Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When Jill first wakes up, blinking into the harsh fluorescent lighting overhead, she briefly, improbably, thinks Heaven? But then Charlie FUCKING Walker is there, face twisted in a snarl and Jill is screaming before she even realizes he’s stabbed her—she’s been stabbed again, goddammit?!

“You bitch!” he screams. He holds his bloodied knife up high to stab her again, and that’s when pure rage floods Jill’s system. She didn’t go through the last week of hell, the careful game of puppet master, the way she fucking trashed her body in the finale, for nothing. She didn’t fuck Charlie Walker to be her puppet for nothing.

Her hands clench to make a fist, cause she’ll break his fucking nose if she has to, but her hand closes around cool polished wood and she’s stabbed Charlie in the side before she can think twice about it.

Charlie falls off from straddling her, and Jill is on her knees in an instant, stabbing at him again, again, again! He’s still got a hold on his own knife, swiping at her arm and stomach although she can barely feel it in the adrenaline. She stabs him a fifth time, twisting the blade cruelly in his guts to finish it all and Charlie whines.

“Ow! Stop—Stop!” Charlie’s weak and pitiful on the floor when Jill falls away from him. There’s blood all over the dark blue carpet, a puddle slowly growing under them both. Slowly, she realizes she’s dying, weak and woozy as she looks at him.

“How… the fuck…?” she mutters to him, falling to the side while she watches him bleed out three feet away.

For the second time, Charlie Walker and Jill Roberts die.

She wakes up later, in a dried puddle of blood but her body is unblemished. Not just from the wounds Charlie gave her, but the wounds she gave herself and the ones Sidney finished her off with. All she has is a migraine from hell and some muscle stiffness.

She takes a moment to fully appreciate her surroundings this time. There’s Charlie on the floor, a large blood stain dried under him, but his clothes and body are as untouched as hers. He looks almost peaceful, like some fucking Disney forest creature asleep in the meadow. There’s no knives in sight, just an aisle of white shelving that stretches seven feet high, old VHS tapes on display as far as the eye can see.

It's been a couple of years since Bradley Video shut down on Main Street, but she recognizes the logo she sees on a banner from the ceiling. She doesn’t think it looked quite like this though, the way everything unsettles her… just a bit.

Charlie groans as he starts to come to and Jill is on him in an instant. The same thing happens as before—there’s a knife in her hands before she fully even thinks it, like a magic trick. She holds the blade against his throat, her knees pinning his arms down cause she’s starting to think he might know that magic trick, too.

“Where… the FUCK are we?” she says, letting the blade bite Charlie’s skin just for the thrill of it, watching the ways his eyes water.

“Fuck. You,” he growls and she thinks she’ll kill him a third time before someone new enters the scene.

“Uh. Excuse me?” says the voice, and Charlie and Jill’s heads spin towards it, expressions an equal snarl.

“WHAT?!” they shout.

The man smiles, and holds his hands up in a placating gesture. He wears a dark long-sleeved shirt—Bradley Video logo on the chest pocket. “Easy! I think you’ll find it’s a long stay in Hell if you just keep stabbing each other. But hey! It’s your afterlives, after all. Who am I to tell you how to unlive it?”

Jill moves to point her knife at the newcomer, but it’s Charlie that speaks first.

“Randy?”

Randy Meeks smiles, large and sharp with too many teeth. There's a confidence there, and it's infuriating to see, like he knows a secret they don't know. She's on her feet, stalking toward him with her knife in hand and he's just smiling, a silent dare.

He doesn't dodge when she swings the knife down. Hitting him feels different from hitting Charlie, not a second of resistance. Her knife sinks to the hilt into his shoulder and Randy doesn't flinch, just looks... bemused, and then her knife is falling through nothing at all, Randy's still there but as insubstantial as air. It hurts to look at him. There's something blinding about him the harder she stares, until finally she closes her eyes and back away, knife falling away to that hidden plane of existence.

Randy snaps his fingers and the dried bloodstains on the carpet are gone, no Heavenly choir chime, just... gone. Like it never happened.

"Now, I won't be cleaning up all your messes, guys," says Randy. "This is strictly a pro-bono volunteer gig, if you want to trash the place and live in squalor... Well. Technically no one has to check in on this afterlife."

The rules to the afterlife are simple.

Rule Number One! You can’t die, you’re already dead. What is death but a lot of pain, agony, and a lot of bodily fluids and the world’s shittiest hangover? So try not to do it more than you have to! Or, pick lots of fights, die a lot, I’m not your boss! Makes the time go by, doesn’t it?

