Slashing Through Your Trauma Pt 4
Notes: So, I uploaded this story to AO3, if that's an easier place for some to read (sometimes, it is easier to post a story there). In honor of us having another Friday the 13th, I have another chapter.
Sweater Vest and His Partner
In the mornings, one of the first things that Kia did was check her diaper. For the most part, she had control over her bladder and during the day never wore anything for incontinence. But, at night, it made life easier because there were a lot of steps to make it to the toilet and back to bed and whenever she did, she wound up awake from it all. Most days, when she woke up, the diaper was dry and clean, just like today. The previous night, she and Linderman had sex, so she knew that there would be discharge, but there was no waste.
She reached for her chair and began to move herself into it. When she and Linderman first started sleeping together, he would jump up the moment she made a peep in the morning and start trying to help her. She had to remind him that she had been doing this for herself for years and now, he didn’t miss a wink as she grunted her way into the chair and made her way to the bathroom for her morning routine.
She took up a lot of space and time to do her bathroom routines. Initially, upon learning that Linderman was moving to Crystal Lake, he would get a small place, near her, but not in her space, because she had built it for her and he didn’t want to barge in.
Whenever they decided that they would live together, it was easier for her to remain where she was living and for him to move in and simply pay for any additions that he would want. A second bathroom was something that both of them agreed would be a good change.
Kia came out of her bathroom in the usual amount of time, and by that time, Linderman was awake in bed, doing something on his phone. He didn’t look up at her, which she would never say, but hurt her feelings a little bit.
“You working?” She asked, to justify why he wouldn’t immediately grant her attention.
“Answering some emails and stuff.” Finally, he turned towards her and his mental acknowledgment of how good she looked was present. “Do you need me?”
“I definitely haven’t been given a “good morning” kiss.” She tried not to sound too indignant about it, but she could tell from the trace of a smirk on his mouth that her tone had nuzzled his ego.
“I have brushed my teeth,” he began, but she cut him off instantly with an exaggerated “EWWWWWWWWWWW,” to which he snickered and continued his emails and whatnot.
She rolled out of the room and started gathering her day bags. “Well, I have appointments and stuff all morning. If you’re starting work before you even get out of bed, I know you have a busy day. Are we still doing lunch?”
“Absolutely” In fact, usually she was late. But the way she smiled at him at the thought of their regular lunch dates captured his heart in a way that kept him silent. She rolled over, kissed him on the cheek and left him alone with his work and his thoughts.
After the morning’s physical therapy, check ups, and a few conference calls Kia headed for her favorite part of the week Lunch with Linderman, which began as her in denial that Limderman had moved states specifically to be with her. As much as the thiught of it made her feel appreciated, she worried that either he had some better reason to do so, or there might be some type of con involved. So, she would “pencil him in” each week for lunch, no matter what, and in spite of her speaking about it like it was some type of appointment, everyone knew it was their weekly date and that even if the day might change, neither of them would let the practice lapse. They even wound up finding a place that they visited every time. They had “a spot” and all of the staff and the owner knew them there.
Kia rolled up the ramp, finalizing her social media content for the day and pressed the automatic button for the door.
“Hey, Hey, Miss LL Cool K,” the older Black man at the restaurant cheered. “You’re husband’s at your table. Your appetizers will be out in five.”
She never corrected him anymore - not about being married and not about e connecting her to anything related to being the Last Lady. For one thing, Lori was the actual LL. She had not only walked out alive, but she was still walking. If they made a movie, Lori would be the Final Girl. But, Mr. Reggie didn’t know Lori, and Crystal Lake didn’t knowLori. So to them, KiaWaterson was the reigning and hopefully Last (leading) Lady. Last Ladies didn’t happen much in Crystal Lake. There had been some stories of Jason leaving the place and maybe some other survivors elsewhere, but townsolkf din’t count hose tales as ones about Jason ifbthey were outside of Crtstal Lake. In theirbstories, Jasin wouldnnever leave Crystal Lake. It was his place of birth, his place of death, his place of rest, and his place of unrest. And it was Kia’s testimonials about her foggy memories of him that made the town believe her. If someone was somehow “copying” Jason, they had been someone who knew it all. The killer she drscrived was the one that Crystal Lake knew and feared. And too many of yhem had graves to visit because of the fact to ever try to knock her down as an imposter or something. They had seen the footage of her and Linderman being carted into the hospital early in the dark of morning. They remembered trying to pretend that tgey hadn’t seen the workers the next day, or the lake being dragged the upcoming eeeks, SOMETHING had taken place, and having someone to give any type of explanation was a small relief.
