Fiction & Plays

By Kaylee Larsen

 

Characters
FIGURE
GOON 1
GOON 2
DELORIA
SMALL FAT MAN
ANNOUNCER
CONSTANTINE

Act 1

Scene 1

[A tall and dark figure enters, dressed head to toe in black with a single silver ring on their right index finger.]

FIGURE: Hurry up you idiots!

[Two smaller figures, both dressed in formal wear, enter behind the Villain.]

GOON 1: My apologies, your highness. My brother was talking about some ridiculous plan of his. Nothing to concern yourself with.

GOON 2: Hey! If you actually–

GOON 1: Might I say you look quite dangerous this evening. Might I take your cloak?

[The Villain waves Goon 1s’ hands away.]

FIGURE: Don’t be ridiculous. It’s freezing in here.

[The Villain tightens their cloak and walks out to their balcony.]

FIGURE: [to the audience] What are you looking at? Haven’t you seen someone as gorgeous as me? Pathetic, all of you. If you must know I am Duchess Deloria Dan Dubious Van Helsingr the Third, Flame of the east, killer of men, and rightful heir to the throne.

[Deloria looks at them smugly.]

DELORIA: [Pause.] But you can call me your Highness.

[Deloria extends her hand expecting a kiss.]

GOON 1: If it wasn’t for that rot Deloria, she would be Queen Duchess Deloria Dan Dubious Constance Van Helsingr the Third, Flame of the east, and killer of men.

DELORIA: Quiet, Fool! I will be queen, Queen Duchess Deloria Dan Dubious Constance Van Helsingr the Third, Flame of the east, killer of men, Jewel of the North, the Iron ruler! MUAHAHAHA!

GOON 2: Ha-ha

GOON 1: HAHAHAHAHAA [At the same time]

[A small fat man with a scroll enters.]

SMALL FAT MAN: Here ye, hear ye, King Constantine Joseph Hannibal Dan Dubious Constance Van Helsingr the First, Dragon of the Aisle of Tillian, the Sword slayer, the Diamond Raider, and King of Mercia, requests Duchess Deloria Dan Dubious Constance Van Helsingr the Third, Flame of the east, killer of men, Jewel of the North to attend the birth of the second prince, Prince Quincey James Dan Dubious Constance Van Helsingr the First.

DELORIA: Of course, he summons me to rub his heir in my nose. Get out of my face, peasant.

[Deloria threw a vase at the fat man as he ran out. Goon 1 and 2 close the heavy doors behind him.]

DELORIA: How dare these impediment fools come into my manor and speak.

GOON 2: Maybe we can-

GOON 1: Shall I decline your invitation, your highness?

GOON 2: But-

DELORIA: No…no, maybe we can use this to our advantage.

Scene 2

Place

A room full of finely dressed people being served by a finely dressed waitstaff.

ANNOUNCER: Now presenting Duchess Deloria Dan Dubious Constance Ann Ferguson Van Helsingr the Third, Flame of the east, killer of men, Jewel of the North, accompanied by her two servants.

[Deloria walks down the grand staircase.]

DELORIA: Look at all those fools. They will call me Queen Duchess Deloria Dan Dubious Constance Ann Ferguson Van Helsingr the Third, Flame of the east, killer of men, Jewel of the North, the Iron ruler!

GOON 2: Your highness, your bro-

GOON 1: Your highness, your brother is attempting to get your attention.

[Constantine waves.]

DELORIA: Look at him on his throne, so high and mighty. I can’t wait to bring him down a notch. Did you know he was a bedwetter? He should not be King.

ANNOUNCER: Here ye, hear ye, gather around to witness the birth of Prince Quincey James Dan Dubious Constance Van Helsingr the First.

DELORIA: This is such a disgusting act. Why would I want to watch this cow covered in gold push out a slimy spawn of my brother?

[Sound of the queen screaming can be heard across the chatter of the room.]

DELORIA: She is so loud. She could’ve had the decency to close her mouth.

[More moans and screams.]

DELORIA: I would never be so loud producing an heir. This is just ridiculous.

[The queen screams some more.]

DELORIA: These theatrics for one little goblin is unnecessary. She’s just doing this for attention.

[The crowd cheers then gasps.]

DELORIA: Oh finally, it’s over.

GOON 2: Your Highness, the ba-

ANNOUNCER: The child is gone!

[Chaos ensues.]

Scene 3

[Party goers are running around the stage with their hands up. Some are crying, some are yelling, and the fat man faints. Deloria is sitting in a chair watching them freak out while goons 1 and 2 are fanning her.]

DELORIA: These imbeciles are not even looking; they’re only running around like a squire without his head.

GOON 1: You are absolutely right, your highness. These pompous, rump-kissing, infantile peasants are nothing more than driveling idiots that couldn’t discern their rears from a rabbit hole.

DELORIA: That’s giving them some competency. I doubt they’d be able to figure out that it’s a rabbit hole. If I was queen, anyone that had less than two brain cells would be beheaded.

GOON 1: But your highness, you wouldn’t have a kingdom.

[Deloria and Goon 1 laugh snarkily.]

GOON 2: Your highness, shou-

DELORIA: This party is becoming so drab. We should shake it up.

[Deloria stands and walks to the center of the room.]

DELORIA: Oh, woe is I. My poor nephew has been taken out from under our noses. How could such a horrendous act occur? Were we not watching the same birth?

[Party goers start blaming one another.]

DELORIA: [To the audience] It’s too easy. With how these imbeciles react to such little drama, my plan is going flawlessly.

GOON 1: [to the audience] To put it simply, we replaced the doctor with one of ours. He hid the child under his coat while everyone was too busy talking to one another. When everyone realized that there was no baby, it was just waiting for everyone to freak out so that we could sneak the little runt out.

DELORIA: What happens after that with the little brat in none of my concern, I just wanted to stir the pot some more. Really rub it in my brother’s face.

CONSTANTINE: Duchess Deloria Dan Dubious Constance Ann Ferguson Elizabeth Van Helsingr the Third, Flame of the east, killer of men, Jewel of the North, what have you done?

DELORIA: Why do you assume it was me?

[Constantine gestures to the audience.]

DELORIA: What do they know? Listen, I’m your sister, your flesh and blood. I would never harm a single hair on my family. I find it absolutely preposterous that you would think such a thing. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to get rid of me so there was no one to contest your son for the crown. How dastardly, brother. Here I thought you were a pious man, the golden boy, a child of God!

ANNOUNCER: Your Majesty! The Child has been found! Praise God!

[A child younger than a day is held up for the could to see. Cheers can be heard all around.]

DELORIA: [Panicked] Who says that’s my nephew? How do I know it is not some random child you picked out of the trash?

[The “Doctor” opens his coat and reveals Goon 2.]

GOON 2: It is me! I am sick of being treated like a bug under your foot, woman. I have been the butt of your jokes for long enough. I have betrayed you, Duchess Deloria Dan Dubious Constance Ann Ferguson Elizabeth Alexandria Van Helsingr the Third, Flame of the east, killer of men, Jewel of the North, and I will no longer be-

DELORIA: How dare you, you little imp. You are scum under the earth. I raised you. You are a pathetic waste of my time, and I spit on your family name!

[The guards surround Deloria and take her away. Everyone crowds around the baby, cooing.]

GOON 1: Well, that happened.

GOON 2: Probably could’ve go-

GOON 1: I mean that really got out of hand.

GOON 2: I mean we-

GOON 1: I think we’re unemployed now.

GOON 2: I have-

GOON 1:And we’re probably homeless.

GOON 2: I’m not-

GOON 1: What are we going to do?

[Constantine walks up to the two.]

CONSTANTINE: Young man, thank you so much for thwarting my sinister sister. I owe you my life and the fate of the kingdom. You sir are the finest man I have ever met. A true child of God. I want you to forever be by my son’s side. Allow me to knight you so that you may have a title and lands far past your wildest dreams. What is your name, my young hero?

GOON 2: Bob.

[Goon 1 looks around the now empty room.]

GOON 1: FUCK!

By Ambria Richardson

 

For as long as I can remember, I have been afraid of the dark. In hindsight, “afraid of the dark” isn’t the right phrase: a more accurate description would be that I am afraid of what I see in the dark.

The first time he appeared, I was four years old. My parents had gotten a divorce a year prior, which is why my mother thought it would be best to start my sister and I on therapy right away, as if she were playing a game of “beat the clock” with any disorders that might arise. Of course, I told the pediatric psychologist about him, The Gingerbread Man. The name came from the general outline of his figure, which resembled a gingerbread man to me. His whole body was a dark shadow with rounded edges, always darker than anything he was standing in front of as if he was swallowing the color from everything around him for sustenance. There were no details in his form, at least none that I could identify at the time. He was always at a distance.

For some unknown reason, The Gingerbread Man scared me. He had never hurt me. In fact, he made no effort to come into contact with me. Sometimes, I wondered if I was the apparition, not him. Even so, he instilled such an outrageous amount of terror in me that I wouldn’t get up at night for any reason. Before I closed my eyes for the night, I would scan my room, analyzing every shadow and object the best that I could, waiting for my eyes to adjust so that I could see more before my eyelids fell for the last time.