Rule Number Two! Get used to your roomies, they’re not going anywhere. Turns out, God, the Cosmic Universe, the Great Spaghetti Monster or whatever—Whoever’s in charge, they like to keep their afterlives nice and tidy. There’s a special Hell out there for everyone, and the Great Universal Truth assigns roommates on like with like. So, Ghostface killers get to roam the same endless aisles together, and it’s up to you how annoying that experience will be. Turns out, Hell is less spiked whips and hot pokers and more shitty retail Limbo and interpersonal drama.

Rule Number Three! There is no escape. Well. Technically. The EXIT sign’s right there, open the door and step into the black abyss. What’s out there? Hmmm. Can’t say. Is it worse than this? Better this devil you know, or the devil you don’t? Just remember. Once you leave, there is no coming back.

“So, we’re trapped… in some shitty, funhouse, carnival-style video store?” says Jill. Standing up, it’s even more obvious there’s something fucked up with the building, the way the shelves stretch higher than they should, the way she’s been walking with Charlie and Randy for a while and she’s just seen more shelving and not a glimpse of the store front windows yet. Even trying to see the actual walls of the building prove fruitless. It’s just… endless shelving, although occasionally Randy will lead them past some blocky CRT TV playing a movie, sometimes with a sad, deflated little beanbag in front of it, the only bit of personality to see.

At least until they reach their apparent destination, a turn down an aisle that opens up a little bit and eases the claustrophobic feeling that’s been weighing down on Jill all along, gone when they stand in the lobby of the store. Finally, she sees the store front windows she’s been looking for, but she doesn’t see Main Street Woodsboro outside. Just… darkness. Total, pitch, darkness.

There’s a cheesy cardboard cutout of Ghostface propped beside the glass door that leads outside. His mask is tilted, knife raised, a cardboard figure poised to stab whoever steps through. There’s something chilling about him. If she felt claustrophobic standing in the aisles, she feels exposed standing out in the lobby, staring at the endless abyss beyond.

“That’s the exit,” says Randy.

They don’t leave.

It’s a pretty big store. It’s bigger than any store ought to be. It might even be endless, because Jill’s been walking for a while and hasn’t reached any end. There’s no straight path anywhere, the aisles are all too tall to see over and the path is only ever straight for twenty feet before another aisle juts forward and she has to go left or right instead.

She left Charlie and Randy behind. Fuck ‘em. She was the brains of the Ghostface operation, and she doesn’t need whatever Obi-Wan Mind Fuck Randy’s got going on. Just looking at him too hard makes her head hurt, and she’ll still feeling her earlier death. Deaths.

Fuck.

She walks until she comes across another little ‘nook’. It looks like it was made to dump kids for a bit while Mom wandered the nearby aisles, a little TV playing Bambi on screen with old Disney films displayed on the shelves. There’s two old beanbags sitting on ratty old carpet in front of the TV, and she carefully falls onto one. Her butt nearly touches the floor, the beanbag’s so far from its prime days.

The TV’s quiet. Hardly anything to hear over the oppressive silence of the store. She closes her eyes, pressing fingers against her eyes until she sees spots of colors flashing behind them. Jesus. Fuck. It’s all so goddamn quiet—

“Hey.”

“FUCK.”

The knife’s back in her hand and she swipes blindly, nearly hitting yet another stranger she’s never met—but, she knows enough now to place his face quickly.

“Stu.”

Stu grins. “Hiya.” He holds his empty hands up in surrender, balancing on one leg where he lifted the other to dodge her swipe. Watching her, he swings his leg down to tap against the unoccupied beanbag. “This seat taken?”

The last thing she wants is to sit next to one of the deranged psycho killers that started this whole sorry tale. The second to last thing she wants is the sheer indignity of trying to crawl out of a deflated beanbag in front of him, before he probably stabs her out of that misery.

She doesn’t have to answer though, cause Stu launches himself up and flops down onto the beanbag with enough force, she suspects he’s the singlehanded cause of their sad states.

“Ughhh, dammmmit, Randy swapped the tapes out again. Still, at least Bambi’s mom dies. Did you know Disney was originally gonna show the hunter dead in the end, too?” Stu settles in, crossing his ankles and rummaging about his pockets until he pulls out a box of crumpled Raisinets. “Candy?”

Jill keeps her knife in hand, angling away to keep him in full view. “No.”

He pops a few candies in his mouth, watching her right back. “It’s been a while since we got new roomies. Roman was the last and he is moody. Plus…” He smiles charmingly. “You’re pretty cute!”

“Touch me and I’ll fucking kill you.”

They study each other for a moment, Stu’s eyes searching hers for a moment before something a little more real slips into his expression and he leans back, considering. “Ah. You’ve died already here, huh? Yeah, the headache’s a real bitch. But hey, I’m a gentlemen! Not feeling that cosmic connection right now, I get it! Maybe later?”

