uuuuh, then… just tell me one thing. Which one hurts more…?”
“What do you mean?”
“Being shot and then injected… or just being injected… Uuuuh, which one is more painful…….”
Nancy choked out the words.
The cruel Mr. Smith laughed like a lizard.
“Being injected after death wouldn’t feel like anything. After all, consciousness disappears once you die. But being injected while alive would be incredibly painful. The nerves slowly dissolve.”
“No matter what we choose… both of us will die.”
“That’s about the size of it. What will you do, miss? Would you prefer to be shot and die painlessly?”
“……”
Nancy lifted her trembling head.
Her thin, long hair clung to her tear-streaked, pale face.
Her tearful gaze turned towards me.
“Summer… I can’t save you. I’m not as strong as you…”
“Nancy……”
“I’m sorry.”
Nancy made her decision to Mr. Smith.
“Mr. Smith… I’ll be the one to get injected while I’m alive. Please, let Summer die without pain……”
Even facing death, Nancy chose to take the pain upon herself.
She unclenched her fist, shedding tears, and revealed what she was holding.
It was a piece of torn shirt.
It was the bandage I had made for her in the forest.
I remembered the most famous rule of horror movies.
‘Blondes are dumb. Short-sighted and frivolous, they always become the first victims’…
I had assumed Nancy would be the same. But I was wrong.
Nancy is not a dumb sacrificial character.
Nancy is a person with a warm heart.
Not a character, but a person.
Mr. Smith approached.
He aimed the cold barrel of the gun at my forehead.
I took a deep breath and recited my line.
“…Wait, Smith. I have a last wish.”
“A last wish?”
“If you’re going to kill me, do it with my own axe.”
I explained that dying with my skull split open by an axe was the death I had always wished for.
Mr. Smith laughed happily, apparently liking my last wish before death.
“Honey! Bring that big fella’s axe!!”
“Okay, got it!”
Mrs. Smith came down the basement stairs carrying the axe.
She handed the axe to Mr. Smith.
The blade, catching the basement light, glowed like moonlight.
Mr. Smith stood in front of me, raising the axe.
It was a moment when my heart raced, and adrenaline surged.
“Hahah, farewell, Summer. You’ll make a splendid zomby.”
“It’s zombie, not zomby. But call it whatever you want, Smith. Anyway, your daughter will never come back to life.”
“…What?”
“Thanks for bringing my axe.”
I kicked out with my legs, still shackled in iron chains.
The target of the blow was Mr. Smith’s groin.
With a monstrous kick packed with brute strength, Mr. Smith’s body soared into the air.
The sound of two squishy balls bursting echoed.
“Argh…!”
Before Mr. Smith could scream, I sprang up like a spring.
I lunged forward and headbutted Mr. Smith’s face.
I felt the sensation of facial bones shattering through my skull.
It was an immense destructive force.
The axe fell to the ground.
I quickly bit the handle of the axe with my mouth.
My biting force was comparable to that of a crocodile.
I threw the axe towards Nancy.
“Nancy! Cut the ropes!”
Blondes die first in horror movies?
I’ll smash that cliché.
Nancy will become the Final Girl.
I, the murderer, will make it so.
“These bastards, they killed my husband…!”
Mrs. Smith cried out in despair.
She was eyeing the handgun Mr. Smith had dropped.
But she had no chance.
I charged at Mrs. Smith and headbutted her again.
Crack!
A satisfying impact sound rang out in the basement.
The Smiths lay next to each other, knocked out cold.
Nancy cut the ropes binding her with the axe.
Then she freed me from the iron chains.
I grabbed Mr. Smith’s handgun and destroyed all the experimental tools laid out on the desk.
It was devilish research that should never see the light of day.
It was best to obliterate it all.
“Now you understand, Nancy? Why we shouldn’t have entered that house by the lake.”
“Yes… I should have listened to you… I’m sorry, Summer……”
“It’s okay.”