I found no solace in my dreams. I would sometimes wake up out of breath, drool running down my chin, and my eyes crusted over with eye boogers. Frantically, I would look around my room, searching for The Gingerbread Man among my stuffed animals, near the bookcase, in my open closet, by the door. If I could just lay my eyes on him, I would feel more at ease; there is power in knowledge. Every night, for years, he and I would play our game of “I Spy”, and sometimes, I would lose.

Although my sleeping habits got worse as I got older, I never mentioned The Gingerbread Man to any of my other psychologists after that first one, as a toddler. I was afraid that I would end up in an insane asylum; my sister has her own battles with mental health which exposed me to the truth that mental and behavioral health care is limited, and the stigma of “disconnecting from reality” is dangerous. So, I kept it a secret. Not until my sophomore year of college did things really start to take a turn for the worst.

That year, I began experiencing severe insomnia: on average, I slept between 3-5 hours a night, not including the nights I simply didn’t sleep at all. After a bit, I began to feel as though I were in hell, stalked by an intangible being at all hours. I experienced severe migraines, vision problems, dry eye, and general fatigue. I became a husk of a person, unable to function normally. I grew paranoid: I started seeing The Gingerbread Man during the day. He would lurk in the corner of my eye. When I was alone, I felt him behind me, his breath fanning the back of my neck. The dark silhouette followed me everywhere; I got no peace from him.

As the days wore on, they began to blend together: I would spend so much time awake that my concept of time all but collapsed. The only thing that kept me on schedule was class. My eyes turned red and puffy, my face and figure became disheveled, and my demeanor grew more and more discombobulated; my speech began to jumble the longer I stayed awake. I would lay in bed every night, with the covers pulled up to my chin, my eyes darting around the room, cycling frantically between each corner, taking in each piece of furniture to identify every shadow. I developed somniphobia, a fear of sleeping: I spent the time that I was awake worrying about sleeping, I would find things to do to lengthen my day, shortening the amount of time I would spend sleeping in a futile attempt to keep him away from me.

In my junior year of college, I had a nightmare that changed everything. I was lucid dreaming, but the setting of my dream was my dorm room. I was still laying in my bed, everything was as it usually was. At least, until my eyes came to rest on my bedroom door, facing the foot of my bed. There stood The Gingerbread Man. Because my body was still asleep, I could not move, could not scream. The only thing I could do was close my eyes and pretend that I had not seen him. I mentally counted to ten, and when I opened my eyes again, he was closer, standing next to my wardrobe, along the side of my bed. Still, I couldn’t scream, even though I desperately wanted to. I had the feeling that if I did scream, something terrible would happen to me. Again, I closed my eyes, hoping that when I opened them he would be gone. He wasn’t. This time, he was standing next to the head of my bed, bent at the waist, with his face inches from my own. We had never been this close before; I didn’t even know that he had facial features. Up until this point, he had been a faceless silhouette, and somehow I preferred that more. I can’t describe his face: his eyes were somehow an even darker black than the rest of him, like a black hole, completely devoid of light, of hope, of anything. I kept my eyes trained on his in an effort to assert dominance, ignoring everything else.

I don’t know how long we stared at each other like that. I still couldn’t move, and to make things worse, I couldn’t hide behind my eyelids this time. He opened his mouth and let the jaw hang slack and open far wider than any human’s. For a few moments before he said, “it’s not safe for you here.” I immediately knew what he meant: ever since I was a child, the spiritual world had been seeping into this one, and because I was a child, I had seen it. Hence, I had learned of his existence. Perhaps that is why children have imaginary friends; they can see what adults can’t. But at that moment, that night, I myself had crossed over, instead of the other way around. I’ve read stories about people who practice witchcraft and voodoo, who lucid dream and cross over to the other side. I’ve read about how unsafe it is for your soul. Still, this theory didn’t explain why I, a 20 year old at the time, was seeing these things. A better explanation would be that I was sick, and I was having some kind of attack.

After he said that, my eyes felt extremely heavy, and I fell back asleep. When I woke up, I felt normal, albeit tired. I got up to take a shower and start my day. The hot water hitting my back stung immensely; it took me by surprise. I immediately got out and went to look in the mirror, and there I saw a long scratch down the length of my spine. It was centered perfectly, and it was perfectly straight. Some parts of the scratch were deeper than others, but at its deepest point, at my lower back, I could see some dried blood. Suddenly, I recalled what had happened the previous night, with The Gingerbread Man. I knew they had to be related in some way. But what really scared me was that I couldn’t chalk it up to mental illness anymore; for the first time, I had physical proof that The Gingerbread Man was real, even if he wasn’t the one who had scratched me.

For days, the scratch burned hot any time I laid in my bed, a further reminder of what had taken place. But I never saw The Gingerbread Man after that night. I still suffer from somniphobia, spending most of my nights searching my room from my bed for him, hoping that I never spot him.

By Kayla Challingsworth

 

th-wump, th-wump, th-wump

The rain finally slowed into a dull drizzle; the soft pitter-patter interrupted by the steady rhythm of the larger droplets falling from the trees.

thuwmp, thwump, thwump

I rolled over on my cot, reaching for my pocket watch on the makeshift bedside table. I shuffled my papers and clutter until my hand touched the cold brass of the watch. Drawing it close to my face, I could barely make out what time it was; somewhere around quarter after four in the morning. I’d been waking up consistently for the last few weeks or so. I rolled onto my back and stared up at the nylon ceiling. The moonlight permeated the raindrops and left perfectly little round shadows throughout the tent. I liked the relaxing rain. It hid the sounds of twigs snapping or far off cries. I slowly drifted back to sleep to the rain’s lullaby.

When I finally awoke, it was daylight. I unzipped the tent and peeked my head out. Steam was rolling off the creek. I crawled out of the tent and onto my fern-carpet of a front yard. The air was crisp, a tall-tale sign that the winter months were on their way.

Iggy, my golden lab, was already running around, following an invisible trail with her nose. I whistled a quick sharp note to get her attention. Once I had her focus, I gathered my bow and knife and left my little clearing for the dense forest which surrounded me.  If Iggy and I wanted any chance of surviving the winter, we had to increase our food supply. By this late in the year, this season’s newborn deer were grown enough that they provided an acceptable amount of meat, but they weren’t too big to handle.

Iggy and I followed the creek until it opened into a slow-moving pool. The creek flowed from the north to the south, and a small meadow bordered the pool on its west. This area was a place for the animals to peacefully graze. I positioned myself in a crevice created by two large boulders on the perimeter of the meadow, patiently waiting.

The forest was decorated with large, magnificent boulders. I would even be inclined to consider them sculptures. When I was a young girl, I would plead with my father to take me into the woods to go “rock-gazing.” I remember the route that took us nearly all day to complete. Our favorite stops were “whale rock,” “head,” and finally the “white house.” My father told me the stories of when his own grandfather introduced him to these monuments. Apparently, they were already named before his grandfather had met them, too.

After a half an hour or so had passed, I heard Iggy’s breathing intensify. I knew that she had picked up the scent of an animal. She raised her head slowly, and I moved my own ever so slightly in her direction. The fawns had made their appearance in the sunlit meadow. They were still out of range for my stick-built bow. Patience is key in situations like this. I kept my focus on the twins as they neared the boulders. Suddenly, the wind shifted, and I was met by a horrendous odor, like rotten meat and eggs. The fawns must have caught wind of it too, for both their heads jerked up, and they sprinted in unison for the cover of the forest.

I scanned the perimeter of the meadow but found nothing unusual. I still smelled the lingering odor of wretched food. Iggy hunkered down deeper into the cracks between the two rocks. I followed her lead; we were not alone in this meadow. The woods fell dead silent. In the near distance we heard what sounded like a tree falling over. Then, silence again. Iggy and I waited another half an hour before deciding it was safe enough to emerge from hiding. The birds picked up their chirping by this time, and the squirrels bounced from tree to tree.

The entire trek back to my camp was daunting. Iggy was not acting herself. She stayed very close to me instead of trotting ahead following scents she picked up. If there is one thing I learned from living out here the past year, it is to always keep your guard up. I learnt quickly that humans are not the dominant species, especially when living in an environment other than our cozy suburban homes. This was exactly why I decided to do this experiment. I decided that I would spend two years out here in the woods. As a society, we had grown soft. Our “natural instincts” had shifted from survival to seeking comfort. Granted, I was only about seven miles away from the nearest civilization, but that was all the more distance it took to immerse myself in an unchartered environment. Take your own life for example: how many times have you seen a deer in your yard, or a squirrel bouncing around? We may believe that they are living in our world, but in perspective, we are the ones imposing on theirs.

Anyways, Iggy and I returned to camp without interruption. Next on our agenda for the day was to check the rabbit traps. As I prepared for this experiment, I packed four snares with me. I didn’t have to set them up too far from my camp for them to be effective. I placed them in the opposite direction of the meadow, following downstream towards the beaver dam. When I arrived at the first snare, I was happy to see a large rabbit caught in the trap. I opened and reset the snare and set off for the next trap carrying my rabbit by its hind legs. The following two snares hadn’t been tripped yet. However, the fourth snare was successful. The fourth trap was placed very near the bank of the beaver pond. Earlier last year when I first arrived here, I caught a large plump beaver in one of my snares. Since then, I haven’t caught another; they were too smart. This time, one of the beavers made a fatal mistake.