When her twisted look of disgust doesn’t fade, Stu makes a face and mutters, “Yikes…” just loud enough to hear. He then twists about and wriggles his way up out of the beanbag, all lack of dignity Jill feared it would be. “Well. Sugar helps sometimes,” he says, tossing the box of Raisinets her way as he slips off towards the main stacks. He disappears down a corner for a second before ducking back with a question. “Can I get a name, or should I just call you Beautiful?”

She tips a handful of Raisinets into her palm, considering him for a moment. “Jill. Now fuck off.”

Stu grins. “Jill. Huh. You know, you remind me of someone—”

“I said, Fuck off!” And she tosses some Raisinets at him before he finally disappears.

Chapter Text

In the beginning, it was just Billy and Stu.

Stu wakes up first, but he finds Billy’s sleeping body just a few aisles down from where he woke up. Stu had crouched beside Billy, confused by this turn of events. He didn’t remember much, between the dizzy feeling of blood loss and that adrenaline surge that led him to tackling Sidney, his head felt like a bag of gravel in a blender. Stu brings his hand to his face, feeling nothing unusual, but his mind supplies the flash of a TV screen falling, Jamie Lee Curtis coming for him with a knife and then—

Hm.

Stu settles in on the floor, hugs his knees to his chest and watches Billy sleep.

Stu can’t really say he put any thought into the afterlife. He’s never really put much thought in anything past the next fun thing to do. This last year of planning with Billy as maybe the most foresight he’s ever put in anything. He never really thought he and Billy would die, nothing more than worst case scenarios that he and Billy planned around. Even in the dead scenarios though, Stu just figured… That was it. Dead is dead. He killed deer out in the woods, looked at their glassy eyes staring up at nothing, and thought Maureen Prescott just the same. If he died, he’d be nothing more than meat on the floor.

He didn’t expect Bradley Video.

He recognizes the store, warped though it is. Instead of waist-high shelving, he feels like a little kid dwarfed and lost in a superstore, Mom and Dad nowhere in sight.

He misses his mom. God, she’s probably pissed at the mess he left the house in. Why’d he and Billy have to pick his house? Why’d Billy have to rip open all the couch cushions? There were feathers everywhere, Stu remembers downy white puffs sticking to every blood-covered surface.

When Billy wakes up, he wakes with a scream. Stu’s just staring morosely in the distance, just offering a quiet, “Hey, Billy.”

Billy sits up slowly. Everything hurts, but no evidence of any wound remains. He feels it in his chest and side, and a throbbing headache right from the center of his forehead. He touches two fingers dead center, pressing like he might find the bullet wound itself under flesh.

He breathes out slowly.

“Fuck!”

In the beginning, they have plenty of time to hash out who was at fault, what went wrong, in what way. They die, a lot, those first few… days? Weeks? There wasn’t a clear way to delineate time. The clocks on the wall don’t work, speeding up or slowing down at their own discretion. Even the TVs aren’t any help, once they wander far enough to find one. Any VHS tape they put in to play will only run for a few minutes before the TV will start to skip and distort.

For a while, killing each other is more fun than nothing. It’s so easy to get mad with nothing around, and every strong emotion seems to summon a blade to hand. Billy killed Stu, Stu killed Billy, round and around they go, until they’re both grappling on the floor and Stu’s dying under Billy and looking up and watching Billy die, too.

After a while, it was just a hangover without the fun of a buzz.

When Stu wakes up, pristine once more but wheezing under the crush of Billy’s actual dead weight on top of him, he thinks… Okay, fuck this. He rolls Billy’s dead weight off of him, and stumbles down the aisles. There’s no dark corners to hold up in. Every aisle is the same corporate fluorescent yellow lighting. It reminds Stu of the last vacation he went on with his parents, when their plane got delayed and they waited 24 hours at the airport. He spent hours squirming in an uncomfortable chair, restless and trapped.

It’s uncomfortable to think it’s just going to be that… forever. Give him a break, he’s eighteen, he never contemplated eternity!

Eventually, Stu makes his way to the lobby he and Billy found… days ago? Every time, it gives Stu the heebie-jeebies to look out into that darkness. What’s out there? It is true death, or are there even worse places just beneath the inky surface? He looks at the Ghostface that guards the door, cardboard standing at attention. It was such a cool costume. It had been Stu’s idea.

Killing Maureen Prescott had been Billy’s idea.

In the beginning, it was just Stu, Randy, Sid, and Tatum, and had been that way since middle school. Stu and Randy, Sidney and Tatum, and then inexplicably Randy and Sidney were the glue that bound the group together. High school wasn’t quite like the movies had made it out to be—Stu figured he had always been some level of cool, effortlessly moving through the social circles and just, never really caring about who he was with, just needing to know if everything was fun. Randy was a dork and a geek, but Stu still came back to him, and Sidney, and Tatum, too. Sid was some theater geek and Tatum was the hot cheerleader, cause real life wasn’t cliques made up of clones like Heathers, it was The Breakfast Club, baby!

