Teeth Long and Sharp as Blades

by A.C. Wise

Have you ever thought about how fairy tale heroines are like final girls? We survive poisoning, curses, imprisonment, mothers who want to cut our hearts out and hold them in their hands. But we survive, and our survival is an object lesson: act this way, and you’ll be all right. Be pure of heart. Be kind to strangers. Don’t go into the woods at night.

It was supposed to be a joke. A stupid prank. A sorority dare. They were never going to let me into their sisterhood, I know that now, but back then I was naive. I was trusting. I walked into the park at the far edge of campus. I stood at the line where impenetrable shadow met safe halogen glow, facing the trees bordering the neat lawns, dense enough to be called a wood. And I didn’t question why I was the only freshman out there, shivering in the t-shirt my mother bought me from the campus store the day we toured the school.

The red shirt read Get Jacked over a white line drawing of a lumberjack, our team mascot. Its hem barely met the waist of the stupid booty shorts Angelica insisted I wear. All I had to do was stand there, dressed like an idiot, and sing the school fight song all the way through, including the verses no one remembers anymore, then I could come back inside.

It was supposed to be safe. I wasn’t even out there alone, though I didn’t know that at the time. Brian, a pledge from a sibling frat, was hiding in the bushes. He was supposed to jump out wearing a wolf mask and scare me. Instead, he ended up holding my guts in with his bare hands, sobbing as he called for an ambulance. (Continue Reading…)