Love letters addressed to Silk Fingers no longer arrive at the studio on Culver Boulevard, but his fans are still out there. They find a way to forgive his violent acts, or perhaps the violence is what draws them to him. There is a lot to be said for his voice, especially on screen. The voice lets the viewer forget about the scars, carved by his victims with their fingernails or the occasional blade, marring his otherwise perfect white skin. He wears a black t-shirt and black pants, but his feet are always bare, a detail which has led some viewers to speculate that he might actually be dead, since the deceased don’t normally wear shoes. “He’s not dead!” one admirer protested on scarymovietime.com. “I think he’s barefoot because he just rolled out of bed. He’s always coming from another woman. Another lover.”
In the movies the silk grows from his fingertips in long strips of soft, caressing tissue. The silk travels all over the body of the victim until it pauses at the neck. The camera follows, coming to rest on the delighted, almost euphoric face of the young woman Silk Fingers has chosen. It’s a rare moment of prioritizing female pleasure in the American horror genre. Teens are usually punished for having sex, especially girls, and therefore the viewer is fooled into relaxing for a bit. Maybe things have changed. Maybe we’ve all safely landed in modern times.
Then Silk Fingers resumes his natural function.
Each victim dies by strangulation. In the first film, from 1980, the murder goes on for ninety obscene, breath-stopping seconds. It is intimate. Critics complained that the viewer was expected to identify with the killer in this horror film that had crossed over into pornography. Parents were alarmed; churchgoers protested.
Hundreds of letters to Silk Fingers poured in within weeks and continued for years, but none of the letter writers ever seems to know the most important thing about Silk Fingers. He’s more than a popular villain or a Halloween mask. He’s more than a money maker. He is human, like everybody else, and like everybody else, he gets lonely.
At his local movie theater, a rare site of human contact in an online world, the actor who played Silk Fingers notices the girl who works at the concession stand. She has lovely hands. She is beautiful despite the ugliness of her uniform, the plastic barrettes holding her hair back, and the popcorn smell that follows her everywhere. He sees himself in her. She has his trademark long fingers.
It’s all in the hands. She slides the popcorn in his direction but barely looks at him. She probably wouldn’t recognize him anyway.
The actor is caught between the character he is known for and his true self, not that he has much of a true self. Silk Fingers came to him too early in life, followed by the money, the additional career opportunities, and the endless conventions, interviews, and campy photo shoots. Thanks to a good agent and a better lawyer, and, most of all, to being born at the right time, he has enough money to survive. He does not think of himself as a killer, but he still lives off the movies where he plays one. He often contemplates the difference between Silk Fingers and himself.
He can’t stop thinking about the girl at the movie theater though he knows this is pointless. Men his age don’t enjoy friendships with girls like her. It would be better if he wanted to date her––he sees plenty of that going on, especially with rich guys. He considers inviting her to one of the events where they still pay him to appear, but first he stops going to the movie theater so often. He plans to show up some time with a friend, preferably a female, to make himself appear more normal.
It finally happens in a natural, harmless way, at one of the neighborhood cafés, where they recognize each other as they stand in line at the counter. She’s on her lunch break and starving, she says, and he offers to take her down the block for ramen. He worries for a moment as she sizes him up, but she is happy to sit at a table over steaming noodles and broth, which she wolfs down, being young and broke and hungry for real food. Her name, Alice, is so old-fashioned it charms him. She tells him, as if she has been asked many times, that she was named not after Alice in Wonderland but after the Alice from Friday the 13th. She doesn’t appear all that curious about him. She’s not a huge movie fan, to his surprise, even though she works in a theater.
“I used to be in the movies,” he says.
“Everyone says that. I mean, not everyone, but this is the town for it.” She is prettier than he realized. Her hair is wheat-colored, slightly darker at the roots, and styled in long curls. “So what were you? An extra? Did you have any lines?”
He laughs. “I didn’t have that many lines, but I was a star. Of sorts.”
“What does that mean?” Now she’s interested.
“I was the villain.”
“Really? In what?”
“Do you know who Silk Fingers is?”
She thinks for a second. “Seriously?” And then: “Wait. How old are you?”
He laughs. “Not that old. Old enough to be your father, so I guess that’s old to you.”
“I don’t have a father. Or a mother,” she says, but her tone is tranquil, like it’s a relief to be free of the burden of parents.
“Oh.” He was not expecting this. “What happened? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“My mother was murdered.”
“No.” For a second he wants to say that it can’t be true, she must be mistaken, it was only a movie. “I’m sorry.”
“Blunt force trauma. They never found the guy.”
Now she’s scaring him. He wonders if this is an act or a test. Her eyes go from a compassionate soft brown to something hard. The stony silence that follows compels him to keep talking. “What about your dad?”