I gathered my harvest and started back for the camp with Iggy in tow. There was an old fallen tree in my camp. It was large enough in diameter that I could use it as a makeshift table. It was useful for many a thing, but today it was going to a skinning board. I started with the rabbit first, carefully carving the skin away from the meat. I sprawled its hide out on the log to dry in the sun. Then I began separating the meat from the bone. I repeated this process for the beaver. I turned to my fire pit and started work on creating flames. Early on I learned to stash firewood in a place where it was safe from the elements, otherwise it would be useless if it was soiled. I walked over and grabbed a few pieces, then arranged them in a teepee formation. I stuffed some dry twigs and leaves under the configuration to act as kindling. With a few strikes from my flint and steel, the fire was lit.

As I let the fire burn for a while, I collected some meat in a pan to cook. Once the teepee had collapsed and the fire condensed to a slow simmer, I carefully tucked the pan of meat into the outskirts of the flame. I shuffled the pieces around with a stick until they were evenly browned. I removed the pan from the fire and sat it on a stump. Iggy trotted over, and her and I shared the meat for lunch. It was easy to tell the two meats apart: the rabbit tasted more like chicken, while the beaver resembled pork. After our feast, I began work on slicing the raw meat into thin strips, preparing them for preservation. Once I completed this task, I began work on assembling the spit to hand the meat over the fire for smoking. I had two sticks which Y-ed at the top which I drove into the ground on either side of the fire, opposite from each other. I then placed another stick horizontally across the Ys of the vertical sticks stuck in the ground. By this time, the fire had died enough that it was creating an abundant amount of smoke. I hung the meat strips on the spit as if it were a clothesline. There was nothing more left for me to do, except prod the fire occasionally to keep it smoldering.

Iggy and I took a break from the day’s exploits and walked to the edge of the creek. I sat on the bank as Iggy waded into the stream, lapping up water as she went. I brought with me a spare strip of raw meat from my harvest. Tearing a small piece off, I looked under the bank on the opposite shore where the water had carved the earth away underneath the surface. Soon I saw a little circular shape swim out from underneath this water cave and towards my reflection. This was Turner, my neighbor, the box turtle. We were rather fond of each other, even if our anatomical differences created some barriers for us. It was especially nice to make a friend out here.

After an hour or so of resting on the bank with Iggy, Turner, and myself, I decided it was a good point to check on the meat. By this time, the better part of the day had already gone by. I loaded the fire up so it would last throughout the night. It takes about a full 24 hours to cure meat properly. Unfortunately, this meant that it would have to burn through the night, and the scent of meat attracted predators far and wide. Iggy usually does a good job at warding off these unwanted visitors. For the occasional animal that refuses to back off, I did bring a hunting rifle with me on this excursion, and about 200 rounds. I always had it with me, always loaded.

As the sky drew darker, Iggy and I withdrew to our tent. I wrapped myself up in my sleeping bag and Iggy curled up on the ground beside me. I fell asleep with my rifle lying next to me in bed. I slept soundly until I was suddenly awakened by Iggy growling. I quickly shook the tired fogginess off and hushed Iggy.  I could hear a creature attempting to gather the curing meat off of the spit, but something else was unusual. With every step this animal took, the ground vibrated. The stranger part, its walking pattern sounded as if it had two legs instead of four. My mind instantly inferred that this was a human, but a human so large that their steps shook the ground? Maybe it was bear on its hind legs, but its steps didn’t sound clumsy. I looked at Iggy, and she was shaking. Her reaction told me that this was force not to be reckoned with. I was as still as I possibly could, even trying to slow my breathing. Then I was hit with a horrendous smell of rotten trash. I recognized this smell; it was the same one I encountered in the meadow the day before. After what seemed like hours, the footsteps finally trailed off away from my camp. I grabbed my pocket watch again and checked the time: 4:09 a.m.

I was unable to fall asleep again, neither was Iggy. I waited until the sunlight started poking through the trees to move again. The birds began their morning hymn, so I felt it was safe to leave my tent. I unzipped the tent and was instantly astonished at what I saw. My flimsy spit was untouched. However, the strips of meat were completely gone. Not a single trace of them left. Bears and other predators wreak havoc on the entire ensemble when they steal meat. The creature was intelligent. Normally, I would have been pissed at the thief, but my instincts were telling me I was about to be messing with something that I shouldn’t be messing with.

I decided not to go hunting that day or leave my camp for that matter. Iggy and I did go and check the snares since they were near. As I was following the creek downstream, Iggy picked up a sent and pursued it with her nose pressed to the ground. She took a turn towards the edge of the stream. There, a massive human-like footprint was smashed into the mud. Iggy stopped in her tracks and looked around. I froze, only moving my head to slowly scan my surroundings. The only movement I seen was some small birds flying from tree to tree. I tried not to let this affect me; you cannot be weak in an environment like this, neither physically nor mentally. I continued my route, finding only a small squirrel in one of my snares. “Something is better than nothing” I reminded myself, as I brought it back to camp and performed my meat preparation routine. This time, there wasn’t enough meat to preserve anything. I disassembled the spit and built the fire up to a sizeable flame. Again, I shared my meal with Iggy.

The beast that visited my camp early this morning left the animal hides untouched. I gathered them and tucked them into my tent to ensure there was nothing left here to tempt it to return. The rest of the afternoon I spent gathering the last of this season’s blackberry harvest. As the sun began to set, I noticed some movement off in my peripheral vision. I brushed it off as just a shadow, but when I saw movement again, I directed my focus in its direction. There, about 60 yards to my west was a black figure, revealing itself from behind a giant oak tree. For a while we just stared at each other, taking our features in. The thing was at least seven feet tall. And its shoulders were abnormally broad. Its muscles were defined, and massive, but it was almost completely covered in long, dark, shaggy hair. And its head – its head was if you threw a hunk of clay onto a pottery table. There was no neck, just an enormous conical head shoved onto its wide shoulders.

Finally, I began backing away, never taking my eyes off of it. It never moved. Finally, I turned and ran the short distance back to camp. Iggy was still basking in the sun. I hurried and constructed a massive fire, in hopes that it would deter the intruder. Then I whistled for Iggy and hunkered down in our tent for the night.

I couldn’t fall asleep. Every time I closed my eyes I was met with the picture of the monster. I figured it was better that I didn’t sleep anyways, so I wouldn’t be caught off guard if it returned. I must have fallen asleep at some point though, as I was awoken by branches breaking, and Iggy shivering at my side.

What I thought was halfway through my experiment, was in actuality, just the beginning.

* * *

            I instantly knew that the beast had returned to my campsite. Unsure of what to do, I reached for my rifle slowly, but silently. After my first encounter with the monster, I did not believe my rifle would be able to do much damage, but it is human instinct to defend yourself. I waited in silence as a listened to the slow drumming of footsteps. Each step sounded like a long slow bass drum, rhythmically stomping out a beat.

boom…

boom…

boom…

            The thunderous steps gradually grew louder as the beast neared my tent. The glow of the fire cast a shadow of the creature onto the side of my tent, creating a perfect outline. I stared in amazement at the silhouette – the broad shoulders, stumpy head towering over my tent. A hand emerged from the dark shadow of the beast’s body, slowly edging towards my tent. It placed a hand gently on the side of my tent, as if analyzing the texture of the nylon. The hand pulsated in and out and the creature pushed against the fabric. It was a large hand, larger than any human hand I had ever seen. Yet, it resembled the characteristics of a human hand; five digits, complete with a flexible thumb. Although much larger, it was proportioned the same as a human’s. The hand then stopped moving. In that moment I was compelled to touch it; my fear was overcome by curiosity. I laid the rifle beside me and stretched my arm out to meet the black outline of the creature’s hand. I touched it softly, and the beast jumped a little, as if startled. It withdrew its hand quickly, and I did the same. However, it reached its hand back out and placed it on the side of my tent again. I followed its lead and placed my hand against the outline; the only thing separating us was the thin nylon of the tent. I held it there, admiring its size, feeling its warmth, simply grasping the concept that I was encountering a living, breathing creature. Suddenly, the beast didn’t seem so monstrous anymore. I began to feel a little acclimated towards it. After a few minutes of pressing our hands together, I withdrew my hand back to my side, and the creature did the same. It stood there for a few moments before slowly retreating back to the depths of the forest.

I was so infatuated with this encounter that the world seemed to stand still. Suddenly, I remembered Iggy, and a hot flash of adrenaline ran through my body. I looked to the floor where she slept; she was still there, hunkered and tucked into a ball, still quivering with fear. I pulled myself out of my sleeping bad and crouched down on the floor beside her. I slowly stroked my hand across her head and back, attempting to calm her. Finally, I crawled back onto my cot, calling Iggy to join me. She uncurled herself from her tightly wrapped position and jumped onto the cot. I fell asleep with her beside me; feet tucked under her body, head resting on my stomach.

