I Was a Teenage Slasher

“No way would Stace Goodkin be one of the inebriated, weaving home. No way would she be riding with someone like that, either. I would say she was one of the good ones, the straight and narrow seniors, but it’s more like she was the only one […] any time Future Farmers of America and Future Homemakers of America took a bus trip together, she always stayed in the hotel room she’d been assigned, running flashcards by herself, politely declining all the guys leaning in her doorway like a movie poster, tipping their heads out to the parking lot, where all the rites of adulthood were waiting.”

Tolly characterizes Stace as a diligent teen who prioritizes her performance in school, despite the fact that her attractiveness makes her popular among the boys. Before Stephen Graham Jones introduces the slasher genre conceit to the novel, it is important for him to characterize Stace this way because it will allow her to immediately fit into the final girl trope once Justin Joss appears at the party.

“And, yeah, by the time me and Amber were freshmen, there was a young tree in front of the high school with a ‘Justin Joss’ plaque on it. If it lived, that tree’s probably throwing some good shade, by now. And the story of a Lamesa high schooler with promise falling into that industrial-sized meatgrinder is what kept so many up-and-comers off the pumpjacks, so: thanks, Justin. You’re part of the gang now, man.”

Jones uses the memorial tree for Justin Joss to undermine the impact of his death and make it feel absurd. As the tree grows, the impact of Justin’s death ironically fades away from the school’s memory, resulting in Tolly’s humiliation at Deek’s party. This underlines the novel’s position on popularity and reputation, suggesting that teens will do anything to gain approval, even if the risk to life is obvious at first glance.

“When your dad dies, whenever in life you are, you realize that you’ve either got to hold yourself up, now, or just start falling and falling.”

This passage is key in developing the theme of Grief and the Struggle for Social Acceptance. With the death of his father, Tolly suddenly feels he must walk through life alone, despite the presence of his mother and Amber in his life. This informs his behavior at Deek’s party, where he breaks away from Amber under the assumption that he has to play down his dependence on her for emotional stability.

“Anyway, if you can’t tell, what I’m trying to do here is document each small little step of this night, this party. Just, I have to be careful. I mean, I can try to blame it all on Grandlin at the funeral, for flicking that blood onto Justin Joss’s headstone […] but it starts with me, I know. I’m the archduke, standing up from his car in the parade, and then falling right back down.”

Tolly traces his origins as a slasher all the way back to the death of his father as a way of stressing his inability to prevent the Lamesa killings. He alludes to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary to drive this point further, since this event is commonly cited as the breaking point in the tension that incited World War I. The inability to prevent the killings because of indirect causes suggests Fate Versus Free Will as one of the overarching themes of the novel.

“The more country you were, the more respect you got, if that tracks. Not for me, all my heroes wore spandex and bandannas, eyeliner and hairspray, but I didn’t really count, either.”

Tolly draws a contrast between himself and the popular kids at Lamesa High by looking at their respective cultural values. Tolly admires the icons of glam and hair metal, which might seem ridiculous to most of the Lamesa teens who afford him none of the respect they give to others. On the other hand, those same teens assess their peers based on how well they can demonstrate the affected behaviors of country life, which seems equally ridiculous to anyone removed from the novel’s setting.

“Justin looked down to where that thick little tumbler had hit him, and… and it was sizzling? […] Amber had reached back, found a leftover margarita. One with salt still on the rim.”

The novel uses this passage to establish one of the important rules that dictate the narrative’s speculative elements. Because slashers can be harmed by the things that harmed them before they became slashers, this passage foreshadows Tolly’s continued weakness to peanuts as a slasher. Amber knows this from her encounter with Justin, which is why she knows to conceal peanut butter when she realizes that she is Tolly’s final girl.

“Old slashers may not die, but they can, if they’re careful, if they’re conscientious, stop killing.

Don’t get me wrong, I still feel the old urges.

