Final Girl
I was taught that my body was a horror story, a haunted house—designed to be invaded.
There’s a man breaking into houses on the street where I used to live. Every article about him ends with the same paternal reminder: Lock your doors.
Every article reports the man is roughly 5’9, between 20 and 35, of thin build, and wears dark clothing. Based on this description, I can only assume he has eyes and hair. But I cannot be sure. No one knows what his face looks like. No one knows if he even has a face.
Every article offers the same unnerving photo—not of a man, but a blur. He’s on the move, indecipherable, save the brand of his sneakers. A blur in Vans. I joke to my friend that we should avoid skaters at all costs. But I know the sour truth of this photo’s subtext. He is worse than a man. He is a shadow. He is any man. Avoid every man. What does it mean to be every man—to be any man? You don’t have to lock your doors.
My friend is too scared to sleep alone at her new apartment. She and I used to live together, back before she got bangs, at the end of the street where the man has been entering homes. At our old apartment, there’d been a man living downstairs. He was maybe 5’9, between 20 and 35, with eyes and hair. But he wasn’t a skater. And he wasn’t faceless. He made sure of that.
He never bought blinds for his bedroom—at least not for the first three or four months. He would fuck women in front of his bedroom window, the same window we had to walk by to get into our apartment. He never had any shame or fear—of what? Being seen? Being caught? Or was that what he wanted? I wish he had told us, so we could all be certain together. Without curtains, my friend and I became the perverts, the peeping toms.
I’m not sure what the women thought, if they could see us as clearly as we could see them. I never looked, of course. I didn’t need to. I could hear him. Sense him, coming and going in and out of these women as he pleased. He was a blur. A shadow. Did he lock his doors? Or was he leaving them open, half-hoping someone might come in?
Now my friend with bangs lives in an apartment without an exhibitionist neighbor, but with a fear of this new man, the blur in Vans. She wants to get a bat. She wants to buy a gun. I remind her that you can’t just do that in California, and that guns are heavy and can lead to injury, even when used correctly. With a gun, it’s only a matter of time until something goes wrong. She doesn’t buy the gun. But she does sleep with a knife.
I don’t sleep with a knife, but I add a lock to my bedroom door, just in case. I got it online, for an old apartment that had a bedroom door with no latch—the door would just kind of creak open, begging for someone to enter. I secured it against its wishes nonetheless, as I secure my door tonight. And I double check my hidden pepper spray beneath my bedside vibrators, hoping the spray doesn’t leak. The risk is worth the sting and the sting is worth the safety. But am I still missing something? Something sharp beneath my pillow? Something lethal to help me drift off to sleep?
It’s a humid summer night for Los Angeles and I break one of my own rules: I kick my bare feet out from under the covers. I regret it almost immediately. Now I’m exposed. Vulnerable. I imagine the blur, a faceless man with eyes and hair, grabbing my feet and pulling me. I imagined similar things as a child. Ghosts. Demons. But also, men.
What does it mean to be every man—to be any man? You don’t have to lock your doors.
I have been editing an essay about my break-in trauma. About a man I didn’t know existed, until I woke up to him standing beside me. The man was possibly 5’9, between 20 and 35, of thin build. He was faceless until he wasn’t. He remained faceless as he touched my friend who slept in a bed beside mine until she and I both woke up. Then we turned on the light. Then, he had a face.
We were on the ground floor. He had come into our hotel room from an unlocked sliding door. Were we begging to be opened, too? How loud can you beg while unconscious? Or was it trial and error? How many doors did the man try until he found one that opened?
We were waiting for him, only we didn’t know it yet. Now, I know better. Now, I know I am always waiting. We were sleeping, our bare feet tucked beneath the hotel linen. We waited. We begged. He entered. Now I lock my bedroom door. But I don’t fear his return. This fear is something else, bigger than doors and locks. This fear is as vast as the velvet black sky.
It is a fear of darkness. A fear of being totally alone, but not quite. The unknown that I have always known, the unknown that is always waiting, waiting to get me alone. The only thing worse than being alone, is finding out that you aren’t.
I had a friend who lived in Italy. The police came into her apartment one night while she slept and dragged her out of bed by her feet. I can’t remember why, but I know they did because I remember what my body felt like when she told me the story. It felt like the night of the break-in. Like I needed to hit someone, hurt someone, but I couldn’t. Like that final scene in any horror movie where the final girl is being choked—as she is wont to do—and her hands flail, searching for something lethal, but all she can grab onto is air.