She wasn’t from Crystal Lake, but she was a part of it now, and a hometown hero of sorts. When she arrived at her table, Linderman already had lattes cooling and rushed to finally get the kisses he’d missed out on in the morning. There was a basket of bread and the humming noises of local conversations, but these were all normal things.
What wasn’t normal was the Black woman at the corner table, with a laptop, multiple books and files spread out, a cell phone, and an untouched basket of bread, but a nearly empty kettle of coffee. She was pretty into whatever she was working on and seemingly aloof about all of the regulars who were very focused on her. Kia had to force herself not to stare. She gave Linderman a puzzled look and he said, “That’s her.”
“The survivor that stopped into WAND!!?”
“The same.”
“You really downplayed how pretty she is!”
“I did no such thing.”
“You said that she wasn’t that pretty and come to find out, she’s fucking gorgeous!”
“I said that she wasn’t prettier than you, and if you ever ask me, nobody is.” Kia was staring again and he knocked on the table to catch her attention. “Don’t stare. The locals are doing enough of that.”
“I was just tryna figure out if she was familiar to me. Like figure out if I might have seen her in the news or on a show or something, but I’ve never seen that woman before. Maybe her story isn’t one of the ones that the media deems important. I found out that Black victims and killers just don’t get the same screen time, and even then, the killers still wind up getting more known than their victims.”
“I don’t think she wants to be known. And she deserves the right to her privacy.”
Outside of WAND, and his itte band of survivors of Kia, Lori and Will, Linderman didn’t speak to anybody about what he went through that night. For the most part, he didn’t speak about what happened at all. Even in therapy, he chose to focus more on his emotions surrounding Kia, and the surviving a murderer portion, he simply spoke of as though it were a backdrop to falling in love and losing years of being able to build upon it.
Facing Jason was the scariest thing that he could ever have imagined, but he bonded with Kia through that. Then, at the remote cabin, seeing Jason go after her and choosing to put himself in harm’s way, rather than see her die… the pain of his swing and the near fata injury. The bleeding and thinking that his ast moments on Earth woud be to reassure Kia that he was fine and to bleed out and die as she promised to come back for him… then… somehow making it and having to instead see her in a coma.
All of that had been a terrifying coming of age for a guy who didn’t engage with wild nights very much. But, at this point in life, despite the horrors of all of it, the most terrifying thing in his mind was ever losing her. That would end his world…
“Hey…” Her soft, low voice interrupted his visit through memory Hell, and he blinked away images of her in the hospital bed, connected to wires and the nightmares of her being one of the ones that they had seen in Westin Hills. “I won’t bother the woman. I really was only checking to see if she looked familiar. She doesn’t. I’m done…” He nodded. He looked like he did whenever he would wake up from a nightmare and not want to tell her that that’s what happened. He didn’t like to discuss even the concept of nightmares, like he was trying to protect her from even the thought of one. “You okay?” she asked.
He nodded and reached for her hand to squeeze it and remind him of where he was. He was in their spot, with the love of his life, and appetitizers were arriving for their weekly day date. She caressed his hand in both of hers and watched him relax a little bit. Thinking she could help that, she changed the subject, “You know… Mr. Reggie is still saying that we’re married.”
Linderman blushed a little and fought a smile. She was playfully accusing him of encouraging the man. “I’ve told him plenty of times that we aren’t,” he said. But, shrugged his shoulders and tapped his free hand nervously on the table. “Maybe it's wishful thinking. He’s a Jason survivor. They say he lost his brother in one of the massacres. Maybe the guy is just hoping for a happy ending out of all of this, sometime.” After a pause, he confessed, “I don’t disagree.”
He immediately regretted it when Kia’s hold on his hand loosened and her face fell. She sighed and began to pick at the stuffed clams. If she was going to mention the disability laws and the way that the system was set up to make marriage very difficult for disabled people, he cut her off. “We’re in a very unique situation, Kia. You are ridiculously successful as an internet personality. You’re worth more than a lot of people in that line of work. You don’t even qualify for disability aid…” She was slowly chewing, trying to avoid whatever thoughts wanted to come out of her. He pulled both of his hands from the table and ran them through his hair, exasperated, now. “Is it me? Because, I feel like we should be close enough now that you know that I can handle the truth.”