I was able to sleep through the entire night without any additional interruption. It was a pleasant morning. I unzipped the tent and was met with crisp fresh air. The sun was just peaking over the hills, the rays piercing through the trees and warming the earth. Steam was hovering over the creek and the temperature of the air began to rise. Iggy was reluctant to follow me out of the tent. She poked her head through the opening and tilted her nose to the sky while sniffing the air. Once she determined it was safe, she trotted out of the tent and around the perimeter of the campsite. The fire was now dwindled to burning ashes, so I began work on gathering some kindling to start it back up again. As the fire began to catch flame, I walked to the creek to collect a pot of water for boiling. I sat the pot of water over the flame and embarked on my trap-checking route.

Iggy followed me as I made my rounds. My traps were all still set, meaning there would be no harvest this morning. I felt that it was a good time to move my traps around; I wanted to avoid completely depleting my resources. I moved three of my snares to a grove of oak trees near my campsite. There’s always an abundance of squirrels around this area due to the acorns the oak trees produced. This time of the fall is when the acorns are at their peak. My fourth trap I decided to keep near the water. However, I walked far down the creek to place this last one. I decided to set the snare where the stream converged into the pool that bordered the meadow. There were always small animal tracks in the mud of the creek bank. Satisfied with my work, I walked back to the camp with Iggy.

When I arrived at the camp, there was a large trout laying on my skinning log. I stopped dead in my tracks and looked around but saw nothing. I approached the fish cautiously: it appeared fresh. I scanned the area again and glanced at Iggy. She was lying on the ground sunbathing. An animal can give you a lot of clues about the world. In this case, her demeanor was telling me that everything was alright. My heightened sense of fear dwindled as I came to the realization that this must be an offering from the creature, and I took it as a sign of peace. With newfound confidence, I grabbed my knife and began to filet the fish. After I was done, I returned to the fire, removed the pot of water, and placed the butchered fish on the pan to cook. I tended to the meat until it was thoroughly prepared. Thankfully, the trout was large enough that Iggy and I could share it. It was the best meal I have had since beginning this experiment: fresh pan-seared trout with sterilized creek water.

I took advantage of the energy the trout meal gave me by collecting a stockpile of firewood. I utilize the entire part of the later afternoon to get as much as I could. Finally, when the sun began to set, I decided to check my traps one last time. Still no luck, but the traps were just fresh, and I knew it would take a few days for the animals to become accustomed to them.

Before bed I built up the fire to last through the night. I sat by the fire for a while with Iggy resting at my side. The darkness brought on an unusual feeling now. My mind raced with questions and scenarios:

Why hadn’t I seen the creature today?

Is it going to return tonight?

Do I want to see it again?

Was that really a peace offering?

Is it expecting something in return?

My frenzied inquiry was abruptly interrupted by an instant “snap!” Iggy scrambled to her feet and stared in the direction of the sound. My head snapped towards the noise as well. I felt a wave of comfort flow through my body as I realized a squirrel had fallen victim to my trap; the noise being the snap of the snare. I walked over to the trap and pried the squirrel out of it and took it to my log for skinning. Iggy lurked by my side as I processed the meat and assembled my contraption for smoking it over the fire.

            I went to bed that night with conflicting desire regarding the creature. It no longer seemed monstrous to me, but I was still apprehensive at the thought of encountering it again. After all, it was still a wild animal, and an enormous one at that. Who knows what it is truly capable of? Iggy fell asleep on my cot again, but I lied awake in anticipation. I came to terms with my emotions: no matter how I felt towards this thing I would have to deal with it. Since I had a very personal encounter with it, I felt the description of creature no longer suited it. Before falling asleep, I decided to give it a name: Quin.

* * *

By Randy Mong

 

“Why don’t you just put a CD in?” Archie asked from the passenger seat, finally reaching his breaking point with the constant noise of skipping stations.

“Because,” Caleb replied with a quick glance to his fiancé, “all we have in here is Evanescence and that cast recording of Annie you insisted that we needed.”

 “That’s not true!” Archie scoffed. “I have my mix in here somewhere,” he mumbled, reaching over to dig in the center console, grumbling about the mess of junk that Caleb had left inside. 

The couple was on their way home from an annual dinner party for Archie’s work. Caleb had been to five of them now, and each year it got worse. Archie’s colleagues got snobbier with age. Or maybe the stick in their asses grew another inch. Either way, Caleb would have rather spent the night having his teeth pulled, but he couldn’t let Archie face it alone. Besides, if he hadn’t gone, people might have talked. 

Things were easier when Archie’s most tolerable coworker, Matthew, showed up to wreak havoc on the open bar and his fellow office workers, but he hadn’t been there at this year’s party. Matthew usually thrived off the dirty looks he got from snooty businesspeople. His absence left Caleb to fend for himself when Archie was dragged into a conversation. Caleb practically crawled into his shitty brown polyester suit to either hide or just die. 

Caleb tapped his fingers against the wheel as they stopped at a red light, taking a moment to absorb the man sitting beside him. Archie had always joked that they were opposites. Sun and moon, as cliché as it was. He was right, of course. Archie was always right. Caleb’s dark mess of waves next to the other’s perfectly styled, toffee-colored hair, and Archie’s celery green eyes that twinkled just the right way staring into his fiancé’s warm browns. Archie was big where Caleb was small, charismatic where Caleb was not, warm against his cold. 

They needed each other, they had both concluded, to fill in the gaps in their lives. It was working well so far, if the ring on Caleb’s finger was any indication.

“Aha! Found it!” Archie held up the CD in its case, eyebrow arched.

Caleb rolled his eyes as a soft laugh spilled from his mouth. “Pop it in then, hotshot,” he said, shaking his head as the traffic light turned green and he pressed on the gas. There was a faint whir of the disc reading before the music began to leave the speakers, piano chords that slowly led into lyrics. Pearl Jam.

If I ever were to lose you

I’d surely lose myself…

Caleb listened to the soft hum that buzzed through the mouth of his fiancé, glancing over at him occasionally as he drove. He looked almost statuesque then, streetlights hitting his Roman nose and long eyelashes. He felt like he’d been looking for an eternity, but Archie’s voice made him falter.

“Wait, stop.”

“What’s up?” Caleb asked as he slowed the vehicle down to a slight roll, checking that there was no one behind him, but it was late, and everyone was already home or reaching the bottom of their bottles.

“Just pull over. There’s someone on the curb.”

Caleb complied with the instruction without a thought because it was Archie. The ring that he’d accepted was a binding of undoubtable trust after all. As he pulled over, into a parking lot on the side of the street, he scanned along the sidewalk before sure enough, his eyes landed on an unconscious heap of blonde hair and disheveled blue tulle. 

He heard the click of a seatbelt beside him and looked up, seeing Archie reach for the passenger door handle. Automatically, Caleb’s hand sprung forward to curl around Archie’s arm that was close to him, squeezing softly.

“Arch,” he murmured, voice tense and nervous, jaw clenching together for a moment. “You don’t need to go out there,” he said. “We just— We can call the cops or something.”

Archie gave him a look over, cool celery eyes warming with a gentleness reserved for his lover.  He reached the hand that was curled around the doorknob to settle on the fingers gripping his forearm. He rubbed the small, pale knuckles with his warm ones. Caleb’s hand was cold. They always were. The thought of if he’d forgotten to take his iron supplements today managed to push through the heart thumping anxiety. But then, a kiss was pressed to his head, erasing any musings he had.

“You worry too much,” Archie spoke against the dark curls, a smile evident in his voice before he pulled away to look at Caleb; he held Caleb’s face in his hands, thumbs stroking over sharp cheekbones. Archie was right. He did. Without his fiancé, Caleb would probably be late for work with how long he pondered over sock choices.

“I just want to make sure she’s okay, alright?” 

Caleb was silent, before giving a subtle jerk of his head. “Alright.”

The door opened, making the car glow with yellow light from the interior bulbs before the soft thunk of the door shutting followed. Archie glanced behind him to give a reassuring smile through the windshield before continuing his walk to the unconscious woman on the curb. Caleb fidgeted in his seat, popping his knuckles habitually. Archie hated it, and it always turned into a long argument over bullshit like arthritis, but with how Caleb’s heart was thundering, he didn’t think he could live to see himself get arthritis.

Pearl Jam was still playing through the car, though it seemed painfully loud now without Archie’s hums and interjections, only leaving Caleb’s breaths to clash and grind against the strums of guitar and vocalizations. Call it attachment anxiety, but Caleb couldn’t give any shits; all he could think about how Archie should have been in the car but wasn’t, should have been holding his hand but wasn’t, should have been by his side as they drove their way home, but wasn’t. But then he heard a voice jackhammer through his anxiety, emerging in a soothing, careful echo.

Breathe.

Caleb’s hands stilled, knuckles sore from popping them, and suddenly the rigid stone stuck in his chest softened, becoming pliant and almost warm as a rush of oxygen reached his brain. He let his head hang for a moment, gaze focused on his lap as he let out a self-deprecating chuckle.

“Stupid, ” he mumbled to himself.

