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Ainsley didn’t know pain could be this bad. She didn’t know that her entire body could feel like it was falling without her head attached and that her veins could feel like they were melting. Her heart felt like it was collapsing in on itself and her neck felt like it was turning inside out. She felt it in her shoulder blades, the backs of her hands, and her knees. She couldn’t breathe, because she felt if she did it would be the last straw and her body wouldn’t be able to stand on its own anymore. Every square inch of her body felt a deep, crushing pain that made her want to sink into the floor and not stop until she burned in the center and couldn’t feel it anymore.
That was the pain she felt when her boyfriend took off the mask.
The pain felt on the inside in her heart, head, and everywhere else imaginable, was worse than the pain left over from the cut she’d suffered from Ghostface days before. It was worse than the pain from getting kicked to the ground and thrown around by Ghostface minutes before. And those physical pains had already been amplified by the knowledge that it could’ve been Ethan who did it.
Her pain, the overwhelming feeling of betrayal, of loneliness, of being used, was joined with an immense fear that only grew as time ticked by ever so slowly. Ethan knew all of Ainsley’s secrets. He knew her biggest fears, and the ways to hurt her the most. He knew who she loved, what she loved, and everything she wanted in life. If he desired, he knew exactly how to get to her in ways that anyone else would never even think of. They say “it's always someone you know,” but she didn’t think it would ever be someone who knew her as well as Ethan did. And she thought she knew him – but apparently, she didn’t.
She almost didn’t hear any of the words or story monologued by the three family Ghostfaces, because as soon as she made eye contact with her boyfriend, blood lust in his eyes, her head started pounding and she could hear the blood rushing past her ears, matching her rapidly increasing heartbeat. The most of what she picked up was that the three of them were somehow related, and were trying to kill Sam and Tara to avenge the death of Richie Kirsch, who had been another member of their family. Every single second that passed, Ainsley felt worse and worse, the added deception and knowing how much Ethan had lied to her severely hurting. It hadn’t even been his real name.
But soon enough, she was pulled out of her treacherous thoughts when the room started to move. Every person started to run in different directions, the three killers splitting up between the three victims who were left. Ainsley almost felt selfish running away once her feet caught up with her brain since Sam and Tara were the ones in real trouble here – everyone was a target, but the sisters were the yellow dot in the middle of the target. But that also meant that Ainsley was probably supposed to be next, as the killers were trying to get the Carpenters alone. So, without looking at who was even chasing her, Ainsley ran faster than she knew she could, the new betrayal and heartbreak fueling her adrenaline somehow.
She ended up in a room that only had one entry point, and before she could run out and try to find another route, or block the door with something, the door burst open, and in came Ethan, his curly hair not looking quite as cute to Ainsley when it was paired with a Ghostface robe and a bloody knife. Ainsley scanned the room for something, anything that she could use to fight him off, and grabbed a folding chair in desperation. But as she lifted it and prepared to throw it or use it as some kind of shield, she saw Ethan calmly closing the door behind him and then just standing still, looking Ainsley directly in the eyes.
Neither of them moved. If Ethan was trying to lure her in, it was working. For a second, Ainsley saw beyond the past ten minutes and just saw the boy she’d come to love in the past few months. The one she’d spent hours with, just sitting together in comfortable silence. The one she’d told what felt like her entire life story and got his story back. But when she remembered that his entire story had apparently been fabricated, reality set back in.
The chair was launched from her arms, as hard as she could possibly throw it. She braced herself for what would happen after and began to scan the room for more possible weapons, but when she looked back up, Ethan hadn’t even moved. He let the chair hit him without even ducking, and he had a look of sympathy and sadness in his eyes, completely opposite from the violence and fucked up joy he’d shown just a few minutes before.
Through tears and heaps of confusion, Ainsley picked up a cardboard box, definitely not heavy enough to do any damage, but bulky enough to cause some annoyance, and threw it at her boyfriend. But he stayed put, his knife at his side and his other hand up, almost in surrender.