Billy had been the newcomer to the group some year and a half ago, that one weird loner kid that had always existed on the periphery of Stu’s social graces. He’d been quiet, nose buried in a book or scribbling drawings in the corner, written off throughout middle school until one summer he came back six inches taller and kinda dreamy, baby fat shed for a teen heartthrob look.

How he and Sidney got together, well! Stu figures Billy must’a actually liked her at some point. He’d been sweet on her, even if he was a weird, intense kinda dude. Those first three months? Billy had been smitten—Stu’s sure of that. Something happened after three month’s though, but Stu had just blamed it on Mrs. Loomis skipping town. Billy had been angry back then, but then, all of the sudden? He was pissed. Looking back, that must have been when Billy found out about Maureen and his dad.

Stu and Billy were on their way to being actual friends at that point. First, Stu had invited Billy to those movie nights he and Randy used to have, and wouldn’t you know? Billy had that same movie freak mind. But then, Billy found out about those hunting trips Stu went on with his dad, and Billy liked that. It was easy to take Billy along one day, guiding the rifle in Billy’s hold, help him line up the shot. It was a perfect shot. Billy’s first kill. Randy could be so squeamish about it all, but Billy looked fascinated the first time Stu showed him how to skin a deer, even laughed—laughed!—when blood splattered on his face when they were cleaning it.

The idea to hand Billy the heart had simply come to Stu, like all ideas—on a whim. Hands slick with blood, he’d smiled, offering the heart with a bow. “Hunter’s code says you’ve got to eat the heart of your first kill—absorb the strength of your prey,” Stu said, parroting the words his father had said. His dad had grilled Stu’s first kill. The heart then hadn’t looked much different than any other piece of meat on the dinner plate. Certainly not like this, wet and still body-warm.

He remembers Billy had looked him in the eyes—stared in that way Billy did, like he’d never learned the proper etiquette to blinking and was channeling a wolf’s hard stare instead. His lips had quirked up to the side in a smirk though, and he’d said, “The strength of a deer, huh?”

Still, he’d taken the heart out of Stu’s hand. He didn’t have to eat it, Stu hadn’t held any expectations of what Billy might do with it, but when Billy brought it up to his lips and tore a bite out of it? It took Stu’s breath away. Even when the heart splattered them with blood with the second bite and he and Billy dissolved to laughter, he’d thought, Damn, this kid’s crazy, too.

Cause the older Stu got, the more he realized there wasn’t much he’d say no to, so long as he was promised fun along the way. And Billy was fun! They set traps out in the woods and killed squirrels and rabbits together. Billy had an entire bookshelf of books on cool serial killers, and sometimes he’d read out parts to Stu in quiet moments, or show Stu the crime scene photos.

When Mrs. Loomis left? Stu had been sorry for his friend. It was easier to ditch Randy to keep Billy company, and Billy always knew fun stuff to do. Billy could rig together all kinds of cool practical effects and tricks. They’d set off firecrackers in people’s mailboxes and leave graffiti around town. All harmless stuff at first, but Stu had seen something changing along the way. They started breaking car windows and trashing properties, started shoplifting, but Billy didn’t even seem like he liked it sometimes, cause Hank Loomis surely never seemed to notice. It seemed like Billy was cracking at the time, like his relationship with Sid might not survive the new chaotic whirlwind of teenage delinquency, and then…

Stu remembers the day Billy asked him to kill Maureen Prescott.

Some black cloud had hung over Billy that whole day. He and Billy had made plans to hang out that Saturday afternoon, but when Billy showed up… There was something… crazed in his eyes. Billy hardly said a word through the movie marathon, and Stu kept stealing glances his way. Anyone else? Stu’s not sure he’d had waited out the storm clouds, but with Billy, it felt like he couldn’t lose. He liked Billy’s rage, in the same way Stu liked explosions. Hanging with Billy sometimes felt like holding a lit firework in hand, hoping to let it go before it blew up in his face. But hey? If he timed it wrong and everything blew up in his face, at least the sight would be amazing.

It was nearly night when Billy finally spoke.

“You ever think about killing someone?”

It wasn’t hard to convince Stu to kill Maureen. At the time, he just figured young love had run its course, and Billy was just trying to get back at Sidney for some slight. Even then, Stu had gotten used to following whenever Billy said jump!

It took a couple of weeks to plan Maureen’s murder, and Billy seemed to settle back to his old self in that time. He and Stu weren’t running wild pulling minor pranks anymore, and Billy and Sid’s relationship stabilized back to Woodsboro High’s cutest couple. It was crazy, planning Maureen’s murder at night and then lounging around the fountains with everyone in the afternoon. Billy would hold Sid one moment, and then hours later, Stu would see him screaming in the woods while absolutely butchering a deer carcass.