He was right. He was being stupid. Of course, Archie would want to help this woman; it was the right thing to do. Normally, he would think so too, but he had been in his own head nearly the whole night that finally being out of it felt like floating in dead space. Caleb felt almost ashamed of himself for thinking about leaving her there by herself.

A muffled yell from outside had him jarred from his position, his head snapping up to look at the source as the warmth of growing relaxation in the car froze once again. It was a frantic flicking of eyes until his vision settled on Archie, not too far away at all, trying to help the now-panicked girl sit up on the curb. She was out of it, eyeliner and mascara smudged over her face, almost making her look like some sort of masked vigilante.

Archie was clearly trying to be gentle, but he didn’t want her to fall back down and hit her head, so he had a careful grip on one arm. She was disoriented, panicked, and thrashing about with sounds of fright, drowning out Archie’s reassurances. She suddenly gathered her free arm close to her and pushed against Archie hard enough that it made him stumble backwards and onto the road. Caleb unbuckled his seatbelt and opened the door then, ready to get out himself. To do what, he wasn’t sure, but he felt useless and stupid just sitting there in the car.

He swung his legs out from the space in his car, getting ready to push himself up, before his brain barely absorbed the whoosh of air beside him, stirring his curls from his forehead. It made him jolt with a soft gasp that quickly turned into a yelp as there was a sudden squeal of tires that made his ears buzz.

His brain didn’t register the metallic smash and glass crunching as anything other than noises, didn’t register the thunk-a-thunk-a-thunk-a as the rolling that it was, didn’t register the strangled grunts as anything at all, because what could possibly make such a sound?

Everything went silent with a final and heavy thud on the pavement.

Caleb didn’t want to move, as much as the adrenaline in his bloodstream begged him to. His body was stuck jerking with full-body tremors before his eyes finally caught sight of the figure on the pavement. He’d never seen a sight quite like it, his pattern-seeking brain trying to fill in dots that didn’t quite make logical sense. Maybe Archie would tell him, explain.

He did, in a certain, morbid way, Caleb realized.

But not in words.

Caleb didn’t need words when the stark white bone of an arm that jutted out from twisted and mottled tan skin, gleaming against streetlamps, told him everything he needed to know.

His brain commanded him to stand, and he did for a moment before crumpling to his knees. Someone was screaming, or were his ears ringing?

He looked frantically to his right, instinct pushing through to examine hazy stimuli. He blinked once, twice, watching smoke from an engine hit the light of the lamps igniting the road in a yellow glow. Small, greenish blue shards— Caleb thought they were rocks for a moment— littered the road, occasionally stained a bright, vicious red. Glass, his brain attempted to supply, but he didn’t want to put together the pieces of this ever-growing puzzle of horror. Other things littered the ground besides the pebble-like glass, things that Caleb couldn’t quite understand.

A man, an older one, one much older than Archie, stood by the smoking vehicle, fingers carding through graying hair. His car was black, like his shirt, like the night they were surrounded by. Even from a distance, Caleb could see his eyes, wide like saucers, and his mouth agape. He’d never seen anyone wear an expression so visceral, not ever. Another puzzle piece to add to the undeniable truth.

The heels of his hands dug painfully into the asphalt as he began to crawl, the sensation surprisingly present in his mind, welcome, even. His sweet, beautiful Archie that was spread, twisted, and spilling over that very same asphalt. Red wet chunks, both with red and an indescribable slime, littered the road, glinting off the light from above in a grayish-pink hue. It looked soft, and as Caleb moved, he felt bits of it under his palms. As he shifted, it squelched and gave under the pressure, spongy and oddly cold.

A fragmented piece of something hard dug into his hand, and he winced as a hissed burst through his teeth, the pain breaking through his fuzzy mind for just a moment as he reached his hand up to look at it. The piece was pink, though it seemed like it would be white if it had been wiped clean, like an oddly thick shard of something like a dinosaur skull that he’d seen at the Smithsonian. Another puzzle piece, digging into the heel of his hand.

A splash of blue tulle and blonde curls caught his eyes next, and he looked closer at how the feminine features and smeared makeup crumpled. She approached the man in the black shirt, shoved him, and he stumbled back against the side of his car drunkenly. It almost made Caleb laugh. She was screaming something, the same frantic tone permeating through the ringing in Caleb’s ears. His brows furrowed as he tried to focus on the words.

You killed him. You killed him. You killed him.

There it was. The finished puzzle.Caleb’s head tilted, and he looked back at his Archie, who now seemed as delicate as glass. Surely, they meant someone else. Archie was fine. Archie was fine. Caleb felt a pinch of grief, for whoever they meant. But there was a selfish thought, one he wasn’t sure got out of his mouth or not.

“Call an ambulance, please! He needs an ambulance!”

He was finally close enough to curl a hand around a blue cotton covered shoulder (Red. It was red now. He could’ve sworn it was blue.) to squeeze the warm skin underneath, to jostle the distorted body beneath him. It was still warm. That was good. That meant something. That had to mean something.

“Arch? Archie… archiearchiearchiearchiearchieARCHIE!”

His knees were wet. Why were they wet? It wasn’t raining. Archie had told him the forecast this morning. He always did. He would tell him again tomorrow. Maybe in the hospital, maybe a little rough around the edges, but he would still tell him to look out for blue skies in that stupid weather reporter’s voice.

He nearly went to gently turn Archie over, to see his face, but he realized in confusion that he could already see it. Or what was left of it, marred with shards of windshield, and black chunks of asphalt from the road, ripped and busted open. Archie’s nose, his perfect blank canvas for kisses, was now lost in a sea of red and nauseating white, distorted and shattered beyond recognition like a curvy backroad. To the right, to the left, and another sharp angle to the right, before somehow disappearing inwards, intermingling with the mess of his upper lip, a distortion of skin and teeth. It was all splattered with blood in hot, thick rivulets, sluggishly gushing out of every open orifice.

His eyes remained untouched though, that bright, sparkling green shining through. Caleb reached trembling hands— palms marred with blood and small chunks of cerebrum— out to curl around his fiancé’s neck, fingers sprawling to press against his jaw and the back of his skull. The skin was still warm. But of course, it would be. Archie was always warm.

Caleb’s fingers skimmed over something that felt unfamiliar to him. He knew every inch of Archie, so it caught his attention immediately. He swallowed the whimper that threatened to leave his throat, only repeating a frantic, desperate, “Arch?” as he quickly looked to examine the skin of Archie’s neck. Alarm bells went off in his head in an instant— wrong wrong wrong wrong— when he observed the stretched and twisted skin. It was an image Caleb had only seen in horror movies, small glimpses of shrapnel-like bone peeking through slight exit wounds.

More pieces to put together again. But Caleb could do it. He’d do it right here, right now, because it was Archie and he needed him to do this one thing.

“I got you,” he murmured, hands moving from Archie’s neck to find a starting place in order to fix him. “We’ll fix this, see? I got you.”

But something still didn’t make sense to him as he slowly began to look at the big picture of his lover sprawled on the road. Why could he see his face if Archie was sprawled on his side, his back to him? That didn’t make sense.

But it did. It did make sense.

His head was the wrong way.

His head was the wrong way.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

If there was one thing Caleb hated more than a funeral, it was this godforsaken suit he’d forced himself into. He only had one; it was also his first. A two-piece set that he had been gifted by his sister on his first birthday. She always did that sort of thing for him, whether it was his first chest binder, or his first real haircut. She had been affirming where their mother had not.

It was a kind gesture that was drowned out by the fact of how ugly the stupid suit was, a dark brown, shiny polyester. It remained untouched except for the occasional brush of fingers along the jacket’s sleeve as Caleb would skim groggily through his wardrobe in the mornings. 

With his own wedding just around the corner, he had figured he could finally retire the damn thing for good and get a nice, wool suit. He and Archie had been bouncing between gray and black for weeks, but it was alright, they had said, because they had plenty of time. But of course, that horrible suit had to have the last laugh, snatching up the time they had and stuffing minutes and hours into shoddily sewn pockets.

Grief suddenly and relentlessly stabbed in his chest, threatening to choke him even more than his tie already was as he settled into his car in the parking lot of the funeral home. With slow movements he pushed his jingling keys into the ignition and turned them, listening to the engine of his shitty P.T. Cruiser sputter to life. He lowered his face into his hands, forehead lightly grazing the steering wheel, a ragged breath rattling through his rib cage as he tried to absorb the week’s events. It was odd to be in the quiet as the last few cars departed the parking lot. He had forced himself to keep busy all week. Funeral planning, document filing, bills piling, hugs and condolences, and casseroles galore. All to keep him away from the startling truth. 

He was alone. What was he going to do?

He groaned out a gritted noise of panic as his fingers curled around his tie to loosen it, ravenous in his movements. The drone of absolutely nothing was making his eyes sting with hot

emotion as he jutted his arm out to graze over the volume knob of the radio, turning it up so the boom of the speakers could patch up the shroud over his grief.

Cape Cay County Sheriff’s office is asking for help in locating 26-year-old Emily Wagner. She was last seen in August…

Caleb dropped his head back until it impacted dully against the soft headrest of the driver’s seat, bringing up his free hand to pinch his nose bridge, stomach churning. This was the farthest thing from what he needed right now. 

