I loved Fat Patties. Let me start there. With that said, there were two things I hadn’t taken into consideration: 1) Wynonna’s stomach was significantly smaller than mine, and 2) I was sick with anticipation over Wynezra “making a move” on Imogen.

So, in my state of disintegration, I ordered my usual: the Big Fat Patty.

The Big Fat Patty was a force to be reckoned with. It was a pure monster of a burger—truly insurmountable unless you were a teenage boy with a metabolism like the Indy 500 and an affinity for masochistic behavior.

“I think my eyes were bigger than my stomach,” I said.

“I’ll say,” said Imogen. “You always order the Lasso Patty.”

“Yeah, weird,” said Wynezra, who was munching on the fries that came with her Lasso Patty.

Once it became painfully clear that I wasn’t going to conquer even a fraction of this Burgerzilla, I asked for a to-go box.

We picked up, and it was off to the AMC 8.

At the concessions, we somehow agreed on ordering two large drinks with four straws (even though I felt extremely germy about the inevitable backwash situation) and also two large popcorns and two M&M’S. We then dumped the M&M’S into the popcorn. We may have been teenagers, but we were wise beyond our years and knew the ways of the world.

As we claimed our seats in the theater, Imogen sat next to Wynezra, who sat next to Holden, who sat next to me. We sat quietly—perhaps a little too quietly—through the previews, and then the theater went just a little bit darker and quieter.

The first thing to appear on-screen was the cut, bloody, and bruised face of Jane Jenkins—the “final girl” of the past three Splatter films. She had a red security blanket wrapped around her shoulders and was being escorted by a pair of medics. In the background was the burning wreckage of the Terrorland theme park—the setting of Splatter III: Land of Terror. Police were attempting to fend off the hordes of reporters arriving on the scene, holding out microphones, shouting out a blur of questions.

One reporter—a determined young woman with curly red hair—found a gap in the police barrier and broke through.

“Is it true that Buddy Borden is dead?” she asked.

Buddy Borden was the mutant killer of the past three Splatter films. He wore a splatter mask—a real thing worn by British tank operators in World War I—in which the top half was leather, with a series of shutter-like slits over the eyeholes, and the bottom half was chain mail. Buddy also happened to be Jane’s biological father, although we didn’t learn that until Splatter II: Buddy’s Back.

“He better be dead,” said Jane. “I decapitated him with a fucking roller coaster.”