Kia swallowed, furrowed her eyebrows and let a mirthless chuckle escape her mouth. “The truth is…” She avoided looking at him, but she could feel how intensely he was staring at her. “I know that while I was down and we were apart, you wanted me for a while.”
If he were to correct her, he would’ve said the entire time, but he didn’t want to interrupt whatever this confession was.
“You even told me that you dreamed about me…” She finally dared to look at him and their eyes were not holding the same tone of emotions. That made her sad, but he wanted the truth. “But, the person that you dreamed about is not the person that I am. The person that I am, you’ve only actually known for a few very short feeling years. I don’t want us to get married and then you finally realize that the woman you married isn’t the one that you dreamed of marrying.I don’t want your dreams to paint this ideal of me for you that being stuck in a legally binding contract with me could reveal. I know I’m not as special as you think I am, and I don’t want to rush into seeing you come to terms with that.”
“I’m offended,” was all that he could say. He took a deep breath, let out a chuckle of his own, shook his head and shrugged his shoulders, “But, I love you, so I suppose I’ll have to just get over it. That’s the truth, for you. I can’t force anything else.” His eyes were damp as he reached for his latte.
Kia didn’t know what the fuck to do next. She had already made it worse. She rolled over to his side of the table, watched him tense up at this. That hurt. She wasn’t sure if he was bracing himself for her to say something equally as hurtful as she had just said or if this was the start of her bringing him the unease she was convinced she eventually would, but she was on the brink of tears, herself and she didn’t like him not looking at her and immediately becoming soft and warm to her.”It’s not about me having a problem with you,” she said so softly that she wasn’t even sure if he could hear her over the noise of the room. “It’s my insecurities, just like it has always been with us. What if something else happens and then my internet personality doesn’t help and then I’m just a burden to you…”
“You could never BE a burden to me!” He said, louder than he meant to and loud enough that several people, even the survivor in the headphones looked up at them momentarily. Kia’s lip trembled and she let tears fall and now, he felt like shit. She collected her hands into her lap and tried to think of what to say next, or if she even should say anything at this point, she was just making it worse with each attempt. Sometimes she forgot that she wasn’t nearly as charming in real life than she was onscreen.
Linderman grabbed the bridge of his nose and tried to catch his breath, certain that he had just sealed his fate of losing Kia forever. His breathing became harder with that thought and snapped her out of her worry to check his vest for his inhaler and help him take it. So, he hadn’t fucked everything up. “I’m sorry,” he managed to say, to a very confused Kia, who was certain that whatever had unfolded had been her doing, somehow. He looked embarrassed and a little disheveled. She adjusted his hair and placed his inhaler back into his vest pocket. “I started thinking about how it felt to see you hurt, and went into a panic about losing you, so I brought up getting married again and…” he looked embarrassed. Kia was too scared to remind him that she brought it up, with the whole Mr. Reggie thing. “When you tell me that you don’t want to marry me, I get scared that it's because this is the dream, you know? Real life with you is beyond anything that I ever dreamed about us having before I had you…” He reached for her hand she gave both of them to him, eager to put this mess behind them. “I’m not going to run away from the real you. The real you matters more to me than some fantasies I had. You’re here, and I should accept that. It never feels like enough, because the moment I fell for you, you were taken away from me, for a long time. I don’t want to have to go through that again. I guess, some part of me feels like if I don’t.. Make everything official, you could suddenly be out of my life again.” He let out a deep breath.
Kia urgently took his hand into both of hers and cradled them to her chest, leaning as far forward as she physically could before her mobility made it impossible. “Charlie,” he looked at her. She never called him that. Sometimes, he wondered if she remembered that it was his first name, but never asked, because it would be embarrassing if she had not. “I would love to be Mrs. Linderman… Or. Maybe not Mrs. Linderman, because I don’t know that that fits my face. I would have to workshop it. Waterson-Linderman definitely won’t work. I’m not tryna write a book for a signature…” he chuckled. “I would love to be married to you,” she finalized the thought. “When I’m not a fucking wreck of a person when it comes to the way I see myself and being in a relationship, anyway. You’re my first real relationship. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. It took me long enough to figure out who I am alone, much less with somebody else. When the time is right, you’re not gonna know how to get me to stop wanting to be your wife. Until then, please, let the Kia that you have be enough.”
“You are!” He started crying and pulled her to himself by their hand collage. “You are. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I love you. I love you so much…” They pressed their foreheads together and finally both seemed able to breath again in the right way.