“Ainsley, please stop,” she heard, softer than she’d ever heard him speak. If he was playing victim to earn a false trust and then stab her in the back, it wasn’t going to work.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Ainsley screamed with raw emotion. He wasn’t going to fool her. She was fighting for her life now, and didn’t care who was on the other side trying to take it. She threw a stray popcorn bucket, more to distract him than to hurt him. The room had clearly been a place for birthday parties — not so much anymore.
“Please, please, please,” Ethan said, coming out in begging whispers. He squatted down and placed his knife on the ground before sliding it away from himself and towards Ainsley. It skidded across the floor and landed right at her feet. “Ains, look. I’m not gonna hurt you. Please stop.”
Ainsley lowered her arm, her fourth makeshift weapon in her hand in the form of a big glass platter. She bent down and picked up the knife, examining it in her hand. It didn’t feel right to hold at all. This knife had most likely hurt her friends. Hurt her. Just touching it made her feel sick.
But also, she was holding it. Not Ethan. He’d given up his one and only weapon (if she were to believe that) in an attempt to get Ainsley to trust him. She knew she wasn’t as strong as he was, but he’d given her the power. It wouldn’t hurt to hear him out, especially since she now had the upper hand if things went south.
“Why should I listen to you?” Ainsley asked, disgust in her voice. She allowed herself to let her guard down a bit, as she wasn’t actively searching for another blunt object to pummel her boyfriend with, and she wiped some of the tears that had been streaking down her wet face for what felt like the whole night at this point.
“I don’t want to be doing this,” Ethan said quietly, looking like he was shaking. “My dad forced me into it. He always hated me and when his golden boy got killed he hated me even more. This was the only way to please him, and I’m still not convinced he’s not gonna turn around and kill me after it’s done.”
Ainsley’s eyebrows furrowed and she felt a pang in her heart. He sounded close to tears, and it was hard to tell if he was being honest or not. She remembered he’d mentioned something about his dad not liking him before, but obviously no other details on exactly why. When she forgot all of the awful things she’d been terrorized with for the past few days, it was hard not to care for Ethan after loving him for what felt like much longer than it actually had been. He’d always been there for her, and it was taking a lot of strength not to go over and wrap her arms around him that very second. Well, not a lot of strength – just a glance down at his tattered black robe and the blood on his hands. And because of the red, she pushed off all of the pity she felt.
“Did you kill Anika?” He’d said he was at class. Ainsley had believed him whole-heartedly, because how would she not have? But now she was starting to have her doubts and wished she’d listened to her best friend when she was throwing accusations. After she posed the question, there was a silence. Ainsley took that as a yes, and her insides felt twisted again. There was a look on Ethan’s face almost like he was reliving the moment he killed their friend, and thankfully, it didn’t look like a fond memory – but he had still done it.
“Did you kill Chad?” More silence. Chad had gotten stabbed in the hallway not even twenty minutes before and Tara was so broken up that there was no way he was coming back from it.
And then the hard hitter: her best friend. Her roommate. The one who introduced her to her entire support system at college and in a new state. The person who always made her feel better when she was down and had gotten her so out of her shell. “Did you kill Mindy?”
“No,” Ethan said, almost scaring Ainsley when he finally spoke up. He seemed very adamant to get his point across, and given the fact that he’d basically confessed to the other murders with his silence, he was definitely telling the truth. “I didn’t, I promise. I was supposed to leave her to die after Quinn stabbed her. But– I just– I couldn’t. I know how much she means to you. I took her to get help and got her taken to the hospital.”
So Mindy was alive. Though she had so much piling up that was stressing her out, Ainsley felt one weight feel lifted off of her shoulders at the revelation. And for a second she felt immense gratitude towards Ethan, before realizing that he was still part of the problem. He’d followed through on the plan to separate her from the group in the first place, and he’d still killed Anika, who Ainsley really thought he’d become good friends with. And he probably killed Chad, too.
Once you kill, there are not a lot of things that can redeem you. There’s no going back, and it seemed like Ethan knew that.