I am always grabbing onto air. I told my friend who lived in Italy that if something like that happened to me, I would never be able to sleep in a bed again. I would become a bat, sleep standing up, upside down. I would become nocturnal. I would become a vampire. I would become immortal. Exhausted, but dutiful. Beds are not for safety; then why should they be for sleeping?
As a child, I broke down frequently when my parents left me and my sister with a sitter for date nights. They reassured me that they would be back after I went to bed. I sobbed that they couldn’t leave, or else men would come and take me while I slept. I wasn’t sure what these men might do afterwards, but I knew it wasn’t good. I knew it made my stomach drop, like when I saw girls and women taken, kidnapped, bound, on TV.
Old lore. The damsel in distress, the girl tied to the railroad tracks. Sometimes, I would play a similar kind of tie-up game as a child with friends, and my stomach would drop, in that funny way adults can become addicted to. I felt like I belonged there—bound, in trouble, waiting for what might happen to me next. I didn’t think about what I would do, but what would happen to me. It was almost like I was living out my fear, surviving it, owning my captivity. It felt something akin to good. But it did not stop the dreams.
I was plagued by dreams of being attacked and kidnapped, mostly by men. They happened almost every night, starting as early as I can remember. They became so familiar, like the crime shows I watched as a girl. We all watched these shows, they were everywhere. An open secret, a pinky promise. That I could become sweet like those candy-named hookers. So cherry, so dear. So red, so dead.
It was almost like I was living out my fear, surviving it, owning my captivity. It felt something akin to good.
On the nights without a sitter or a date, I forced my mother to stay with me until I fell asleep, holding my hand, shushing, singing. Now I’m grown and no one sings to me, but the dreams have stopped. Now, when I go to bed, I fear a different dark. I fear what might come while I am gone, asleep. My reoccurring dreams were not the nightmare. No, the nightmare is the place you wake up. For that is where they live. The men from my dreams.
As a teenager, I escaped the dreams by sneaking out of the house to walk around town late at night. I wasn’t scared, because I was on the prowl. I was active, moving, no longer waiting for what might happen to me. There I could be free. There I could finally rest. I listened to music, unafraid, vampiric, feeling immortal rather than small, rather than young. I chose not to sleep. I didn’t need it. Vampires didn’t need sleep, or locks. Vampires do not get taken. They are the ones who do the taking. They are not afraid. They are fear itself.
I feel like that most of the time now—brave, empowered, eternal. I have survived long enough to know what true fear smells like, how it comes when you least expect it. Knowledge feels terrifyingly close to power, to bravery, to safety, but they are not the same.
The future is a fanged nightmare.
Sometimes I sleep through the night, and when I do, I wake to find that hands have not come to drag me by my ankles or bare feet. Waking up safe each morning in my bed should be a relief, except there is always the possibility that the next night, and the next, they might come—the men, the hands, the unknown, the dark.
Waking up safe each morning in my bed should be a relief, except there is always the possibility that the next night, and the next, they might come—the men, the hands, the unknown, the dark.
A few years after the break in, my dreams began to revolve around my own weakness, my insecurity, my fallibility. My dreams were still about running and hiding from men. But more distinctly, how I would never run fast enough. How I would open my mouth to scream, and nothing ever came. Even when I was doing Muay Thai, kicking, punching, you-go-girling every day, I didn’t see myself as strong enough. At least not when I was asleep. I would punch and punch, and it wouldn’t do anything to deter the men in my nightmares. Is that my biggest fear—that I could never do anything? That my hand will never make contact with a strong jaw, make good on a promise of strength? That I can never make him bleed? Can he still bleed—without a face?
I hear things go bump in the night. I see creatures in the shadows, in the corners. Warm-blooded and waiting. I let my imagination get out of control, like I did as a child, when I dreamt, when my mother held my hand. She had told me to tell the bad men in my dreams that this was my dream not theirs. I didn’t have the heart to say I didn’t think that mattered. I think that’s why they were there. They were hot prowling. They were hoping I was home.
There is a recent genre phenomenon identified in horror movies by horror scholar Lea Anderson called “the swallowing.” It is a fear of consumption. A fear of being swallowed, gobbled up by a hole. That you are so small and defenseless, you are not big enough to stop the maw. The fear has roots in misogyny. And trypophobia.
I have trypophobia—the fear of holes. I have the need to fill them, like when we see bumpy, flaky, pockmarked skin, or tree bark that looks diseased, and have the urge to rip it off, to make it right and smooth. We evolved to recognize this difference for the good of the tribe. Holes suggest lack, non-homogeny, a tear, a rupture, non-accordance. Holes can mean weakness, faultiness, decay, fragility. They do not represent strength, unity, or health. We see holes and we see death, like looking down the barrel of a gun. A thousand barrels, a thousand guns, blinking. Waiting.