“I love you,” she whimpered, squeezing his hands and sniffling. “Please wait for me,” she whispered.
“I will. I’m sorry. I love you. Of course, I will… Fucking PTSD..” She let out a little chuckle and Linderman pushed forward to kiss her. She moved her hands around him and pulled his head closer to kiss him deeper. Their food arrived, without their notice.
Halle glanced at the man that she recognized as “Sweater Vest” and his partner again, not to intrude on their deeply emotional public moment, but because she saw a server come to their table and she hadn’t seen one at hers in a bit. Then, she spotted Mr. Reggie, smiling. He noticed her, lifted his mug of drink and she gave him a soft smile and tapped her now empty coffee pot. He nodded once and gestured to someone behind the counter.
Halle returned to what she was doing, which at the moment was look up “Black woman survivor Crystal Lake.” Of course, it had occured to Halle that she hadn’t seen many Black people in Crystal Lake, but she had not expected to see any survivors. She couldn’t remember if Sweater Vest said that he had a partner who was a survivor, but she got the vibes from him that he would and whatever she had just been privy to, without her approval, showed her that this was either his partner, or a friend who he was REAL close to.
Kia Waterson. She was literally the only one. She wasn’t hard to find once Halle knew that she existed. Sista Girl had quite a following. This is probably why all the podcasters try to pass through here, Halle mused. Hmm… Technically, from what Halle was seeing, Kia Waterson was part of a Springwood Slasher event… BUT, apparently, the Elm Street Murders of her era, the Cornfield Massacre, and the Westin Hills Attack (an institution where she and several unnamed friends were followed by the murderer, and he was reportedly killed) all constituted as a copycat killer spree, but which killer was still heavily debated as there was never any information found that connected the copycat killer to either the Springwood Slasher nor the Crystal Lake Killer.
Now, the fact that those same kids journeyed to Crystal Lake, where they were then attacked by a murderer, also made the stories reported cause more confusion. For one thing, those kids had never been named in the news, and the only one to come forward later had been this Kia Waterson, who was quite vocal about the fact that the person who killed her friends and attacked her had not been the man who was named as the killer.
“If he was a part of that, it would surprise me a lot. He was the only adult who was even listening to us when we were scared and in danger. He was trying to help us when that killer killed him. If they ever actually find anything real tying him to the murders, I would be shocked. I would eat my wheelchair if that happens.” Halle saved the article for later.
The server came and she switched tabs, “Can I get whatever she’s got,” she gestured towards Kia and the server nodded, “Yes ma’am, did you need anything to drink?”
“Replace the kettle of coffee, please.”
“Goodness! You’ll never get to sleep!”
“I will, just not before I’m ready,” Halle said and smiled. The server nodded and went away. “I do have to eat, though.” She hoped that she could trust whatever the only other Black woman that she had seen in town so far had ordered, seemingly enough that she wasn’t even there to order. Mr. Reggie simply cheered, “Hey, Mr. LL! I’ll get you and your wife’s orders started!”
“Mr. Reggie, what has she told you about calling her that?” Sweater Vest had said, smiling so brightly that Halle knew that he certainly didn’t mind her being called that.
She exited the frivolous flashback of earlier and continued reading. Four teenagers travelled to Crystal Lake, and according to the news reports, only two were left alive. No names, but Halle sent a message to a friend in law enforcement who might be able to give her a little more information.
However, from what she could gather, from what she currently had, Kia Waterson was a Crystal Lake resident currently and locally recognized as a Crystal Lake Killer survivor. But, later reports of the Springwood Spree Killer of 2003 also included Kia as a survivor.
So… in a way, Sweater Vest’s partner had survived two murderers. It wasn’t exactly like Halle’s situation, but she couldn’t help feel a little more kinship towards her. The Springwood Spree officially ended at the Westin Hills Psychiatric Hospital and the Crystal Lake Copycat Killer attack was not suspected by investigators to be connected, and by many onlookers to be something that had been orchestrated by the teenagers.
The more Halle read, the more she became convinced that the police had identified the wrong killer, or had missed an accomplice. Was it possible that there were two copycat killers? Like the thing that kept happening to Syd? She created a new folder in her documents: Springwood Spree/Crystal Lake Copycat 2003, and began collecting articles.
If they missed a killer, another one was out there free. This was often the case for serial killers. But, Hell if she wanted one in the town she was currently sleeping in.