“I’m not asking you to forgive me,” he said. “For any of that.” Ainsley could see tears starting to form in his big brown eyes and slip out. She could tell that he was telling the truth – even though she didn’t know him as well as she thought she had, she still knew his mannerisms and that he couldn’t fake this level of emotion. “I just wanted to make sure you don’t live the rest of your life thinking I was a monster.”
“Kinda too late for that,” Ainsley got out, taking shaky breaths at all of the different emotions welling up inside her. She almost laughed when she said it, too.
“That, all that out there,” Ethan said, pointing at the door in the direction of where his family had just had their whole big reveal. “That was fake. I had to play it up for them. I would never say those things. You know me.”
So much in Ainsley wanted to believe him. And to a point, she did. It was almost too hard to imagine him actually being like that, but he’d been so convincing. She used to believe he could never hurt a fly (and he really couldn’t – one of her favorite memories she’d shared with Ethan had been when he gently caught a bug in his dorm and took it all the way downstairs and outside instead of killing it), but after the way he’d laughed and grinned and yelled about being a killer, she had run for her life from him. She’d been ready to throw a heavy plate at him and not be worried if it hurt him, because he had made her believe he deserved it. And now he was doing the opposite.
“You really seemed like you wanted to kill us,” Ainsley said, making sure he couldn’t tell everything that was going on in her head. It was better to not show the sliver of love that was still inside her heart.
“What do I have to do to get you to trust me?” he replied, almost whining. It seemed genuine, but at the same time, it was the ploy that all love interest villains end up playing.
“I’ve seen all the fucking movies, Ethan! I know that’s what you say to get me to feel bad so I come over and hug you and you stab me in the back with an extra knife you probably have stuffed down your fucking pants!” She didn’t not believe it.
And those words seemed to stab Ethan right in the heart. “I would never hurt you. You know that.”
But the cut on her thigh that had made it harder and harder for her to run ever since the night Anika died said otherwise. Ainsley didn’t even need to say anything; she glanced down at it and Ethan’s eyes followed, immediately realizing and panic setting in on his face. If Ainsley had to guess, he hadn’t even noticed he did it that night.
“Ainsley, I-” Ethan started, but he couldn’t get the rest out. Instead, he broke down in tears and sank to the floor. It was an interesting sight, for sure. It wasn’t that Ainsley had never seen him cry before – they were always very open with each other and made sure they showed their emotions together. But it was the sight of him crying in the outfit of a killer, his hair matted from the mask, and his boots scuffed from fighting. It gave so many mixed signals.
Ainsley fought her first instinct to walk over and comfort him. The last time she’d heard the sound of his cries, it had been a late night and he’d told her he’d had a fight with his dad over the phone. She didn’t pry for details, and now she was curious to see what he would’ve told her if she had. The dad part had to be true, and she knew now it definitely had to do with the family’s elaborate killing spree plan. Instead of asking that night, she’d just held him and let him get it out. What the fuck was she supposed to do now?
She took a deep breath and walked closer, but still kept her distance. If anything Ethan had done in that room was a ploy to get her to trust him, it was this. And yet, she couldn’t stop herself. She’d spent so much time around him in the months that they’d been dating, and knew that not all of it could’ve been acting. There was no way he had put on a false face since June orientation, especially in their most private moments. He had to be telling some smidgen of the truth, if not the whole truth. Detective Bailey was scary, and from what she had seen in the few minutes of the family being united, Ethan was definitely the least favorite kid. She couldn’t imagine what it had been like with Richie there too since he seemed to be the darling boy of the family. Ethan seemed to be an afterthought.
She didn’t walk all the way up to him, but Ainsley made her way about halfway across the room. “Ethan, I can’t forgive you,” she started, and he looked up at her, his face wet with tears. Miraculously, there was not a single trace of anger in his eyes. “You killed my friends. Our friends. There is no way to wash that blood off your hands.” He sniffed a bit and seemed to nod in agreement before she continued. “But I believe you that you don’t want to be doing this. And I promise you, if I make it out of here, I’m gonna make sure everyone knows that. You don’t deserve this. Maybe I don’t know you as well as I thought I did, but I can tell that the boy I fell in love with is still in there. And I’m apologizing to him.”