The world’s so much simpler when you’ve got a chainsaw in your hand, isn’t it? A chainsaw or a machete or an axe, that’s the elegant solution to every problem.”

As a narrator, Tolly occasionally breaks outside of the narrative frame of the memoir to hint at how he lives beyond the end of the novel. One important detail this passage reveals is that Tolly, who has survived the Lamesa killings, still feels the urge to kill again because of its simple power. This introduces tension for the narrative outside the frame, as it suggests the possibility that Tolly’s slasher persona may reemerge.

“At the time, junior-going-senior, before everything that happened happened, I wasn’t necessarily thinking about college in any real way——maybe a few classes down at Midland, just to see what the tall city was like on the weekends?——but I admit that lately I’d been watching all these washouts my mom kept having to hire, as it was them or nobody. What I was kind of starting to suspect, or at least sort of see the edges of, was that if I didn’t get any schooling, then I was going to be one of them, wasn’t I?

[…] [H]adn’t I heard that some places made you write an essay as part of your application? If I could target a place that did that, then I figured I might have at least a little bit of a chance […]

With words, I can compete.”

This passage is important in driving the theme of Fate Versus Free Will as it hints at the ways that Tolly might break away from the life he is destined to live. Tolly entertains the possibility of pursuing college, leveraging the promise of his natural writing talent to prove his self-worth. This proposes an alternative to the narrative that Tolly lives out: Rather than succumb to his rage against the social hierarchy of his school or resign himself to live as a “washout,” Tolly could make something of his life using a gift that no one else around him has. This passage is bittersweet, knowing because of the narrative structure that he never achieves this aspiration.

“To me, masks had always been the wonderful thing about Halloween. Not because I got to be a monster or a president, but because, when I had this hard plastic or rubber over my face, then I was released from the burden of tracking what my lips were doing, how I was holding my cheeks, what was going on with my nose.

I could just be blank.

When I touched my face, realized that any expressions I made would be hidden from the world, my whole body relaxed.”

Tolly comments on the iconography of slasher movies, observing that the slasher mask allows him to overwrite the identity that makes him feel conscious of himself. Being a slasher gives Tolly power, but this observation also sets up a later moment, where one of Tolly’s victims, Jenna, recognizes him despite his mask. This passage is necessary for Jenna to defuse and therefore undermine the slasher’s power over the narrative.

“I could see what I was doing, but I was kind of like a rider, you could say. The infection was using my brain to coordinate this attack, and I was aware of each moment—well, when it got intense, I was—but…could I have stopped it?

I honestly don’t know.

If I were just trying to shift this blame to something else, someone else, I wouldn’t say that, I don’t think.

[…]

No, I wasn’t myself. Not really.

That’s no absolution, though.”

Tolly reckons with the sense of agency he has when he is committing the Lamesa killings. According to Tolly, he has no control over his body when it kills the marching band. On the other hand, he hints that he may also be deflecting the blame because it is difficult to reckon with his guilt. Jones thus uses the ambiguity of Tolly’s admission to raise thematic questions about The Perils of Revenge.

“From where Amber’s Rabbit was, the grain elevator was right behind the warehouses like some sort of concrete giant. Back then I didn’t know cheapie Gothic thrillers, but in the seventeen years since then, I’ve familiarized myself night after night, and, believe me, if any of those books had been set in Lamesa, Texas, then the grain elevator would have been the spooky place on the hill, with fog always drifting around its base, and some woman in a sheer nightgown running away.”

Jones uses this passage to establish the image of the grain elevator, which will not only recur as a motif for Fate Versus Free Will but will also play a crucial role in the resolution of the conflict. He uses the metaphor of the spooky house that regularly features in Gothic thrillers to underline its importance in the setting.

“I say slashers are all about revenge, but what’s revenge but balancing the scales, right?

I think the world wants things to even out. So it lets my kind cheat.”