I do not wish to look death in its rotting eye, not like this, not in process. I want a coffin nailed shut, a closed casket, dirt piled on top to fill that hole into even ground. I want everything to be smooth and inoffensive, to not threaten me with circles of darkness, these reminders of the unknown, of my own mortal fragility. Am I a misogynist?
We see holes and we see death, like looking down the barrel of a gun. A thousand barrels, a thousand guns, blinking. Waiting.
I hated myself for some time—my body, my femininity. I was afraid of and disgusted by my holes, no matter how much my mom encouraged me to masturbate. She was a proud Second Waver. I didn’t want to be faced with the dark, gaping unknown. I thought I would find rotten fruit and pit, a place beyond return, something bad, horrible, wrong.
I never followed my mother’s directive, not until curiosity got the better of me, in my eighteenth year while living in a sorority house. Not until the night I found out what could happen when a bride-to-be gets a massage from a busty masseuse.
Those women didn’t seem to be afraid of holes. They reveled in them, diving right in. They swallowed each other whole. W-hole. It looked glorious. Freeing. Transcendent. Their mouths moved to scream, and they screamed. They became nothing but holes. Black holes. Everything. Nothing. The beginning of life as we know it. It was like seeing a Biblically accurate angel depicted for the first time. Like grasping onto air while running out of it, until finally, flailing hands make contact with something lethal. Killer. Powerful. Awe-some.
“The swallowing” appears in countless films but prominently in monster movies like Jaws, Jurassic Park, even Alien, and of course vampiric films, all of the Dracula(s), Daughters of Darkness, Queen of the Damned. When original horror lore was woven into modern adaptations like the Demogorgons of Stranger Things or the chic open-mouthed alien in Nope, the swallowing appeared again, as well as in the recent resurgence in cannibal cinema with Raw, Yellowjackets, Bones and All. The swallowing is most glaring in femme-centric body horror: It Follows, Swallow, Rosemary’s Baby, Jennifer’s Body, and my favorite, Teeth.
Rosemary’s Baby is about a home invasion. Pregnancy can be a home invasion. But pregnancy is an inside job, like the closet in Rosemary’s apartment, the one she didn’t know lead into the adjoining apartment where Satanists and witches lurked, waiting to rape and impregnate her with Satan’s literal spawn. The rape sequence is stylized, tasteful, not gratuitous. Ten years after the film premiered, its director, Roman Polanski, would flee America after incurring the first of at least three underage rape charges. A year later, in 1979, he would be quoted saying, “Everyone wants to fuck young girls.” Rape is a home invasion. Rape is a horror story. It’s worse than a nightmare. It is reality. It is a blur in Vans.
Whether the swallowing manifests as monsters with vaginal fanged gobs who threaten society as we know it or women themselves, these menaces must be killed, put out of their own misery. They must be Glenn Closed in Fatal Attraction. It’s really for the best that we fill these holes; that we kill these holes. With “the swallowing” we identify, then rectify such horrors onscreen. We cover up the darkness with a white sheet in the morgue. We pull out the teeth, stitch the mouth shut, harpoon the shark, slaughter the Demogorgon, the vampire, the cannibal, the crazy woman. We smooth them over like cracks in uneven pavement so that children won’t trip and be reminded of fragility, of death. Think of the children. Think of the young girls.
The man breaking into people’s houses is performing what LAPD calls hot prowling. It’s hot because he knows people are home. He’s coming closer, playing a game of Hot/Cold. You’re getting warm. Warmer. You’re hot. Hotter. You’re on fire.
In the most recent hot prowl, it has been vaguely reported that he assaulted the woman who was home. Given how long rape kits take to process, if evidence was even left at the crime scene—the crime scene here being the woman’s body—it is better that we be on the lookout for a 5’9 blur in Vans. Be vigilant. Be afraid. Be safe.
It is not uncommon for women to have fantasies of fucking robbers, or of being forcibly seduced, tied up, and had—raped. A study in 2009 reports that 62% of women have had a related fantasy, while a 2019 study reports 58%. The 2009 report was thought to be a breakthrough given its preceding study, which placed its findings on an “erotic-aversive continuum,” with 9% of women considering such fantasies entirely aversive, 45% entirely erotic, and 46% both erotic and aversive. So we are left with our modern taste and our 58%.