It all reminded Stu of that first deer heart. He and Billy made their plans, practiced what they could, but some part of Stu was just… waiting. Would Billy really do it? Only after, high on his first real kill, did Stu finally get it. Billy was just like him. Billy wouldn’t say no to things, cause Billy, at his heart, wanted to be entertained. Movies, real life, it was all the same. It just needed to make a good story. It just needed to be fun.

When Billy and Stu met back up the day after Maureen’s murder, it was Billy that said, “I want to kill Sid.”

But it was Stu that pulled the Ghostface masks out from under his bed, grinning a little too brightly as he passed one over to Billy. “I have an idea…” said Stu, nearly breaking down into giggles.

And Billy hadn’t needed any convincing at all.

Of course, if Stu could go back and do it all over again, he’d move the scene of him and Billy stabbing each other. It came just a little too early in the script.

He and Billy had played with knives that year in pre-production, but actually getting stabbed hurt worse than either of them had expected. When Billy stabbed him that first time? Ohhh, it hurt! It was hard not to take it personally, and when Billy handed him the knife… Stu… Stu went a little harder than he should have. Then Billy was pissed at him and stabbed him some more, and look. It had looked great in the scripting until the script went off the rails. That finale had gone through so many rewrites between him and Billy. The psychological warfare aspect of it was unmatched! Sid had looked horrified.

But yeah. If he and Billy could do it again, they’d have a better grasp of first-hand stabbing experience, especially with their last few weeks in Hell. They’d make sure to really wound Sid first. He’d make that hike down the ravine to kill Gale himself. Making he and Billy could lightly stab themselves while Sid was dying? He wishes he had the script notes still, he and Billy had burned them the day before killing Casey.

Eventually, Billy finds him in the lobby.

They stare each other down for a moment, but no knives materialize into thin air, and Billy flops down on the floor with Stu without a fuss.

“What do you think’s out there?” says Stu. They’ve never seen a hint of light out in that darkness, haven’t heard anything when they press their ears against the glass wall. The light within the store touches nothing out there, not even a hint to suggest ground beyond the door. Neither one of them has tried to open the door.

That cardboard Ghostface stares back at them.

“Nothing,” says Billy. “I hope.”

Chapter Text

When Roman first finds the door to the backroom, it’s a balm in the fluorescent hellscape he's been wandering. An innocuous wooden door set in the back wall of the store, Roman hadn’t felt that existential dread he only felt in the lobby. No... He felt drawn to it. There's no ominous red EXIT sign glowing above the doorframe, and Roman feels no resistance when he turns the knob.

The room beyond is dark, dingy, some small storage room that, if this was a real, functional store, probably would have had a purpose for rewinding and inspecting tapes and served as an employee breakroom. As it is, the room is dirty in a way the store isn’t, dusty and decrepit and haunted, but it feels more real than the sterile environment of the store.

It’s easy to set up camp in the breakroom. Roman finds a coffee machine in that back that’s always full of lukewarm coffee, burnt and bitter while he tries to swallow it down. The taste of it always lingers terribly on the back of Roman’s tongue, but it’s something when so much of the afterlife is simply nothing. He’s never hungry, never thirsty, never tired. He’s never hot, never cold. He’s dead.

He sits on the floor of the breakroom, a TV dragged down on the floor with him. He finds a Ghostface robe in one of the cabinets and it’s a comforting weight over his shoulders when things like blankets and cushions are in short supply. 

It was Hell that provided the stack of old, homemade VHS tapes to torture himself with.

Unlike the movies he might actually love to watch, these crappy homemade videos always play perfectly. There’s Sidney, six years old and smiling while her mother brings out the cake. There’s Maureen, the perfect mother, sitting at a Christmas tree and Sidney’s in her arms, a new doll in hand. It’s Sidney smiling at her dad behind the camera, Sidney, Sidney¸Sidney.

That’s not Roman’s mom on these cameras. He doesn’t have one, never did. Roman bounced around the foster system, between families and group homes. He doesn’t really know when he realized none of those places would ever really be for him, that he’d never be more than the outsider.

The idea of a mother had been a fairy tale to a lost boy. He’d lay in whatever new bed or room he’d find himself in for the next few weeks and imagine some story about how his mother had to give him up for his own good, or, or maybe he truly was lost! Maybe she didn’t mean to, or maybe she regretted it, maybe she’d been young or desperate or sick. Sometimes, when he got older, he simply wondered if she was dead.

It took years to find her, and oh. He remembers when he held that first picture of Rina Reynolds, that black-and-white production shot and he’d wondered if they had the same eyes. He’d gone to Woodsboro with his heart lodged in his throat, nervous and hopeful and thinking this would be the thing that finally fixes that hole in his chest.