For the first time, I said it was okay.
It seemed like the right time to say such a thing.
I helped Nancy, who could barely stand, escape from the house.
Then, the narrator’s voice echoed in my head.
-The night of the massacre has begun.
The night of the massacre?
Shouldn’t the ending credits be rolling since everything was over?
But looking at the lakeside in the dead of night, I understood what the narration meant.
Countless zombies were crawling out of the lake.
-Slaughter and thrill!
“Nancy!! Are you ready?!?!”
“Yes…!!!”
“Then let’s go!!!”
We charged towards the zombies at the lakeside.
The zombies ran towards us as well.
I swung the axe, slicing and chopping the bloated flesh soaked in lake water.
Nancy provided cover fire with the handgun from behind.
The forest filled with the smell of blood, and the lake turned red with blood.
A whirlwind of madness stirred the night.
This was the ‘Arizona Axe Massacre’ the narrator had mentioned.
-There was also a massive explosion at the scene of the massacre. Boom!
The moment the narrator spoke, a massive explosion sound that you’d expect in a blockbuster movie echoed.
Nancy and I were startled and turned around.
It was the sound of an explosion coming from the Smiths’ wooden house.
Maybe the chemicals in the basement had exploded.
The lakeside house was engulfed in flames in an instant.
The remaining zombies jumped into the flames like moths to a flame.
“Smith! If you want to live, get out of there now!!!”
I shouted loudly towards the house.
However, the Smith couple did not come out.
They climbed to the top of the burning house, onto the roof.
In the arms of the mad couple was the emaciated corpse of their daughter.
Mr. Smith took out a syringe and injected the drug into his daughter’s corpse.
Nancy and I stared blankly at the scene.
On the roof of the burning house, the Smiths’ daughter, who had died 10 years ago, was resurrected.
Of course, in the terrible form of a zombie.
Mr. Smith and Mrs. Smith were tearfully happy.
But their zombie daughter did not recognize her mom and dad.
The daughter’s rotten mouth bit into Mrs. Smith.
When Mr. Smith tried to intervene, the daughter extended her fingers and pierced his abdomen.
“No!! Noooooooooo!!!”
“Arrrrrrrgh!”
The zombie daughter pulled off her mom’s arm and chewed on her dad’s intestines.
Eventually, the couple was eaten alive by their zombie daughter atop the burning house.
It was a family heading into a fiery hell.
Nancy gasped in horror.
“My God… How horrible… Did they want to reunite with their daughter that badly?”
“Maybe. Look at their faces.”
Through the bright red flames, glimpses of the Smith couple showed them laughing madly while being devoured by their zombie daughter.
It was chilling.
The flames swallowed everything.
The lakeside house collapsed along with the zombies.
The collapsed obsession left a pungent smell.
All that rippled over the surface of the lake were chunks of flesh entangled in flames.
The ‘Arizona Axe (Zombie) Massacre’ that unfolded by the forest lake that day left bloodstains on my axe blade.
Carrying Nancy, whose legs had given out, I escaped from the forest.
Through my back, I could feel Nancy’s small heartbeat.
Her warmth and her gentle breathing.
Nancy was asleep.
The road outside the forest was right next to the lake.
They say the darkest place is under the candlestick, but I never dreamed the exit would be this close.
I felt somewhat empty.
Far away, I could see Nancy’s car with a burst tire.
Beyond the horizon of the road, the bright sun began to rise.
The long night had finally ended.
Dawn was breaking.
The sunlight warmly bathed the world.
-…The murderer escaped from the forest carrying the survivor.
After surviving the massacre, they finally faced the dawn.
Beyond the long night, a new sun was rising, the narrator commented.
A rare happy ending for a horror movie…
At that moment, a question occurred to me.
My consciousness had entered the body of the murderer in this horror movie.
Then, what happened to my body in the real world?
…Was someone else controlling it?
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