“Oh, fuck me…” he muttered under a frustrated huff, jaw clenching before he pressed the button on his console to skim to the next station, and then the next station, and then the next…

Caleb finally stopped at a station that seemed to suffice, some shitty Goldies station that played Journey and Queen about a billion times before finally giving a reprieve with a hardly more tolerable ABBA song. He took a moment, holding the steering wheel in a knuckle-white grip as he sucked in a breath, repeating the command to himself quietly before his heart managed to stop roaring in his ears. He swallowed thickly before reaching to put the car in reverse to pull out of the spot at the funeral home that he had frequented for the last week.

Nausea pooled in his gut, acidic and relentless. He had gotten to see Archie again, though he wasn’t the Archie he knew. It was like looking at a wax sculpture from that overpriced and creepy museum that the pair had gone to in Niagara Falls, where Archie made Caleb lean in close enough to one of the sculptures before squeezing him at his sides, making him shriek before they both devolved into giggles.

That wasn’t Archie. Archie’s cheeks flushed a brilliant pink when he smiled, not the dull, powdery rose that sat atop his pale cheeks while he laid stationary in the casket. Archie was warm when he pressed his body against Caleb’s back while they curled up on a quiet, cool night in autumn. His heartbeat fiercely against the space between Caleb’s shoulder blades. That wasn’t Archie.

That was a body.

Archie had never made a will or detailed what he had wanted for a service (why would he?), so his mother and Caleb had taken it upon themselves to plan, which meant Archie’s mother, Kathleen, provided “suggestions” while Caleb was expected to nod along like a mindless zombie.

Caleb was proud to admit that he hadn’t gone belly-up over the discussion of an open casket. He knew it was something that Archie would have absolutely despised for himself, but of course, Kathleen was insistent upon it. She went on and on about “preserving her son’s legacy” and “giving the opportunity to say goodbye.” 

It was easy to say that when she hadn’t seen how unrecognizable her son looked twisted and distorted and destroyed—

“Fuck!” Caleb suddenly stomped his foot sharply against the brakes of his car, his poor car practically screaming through the strain of the sudden stop. He gritted his teeth, bracing himself for inevitable impact with the frantic deer that had shot from the curtain of trees that surrounded the road on either side.

He jerked with the stop, muscles tensing to avoid smashing his face against the wheel, blood screaming in his veins with the vicious ice of adrenaline. And yet, there the deer went on its way, finishing its path across the road, disappearing in the woods again. It didn’t reflect on its near gruesome death, all flailing hooves and its blood and fur trapped in the grill of Caleb’s car. It made Caleb think. Did Archie have time to think? Reflect? Was he scared?

Caleb was still stuck in a dead stop, his leg almost aching from the amount of pressure his foot was putting on the wheel, but he couldn’t move. His teeth clacked together as he shuddered. A honk tugged Caleb from his thoughts with a jolt, and he looked around frantically before the sound happened again, from behind him. He whirled around over his shoulder to look through his rear windshield, heart still racing and palms sweating, and somehow the embarrassment of seeing a car behind him with an irritated driver behind the wheel calmed the nausea in his stomach. If he’d thought about… the incident any longer, he was sure he’d be sick.

The task of carefully pressing the gas and starting to drive was helpful in yanking him out of the horrible drain he’d been going down. If he looked at the trees, at the speedometer, at anything, he could at least repress the images branded behind his eyelids. And so, he cranked up the music as loud as he could, listening to the shitty speakers in his car vibrate with bass that they couldn’t handle and just let himself go on autopilot, mind becoming a welcome blank expanse. He could handle this. He could handle the oddly comforting sense of nothing. A welcome change compared to the Tilt-A-Whirl from hell that his brain tended to put him through.

Caleb didn’t change the station once the entire way home, barely absorbing the inevitable cheerfulness of “Come on Eileen” that every Goldies station inevitably forces onto their poor, unsuspecting listeners at least once a day. He simply let the familiar tune’s beats vibrate against his hands on the wheel as he pulled into the parking lot beside his apartment complex. Robotic movements turned the key out of the ignition and swamped the car in silence. Caleb sat for a moment, eyes shutting as he sucked in a breath. His car felt like a fucking armored tank right now, and the sunny, warm day somehow was a war zone. He swallowed the lump in his throat, teeth digging into the inside of his cheek.

Breathe.

And he did.

It would be okay. Maybe only for a few minutes, but he’d take them.

Caleb climbed out of his car slowly, hand clenching into a fist around his keys before shuffling to the door of his apartment. Thank God it was on the first floor. He could hardly stand the stairs as it was. He hesitated as he shoved his key in the lock and pushed down on the door handle. This was it. It really was hisapartment now. Just his apartment. He hadn’t been just his in a very, very long time. But he could pretend it wasn’t. Just for a little while longer.

Caleb opened the door then allowed himself to walk inside with a deep heave of air into his lungs. He shut it. Air released. He leaned against the door, letting his head fall back against it. He stood there, allowing his brain to fill in the silence with familiar sensations. Food on the stove, CD in the boombox, a kiss to his temple. Laughter.

“I’m home!”

Caleb was met with the smell of spices and vegetables as he nudged open the door with his shoulder, mouth immediately beginning to water. He was starving and Archie’s cooking was unmatched. It was Friday evening, the one day in their horrible schedules that worked out just right, and they always took advantage of the precious time, Archie cooking dinner, Caleb picking the movie, and an unspoken competition to see if they could finish it.

He didn’t savor the delicious smell in the grumble in his belly for long, however, as the blast of music practically knocked him off his feet.

“We’re going to get a noise complaint again,” Caleb scoffed as he shut the door with his foot, bags of groceries juggled in his arms.

He could practically feel the vibrations of the music through the doorknob when he had turned it, and the source was now in front of his eyes. A small but deceptively powerful red boombox threatened to blow the ceiling off of their apartment with the sheer volume that Archie had cranked The Smiths up to. Caleb didn’t even think it was possible to jam so aggressively to The Smiths, but Archie was proving him wrong now, bobbing his head and swaying his hips in a way that almost seemed obscene.

It created quite a picture for Caleb, one he certainly didn’t need while he was holding bags of frozen TV dinners and bread.

Archie turned from the stove, and the vegetables he had begun sautéing on the stove, soft lips pulled into a sly grin that only Caleb saw. Or at least he hoped he was the only one who had seen it, because he knew what it meant. Archie reached a hand almost painfully slow to turn down the music until it was a faint drone, and now it felt too quiet, like Caleb was stuck under Archie’s tantalizing gaze like mouse caught in a trap.

“They should be grateful that they don’t have to make the usual one,” Archie said, voice deceptively soft as he approached his fiancé, strong arms curling around Caleb’s waist.

Caleb’s face turned warm, blood rushing to his cheeks as he hummed out a chuckle, bags of groceries hitting the floor, meeting their inevitable doom to thaw as Caleb’s now-empty hands reached up to graze up Archie’s arms.

“You’re gross,” Caleb teased softly as he felt a kiss to his temple, a long nose in his curls. “At this point, we’re going to have to face two noise complaints.”

“Hm…” Archie hummed in response. Another kiss to Caleb’s lips. It would’ve nearly felt chaste, if the butterflies in his rib cage weren’t flapping their wings against his sternum. “I’m thinking that’s the goal, hot shot.”

Kisses to Caleb’s jaw and a grin against soft skin. A faint gasp lurched from his mouth as Archie laughed softly in his ear.

“Dinner is going to burn…” Caleb murmured, craning his neck as Archie’s teeth scraped gently along his pulse. A laugh from Archie then, one that Caleb joined in on, both of their cheeks pink and eyes bright. Archie emerged from his spot nestled against Caleb’s warm skin, dazzling green eyes glinting dangerously.

“I really don’t think you should be worried about dinner right now…”

It would have to be enough for now.

“I’m home,” he called out. He was met with silence that he neglected to acknowledge, feet moving him towards there—his bedroom. Caleb flicked on the light before staring at the clutter on the bed with a tired chuckle. God, he could picture Archie now, the way he would have picked up the clothes on the bed in one quick swoop and tossed them all back in the box they came from. “That is future Archie’s problem,” he would’ve said.

But it wasn’t future Archie’s problem. There was no future Archie. Only a future Caleb, and practically a million pieces of clothing that he was now forced to sort through at the insistence of Archie’s mother. She wasn’t much of a hoarder. Something about “someone needing it more than them”, or whatever the fuck kind of bullshit excuse she wanted to use to throw away memories. Someone didn’t need the shirt that Archie wore when they opened presents on Christmas morning, or his favorite pair of jeans. Caleb did. He needed that more than anything. He was limiting himself to what he could reasonably store, and he tried not to think of the rest.

He’d have to finish. It was a task he put off by finally shrugging off the ugly brown polyester suit jacket he was wearing, deciding to put on something more bearable, something that didn’t have the lingering aura of death attached to it. He wrenched the strangling tie off with a sharp flash of disdain, his shirt following. Caleb quickly yanked off the pants and set them aside, face scrunching. They weren’t dirty and they didn’t match the jacket anymore. He had to replace the original pair after they’d gotten soaked with— Maybe he’d finally burn the thing once and for all. He never wanted to wear it again.