He’d done his research before driving out. He’d known about the husband, the little sister he’d dreamt of in childhood. Wasn’t this some fucked up version of everyone’s little nuclear family? Mother, Step-father, son, half-sister? Couldn’t he have something?

Couldn’t she spare something for him? He’d made it to his mid-twenties all on his own, but goddammit, he was tired. Maureen had answered the door with a smile. He remembered that. One wonderful, half-second of a smile before Roman opened his mouth and said, “Mom?” and that smile had crashed. Crumpled. He was some rotten ghost on her front porch, and Maureen didn’t want to be haunted. She wasn’t his mother. Rina was, and Rina was dead, and Maureen was gonna die, too.

It wasn’t hard to find someone else to kill her.

He’d hung around town after that first, and only, disastrous family reunion. A part of him had really wanted to know what life he had missed out on. He took pictures of Sidney at her high school, of Neil on his way to work, of Maureen and her friends. Those pictures and videos followed Roman to Hell, too. Up on the wall, he pins a picture of Sid on her way to rehearsal, her mother saying goodbye and there it is, frozen in time: the gentle hand of a mother brushing back a stray lock of hair, perfect love on her face for her perfect child.

Roman spent his whole childhood watching those people around him, learning to spot the ticking time bombs around him. He spent a week in Woodsboro, learning the identities of everyone around Maureen, and when he saw Hank Loomis leaving Maureen’s hotel, and saw the son Billy Loomis draped across Sidney’s shoulders, well. Roman just lit the match and left Billy to detonate.

He hadn't known how far Billy would go, hadn't seen the whole story of Stab 1 playing out. He couldn't have planned for Mrs. Loomis and a mother's love--and vengeance--spawning a sequel. And then? He'd been so jealous. Sidney just got everything, didn't she?! First the picture perfect childhood, a mom and dad, and when life handed her a fucking franchise to capitalize on, she vanished! It wasn't fair!

He looks at the Ghostface robes he wears now. It had seemed so obvious what he had to do, time rushing by back then and his 30th birthday fast approaching. It wasn't enough to see Maureen dead, to watch other people take a stab at Sidney's life, not when he could see the story opportunities Sid was just letting pass her by! He could kill her. If she didn't want to be the main lead, she could step out of the way. 

Just goddamn Dewey and his headshot.

Roman’s knife is in his hand without any real conscious thought, gouging thick gashes in the floor. It’s his most hated family video on TV—Neil holding the camera while filming one of Sid’s elementary school plays, and Neil can’t stop turning to look at Maureen. She’ll smile and say, “That’s my baby!”

Neil is usually the cameraman in these home videos, and Roman hates him. Neil can’t keep the camera steady and is always trying to record everything all at once, all those little moments of his perfectly charmed life. He oozes fatherly pride at Sidney’s little song and dance, and he can’t help but catch Maureen’s glowing expression between every scene.

Breaking the cassette tapes doesn’t do anything for Roman. They’re always perfectly intact as soon as he looks away, and sometimes it’s worse not watching. There’s nothing to catch his attention otherwise, and he’s been full of rage anyway his whole life.

The tape runs out and Roman hits Stop. Rewind. The mechanical whirring is the only sound, and so he hears the footsteps outside the door, the hesitant turning of the doorknob. He half-tilts his head towards the door. It’s probably not Billy or Stu come to harass him for the space again—whenever they do find their way back to the breakroom, they tend to burst into the room to kill him in a rush. Could be Mickey. He hasn’t seen Mickey in a while.

It’s not.

He’s never seen the petite teenager standing in the doorway, not as she looks today, but he knows who she is regardless. Somewhere in his stack of photos, there’s a picture of Maureen and her sister Kate out to lunch, a baby Jill Roberts in her mother’s arms.

“Hey, cousin,” he says.

“Roman... How’d you know it was me?” she says.

Roman laughs. “A little birdie told me you’d arrived. A new Ghostface, ten years later.” He studies her carefully, lips pulling into a smile. “Sorry your movie didn’t work out.”

“Would have been a good start to a new franchise,” says Jill. “Better than your turn at it, what with your soap opera origin story shit.”

“Ha! Great. My Hell just keeps filling up with more teenagers.” He waves her away with the point of his knife. “You’ve obviously followed my story, so you ought to know I have no love for family, so clear out before I gut you. This? Is my corner of Hell and you can go find your own to wallow in for eternity.”

The tape clicks when it’s finished rewinding, the blue screen of the TV the only light on Roman. Jill won’t move, arms crossed and shoulder leaning in the door frame. It’s been a while since Roman murdered another Ghostface, but he will if he must. He’s getting ready to jump up and chase her down if she won’t leave on her own when she says—

“I thought the tapes didn’t work.”

“Hmm?”