Being afraid and being horny are primal instincts, animal instincts. These states make us sweat, make our hearts race, our senses heighten. Where does aversion begin and eroticism end? Have we been taught there is no line? That aversion eats the tail of eroticism and eroticism swallows aversion whole? Are they fucking? Is it consensual?
CNC, or consensual non-consent, often allows a space to reclaim sex for those who have experienced nonconsensual non-consent. To reframe this as a lust so mighty it can bring their partner to commit the most heinous of acts. In this framing, the women—and survivors—are not victims being taken in the night. They are the ones doing the taking.
Where does aversion begin and eroticism end? Have we been taught there is no line?
One of my neighbors when I was a child had her home broken into. She had great big dogs, two of them, but her home was broken into anyway, and she was bound while they robbed her house. She lived just down the street. I remember saying, to myself, to the sitter, to my mother who would hold my hand as I slept—I fucking told you so.
My neighbor survived the break-in, just like Kim K. I wonder how they sleep at night; how many locks are on their bedroom doors. Or do they not trust locks anymore? Or big dogs? Do they participate in robber roleplay? In CNC, finding safety in sensual thrill? Would they rather bark and bite? Would they like to taste flesh and revenge in a mouth spread wide? Would they like to be full? To have no more holes?
I figure the man hot prowling, breaking into people’s homes, raping at least one person, wants people to be home, wants people to leave their doors open. He wants a thrill, maybe a struggle, but not a fight. He wants the element of surprise, and the cowardly power that comes with it. He wants what Brock Turner had—the illusion of control. Is there illusion of control when you are always left open—holey? This perpetual vulnerability, called divine feminine, is it holy? Or damned? Monstrous?
Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut Blink Twice was originally billed Pussy Island, but it wasn’t the studios or the MPAA that made her change the title. It was the women she screen-tested who found the title “off-putting.” The movie is a sort of Promising Young Woman meets Get Out. The movie is sort of about “Epstein Island.” The movie is sort of about rape. The protagonist, Frida, and the other women in the film are brought to an island and raped each night, but drugged so they forget in the morning. The rape sequence is slightly stylized and came with a trigger warning of “sexual violence” that might be triggering to some viewers. It is not at all tasteful. There is a lot of hog-tying. There is a lot of screaming. There is nowhere to escape. Not for the women, nor the viewer.
There are beautiful frames, but we hold on them so long. The women scream, as we have all been taught to do. But they are gagged. And on an island. They are completely alone—but what’s worse, they’re not.
I only need a glimpse of the Blink Twice rape scene before I feel the fear flood my body once more. The women try and fight, but their dresses have been designed with built in restraints. Not to mention the drugs, the forgetting. What I don’t understand is how their vaginas weren’t sore afterward, weren’t a dead giveaway. Maybe they were. Maybe we aren’t meant to think of sore vaginas. Too unseemly. A bruise on the arm, dirt beneath nails, now that is cinematic. That is movie rape. When they finally figure out what has been happening, they scheme, they claw, they hit, they you-go-girl into a bloody finale. Yass queen. Go get your rape revenged.
It took a bit of digging to discover what exactly about the graphic rape scenes affected me so viscerally. Then I realized they were a reminder of what I worked so hard to forget. A reminder that my body was made for sport. That I was forever a home, waiting to be invaded. Forever a hole.
Femininity is a home invasion. It is a lesson any body can be taught. You are not safe in your own flesh home. There is no amount of locks you can add, layers of clothing, pantyhose that won’t rip, knives and pepper spray hanging from your car keys, napkins to cover drinks, powders to identify roofies, there is no amount of safety. You cannot run from yourself. You have been made to be invaded.
Look, watch the screen—see how simple it is. Remember those men from your dreams? Remember the man in the hotel room? See how their faces contort and blur? What is the common denominator? You. You the weak. You the home. You the invadable.
I remember this. I forget it. But it does not change the fact that I can shapeshift at will. This is a tradition as ancient as the tectonic plates that shift inside me each month. This is something I was never taught, something that can only be learned—something that transcends gender, something primal, something for those who pray as prey.
I can make my eyes wider without moving my head, without making a sound. I can make myself smaller, not larger, but so small I can slip through the crack beneath a door, locked or otherwise, so small I might not be able to escape, but at least I don’t have to be there.
I can make my heart lighter, can cover the bruises like hickeys I’d wake up with, like scratches on my back that I asked for apparently, while I was away, while I was not there. But that’s what I had wanted—to not be there—so can you blame me? For asking for it?
You cannot run from yourself. You have been made to be invaded.
