Laura Henriksen
4 Alternate Endings to The Blair Witch Project
1. On October 21, 1994, Heath Donahue,
Joshua Leonard, and Michael Williams
hiked into Maryland’s Black Hills Forest
to shoot a documentary film on a local
legend, “The Blair Witch.” All complaints
about Heather Donahue’s performance
in the role of Heather Donahue were
transparently misogynistic.
2. It seems so real! Four ways
to be your own problem, five big
night coughers, a real mad trio.
Stalked, unmythed, happy
now? Too much direct eye
contact. Only found raw,
students exhaust, you go
outside again, heard it, four
or five, hey don’t explain it
to me. Not even that long ago.
3. The true horse of this story.
4. Or, we could just follow the creek
like a soggy path until it takes us
out of the forest. The cars that
exceed constraint, the pressure
to sequel. Rather than worry
it, I prefer for you to just leave
at the edge of the endless
millennium, confused
1. You kept saying there’s no way to be lost
in America but look at you now. According
to the official meteorological definition,
storms almost never happen. Okay, Mike,
we can go now.
2. Sorry, what? Yesterday burned the sausages
“screaming sadly to himself.” What fault,
mom? Same mom, these movies. Heathered
it, God alive, just leaned closer to the
ground cover. How you obscure me,
sorry map, moms 1-3, sorry days.
3. Look at me now, Mike, retelling
the legend like making my
friend’s girlfriend’s sister
watch me play video games.
I was so jealous in the drive-thru
I thought this must be love.
Halfway filled up, half damned.
4. Who spilled the honey that started
the bugs running? Reviewing the footage,
a heartsick cryptozoologist. Don’t
anyone here start repenting. Sticks
and stones, stickers on phones. Her
beautiful apron strings. Not yet though.
1. That night in the hotel we watched
the very flower of youth on TV.
We overperformed
everything for each other.
Did we enjoy our bourbon
direct from its plastic bottle?
Well I didn’t. We were students
of the moving image. I don’t know
if I can say truth was a primary
concern. To do work to do.
2. To speak to the people we pretended
to be them, all among. You need to build a
foundation of trust. Or that’s one thing.
3. Accusations of witchcraft are often tied to insecurity
around reproduction and, by extension, piety. In The Blair Witch,
we see a familiar fear for the safety of children, the sanctity
of their naturalized innocence. Any gender can be an architect
of danger, there’s Elly Kedward but also Rustin Parr, two
historical figures provided as vessels for the Blair Witch,
who exceeds them both. We are told by one person who has
seen the witch that she could tell she was a woman, despite
being covered in hair. This woman speaker is represented
as too crazy to be believed. While Josh, Mike, and Heather
remain hopelessly trapped in gender, the witch exceeds
its forms. The woods are the witch, her address.
4. Hooves at the door, it’s easy
to blame the candle, the one
who summons an early fall.
By then she had already departed
childhood’s solemn garden.
A palm’s heel impressed
in rock, skirt along a hall.
1. As time makes duration
and duration endures, how silt
and leaden, a buggy or truck.
In the distance, Heathering,
not going anywhere, as such
not lost. To keep it from rot
make an arcade of sobs.
2. Anything made by an animal
is an omen. Better eat before
it’s gone. Heard far and
away, waking from a dream
into a crowded nursery. What
a candid interview, steady trot.
3. The scary knowledge that trees
plant themselves. The time that
is always young and cruel, the
student films, monument cloth.
4. Horror films do so much, you know? Reflect
social anxieties, reinforce social norms, release
stress chemicals in viewers’ brains. I love
especially horror that invests in fear of
evil technology, the haunted internet,
possessed cameras, cursed videotapes,
that sort of thing. The Blair Witch is
a unique example of this style, since
the devices here aren’t the threat, although
they are burdensome, heavy to carry
across the river. In the woods, our heroes’
equipment is only symptomatic of a
deeper hubris: their desire to document,
their belief that you can know something
that way. Like come on, you saw
how much good the map did you.
1. Who could tire of this
dread. Gallop down the
stairs again, all of your body
inside your stomach, more
heavy and alone than your caller.
2. I keep getting this advice,
“Don’t give up!” but I feel
this really overstates the power
what I believe has over the
things that happen or don’t.
3. We didn’t disappear completely,
only in parts. Anybody could.
The temporary void where I
applied mascara for the last time.
Being one of four seasons and
then down on all fours.
4. Hidden in the icebox,
a steak surprise. Shining
earrings. People sometimes
search for the truth in the
legend, but I find it’s
mostly the other way
around. The night that
made her, followed by
the night that made
her something else.
Laura Henriksen’s first book, Laura’s Desires, is forthcoming from Nightboat Books, and an excerpt is available now as a chaplet from Belladonna*. Her writing can be found in LitHub, The Brooklyn Rail, Newest York, and other places. She lives in Sunset Park, Lenapehoking, teaches writing at Pratt Institute, and works as the Program Director of The Poetry Project.