A horror story where all the characters act intelligently and rationally, except the antagonist

“This job is going to make or break your career. You know it, the big guy upstairs guarantees it, and your parents are, like, mildly apprehensive about it.

“Just be a swamp monster,” your mother says 

“There’s good money in mob monsters,” your father agrees.

“Well yeah,” you say. “There has to be otherwise no one would agree to the surgeries.” Your friend Arvin had come out with tentacles.

You are not going to be a tentacle antagonist.

Your parents look at each other with barely disguised grimaces. As one they turn to you.

“That’s probably the best option for you,” they say together, a benefit of the telepathy that had made them premiere antagonists in their day. You’ve inherited no psychic ability, a fact that no one in your mauling classes lets you forget.

You try to flip the table, but can’t since it’s bolted to the ground. Your parents frown disapprovingly at you and you make a face at them, trying to convey what exactly you think of their suggestion. Then, with an inarticulate scream of rage, you storm out of the house.

You’d show them. You’d show them all.

------------------------------------------

The costumer doesn’t seem to know if she should laugh or not. She looks from the drawing in her hands to you and back again. She sucks on her unnaturally sharp teeth, looks back at the cabin they’ve given you for this job, and back to you.

“I have questions,” she says.

“Alright,” you say, magnanimous in your makeup chair. Everything is being set up just how you want it, from the traps in the forest to the secret labyrinth of tunnels running underneath the set, to the bowl of rotten fruit on the counter in the pristine kitchen.

Your parents are going to eat their words.

“Are these chainsaws?” she asks, turning the paper around to show you your own drawing. You admire it for a moment, a little impressed with the shading you accomplished in the half hour it took you to draw it.