Gisèle Pelicot had no idea that she was being raped for a decade by both her husband of fifty years, and by men from the small French town of Mazan, where she and her husband, Dominique, moved to in 2013. But she knew something was horribly wrong. Upon moving to Mazan, Gisèle began experiencing complete “blackouts”—episodes of memory loss—nights gone, never restored, along with hair loss, weight loss, and “gynecological problems.”
She thought she was dying. She thought she had a brain tumor. She stopped driving, worried she would blackout and hurt someone. She was afraid her body was betraying her. She was afraid the wrong thing was her. She scoured herself for a lacking faculty of hers to blame. A deficit. A wound in need of healing. A break, a fissure, a hole to fill. Rape is a home invasion. Rape is a hole no one asked to be filled. In fact, it is a hole that begs not to be filled.
Gisèle only found out the true cause of her symptoms in 2020, when police called her into the station regarding images Dominique—whom Gisèle referred to in the trial as “Monsieur Pelicot”—had taken of her whilst he and the others were raping her. Monsieur Pelicot had been brought in by police after he was caught taking unlawful upskirt footage. For the second time. That’s when the police found the images of Gisèle being raped by Monsieur Pelicot and countless other men from town. She could’ve known some of them, she could have been passing them every day. She could have never met some of them. She never would have known the difference.
Some of the rapists said they didn’t know she was drugged, despite Monsieur Pelicot testifying otherwise. Monsieur Pelicot said the men all knew “the rules” to make sure Gisèle did not wake up. Some of the rapists said they were told it was a three-way and that she was pretending to be asleep because she was “shy.”
Gisèle had gaps that could only be filled in by the testimonies of rapists and photos in police evidence. She had no idea. The doctors had no idea. She thought she was losing her mind. She thought she had a brain tumor because she was losing time. She didn’t know where it was going. She didn’t know where she was going, where she had been. The day the police called her into the station in 2020 was the day she stopped losing her memories. It was the day she discovered where she had been. She had been at home. Invaded.
Gisèle watched the footage Monsieur Pelicot had taken of her assaults before her rapists stood trial. The footage is how she decided she wanted to make the case public. She wanted everybody to know where she had been.
You can’t protect yourself when you’re not there so the answer is to always be there. Always be present. Always be awake. Never consume anything. Never have a drink. Never have a beer you didn’t get poured. Never walk alone. Never walk. Never go home where your husband is waiting to sedate you and rape you with countless strangers. Nowhere is safe. You are the unsafe thing. You are the nightmare.
What have you done? Where did you find this body? And what made you decide this was the place you could stay? That this was the place that could be your home? Didn’t you realize you were asking for it? Didn’t you realize that you chose a haunted house? A cabin in the woods? A horror story. Is this the place you chose to call home? Didn’t you know?
My friend, the one with the bangs, is so afraid still of the hot prowls, of the rapist without a face. She goes to sleep at a friend’s house, further west from where he has been prowling, if she sleeps at all. I want to reassure her, to hold her hand and sing until she can fall asleep. I want to guard her dreams, her door, her aversion-eroticism continuum, her holes.
I tell her that the man probably just wants someone “easy,” regurgitating the trusty maxim we were told when growing up in the kind of bodies Roman Polanski likes best. We grew up being told that they—the men—always want an easy target. Ponytails to hold onto, miniskirts to lift, someone incapacitated, or someone who can be incapacitated easily. My friend is 5’10. She is taller than the blur, the prowler, the rapist without a face. I tell her she will be okay. I say anyone who looks like they might put up a fight will be okay. I’m not lying, but it sounds like I am.
Didn’t you realize that you chose a haunted house? A cabin in the woods? A horror story.
It’s jarring, living in a body that is both a perpetual threat and perpetually threatened. It doesn’t make any sense. I am the nightmare full of dread. But I am a hole begging to be filled, eliminated, smoothed over, had. I run, I chase, I gape, I fill. I shapeshift. I endure. I scream. I rest, reluctantly, vigilantly, eager to be awake again, to return to patrol, to my duties as prey and prowler.
Ultimately, I have always been okay. I have always had holes. They have been filled, and doors have been left unlocked, but I am still full of darkness. I can swallow a man whole. W-hole. I can be a monster. I can do the taking.
found this because of your desktop website!! i keep thinking about that idea of something lethal: when all you can hold onto is air, to help you drift off to sleep; how with a gun, it’s only a matter of time until something goes wrong. because it’s such a complicated feeling of pain and inevitability and wanting. i loved this piece <3