Chapter 19 – Finale

Today it's been a week since I'm back home.

I have got my cuffs removed by a locksmith – my brother is curious as hell to know how I got them, but I haven't told him yet. I also haven't explained the choking marks on my throat; why I didn't bring back my backpack; why I have been in such a strange mood.

My brother also cannot understand what could have possibly happened that was so bad; bad enough to get me crying so often. He is giving me time. Now that I took the courage to put this down on paper, I finally feel ready to tell him the whole story. Tomorrow, possibly.

I'll consider myself lucky if he doesn't institutionalize me afterwards.

One of the first questions that I asked him, as soon as I woke up from fainting: did The Devil's Rejects really hit the theaters on the 22nd?

"What kind of question is that?" he wanted to know. "You talked about it day and night before it came, and you dragged me along with you to watch it. You don't remember? Have you hit your head in Ruggsville, sister?"

So it did happen.

On that same night, I went to the movie theater again. My brother offered to go with me, given my extremely agitated mental state since I arrived. But I needed to be alone.

While everybody else was chatting, chewing on popcorn and slurping soda, I was shaking insanely, biting at my own hand to try and calm down. I opened my purse and removed the precious, priceless object.

Otis' t-shirt. I had missed him so much – on my stupid stubbornness to stay far from him – that I had taken the habit of carrying his t-shirt around in my pant's pocket, sniffing it every once in a while. That's how I still had it with me when I escaped back home.

From the moment the movie started, to the minute it ended, I couldn't will myself to stop crying, pressing the beloved t-shirt against my face, still smelling Otis in it. I was annoying everybody in the theater, but I couldn't care less.

The movie began with what I experienced that same morning – Tiny dragging a body, cops arriving, shooting the house, the whole thing. There should be an actress playing me, I told myself in a weak attempt to humor. I was already missing my friends' real faces, but the actors were all I had to see the story again.

At every second of the film, I hoped ardently that things had gone slightly different. Maybe I've altered the past, I hoped; maybe they didn't have a sad ending. Unfortunately, the entire movie was exactly the same as it was before. I had proven myself completely useless to save my friends, or to cause the story any changes at all. At the end, everybody died, and people left the movie theater chatting about the great movie that they had just watched.

No changes occurred in the movie. Except for a little, tiny one. A detail, really. Later on, fans across the world were discussing it in online message boards, wondering what the heck did that detail have to do with the plot, and who was this chick that the characters had briefly referred to. No one seemed to have a clue.

The scene was the one where the house was on fire, and Tiny had just rescued Otis, Baby and Spaulding. Those three were in the car, ready to hit the road; Otis asked: "Are you sure about this?" and Tiny signaled that he was going to stay. So far, same old stuff.

But then something different happened. Tiny spoke his only line on the movie. That deep voice that scared everybody else, but was so beautiful to me. He told Otis: "Laura said she was going back home. She said she loves you."

I cried harder when I heard that – but it was tears of joy. I had never told him that I loved him. Now he knew it. Otis answer to that, however, made me laugh and cry at the same time.

He looked up at Tiny, then straight ahead, in contemplative silence for a few seconds. Finally he spoke, looking at nobody, as if he were talking to himself; he had a very sad smile on his face. "Laura, I love you, too. Soon, I am also going back home."

And without looking back, they hit the road.

THE END