This Isn’t Jason
Paige T Perkins
A group of friends made plans to spend some of their winter break together at a family cabin; a time for winter fun and relaxation after acing their finals.
Yet, all Whitney felt was dread.
“Has Jason come back yet?” Whitney entered the living room where most of her friends were lounging around: Chris, Tina, and Tiana in the middle of an UNO game on one sofa and Martin who slept loudly on the other. Their other two friends were most likely in their assigned rooms, leaving one unaccounted for.
Whitney stood, one foot tapping as two of them looked up at her, but Martin was still sleeping.
Tina tensed up a bit along with Chris, but Tiana huffed, “You’re still on this?”
Whitney snapped right back, “Yes, I am! How could y-”
Snoooorre…
“How could y’all-”
Snooooooorrre…
“I’m just-”
SNOOOOOORR-
Before Martin could let out another sound, Whitney grabbed a pillow off the couch and threw it at his head. He abruptly sat up and sleepily mumbled, “Wassup…?”
Before Whitney could speak, Tiana beat her to it and stood up “‘What’s up’ is Whitney still worrying about Jason.”
Tina was quick to speak up. “I don’t blame you though. He has been MIA all day…”
Whitney clapped her hands and pointed at Tina. “Right? Thank you! We know how Jason goes the extra mile with his jokes and pranks, but this? This isn’t Jason.”
“But, yes, it is Jason,” Tiana countered. “Professor Wilburn’s class, heart-attack prank.” Whitney shook her head. “This is not the same!”
This sparked an argument between the two young women while Tina and Chris tried to mediate. The volume began to rise as well as the room’s tension and soon enough, Whitney was prepared to get her coat to go search for Jason herself. The whole situation having given him a headache, Martin decided to speak his piece.
He leaned forward, elbows rested on his knees, “I can settle this, Jason is fine.”
“You don’t know that,” Whitney sighed.
Martin stood from the sofa and stretched. “Yes I do,” he yawned. “I heard him come in last night.”
She walked up to him, voice soft and a bit breathless. “When?”
“Well, after you came in last night, complaining about how ‘Jason play too much.’” Martin bent his voice an octave higher, which almost earned an eye roll from her, but her worry outweighed her irritation.
“Hours passed, it’s like, 3 AM, I just got back to my room after getting my midnight snack…”
Chris interjected, “But you said it was 3- “
“I was ready to dig in, when my door creaked open. I sat there, waiting, ready to throw my Twinkies if it came to that, but then I heard whispering. ‘Psst, Martin. Come here,’” Martin continued. “It was Jason, so I talked to him. Asking him what he was doing. He just kept on telling me to come with him. So, I got outta’ bed, and went over to the door. Opened it, and he wasn’t there.”
Whitney groaned. “Please, stop joking.”
Martin held up his hands and shook his head. “No, I’m being honest. He wasn’t there. But then, I look down the dark hall. And, all the way down there is Jason’s goofy ass peeking from around the corner. Still telling me to follow him.”
Chris and Tiana, who had become a bit anxious about their absent friend, let out light laughs, the tightness in their chests eased up. Tina, still on edge, continued to listen.
But Whitney pressed further. “Then what happened?”
“I closed the door, and sat my scrawny ass down and ate my Twinkies.”
Whitney, exasperated, asked why he didn’t go with Jason and he easily answered with a chuckle, “I just knew he was going to scare me. Plus, y’all already know I’m scared of the dark.”
Whitney’s demeanor deflated. She sat on the sofa, hunched over with her face in her hands.Martin lost his comedic grin and sat down next to her. “Seriously though, Jason’s fine. By morning, he’ll be pouting about how no one fell for his prank. Then, he’ll see you and he’ll fix his face.” He wrapped a gentle arm around her. “Don’t worry, Whitney. Okay?”
Tina moved to sit beside her. “If you still want to, I can go look for him with you?”
Whitney shook her head and forced a smile. “No, it’s fine. I’ll just wait it out.”
Martin gave her a tight hug and Tina rubbed her back. The comfort she received in that moment remained in that moment.
Now, alone in the dimly lit bedroom, her face was wet with tears as the comfort had already run dry. Whitney could no longer bring herself to search her mind for nonsensical justifications for Jason being missing.
Then, she heard it.
A whisper that was not completely clear, but was not too distant. The only thing separating Whitney from the source was one brown, wooden door. The door creaked open and she sat as still as a statue, softening her breathing to be able to hear whatever happened next.
Then, she heard him.
She just knew it was him, whispering for her to come closer. She obliged. Not without some words first.
Whitney sighed. “Jason, I can’t believe I was worried about you while you steady playing games.”
She came up to the door as she tried to suppress her smile, and opened it. Jason was not there.
This made her think back to what Martin told her and the others before. Though a bit of irritation seeped through, Whitney definitely could not hold in her smile then. She looked down the hall and, as expected, there was Jason peeking around the corner at the end of the hall. This got a little laugh out of Whitney as she quietly and slowly made her way down the hall. “Remember, I’m don’t scare easy like Martin.”
Jason let out a hushed laugh as he continued walking away from her, down the noisy wooden stairs. Although this confused her a bit, Whitney continued to follow. She joked here and there, all while walking a distance behind the jokester. But, she came to a stop when she saw him walk through the front door, into the snowy outdoors.
Whitney softly grumbled, “Jay, what are you doing?”
Jason blended in with the darkness of the outside as he inched further from the door wearing but a shirt, pants and shoes; far from what one should wear in these conditions, but Jason did stupid stuff like this.
“Come on, baby,” he whispered. “We’re almost there.”
Against her better judgment, she still followed her boyfriend, but not without grabbing her coat first. Jason’s beckoning began to remind her of how he had been the night before: trying to lead her out to the shed to show her something ‘cool.’ Whitney had been ready to check it out if he had stopped tossing snow at her.
A weird pit began to form in her stomach as she still followed him further into the dark and down the snow-covered path.
Yet, she continued to joke a little: “I hope you aren’t expecting to do anything freaky out here, because I am not getting low in the snow.”
All walking finally came to a stop once she saw Jason standing stiff in front of the shed he had mentioned the night before. The lighting was low, as they had ventured a good distance from the cabin. The emergency light in the back of the house barely illuminated the scene before Whitney.
Whitney had become somewhat disturbed by Jason’s lack of movement, and the pit in her stomach had not eased up at all.
“Jason?”
She took a step forward, an arm outstretched to touch him after a long, worrisome day. Her steps came to halt when she tripped and almost fell over something hard, probably frozen, on the ground. She looked down and tears immediately blurred her vision. She had seen enough anyway.
On the snow-covered forest floor lay a sickly-pale skinned Jason. Almost unrecognizable due to his body being shriveled up and curled in on itself, but still she could see it was him. A sharp breath was all she could let out before this thing, to put it plainly, whispered in a voice that resembled Whitney’s.
“This isn’t Jason.”