Happy times for the Horror Girls

(As told to Alan Forsythe)

Hi, my name’s Jen and I want to tell you about the fucking amazing time my twin (guess which one’s evil) sister Janet and I have been having lately, since we got into making movies and scaring the shit out of people.

We’ve always been kind of 'out there.' When we were little girls we had no time for dolls or Barbies. No way, we preferred to put on homemade horror masks and terrorize other little kids in the neighbourhood. Little kids scare easily though, we’ve really had to step up our game now that we’re all grown up. If we did play with Barbies it generally involved some sort of torture, murder rape scenario, ya seriously, we were twisted.

So how cool is it that we can make a living at doing what we love! Right? But don’t think it was easy, because making a movie is a challenge on a micro, micro budget. You have to be super resourceful, and let’s face it kind of ruthless.

My sister and I are, not to be braggy, but we’re hot, so we get boys to do most of the technical stuff for us. You know lighting, camera sound recording that sort of thing. We stick to the directing and set dec (that’s short for set decoration) it’s what you do to make a scene look believable or as believable as possible. Can I tell you something? Janet and I, we love, love doing set dec. we just let our creepy imaginations run amok.

On our first feature, Dead Call Girl in a Closet, which we made for just $2000 (and some favours) we went through a lot of blood, a lot of blood and, well, you wouldn’t think it but all of that corn syrup and red dye starts to add up pretty quick.

Remember I said we were resourceful? You better believe we are, resourceful and determined, so look out world. Anyway there was this one boy, Gerald, he wasn’t like the other guys working with us, i.e. he didn’t have any technical skills to offer, he just wanted to get involved in movie making; so we let him be a P.A (production assistant) it’s like basically the lowest position there is on a film set.

Now Gerald’s super eager and always trying to be helpful and shit, but in a way he’s also kind of annoying. I mean it’s like when we would wrap at the end of the day; we’d kick back with a cold one, talk shop with our great crew guys and tell ourselves what a fantastic movie we were making. Then there’s Gerald, with his lost puppy look ruining the cool filmmaker vibe we had going.

One night after the crew had gone home and Janet I we’re left alone to put the finishing touches on the apartment where we were going to shoot the final scene. It was supposed to be a real blood bath, everyone accuses the other of murdering the call girl and there’s this Mexican standoff and then blam, blam, blam, blood and guts everywhere. The problem we discovered, was that between all of the squibs and added blood spray for the walls and drapes and everything, we didn’t have enough fake blood left, and we had run through our entire budget by that point. 
We were planning on wearing super slutty clothes on the last day of shooting to encourage all the guys, since we were out of money for catering, but still, that wouldn’t help us get any more fake blood.

Well we were like shit bitch, now what do we do? And who should walk in but Gerald, being his usual eager annoying self, going, “hey ladies anything I can do to help?”

I was actually about to tell him to fuck off, and okay granted that would have been pretty bitchy, but he was being really stalkerish. And I was more concerned about how to finish our movie and make it look right than Gerald’s feelings. So I didn’t care about his stupid hurt puppy look. I was in no mood for his useless suggestions, not too mention his stupid nerd clothes always bothered me. I mean polo shirts? Really. Sure, okay, maybe as an ironic retro eighties thing, but then that was another thing I hated about Gerald, he had no sense of irony.

Before I could snap at him however Janet had decided on a different course of action, she plunged a foot-long kitchen knife, we were using as a prop, through the poor guy’s back, it went right through him and the point stuck out of his stomach (he was a scrawny little guy).

I was like, “holy shit Janet, what the fuck! Meanwhile Gerald’s standing there sucking air in these rasping gasps like a fish out of water or something, while blood was coming out of his mouth in these little bubbles (part of me was thinking, damn, I wish we filmed this).

Anyway Janet pulls the giant fucking blade from out of Gerald who then collapses to the floor, twitches a couple of times and then just lies still, oozing blood all over the place. He was, it was fairly obvious, stone cold dead. And Janet just looks at me blankly and goes, “what?”

“What bitch, are you kidding me!? You just killed Gerald!”

“So, no one liked him.”

“So!?, It’s like murder for Christ sakes! People take that shit like, way serious!" I was really angry at the time, but part of me did think she made a good point, no one did like him, but still.

“Okay Jen, you need to calm down and just think this through. No one cares about Gerald, I mean okay sure, I guess he has a family somewhere, but whatever. Secondly we need to stop wasting time and get his blood splattered around the room in a pleasingly artistic way before it turns all gross and black.”