This passage speaks to the theme of Fate Versus Free Will because it points to the higher power that dictates the moral compass of Tolly’s universe. Tolly believes in fairness and justice, but only according to the terms of the “world” that disproportionately advantages killers and slashers. This alludes to the disparities between fairness, justice, and revenge as key thematic concepts.

“Hopefulness, I think that’s what it was: I knew bad shit had gone down, and that I was involved, but it didn’t really feel like me who had done it, if that makes sense […]

What I’m saying is that I still believed in good things. I still had the idea that if my intentions were pure enough, innocent enough, or at least not bad and evil, all this could work out somehow.

[…]

This is how you think when you’re seventeen. You still believe in the world.”

In this passage, Tolly is contrasted against his younger self, emphasizing his optimism as a teen. The implication of this passage is that the older Tolly is more cynical, which is why he is more willing to take responsibility for his actions, even though he didn’t feel in control of his body. Because of his naivety, the younger Tolly is more willing to accept that his soul is redeemable.

“Reason I now keep that bolt and nut in the cash drawer on the ones, instead of always with me? It’s because, for a while, it was getting too easy. It was starting to feel like a gateway behavior—the small, seemingly inconsequential thing I thought I could get away with, that wouldn’t lead to anything bad.

I was fooling myself, yeah. Or, my true nature was whispering to me that this was fine, that—to use Rodrigo’s old argument—this was my God-given right.

Except gods don’t have anything to do with my kind, I don’t think.”

The older Tolly observes that the continued use of his abilities will eventually result in the resurgence of his slasher persona. Tolly’s superhuman abilities point to the power it grants him over the social hierarchy of the world he lives in. Although the older Tolly is no longer concerned with reputation or popularity, he fears that the reminder of his powers will force him to look for reasons to kill people.

“You always hear about people who suffer trauma and lock in at the age they were then, never really keep growing up, not on the inside.

I didn’t know it that summer, wasn’t far enough away to tell yet, but I suspect my dad was that for me. Even if Amber and me don’t go to Deek’s party, I bet I’m still seventeen forever. Which plays all right until you’re about twenty-one, I figure. After that, it gets harder and harder to fake, doesn’t it? What was funny before, it starts looking kind of sad.”

In this passage, Tolly speaks to the traumatic impact of grief, forcing him to deal with the loss of his father even as the world around him moves on. Tolly believes that his grief would have continued to affect him regardless of if he became a slasher. Through the implication that living normally with his grief would have made him seem pathetic, this confession helps to show how becoming a slasher also allows Tolly to have power over his grief.

“Even if I don’t become a teenage slasher, […] then I still wasn’t ever going to make anything of myself. I’d keep using my dad as an excuse, and if that ever wore thin, then it’s coming from a small town with nothing much going on that did me in, or having been born with no real talents aside from Ready Writing.”

Tolly doubles down on his sentiments in the previous passage, which draws a greater connection between Grief and the Struggle for Social Acceptance and Fate Versus Free Will as themes. Once again deploying the subjunctive mood, Tolly believes that he is fated to live a meaningless life, no matter what direction that life would have taken. Blaming his circumstances is the only thing he can do with no other real agency. This makes it clearer why becoming a slasher allows him to upset those circumstances and attempt to make something of his life.

“‘And hate’s just—’

‘Fear turned inside out,’ I finished for her, mockingly.”

In this passage, Amber and Tolly mockingly recall a motivational poster in their school. The slogan on the poster idiomatically reflects Tolly’s fears for the future, as well as the way his life as a slasher impacts those fears. By upsetting the status quo in Lamesa, Tolly’s rage allows him to have power over his fears.

“It’s not about ‘want.’ It’s about have-to. You can’t stop until…until it’s over. Until all the guilty parties have been, you know. Punished. That’s why—it’s probably why Stace was finally able to take Justin Joss down, yeah? Because he’d done what he came to do.”