He walked past the mirror in the corner of the room, avoiding glancing at his half naked form for any reason, sighing as he pulled open the closet door. He didn’t think, only grabbed a T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants. Caleb would’ve worn a garbage bag if it meant getting out of that suit. Finally dressed, he hesitantly approached the bed, staring at the small pile of clothes and the box on the mattress. He’d found the box nestled in the corner of their closet. Things that Archie didn’t deem worthy to hang in the closet but was too lazy to sort either. Caleb had forgotten about it entirely until he’d been forced to go through everything.

He reached towards a shirt at the top of the pile with careful fingers, like it was an ancient artifact that threatened to crumble at his touch. Caleb held it up, looking at it with a fond smile as his eyes began to sting. It was a green flannel; one that wouldn’t fit Archie now. This was bought before he started going to the gym. He could think of a time he himself had worn it after a night of clumsy, drunken touches and giddy giggles to save himself from the chill of the morning after. However, there was a memory much more prevalent, precious in his mind. He remembered vividly the first time he saw this almost as vividly as he smelled the ocean and felt hot sand against the soles of his feet…

Caleb was reminded very quickly why he hated the beach every time he went. People claimed he was lucky all the time to live in a shoreside town, but he would happily disagree. It was filled with obnoxious old tourists who wanted to spend their winters in a place that didn’t make their joints creak, and the beach was to blame. Not to mention the sand sticking to every possible surface, the inevitable wince-worthy sunburn, and all of the eyes that felt like they were glued to him, like they had x-ray vision.

But here he was now, unable to say no to a birthday beach day invitation for a friend of his from college. He may have hated the beach, but he wasn’t a total dickwad. They were playing Frisbee, though none of them were really that good at it, when a gust of wind captured the disc and sent it in the impossibly wrong direction.

“I got it!” Caleb exclaimed before anyone else could, trudging through the sand to chase after it. It landed right by a man who was sitting in the sand, arms propped on his knees as he stared out at the horizon. The sound jolted the man out his trance, and he looked up.

His green flannel snapped and rippled in the wind, unbuttoned and revealing a golden, lean chest beneath. Caleb wondered briefly—for hardly a millisecond— what it would be like to pull that very shirt from his shoulders, what the stranger’s warm skin would feel like against his fingertips, when he scoffed and shook his head. Stop it, you freak.

Caleb wanted to groan, absolutely mortified by the idea of having to approach anyone like this, but especially someone who looked like they were having their own personal “Avril Lavigne music video” moment, but he had no choice, finally reaching the man with a sheepish smile.

“Sorry,” he said. “My friend is practically armed and dangerous when she’s got a Frisbee.” Caleb wanted to wince at his poor attempt at a joke, but the handsome man smiled, just a little.

“That’s alright. Don’t worry about it, you’re just lucky it came after me and not one of the old ladies,” the man reassured teasingly. His eyes were so green. They glinted in the setting sun, practically matching the flannel he was wearing. It suited him, conforming to his lean physique in just the right places. As handsome as the man was, however, there was something Caleb noticed above all of it.

This man looked sad.

“Hey, are you okay?” Caleb asked, surprised at his concern for a total stranger, but he couldn’t help it. The question made a breathy laugh leave the man in the sand, clearly a bitter one as he huffed out a deep sigh.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine… Just— Life, I guess,” he murmured softly, and Caleb made an understanding hum as he nodded. He grabbed the Frisbee from the ground before throwing it in the direction of his friends, raising a thumbs up into the sky. He looked back at the man, who was now gazing at him curiously, before slowly lowering himself to sit down, legs crossed in the sand. “I get it,” Caleb murmured, just loud enough to be heard over the waves. “Penny for your thoughts?”

The man looked at Caleb up and down for a moment, and it made Caleb worried that he’d thoroughly freaked out this absolutely gorgeous guy, but then those celery green eyes softened slightly.

“My wife,” he began quietly. “Ex. Ex-wife. She took off a couple of nights ago, left a note and everything. Said she’d found someone else.”

Oh. Oh no. Caleb had figured that the guy was having a bad day, but he did not think he was qualified to somehow comfort someone through this. He opened his mouth to speak, but the man looked up at him, slightly amused.

“You don’t have to say anything,” he assured. “I know that it’s… a lot. I just think it helped to get it out into the universe, or whatever…”

Caleb nodded softly, smiling at him in return. It was quiet for a moment, besides the seagulls, waves, and the breeze. It was comfortable. He didn’t feel the need to say anything, but he did anyway.

“What’s her name?”

“What? Oh… It was Sierra.”

Silence again for a moment and Caleb glanced down at the sand. A small glint flickered in his eyes and a smirk pulled at his lips.

“Well… Fuck Sierra, then.”

The man’s head whipped over to look at Caleb, whose smirk was now pointed at him, and they stared at each other for a moment in an exchange of mischief and surprise before they both devolved into little giggles.

“Alright, fuck Sierra,” the man said in agreement as the laughter finally started to fade. “What’s your name, hot shot?”

“Caleb.”

“I’m Archie.”

Caleb let out a tearful laugh for a moment, shaking his head. They were both so stupid. They fell in love in practically weeks, everything moving too fast, but somehow not fast enough. How it took them five years to get engaged, God only knew, but he wished they had had the nerve to go through with it faster. Maybe then, Caleb could have had a husband, even just for a little while. The sob jerked out of him suddenly, completely uncontrollable. His fingers tightened their grip on Archie’s flannel, like if he gripped it tight enough, he’d somehow materialize under his touch. He continued to cry. They were sharp, almost tantrum-like wails as he buried his face into the fabric, breathing in deeply. Somehow, even though it had been sitting in a box for God knows how long, it still smelled like Archie and the ocean. Anger, then. So much anger. He shouldn’t have to do this. Shouldn’t have to sort through all of this, shouldn’t have to savor his own fiancé’s scent because he would never get it again. He should’ve been happy. This wasn’t fair.

“God, fuck!” Caleb bellowed suddenly, raw and rough on his vocal cords, as he threw the flannel to the side. His fingers reached up to thread through his curls and squeezed. He savored the burn in his scalp for a brief moment, but it wasn’t enough. He needed something else. He looked at the box on the bed with a fiery gaze, and he reached for it with a scream as he pushed it off the edge of the mattress with an angry sob.

A metal clatter broke through the air, suddenly making Caleb stop, blinking tears out of confused eyes as he tried to steady his ragged breaths.

What was that?

Caleb quickly wiped his face with the back of his hand as he hesitantly rounded around the bed to find the source of the noise. He sniffled as he knelt to look at the small, steel cash box on the ground, broken open from hitting the ground. He swore softly, reaching to gather the scattered contents. It was mostly loose change, a few dollar bills, and pictures. But two things stuck out. A key to what looked like a storage unit, and a USB simply labeled Videos in Archie’s spidery script. His brows furrowed as he plucked up the key, rousing a nudge in the back of his skull. What was so familiar about this key?

It was April. Spring cleaning was upon them, as it was the same weekend every year, though the expectation of it made Caleb dread it worse. But it needed to be done, and their desk in their office was an absolute disaster, a mess of abandoned poetry and songs scattered with insurance bills and Archie’s construction documents for his job. Though, the true horrors were in the drawers. Mountains and mountains of takeout menus, random paper clips, and Caleb’s abandoned family of plastic dinosaurs. He opened the top drawer with a wince, sighing deeply as he began to dig through it. He frowned as his fingers nudged over cool metal, and in the hopes of finding a spare quarter, he curled careful fingers around it and pulled it out. He faltered at the sight of a key. It was average. Not too big, not too small. Just… a key. For what, though? It certainly wasn’t his.

“Arch?” He called, waiting for the telltale signs of bare feet sticking to hardwood as his lover opened the door to their office, headphones around his neck, still faintly playing music through the speakers. Caleb turned, holding out the key between them in his palm. “Do you know what this is for? I found it in the desk but I-”

Suddenly, the key was snatched from his palm with such vigor that it made Caleb gasp, and something flickered over Archie’s face, glinting in eyes before the key was shoved into his pocket.

“Don’t worry about it, love,” Archie began, smiling down at Caleb. “Just for a storage unit with some stuff from my old apartment. I’m keeping it until we get married and expand, or whatever.”

Caleb looked at Archie in confusion, blinking softly as he opened his mouth to answer, but he felt a hand at the button of his jeans, and he jolted.

“Arch— I— Why didn’t you mention it earlier? I feel bad.” Caleb murmured as he tried subtly to intertwine his fingers with the ones at his waistband, only for them to be smacked away. His brows furrowed. “Archie?”

“Hush, alright? It’s fine. Just let yourself feel it.” Archie insisted, face burrowing into Caleb’s neck then, into that spot that made his knees weak, and he did.

Caleb’s stomach gave a twist as he quickly averted his eyes from the key, not wanting to think about it anymore. They never finished spring cleaning that day, hence the piling box of Archie’s things that he was left to sort in the closet.

He turned the USB in his hand. Archie never seemed like the type to keep videos. What kind were they? Why would he lock away something sentimental? Was it porn? Caleb looked over his shoulder, like he was afraid of being caught, like Archie himself would burst through the door and scold him for snooping through his things. But of course, that would be too good to be true.