It was then that I realized, wow the bitch is a fucking genius. So budget problem solved and did we ever set dec the shit out of that apartment. It ended up looking like something Stanley Kubrik would have come up with (if he had been a poor indie filmmaker with a psychotic twin sister.)

Although shocked and a little disgusted at first, in the end I was really proud of Janet and kind of wished I’d thought of it myself.

The crew were totally blown away when they came in the next day, saying we had out done ourselves on the gore factor and how good it was going to look on film. A couple of them did remark the blood looked almost real, but then I bent over in my skirt to pick something up (you know, like an imaginary pen or something) and that was the end of that. And just like Janet said, not one person remarked on Gerald’s absence or even seemed to notice he was gone. We had wrapped his body in some plastic sheets and dumped it at the local landfill early that morning. It was crazy, I mean we just drove in, they weighed us and the foreman guy goes, “ya just dump your trash here,” he says pointing to a spot a little ways in from the gate. So we lift Gerald’s plastic wrapped body out of the trunk heave it on the trash and drive out with the foreman guy nodding at us and wishing us a nice day. We just about cracked up at that and agreed we had to use it in a movie sometime.

So a few weeks later the movie’s finished and we make all the festivals and the fan boys are just drooling over us, cause like I said we're hot. Plus everyone said we had this mysterious-kinky-dark-vibe about us that apparently added to, ‘our allure.’

At our hometown film fest this young producer guy flew in from L.A, saying he’d heard so much about our film and wanted to meet us in the flesh.

 He shows up in town and calls us up, raving about how talented we are and how we’re just what Hollywood needs right now and blah, blah, blah, and that he wants to hang out with us all weekend to really get inside our heads (okay creepy). But whatever, we meet him at the big gala party, which was actually pretty lame. It was held at some musty smelling old theatre everyone kept referring to as ‘a work of art.’ At least there was lots of free booze, thank Christ. And as it turned out Producer Guy was actually kind of cute, if you could get past the whole creepy vibe he put out.

“The Horror Twins,” he calls out when he sees us, and I’m thinking ‘Horror Twins?’ Really dude? There was a pretty obvious alliteration there that was highly applicable. But never mind, Janet and I can play the game. We sidle up to him and pretty soon it’s one big mutual adoration fest as we cooed about his films like a couple of geeks at ComicCon. We sprinkle in just the right amount of pop cultural references to confirm how hip we are, and he keeps going on about how hot and talented we were. Which would have been more flattering if he didn’t keep emphasizing hotness over talent, like, “You guys are so freaking sexy and hot! And it’s so cool you’ve got all this talent.” Well, whatever. 

At one point Janet looks at me and shrugs, I get it, I mean what the hell we’ve done worse guys, and this is one that can help us make our next film.

A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do I think, as he makes a big deal out of slipping us a couple of tabs of ecstasy (kind of retro I thought) and Janet and I drag him off to the one cool bar in town. It was an after hours place that catered mostly to drag queens, leathermen and really scary butch dykes, but we kept him entertained doing our hot lesbian twins act on the dance floor. At one point this tall, um, well we were never quite sure what she was, either a 6’2 transsexual with close cropped platinum hair or a really built lesbian chick (maybe it was the ecstasy but I was into her whatever she was) starts trying to drag us away, and Producer Guy was having none of that. I guess he figured it was time to make the party private.

 The next morning at his hotel we’re all lying in bed, kind of all still tangled up from the previous night’s fun, and Producer Guy starts to stir. I’m thinking oh no, I’m not into morning sex, I just want to shower and put my face back on. But he surprises me, he props himself up on a pillow and in this suddenly business like tone of voice asks,

“What ever happened to that kid who disappeared from your set?”

Janet and I were both like, “what?” But she took the lead, cause, and I can admit this, she's totally a better liar than me.

“Well nobody knows what happened to Gerald, he just sort of disappeared. But it wasn’t from our set, he just didn’t show up the next day, he was a weird kid, who knows?”

“Sure, but didn’t it freak you out a little, you’re making this movie about a bunch of murderers on the run and then one of your crew just disappears?”

I was like what is this guy getting at? But Janet as usual was cool as can be, what a great sis she is!

“Not really, he wasn’t that big a part of our group, we kind of just gave him stuff to do because he wanted to learn filmmaking. So whether he disappeared after leaving our set or after walking out of a 7-11 it was about the same to us. Sad ya, I guess, I mean I dunno, maybe he’s off in Thailand or something, but whatever we didn’t feel that connected to the whole thing.”

I’m thought good answer, but Producer Guy he has this quizzical look on his face that's really hard to read, so part of me is also thinking we're not out of the woods yet.