In this passage, Amber uses slasher genre conventions to create expectations for the plot beats in the last two chapters. These conventions expose a crucial loophole for Tolly: If Tolly succeeds in killing the marching band, then he is vulnerable to the final girl’s attacks. Through these tropes, Jones also comments on the way the lack of a revenge motive renders the slasher pointless.

“How Amber had just been saying the Josses and Shannon and Lesley had all fallen into their respective roles? That was exactly what was going on here, in front of the Rabbit, under the shade of the Town & Country: Amber was grinning and looking down, playing demure and embarrassed not because she was, but because of some guy-girl dynamic she couldn’t help, in the handsome face of this twenty-six-year-old probably making an impossible fifteen dollars an hour just because he could lay a bead like a line of dimes.”

Although Amber has been falling into the pattern of the final girl through her newfound love for reading and animals, Tolly observes that her attractiveness in the eyes of other men is also a sudden development that aligns with genre tropes. Tolly’s later admission that he is an unreliable narrator shaping the story to how he feels about this time of his life recontextualizes this moment as one of fear. He values his relationship with Amber so much that her engagements with men become features of the horror genre in his eyes.

“Slashers don’t really have an inbuilt religion or sense of decency, but there are still things that would be absolute sacrilege to us, make our souls recoil with travesty. Slapping that dying penny down, it would be the worst of the worst, an insult no amount of blood or screaming could drown.”

Jones comments on the slasher genre in this passage: What the slasher craves is not the death of their transgressors, nor the restitution of what was damaged, but the suffering of those who wronged them. Slashers thrive on suffering, and through the lens of Justin and Tolly’s stories, the suffering of their bullies is weighed against the suffering the two slashers have experienced all their lives.

“I had to kill them, yes, but I don’t think I had to […] couldn’t the me trapped in this have stepped loudly enough to have alerted them? Didn’t I have at least that much control?

[…]

Except what was roiling through my head, what was becoming larger and worse in the rearview with each step I’m taking through the mesquite that night, it was how terrible it had been to be strapped to that lounge chair by the pool. How this had been five against one, and that one had been drunk past being able to defend himself, and that, really, the only reason he’d been drinking in the first place was to, for a moment, forget that his dad was gone and never coming back. So, pretty much, what they’d done at Deek’s party was spit on my pain, on my grief.”

This passage marks a turning point in Tolly’s ownership of his actions. He begins to succumb to slasher logic, agreeing with the leaps in logic that justify why the marching band should die. Key to this line of thinking is the weaponization of Tolly’s grief. He indicates that the marching band mocked his suffering, willfully ignoring the fact that none of the marching band seemed to care about him until he jumped into the pool. Slasher logic is emblematic of The Perils of Revenge as a theme, showing how revenge might force one to bend the truth to their advantage.

“I don’t believe your dad would have wanted this life for you. He—he said you were smart, that you were going places, were going to write your own ticket.”

Tolly’s encounter with the pumper reveals the contradiction of using his grief to justify his anger over his doomed circumstances. By making it clear that Tolly’s father wanted Tolly to live according to his ambitions, the pumper helps Tolly realize that to resign himself to his perceived fate would dishonor his late father’s memory. To truly honor his father and his grief, Tolly would have to transcend his circumstances.

“So if me telling how the welder and my’s interaction that day felt instead of how it actually was makes everything else I’ve written here a lie, so be it.

But there’s another way to take it. Ask yourself why I would go to all that trouble, right? What’s motorvating—as my dad used to say—me to do that, and what am I saying without really saying it?

I’m asking, here. Because I honestly don’t know.

Is it a slasher thing? Another mask, maybe? Some kind of deflection?”

This passage reframes Tolly as an unreliable narrator. After he admits to fictionalizing his encounter with the welder, Tolly casts doubt on the entire enterprise of his narrative. He justifies, however, that the events he has narrated speak more accurately to the feeling of his experiences, rather than the experiences themselves. He highlights the value of his narrative according to this standard rather than the criteria of accuracy and truthfulness.