It took a lot not to reach for his hand, at the very least. Ethan clumsily wiped his tears from his face and looked Ainsley directly in the eyes. She tried to read everything that he was conveying through them: love? fear? regret?
“Ainsley, can you do one thing for me?” Ethan asked. Without realizing it, Ainsley’s grip on the knife tightened – she still didn’t 100% trust him. But nevertheless, she nodded, and he spoke up again. “Stay here. Play dead. I’ll run out there, say I killed you, and deal with whatever happens. But you stay in here until that’s over, and you make it out alive. I don’t need to you forgive me. I just need you to stay alive.”
And there were more tears in Ainsley’s eyes than there had been before. She was viewing everything from multiple viewpoints: her heart was saying that Ethan still genuinely cared about her and wanted her to survive, despite the circumstances he had been put in, but her head said that this was another trick, and the second she laid down someone would come in and stab her in the back of the head. She couldn’t stomach the idea of not helping Sam and Tara, who she knew were definitely fighting for their lives out in the theater. But she knew that Ethan was giving her a free escape, and she wasn’t sure she would stand a chance against the other two killers. She weighed everything in her head, all while staring at Ethan and nervously gripping the knife. If she looked at him from the shoulders up, she trusted everything he said. But if she looked at him fully, all she saw was the costume and the reminder that he was a murderer. Despite everything he’d said in the past few minutes, he’d still killed Anika. He’d stabbed Chad. He’d cut Ainsley, even if he didn’t do it on purpose. And because of this, she also knew that there was no good ending for him. If she let him leave while she played possum in the party room, he was either going to die, or go to jail. And even through everything he’d done, the thought of either of those still put a hole in Ainsley’s stomach and she didn’t know if the holes could ever heal. There was no good answer, no good decision, no good outcome.
But the selfish, fight or flight instinct inside her wanted to take the easy route. And so, she was going to go along with it, and pretend she was dead to stay safe.
So she finally nodded in agreement with the plan. When she looked back at Ethan, she saw the guy she’d been in love with for five months. The guy who she’d watched awful rom-coms with in the wee hours of the night, and who had listened to every song she’d ever recommended to him. The guy who listened to her endless ramblings and remembered all of the things she said, hanging onto even the small things like details about her 10th birthday party, or her favorite color of her favorite flower. The guy who always was there to walk her home when she had a late event on campus, and who never complained when his sweatshirts went missing. This was the guy who was saving her – not the one who had taken lives. This was the one she was following in his plan, and the one she was hoping would miraculously make it out unscathed when he left.
And so, she stuck the knife in her back pocket, decided in her pessimistic ways that it was die now or die later, and closed the gap between her and Ethan. She kissed him one last time, taking it in as the boy she loved who had been so good to her, but still keeping an eye out for his hands and praying they didn’t reach for the knife. They never did.
The kiss felt like a goodbye, and deep down, Ainsley knew it was. There was no situation that ended with Ethan coming out innocent – in a way, he was sacrificing himself for her. So she held on, longer than she probably should have, and she dug her hands into his curls one last time. Then, she grabbed the knife, took a deep breath, and cut the bandage on her thigh. She knew she had to re-open the wound and cover herself in fresh blood if her fake death was to even be a tiny bit believable, and she figured it was easier to get it from somewhere that was already going to scar rather than give herself a brand new one.
And to make it more believable, she screamed as she did it. Screamed like she was being murdered by her boyfriend in cold blood, and like the life was leaving her body. As she did, Ethan stood up, shook his head like he was trying to shake his emotions out, and started to back out of the room, his eyes fixed on Ainsley the entire time. He knew, too, that this was goodbye – and he was pretty sure it was mostly for him.
Ainsley set herself up in a post-murder position, spread her blood across the floor and her body, and put the knife next to her hand that she laid limp. And she waited. And waited. And waited. Through screams, stabs, vulgarities, bangs, and eventually sirens, she waited. And when she emerged, she found Sam and Tara alive and well (as well as they could be), and the bodies of the Kirsch family on the ground. Beaten, shot, and stabbed.