“I never knew him.” She lowers her eyes and stabs at her ramen, and then, when she looks up, she is back to being cheerful. “How’d you get that scar?” she asks, gesturing with her chopsticks.
“On set. It was an accident. My only mark from all those years in the business.” He rubs at the small but distinct pink line next to his left eye. He tells her about the Silk Fingers mask they still sell in Halloween stores. It is covered with scars, including the one she asked about, fashioned to look like it is forever bleeding.
“Cool,” she says, and they both laugh.
They could be a couple of friends out for a meal, he thinks. He could be a relative. Her uncle.
She stands up to say goodbye the moment she finishes her ramen, adding, “Hey, why didn’t they give you more lines? You have a good voice.”
He smiles a little, and then, before he can give her a proper answer, she is walking away, waving at him with those long, elegant fingers. She has to get back to work.
She doesn’t need him.
For years a certain woman would call him. He could not remember where they met, which party or bar, or even which city. All he knew was that they slept together, once, but he could not conjure her face or body. And then, just like in the movies, she turned dangerous, harassing him over the phone, but never in person. He had a private landline back then and somehow she got hold of his number. Most people contacted him through his agent or by sending fan mail to the studio.
It was more of an annoyance than a serious worry when she told him she was pregnant. They didn’t talk about DNA in those days, but he knew he could insist on a blood test of some sort, if it came to that. He didn’t have time for this game of hers. He was busy. Successful. He bought a condo that would quadruple in value. Whenever he would begin to forget about the vague and embarrassing possibility of parenthood, she would call again, always late at night. If it went to his answering machine, she would hang up. He confided in a co-star about the situation one time when he had had too much to drink, but the guy only laughed. “Do you have any idea how common this is? Call her bluff. I can give you my lawyer’s number. And use a condom next time, rock star.”
Around the time that the baby would have been born, the calls stopped. He didn’t know what to think, and he was able to put it out of his mind over the course of another busy year, telling himself that the woman was either not serious or mentally ill. Perhaps there had never been a pregnancy and she simply took pleasure in needling him. During the period of the phone calls, he tried to create a face for this woman. Sometimes he thought he knew who she might be: a blond woman, not a girl, for he was no creep. More attractive than most. A warm-looking, brown-eyed blond.
He could never truly shake the idea of fatherhood. Over the years the anxiety turned into a kind of yearning, a wistfulness, until he found himself studying young women on the street, just like a real stalker. She would be in her early twenties, and probably blond, given his preference.
It could be true. She could be out there.
Or the caller from the past could have been a liar.
Should he open up to Alice? Would she care? More importantly: how can he get a strand of her hair? A drop of saliva? He feels such a connection to this girl at the movie theater. Why isn’t there some easy way to find out if she is his? He can’t remember the mother’s name, though, if he ever knew it. There were so many women in the glory days, when he was just mature enough to understand that his allure wouldn’t last. He was drinking too much and coke was on every flat surface. He told himself he deserved to have fun, and now, approaching the end of his life, in this big city of people hiding in their cars, he tells himself he shouldn’t be alone so much. He should have a family.
Everyone has a mother and a father somewhere even if they’re on the other side.
He does not know why he always imagines a daughter and never a son. Was it something the caller said, all those years ago? In any case, it is too late to begin a new story when this one has grown for so long in his mind.
Alice’s face gradually replaces the caller’s in his memories. What was once a blur with a blond halo becomes a real person.
Alice knows she isn’t okay. She should be in counseling or going to a support group, but therapy is expensive and there are only so many hours in a day. One day she’ll get around to it.
She always carries mace and a knife, gifts from her mother. The mace might be expired but the knife won’t let her down. She doesn’t watch scary movies because her life has had enough horror in it all along. She isn’t looking for a daddy, never has been. Alice reveres her mother, found dead in a motel room, and from her mother’s tragedy she has made a kind of guidebook. If she studies her mother’s life and refuses to repeat her mistakes, if she is exceedingly cautious, if she is smart, she can avoid her mother’s fate.
(Alice knows that her mother went to a motel on her last night instead of bringing a strange man home to the apartment she shared with her young daughter.)
The past three years have been about survival. She is not alone. The whole city is struggling, hustling, and somehow this makes it all better. Everybody has it hard. Everybody has a sob story.
She exchanges tales of men with her roommate, who works in a bar. Creeps abound. Older men think their attention is wanted. A woman has to be careful in any town but especially in this one. They both know someone who has been stalked and assaulted. Her roommate’s sister once let the wrong person into her apartment, and he left her with a broken jaw.
Not that Alice thinks of herself as a victim. She hates that. That’s why she doesn’t tell many people how her mother died. She can’t stand to see how their faces change when they learn the truth. She doesn’t know why she told a killer from a movie franchise about her mother. Every so often she loses control, and then it’s like she’s watching herself in a play. Her face goes numb, and as she shares the horrible details, she feels like she’s lying.