“Oh come on girls, don't kid a kidder." I probably should have kept my mouth shut, but I couldn't help it, I was wondering where he was going with this. So stupidly I blurt out something like, what was he getting at, or whatever. I glanced over at Janet and she's giving me the cool it look with her eyes, but it was too late.

"What am I getting at? Well not to put too fine a point on it, I'm pretty sure you killed him.”

Whoa, that was unexpected, it wasn’t even a question, he flat out said it like, ‘hey that was great sex.’ So despite some furious looks from Janet I just kept ploughing ahead, I mean after all this was getting kind of intriguing, right?

“Why on earth would we want to kill Gerald?”

“Probably because he was annoying you.”

“True,” I said, and I could see Janet was about to jump in and say something like, what I meant was that it was true he was annoying not that we killed him, and then if I could keep my mouth shut we could get dressed say our goodbyes and find some other Hollywood producer to sleep with.

But in a weird way I was sort of past caring. So anyway, before she could mumble something about him making ‘wild accusations, or that, 'really, it was down right rude what he was implying considering what we had done to him, he had done to us, and we had done to each other the night before and thank you very much we’ll just get dressed, and no you can’t have our panties (I dunno, he just seemed like the type) and we’ll be on our way, have a nice life.’ No, before she could even got one word out, I added,

“And we enjoyed it.”

First of all while that seemed like a really unwise admission to make I have to admit it just felt right, cause honestly, even though it was really Janet's move, in retrospect I did think killing Gerald was kind of funny. I mean I still get a chuckle out of it now.

“I knew it!” says Producer Guy like we just told him we’re both vegan and he has this great chickpea recipe for us.

“I just knew, God that’s so sexy, you guys are hot!”

“So you’ve mentioned,” I said as sarcastically as I could muster.

“How’d you do it?”

“Do you mind if I ask how you guessed in the first place?” says Janet, getting all business like herself suddenly.

“Just a feeling. When I saw your film my first thought was that the murder scenes were very detailed, it added to the horror, but I was intrigued it seemed, I don’t know, it seemed like you had a feel for it. Then when I met you something in your look told me, yup these girls could kill.”

“Are you implying we killed Gerald just to get a feel for murder?”

“Did you?”

“No.” Was my flat denial, and ya, actually for me that was true. But Janet as I was learning, was much more of a student on killing people than me. And now that the truth was out of the bag, she couldn't explain her murder of our lowly little PA Gerald fast enough.

“Ya, sort of, I mean Gerald was annoying, so it was only a matter of time I guess. But really the idea came to me while we were writing the script, of actually seeing what it was like to kill someone." I'm thinking Jesus bitch, the idea of murdering someone started then? Holy shit that's dark. 

"Then when we were shooting and I saw all of that blood, well, you know, it got me wondering, what would it really be like. That plus we needed the blood.” I agreed, and while it's sort of wrong to kill someone, even a loser like Gerald, you did have to admire our resourcefulness. 

At that point the shock of what we were admitting to had kind of worn off, and it felt like were having like this really great encounter session.

“So what about you Producer Guy, ever kill anyone?”

“No, well not yet anyway.” He said it like he was disappointed he wasn't part of the murder club, like he was admitting he didn't get laid until he was twenty or something.

At this point I’m thinking, wow when did murder become the cool new thing to do? Of course Janet was all over this.

“Well maybe we can help you with that.”

I think Producer Guy mumbled something like, “I was hoping you’d say that,” but with all the talk of murder the sexual tension in the room had shot through the roof, and he was suddenly all over Janet, and I felt like I had to jump in as well, even though I’m really not that keen on morning sex, but whatever.

               ***

Producer Guy went back to Hollywood the next day and things returned more to what I guess you would call normal.

Although normal’s relative, because Janet, since wrapping our film kept talking about who we should kill next. I’d say, “what do you mean we, freak, I didn’t kill anyone.” But I don’t think she even heard me. And when we were out shopping or something she’d always be pointing and going, “hey what about him, or maybe that guy?” It was always men, she told me she didn’t think it was right to kill women (I guess it was the feminist in her).

So it’s months later, and we never did hear back from Producer Guy, and the glamour of the festival circuit had long since faded, that Janet, one night, announces, “Let’s just go film something.”

“Like what?”

“I dunno, just something, I need to do something.”

Ok, I think, what the hell, I was feeling kind of anxious myself in a weird sort of way. It was like we had this ‘sparkle’ for a little while, then it faded, and now it was gone. I felt maybe some how we had missed something, and wondered if we were ever going to get that ‘sparkle’ back.