She nods at the TV. “The tapes. The ones I see out on the floor, they’re all distorted and shit, they jump around, but I never see anyone rewinding them. They just keep playing. So what’re you rewinding?”

“The only things that work around here are the things we hate,” says Roman. “Now get out of here. Before I run out of my last ounce of patience for my cousin.”

For a moment, she still doesn’t move. Those dark, familial eyes roam over the room, scanning everything with too much scrutiny. When Roman shifts to stand, though, her eyes lock back to him and she must decide to cut her losses.

“Fine!” she says, and grabs the doorknob to slam it shut behind her. Roman throws his knife at the door after her, time and practice embedding it in the wood. It reappears in his hand when he scratches at the floor, dragging new thick wounds into the wood. It isn’t enough. He should follow her out that door, chase her into the maze, fucking kill her! She looks so much like Sid…

He kicks his foot out, his heavy boots knocking the TV back, cracking the screen. He lashes out with the knife, skewering a stack of tapes. He breaks them, throws them against the wall. He throws his knife out at the picture of Sid and Maureen and when he blinks his eyes—the destruction is gone.

The floor is smooth. The TV is upright and uncracked, the blue screen simply waiting for him.

He sits on the floor and presses Play.

“That’s my baby!”

He curls up in his robes and watches Sidney once again steal the show. When the tape runs out, he hits rewind.

Stop. Rewind. Play.

“That’s my baby!”

Chapter Text

The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth

In life, Randy actually loved his job at the video store. He was good at it, in a way even Mr. Bradley couldn’t deny. He could always find whatever half-remembered movie someone was searching for, and no one that came into Bradley Video, left Bradley Video without at least one film to watch that weekend, maybe even convinced to a two or three movie marathon. No matter how many times the old man fired him, Randy always got his job back. It was always some bullshit reason he got fired anyway. So he’d get a little excitable, sometimes get a little loud, but it was passion, okay? He fuckin’ loved those films.

Even in death, a more Heavenly version of Bradley Video followed him to a part of his own little celestial domicile. It looked just like it had in life, none of that weird, trippy shit that happened down in the basement. But Randy liked wandering the aisles, liked holding each cassette box in hand, carefully curating his next movie experience. Even when someone tried to tell him about this thing called streaming, he wasn’t into it. It was Heaven, every movie out there was right at his finger tips already; he wanted the experience of picking through tapes. Even the “modern” movies could appear on his shelves.

He could go anywhere. He could experience anything. He could fly, he could go to space, he could wander Hollywood and watch movies being made on Earth right now. He could visit his grandmother, he could absolutely gorge out on just… amazing food. Anything he wanted could be right at hand with a snap of his fingers.

It was all… a lot like dreaming.

Maybe that’s why Randy couldn’t stay out of the basement.

There was a reason Randy had been a bit of a red herring in two Ghostface attacks. Hell, one-half of the original duo had been his best friend for years. And then, in college, he’d thought… Well, he’d thought Mickey was annoying as shit, but so was Randy and it was always fun to meet someone who could match that energy. If Mrs. Loomis hadn’t gone Psycho: Van Edition on him, he’d have clocked Charlie in a minute just cause of how badly he’d have wanted to start a film studies club in high school. Unfortunately… He just had so much in common with these freaks. 

Randy leans against the counter, a box of Sour Patch Kids in hand. Stu is there, and it is very clear by now he won’t be getting any candy unless Randy chooses to share. Carefully picking each color out of the box, it really gives Randy a chance to appreciate each little gummi, even while Stu struggles to continue their discussion about the idea of a Halloween remake while watching the candy bag like a dog at the dinner table.

“It’s just, the original is a masterpiece, you know? What John Carpenter did shaped an entire genre, basically changed the landscape of the 1980s. Why would you sully that with a remake?” says Randy.

Stu keeps looking between him and the gummi in his hand. “Yeah, I mean… Jamie’s the bomb.”

“Exactly, that too!” It’s a little pitiful; Randy dumps a couple of gummis out on the counter.

Stu pops them up happily, and chewing while he talks, says, “But this new girl. Is she hot?”

“Oh, yeah. They’ve even got a grown-up Danielle Harris, you remember—”

“Halloween 4,” says Billy.

Billy can’t sneak up on Randy anymore. It’s some fun celestial perk, he can’t get hurt, can’t get jumped. No jump scares for Billy-Boy. Randy bares his teeth in a grin at Billy when he slinks up to the counter.

“Hey, Billy. How you been? Seen any good movies lately?” says Randy.

“Why do you even come down here, geek? You sad you missed your chance to write your own sequel?” says Billy. He can try to leverage that psycho killer stare all he likes, cause looks are all he has down here against Randy. It took an afterlife to do it, but Randy is immovable now. He can’t get bullied or manhandled by a JD understudy in a bad production of Heathers.