The story about her mother is true, but speaking it aloud to the wrong person can make it dirty and false.
She doesn’t know what Silk Fingers wants but she knows what he’s doing. It’s what all men do: he is determined to make her into someone else. It’s fine. Happens every day in every town.
She’ll show him.
One Friday night the actor goes with a friend, someone from his UCLA days, to see an old Japanese anime film at The Silent Movie Theater. Alice is there with another pretty young girl, and he can’t help but show his excitement. “Hey, what are you doing here? I didn’t think you liked old movies.”
“Everyone likes anime,” she says dismissively, but then she surprises him by coming forward with a casual, one-armed hug. She introduces her roommate, who shyly asks if he is Silk Fingers. Confetti flies through the air. He’s recognizable, famous, according to a member of Alice’s own peer group. This is real progress.
He decides to go for it.
The next week he’s at the last show at her movie theater when he asks her if she wants to get something to eat. She says she’ll meet him at a nearby diner when her shift ends. She needs to go home and change first. He stops himself from offering to pick her up at her place, which would be too pushy. Maybe she won’t show. He’ll have a decaf and go home.
It’s late when she appears, so late that he’s drinking real coffee to keep from yawning, but she is buzzing with youthful energy. She orders a chocolate milkshake and downs it. He’s not sure if he can keep up with her, and he does not know what to talk about. It’s never the right time to ask her about her mother.
“So. Do you want to go to my place?”
He is startled. “This isn’t, I mean, I’m not——”
“Just to talk. I know there’s something on your mind. The suspense is killing me.”
“I do want to talk.” And then, because she’s getting that hard look in her eyes again, he adds, “It’s nothing bad.”
Getting into his car and driving to her dreary apartment building passes like a dream. Walking up the concrete steps to her unit, he reminds himself he isn’t going to have sex with her. He doesn’t think of her that way, but the march up the stairs, letting her blond hair lead him, is so familiar. He’s in his twenties all over again as he sits on her threadbare couch.
Her roommate isn’t home. They are alone and the whole building is silent. He has no idea what’s coming, much like the victims in his movies. “Is that you?” he asks, pointing to a photograph nestled in a bookshelf.
“No. That’s my mom when she was little, but I usually tell people it’s me. You know, so I don’t have to go into the whole story of how she died.”
“Oh.” He resists the urge to jump up and examine the image more closely. “Did you grow up on this side of town?”
“No. I’m not from LA.”
“You’re not?”
“Nope. I’ve only been out here three years. I’m from a little desert town, no place you’ve ever heard of.”
“But your mother?” he says, and then leaves the thought hanging. Alice is fiddling with something inside her jacket. “Was your mother a movie lover?”
“Yes, but she liked watching videos at home.”
“So she never went to conventions or festivals?”
Alice shakes her head. “We don’t have that stuff where I grew up, and she didn’t travel much. She couldn’t leave me at home by myself.”
He has nothing in common with this girl. The energy pours out of his body until he feels his full age.
“I told you about Friday the 13th, right? She named me after that Alice.”
“Yes, of course. That’s why I thought she was a fan.”
“One of your fans?”
Now he can imagine her pulling out a gun and shooting him. It would serve him right for being so foolish. “Maybe not one of my fans, but a horror fan.”
“Do you remember what Alice does in Friday the 13th?”
He searches his memory but sees only a solitary girl in a boat in the middle of a huge lake. “Doesn’t she kill Jason?”
Alice laughs and he is reminded of the relationship he wishes they could have. “Hell no! They can’t kill Jason. They need a sequel.” She leans forward and lowers her voice: “Alice decapitates Jason’s mother.”
“That’s a bit harsh, don’t you think?” he asks, but she doesn’t smile. All he has to do is walk out the door and forget about this girl. He’ll find another movie theater, or stay away for a while. Maybe he has been stalking her, after a fashion, but he meant no harm.
Alice stands, wound up tight and ready to strike, blocking his way. One lovely hand is still tucked in her jacket. Unlike him, she is at the beginning of her journey. She could turn out to be anybody: a victim, a final girl, or a psycho killer. She is capable of anything.
Jan Stinchcomb is the author of Verushka (JournalStone), The Blood Trail (Red Bird Chapbooks) and Find the Girl (Main Street Rag). Her stories have appeared in Bourbon Penn, SmokeLong Quarterly and hex. A Best of the Net and Pushcart nominee, she is featured in Best Microfiction 2020 and The Best Small Fictions 2018 & 2021. Find her at janstinchcomb.com; Bluesky: @janstinchcomb; Instagram: @jan_stinchcomb. Her favorite revenge story is Notes on a Scandal (2006) with Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett.