A couple of hours later we're driving around the city, getting further and further out. We’ve got a pretty decent digital camera and a couple of attachable lights but Janet had also thrown some handcuffs, rope, plastic tarp and this big machete thing that I didn’t even know she had in the trunk with our camera gear.

I really, really should have been more suspicious when she brought all that stuff along. I did ask her and she smiled and just said, “oh you know, for props and whatnot.”

After a few hours of driving aimlessly I was bored. More bored than if I had just stayed home, where at least I could have watched downloads of my favourite show, ‘Vamp Magic,’ the title refers to a key plot element, I won’t tell you what it is in case you haven’t seen it. I’ve watched every episode, but I like to rewatch them, especially the sex scenes, which often end with someone getting killed or at least extremely bloody.

Janet however had this really intense look about her, I swear, if I didn’t know better I’d think she was looking for a fix.

“Oh shit ya! He’s perfect!” She yells, like wayyy too loud, just when I was about to ask her to take me home (for like the sixth time). The ‘he’ she was raving about was a young guy, maybe just a little older than us, kind of soft looking, not fat or pudgy, just you know, soft. He had this really gross scraggly goatee and was wearing baggy jeans (what else) a greased stained baseball cap and a hoody (again, what else).

It didn’t look like he was going anywhere in particular, and you had to wonder what he was doing, since where we were it was mainly industrial and there weren’t many homes around. And anyway I’m thinking ‘perfect’? There’s nothing near resembling perfect about the guy that I could see. But Janet pulls over and I could see she was practically licking her lips she was so excited. The guy was kind of slow to look up and he did a double take when he saw it was two cute girls pulling over to talk with him.

“Hey are you lost?” Janet said it with a big (creepy) smile on her face.

“Uh, hey, no I’m just heading home.” The guy did not come across as being all that intelligent (wow, big surprise).

“Home, out here?

“Uh, ya, well it’s a ways.”

“Well you need a ride?”

Okay so just go ahead and call me stupid because I did not get what Janet was up to until that point. I guess part of it was denial, which apparently can be pretty strong or so they say, but also because I didn’t want to admit to myself that I was sort of into it…I guess that’s denial too, whatever.

So of course he jumps right in the car, I mean after all this is this guy’s biggest wet dream come true. I introduce myself and try to stop from gagging from the stench of his BO.

“Hey so you guys are like sisters, right?” Like I said he wasn’t that smart.

“That’s right.” Janet says, still in her super cheerful mode, which sounded sooo phony to me, but the stupid guy in the baseball cap just ate it up.

Janet starts heading further out of town and we keep up a steady stream of chatter so the stinky guy in the back seat doesn’t think to wonder why we never asked where he lived or which way we should go.

By the time Janet had driven us clear out of the city Stinky Guy finally woke up to the fact we weren’t taking him home.

“Hey this isn’t where I live.” It was seriously painful to watch him think, you could see the gears grinding away. I think it may have given him actual physical pain.

“Oh me and my sister had something else in mind, you don’t mind do you?”

“Uh I guess not, as long as I’m involved.”

“Oh you’re definitely involved, in a big way.” Okay I know I said this guy was like super stupid, but even someone that dumb should have been spooked by the way Janet said, “you’re involved in a big way,” I mean come on dude, she’s looking at you like you’re a piece of flank steak.

Well anyway we find a nice secluded spot off the highway a bit, and Stinky Guy’s all,

“So who wants to start first?”

Ya sure you keep dreaming. Janet tells him to relax and that we’re kind of kinky and that she’d like to put handcuffs on him, which of course he goes for. Then she leads him over to a tree and asks if it’s okay if we tie him up, “then we’ll get started, I promise, it’s going to be really exciting,” purrs Janet to the guy and he really didn’t need much convincing. Although I’m thinking like, come on! Hasn’t he seen one horror film in his life? Two random hot girls pick him up at random (something that was never going to happen in his wildest dreams) drive him to a secluded location, and want to handcuff him and tie him to a tree, and he’s still not thinking, ‘mmm, this might not be such a good idea, well, fuck, whatever, his funeral.

We get the guy tied up and Janet tells me (that’s right, tells me, bitch) to get the camera and lights.

We get everything set up and although the lights were just small battery powered things we put them at a high angle and got a pretty good eerie looking effect. By this time Stinky Guy’s starting to have some doubts, but Janet teased and soothed him a bit (like you know, in an erotic way) while I learned my lines. That’s right she had a script and she wanted me to act them out. She, clearly, had been thinking about this scenario for awhile.

“We’ll only get one take so if it goes a bit sideways improvise.”