“Hey, I’m not the one who had to kill people to get his jollies,” says Randy, “Although, you guys are more pleasant company now that you’re all effectively neutered. Toothless. Declawed.” It’s a tense situation, standing in front of a seething Billy Loomis. Well, tense for Stu anyway; Randy can see him casting looks to Billy for instructions, but there’s really nothing to do here, is there? “What? You gonna show me your knife? That’s just embarrassing.”

“Fuck you,” says Billy.

“Yeah, fuck me,” says Randy. “Maybe I’ll go check the tapes, wouldn’t want you guys getting bored of the selection.” He drops the half-full box of candy off with Stu. To Stu, he says, “See ya, dork.” And to Billy, “Say hi to Mommy.” And he’s gone in a blink.

Stu picks up the box and inspects the candy inside. “Man, Billy, why’d ya gotta chase ‘im off?” He rattles the candy consideringly, and pops one in his mouth before offering it out to Billy. “Sour Patch Kid?”

Billy smacks the box out of his hand and the gummis scatter on the floor. Stu groans, moves to chase them down, but Billy tangles a fist in his shirt collar instead. He pulls Stu down to get in his face. “Goddammit! He’s just fucking with us, Stu, so stop playing his game!”

Stu laughs. It must catch Billy off-guard; his fingers loosen their grip, but Stu doesn’t pull away. “What game, Billy?”

Billy pushes him away. “He’s here to torture us just as much as the rest of them.” He backs away, watching Stu for one moment of hesitation, before disappearing into the store. Stu shrugs and starts collecting his gummis off the floor.

“Yeah. Just like the rest of them.”

“You know, not all remakes are bad.”

“Jesus Christ, Mickey, I think all of your opinions are formed solely to pick fights with me.”

Randy finds Mickey laying on his back on the carpeted floor, hands folded over his ribs and ankles crossed, happy as a clam in the castle fort he’s built out of VHS tapes. All the shelves for the next few aisles are stripped bare. Randy regards him placidly, before tilting his head in mock consideration.

“I mean, I guess it makes sense for you. After all, you were basically trying to remake Stab while it was still out in theaters.”

“Whoa, hey, hey—it was a sequel. I just threw in some homages and Easter eggs and some theming with the names. It even turned out to be part of a trilogy.”

“Trilogies are planned,” says Randy. He absolutely refuses to give Mickey any ground on this part. “You didn’t plan for Roman, Roman didn’t plan for you. You and Roman are just sequel cash-ins.”

“That’s hurtful,” says Mickey, mildly. He’s still smiling up at Randy, but, God—no one in the basement really bothers to hide the threat in their smiles, do they? How did Mickey manage to keep it somewhat together on the college campus for months? He always looks like a lunatic these days.

Granted, how often was Randy called out for a bad joke, or some sinister vibe, all through middle school, high school, and even his cut-short college career? Even when he finds people to get along with, it’s other fuckin’ lunatics like Stu and Mickey. Tatum never feels the urge to come down here and face her ex, and she always looks a little baffled at Randy when they do meet up and she learns he’s still coming down here.

It’s like Mickey can hear his thoughts.

“Why do you keep coming down here?” Mickey asks.

"Geez, that's the question of the day."

"It's a good question," says Mickey. "Why hang out here?"

“Same reason people hop in shark cages.” At least, Randy guesses. He’d never felt that urge in life, and doesn’t feel it even in death. He could swim with sharks right now if he wanted, just as impervious to their bites as he is against serial killers. He shrugs. “Maybe more like why little kids lift up rocks. Can’t help but watch the bugs scurrying under.” Mickey laughs.

“You know,” says Mickey, “I was pretty bummed when Mrs. Loomis killed you. I would have wanted you around for Act Three.”

“Ah,” says Randy. What do you even say to that? Truly, nothing in life prepared him for the kinds of conversations he’d find himself in death. “That’s sweet,” he says flatly. “Wanted to do it yourself?”

“Well… Yeah.” Mickey holds his hands up a little, that classic, what-can-you-do gesture, like, aww-shucks. “We didn’t like… Have the quad attack that scripted out. How could we know how you three would split up? Or, heh, that you would wander so close to the van? I mean, it worked great for the film, I can’t complain, but… I wonder if I could have convinced Sid you were my partner? She thought Derek was.”

Randy doesn’t actually have a job down here in the basement version of Bradley Video. He doesn’t have to clean up any messes, the store will always eventually reset itself back to zero. Nothing is ever supposed to really change down here. He snaps his fingers and the castle fort is gone, all the movies back in their place on the shelves.

Mickey doesn’t move from where he’s laying on the floor. “I worked really hard on that.”

“Good bye, Mickey.”

“See you soon, Randy.”