Human beings love to be scared; sorta. We love the feeling of relief that comes after a fright as our brain releases endorphins following a fight or flight reflex. That’s one of the reasons that people love scary movies: They allow us to skirt the edge of terror from the safety of our own couch. While we all enjoy the vicarious thrills of Freddy Krueger’s dream-based murder sprees and Jason Vorhees shambling, camping safety advisory videos; there are people in the slasher flick world that we gloss over who are going to have a worse time of it than anyone else. While it’s terrifying to be a teenager in a slasher flick, it’s soul crippling for regular folks just trying to live their lives and do their regular damn jobs. Like these folks.

The Local Police Chief

This poor guy spent years on the street, slowly working his way up the promotion ladder. After decades of unruly drunks and underage college kids puking in the back of his cruiser, he finally made it to the top of the heap. He moved his family to a mid-sized, quiet, suburb so that he can take on the job of being the head of the local law enforcement community. His family is happy because he’s not out on patrol every night, and they were finally able to afford that 3-bedroom, 2-bath, white picket fence place that they’ve been dreaming about. He’s no longer worried about crackheads, or gang bangers; now the biggest thing on his plate is busting the after prom parties before someone tries to get behind the wheel and drive.

And then, seemingly out of nowhere, every high school aged kid in his jurisdiction goes absolutely bat shit insane. They all start dying mysteriously after either being mutilated in their sleep or a series of random, and freakish, household accidents. Even in the Scream universe, where the killers are just delusional actual humans, the Law Enforcement Community is ill-equipped to even begin to fathom the reality that faces them. This poor man, who just wanted to move to a quiet place and earn his pension, now he’s got Hell—sometimes actual, literal, Hell—to deal with. Will he face it with the professional hardness of a seasoned law enforcement veteran? A stalwart of truth, justice and righteousness looking out for the good of the common man? Nope. Most likely he’ll bumble his way through it until it’s too late to effect any good on the situation and, more likely, will cause far more trouble along the way.

The High School Teacher

Being a teacher isn’t an easy job in a regular town. Your classroom is packed full of pubescent hormone sacks that want nothing to do with your curriculum and would rather be necking under the bleachers at the pep rally—or whatever it is that kids do these days. You fight constantly to regain their attention away from their friends, and their cell phones and their snapchats. Your life is dedicated to trying to improve the minds of the generation that is prepared to replace you by teaching the fundamentals that they don’t know that they’ll need.

Then, one sad day, probably following a prominent dance or social event, your entire world gets changed. How in the tap-dancing Hell are you supposed to teach organic chemistry, to a class of boner riddled juniors, after the prom queen has been doused in blood and then used her psychotic mental powers to destroy most of the graduating class? How do you refocus the attention of sleep deprived teens who are being murdered in their sleep? And, more importantly, in this day of metric based teacher evaluations how do you maintain your tenure when your students are more worried about surviving than they are getting passing scores on their standardized tests?

Though it looks like they’ll give anybody tenure these days

The Therapist

Sitting and listening to the sordid stories of bored housewives and over-stressed IT professionals is a job that most people wouldn’t take. To be a therapist, even in a normal town, is a feat reserved for only the most sane and patient of human beings. You build your practice and sit, day after day, listening to the stories of your friends and neighbors. Each day you have to compartmentalize their unique problems as the “professional you,” while attempting to mingle amongst them as the “normal you”. It has to be stressful just to try to live a normal life.

Then the devil came to your town and decided that all of the sexually promiscuous teens, and their drinky fun parties, needed to die. Now here you sit, the sole outlet for everyone’s concerns, and fears, faced with the gruesome truth of the reality around you. Everyone you know; your friends, neighbors and customers are now subject to terror beyond imagining. The deepest, darkest pits of Hell have opened up in your quaint little town, and now you have to deal with the fallout for everyone. Kids sliced to ribbons in their sleep. Your teen gone to sleep away camp, macheted to death while they tried to get their freak on. It would be about three days before you wrote yourself a prescription for “Xanax Crispies” for breakfast.

The Local News Anchor

Local news is all about local color. The local high school sports team. The opening of a new, artisanal coffee shop on Main Street. The wacky hijinx down at the mall. It’s all pretty light and fluffy and lacking in depth. When it comes to covering the world shattering events they’d rather throw to the national anchors who will handle it like professionals while the local folks curl up under the desk. But when the world shattering awful thing is happening in their back yard they have no choice but to cover it personally.

Now they’re exposed to things that they’ve spent years avoiding. Face to face with things that they have zero ability to cope with. Local teens are being eviscerated and they have to show up and film that shit. These things will sit in the back of their heads forever. When they close their eyes. When they try to sleep. All they will see is the aftermath of the small town they love being changed forever. They could go to a shrink; but the only one in town is already off his rocker.

The High School Janitor

This poor fucking bastard. He wanders the hall of the local high school, cleaning toilets and getting pitched shit by kids who normally never had to work a day in their life. It’s not a glamorous job but someone has to do it. He never thought he’d end up here but it pays the bills and it’s a union job, so at least there’s benefits and paid time off.

Then kids start dying in the hallway. And the auditorium gets covered in blood after the prom. And somewhere in the boiler room a literal gateway to Hell has opened, flooding the school with demons; and it’s all his problem. No one else is going to clean up this mess. The police are too busy hunting down the killer—and fucking that up. The teachers and administration are too busy trying to comfort or help the kids—and fucking that up. So here’s this poor guy, trapped in a job that he hates, that just got a bojillion times worse. More than likely it’s just going to tip him over the edge and he’s going to be the one doing the killing in the sequel.