Right, sure, killing a guy tied to a tree and I’m supposed to just improvise. Come to think of it, I guess that is improvisation, whatever.

So I pull out the machete, and at this point Stinky Guy has started to realize the night is not going to end in a letter to Penthouse Forum sort of way.

“Why did you think you could cheat us!” I yelled at him, while Janet started filming.

“What!? What are you talking about?”

“Denying it will just make it worse for you!”

Okay, this was really not Janet’s best dialogue, but I guess you have to work with what you’re given.

“Tell us who you were working with and I’ll make it quick.”

“What! Make what quick!?”

“The dumb act is wearing thin Johnny. Who was in on it with you, was it Dallas, Ponyboy, Two-Bit or was it the whole damn gang?”

I have to admit I was starting to enjoy myself by that point, and I could see what Janet was going for – stilted, clichéd dialogue but in an ironic way.

“Who the hell? I don’t know what you mean!?”

“Okay Johnny, play it tough, but I’m warning you this isn’t fun and games anymore, we’re playing for keeps.”

“Okay, okay, I get it, you guys got me good, I’m scared alright, you can cut me down now.” I looked over at Janet, Stinky Guy had gone off script a bit, we had expected him to just keep screaming denials and saying we were crazy. Janet gave me a nod and I realized it was time to step up the drama.

“I warned you Johnny, the cute act is over.”

With that I walked over and hacked his leg just above the knee with the machete. It went in pretty deep, but nowhere close to what I was expecting (the idea was to chop his legs off, ya Janet is one twisted little bitch). Unfortunately at that point Stinky Guy starts screaming at the top of his lungs, and yikes that boy could hollar.

So I took another swing at it, but between him screaming and me feeling a little freaked out by the whole thing my second swing was pretty feeble and just made another cut across his thigh. That made Stinky Guy yell even louder (how that was possible I don’t know).

 “For fucks sake Jen!”

“I Can’t help it he’s yelling so loud, it throws me off.”

“Wait, wait, you guys don’t have to do this!”

“Just come here Jen, I’ll do it, but change the camera angle. Oh wait get a close up of the machete so we have something to cutaway to.”

“No you guys, just stop, just stop for a minute!”

Janet takes the machete and marches up to the guy and gets right beside him. I frame it so you could just see her arms and the machete. She levels the machete at Stinky Guy’s throat to get the aim right, and the poor guy knows what’s next.

“No, no don’t, don’t, please no!” Of course Jen just ignores him (she’s a cool one that girl I’ll give her that) and swings for all she’s worth. His head didn’t come completely off but almost, and the screaming stopped, thankfully.

Jen then hacked the few remaining strands of flesh holding the guy’s head on and it rolled off and bounced to the ground.

“Did you get it?”

“Got it.”

“Hey maybe we should do another take for insurance?” She had this mischievous grin on her face, and I’m like yeah, haha Janet. Good God that girl had a black sense of humour.

So we cut the body down, removed the handcuffs, wrapped the torso and head in the plastic, and the following morning we tipped it into the dump, waving and smiling at the nice foreman guy on the way out.

               ***

Now you might think that using a real murder scene in a movie with someone who has been reported missing clearly visible as the victim in said murder scene would get you slapped in jail for life faster than you can say smashcut. Well you’d be wrong. Janet and I put together a pretty grisly little no budget thriller about two girls (us) on a vendetta against the men who stole their inheritance. Yes that’s right men, we didn’t stop with Stinky Guy, there was Hippie Guy, Wannabe Gang Banger Guy, Total Douche Frat Boy Guy and my favourite, Accept the Lord into Your Heart Guy.

We edited the story to appear as if we were hunting down our wrongdoers one by one and dispatching each in his own unique gory way. Sure it was a little choppy but people raved, just raved about our special effects. The fan boys practically wet themselves on viewing our gorefest opus. One even said to me, “I’d let you guys murder me any day.” Janet and I had a good laugh over that one. And the fan girls hailed it as a feminist masterpiece (well, I think  one of them said that).

So we hit the festival circuit, got that sparkle back, and we were living large again. Then one day, a few months into our new found fame who should call but Producer Guy. Never one to mince words he got right to the point.

“Kudos girls, what was it six murders, Jesus you guys really don’t let anything get in the way do you?”

Janet, as usual did the talking.

“Jealous much Producer Guy?”

“Yeah I am, I wish I had your ruthlessness. But I’m not going to let your talents go to waste this time.”

“Oh yeah, a picture deal?”

“Well yes, but one that calls for your unique filmmaking skills.”

“So who do we have to kill?”

“For starters there’s this director…