He slowly rose to his feet, hesitating before curling the USB into his fist and leaving the bedroom, where his laptop was set on the kitchen island. He felt bad snooping, but Archie had nothing to hide now. He was dead, so secrets became forfeit. Besides, if it were porn, he could allow himself a fond chuckle and maybe he would sleep easier tonight. Caleb slowly sat down at one of the chairs surrounding the island, reaching to boot up his laptop. He turned the USB over in his fingers, hesitating for a split second before mumbling a “fuck it” to himself and plugging it into one of the USB ports. It took a moment for the computer to read it before he could finally open it, confronted with a singular file appearing in his tab.

Home Videos

Suddenly, some odd tension that had been forming in his chest released, and he gave a shake of his head. He couldn’t believe he thought it was porn, when Archie really was just hiding the fact that he was big sap after all. Maybe it would make him feel better to see what memories Archie thought good enough to keep. Now he had something of Archie’s that would never fade.

He clicked on the file, and suddenly, he was confronted with folders. Lots of folders. He didn’t even know where to start, very quickly overwhelmed, but he was more confused about the names of the files than anything else.

Percy. Xander. Monica.

A weight dropped in Caleb’s stomach, an irrational thought immediately popping into his head. Was he cheating? Was this all a guise to hide Archie’s secret lovers? No. No, Archie wouldn’t. Maybe these were friends. Archie had always been organized. He had organized sentimental photos. That had to be it. He kept scrolling, name after name after name. It had to be at least thirty. What was this?

Emily.

The name stirred something in his memory, something vague, but he couldn’t place it. He never remembered Archie ever mentioning any of these people, but this reminded him of something. He hesitated before moving his cursor over it, watching the blue outline highlight it for a moment before he clicked on it. The folder opened, and he was met with mostly photo files. Caleb’s brows furrowed as he clicked on the first one. He was met with a picture of a woman and her dog. It seemed simple. She was pretty. Long, straight brown hair, brown eyes. A nice smile and freckled cheeks. But she wasn’t familiar. Jealousy and dread pooled in his gut. He continued to look through the photos, most of them just of her, who Caleb assumed was Emily, and an occasional family photo, but none of them included Archie. He reached the end of the photos, trying to ignore the cold stone forming in his stomach as he looked at the last file.

Emily.mov

Maybe this video file would have some answers. It was different, the only one. For some reason, this felt necessary. He clicked on it.

At first, he thought the video was corrupted. He could hear a faint rustling of audio, but the screen was dark. He was about to skip ahead to see if anything changed before the screen was overwhelmed with light, turning it white for a moment before the camera focused. Metal walls, no windows, but the center of the screen contained what made Caleb’s heart sink.

A young woman. She was tied to a chair. Brown hair, frightened brown eyes, freckles.

Emily.

He watched in confusion, his hand that wasn’t wrapped around the mouse curling into a trembling fist. This was a prank or something. A college project. Porn, for fuck’s sake. Anything but what Caleb’s mind kept pulling him to. Because why would Archie have something like this? Why would he watch this?

He was broken out of his thoughts as a whimper echoed through his speakers, one that made his heart ache. This was real. Oh God, it was real. Bile rose in his throat, but he swallowed it, moving the mouse to close out of the video. He couldn’t watch this anymore. He didn’t know what else he was supposed to do. But then he heard something. Something familiar. Piano. Guitar. Pearl Jam.

If I ever were to lose you

I’d surely lose myself…

It was Caleb’s turn to whimper then, reality smacking him in the face with such ferocity that he thought he’d spit up blood and teeth. His head hurt enough that it felt like it could happen. Was he breathing? Where was he? What the actual fuck was going on?!

“I’ve got my mix in here somewhere…”

No. No, Archie wouldn’t watch this shit, let alone film it. It is all a sick coincidence; a dream, a nightmare, anything at all except the barrel of truth Caleb was looking down. A puzzle piece found, like that night, memories sliding into place. An understanding that he didn’t want to confront. The radio in his car, after the funeral in the parking lot, the news reporter’s faux sympathy barely leaking in over the boredom.

Cape Cay County Sheriff’s office is asking for help in locating 26-year-old Emily Wagner. She was last seen in August…

It seemed cruel now that he had skipped past it, like it was a sob story he didn’t have the energy to handle, but now here she was. Emily. Living, breathing, real, terrified Emily.

A figure with broad shoulders, warm, large hands, and toffee-colored hair came into view on his laptop’s screen, a knife spinning and glinting in his grip.

Don’t turn around. Please don’t turn around. It’s not you if you don’t turn around.

The man swiveled on his feet. Long nose. Green eyes.

Caleb shot to his feet, running to the sink, barely making it before he gagged sharply, vomit leaping up his throat and out of his mouth. Cool sweat gathered on his forehead, making his curls stick to his forehead. The same curls that Archie would kiss, would twirl around his finger, would tug on when—

Caleb groaned with dread as he vomited once more, panic overtaking his system. He would’ve screamed if he could’ve breathed, but it seemed he didn’t have to as an agonized and shrill cry left his laptop speakers. It was something raw and guttural, something even the most talented of actors couldn’t repeat. Like a creature was trying to escape through poor Emily’s throat. Caleb’s ears were ringing, but he could still hear it. Screams turned into gurgles, and Caleb had had enough. He pushed himself away from the sink and stumbled to his laptop, shakily reaching for his mouse to close the video, trying to avoid looking at the screen as much as possible.

So much red. A smile on Archie’s face that he hadn’t even seen when he’d been proposed to. A raw, inhuman form of glee that only the most sadistic of people could unlock. Archie’s arm swung in an arc, a claw hammer in his fist, already stained with blood. The extracting end of the hammer descended, and Emily’s pleads— wet with the blood spurt from what was left of her teeth—for mercy escalated into incoherent shrieks as the hammer lodged into the meat of her thigh with an indescribable squelch.

Caleb frantically closed the tab as a pained sound of sympathy drew from him. The room was dead silent. He could hear the fridge humming, and the dulling of the ringing in his ears, though the screams seemed to echo, like he was in an infinite tunnel. Now faced with the tab of names again, he stared at them with a blank gaze. A familiar feeling washed over him, like the one he had felt on the way home. An absence, like someone had cut him out of the universe’s big paper snowflake, and now he was floating, fluttering, down… down… down…His eyes glazed over more names.

Caleb’s head felt empty, words formulating into thoughts that disappeared into nothing seconds later. His Archie was never his. How many times has he curled up to sleep at night, warm in his bed, while his fiancé was carving into someone? How many times had he missed the clues, the tricks, the deceit?

If he didn’t know who Archie was, then what could he possibly know?

He believed in Archie more than he believed the sky was blue or that apples grew on trees. He had memorized every glance, every smile, every pitch and tone of his lover’s voice. And it meant nothing. Because it wasn’t real.

His eyes flicked over a name.

Matthew.

Matthew hadn’t been to the annual work conference. Of course, he hadn’t. Because he was fucking rotting in a storage unit while Caleb and Archie sipped champagne. Had Archie done it that day, before they left? Or maybe the night before? Did Archie get a chance to bury him before he was destroyed by metal and rubber? Was that karma? If so, karma for who? Caleb didn’t think, only numbly dragged his mouse to click on Matthew’s file. Sure enough, there it was, a .mov file and a plethora of pictures. Just like Emily. Before Caleb could think, he clicked on the video. And he watched it.

Why shouldn’t he? Was this not reasonable punishment? To see the damage, he allowed to happen? Shouldn’t someone see these poor people’s last moments? Their memory would die with him, and he had quite a bit of time left on this Earth.

Then he watched another.

And another.

He lost track eventually. The sun had come down, then back up again. The acrid taste of vomit still lingered in his mouth, though he made no move from his chair. If he were lucky, maybe he’d rot there. Some of them he couldn’t finish. Eventually, he had reached the bottom of the folders. Two left.

Sierra.

Caleb stared at the name for a moment before a hysterical laugh had bubbled out of him, and he clamped his hand over his mouth to stifle it. An ex-wife who mysteriously disappeared into the night? Now, it seemed embarrassing that he had fallen for it. How much more Dateline could you get?

Archie had killed her. He had killed her in cold blood and moved on. He wondered if Sierra had found out about her husband’s violent tastes, if Archie would insist that she had forced his hand if he was still alive to defend himself. Or maybe she was just as clueless, and Archie had gotten bored. Caleb always saw Archie as a man who couldn’t finish a book or a movie, because he always got too bored.

Well, anyone who got off on murder had to be a little bored everywhere else, didn’t they?

Caleb didn’t want to watch Sierra’s video. Didn’t want to click on her folder. He wanted this to stop. He wanted to be done. But he would never be done, would he? This would never end. Even with all these people dead and buried, Archie included, they would have his grip on him until his final breath, all their burdens weighing on his shoulders, like the chains of Jacob Marley.

But there was still one file left. One file, and he could shut off his computer and pretend like he knew what he was going to do next. His eyes scanned over the screen, at the final file.

Caleb.

By L.J. Ciccarelli

 

“Listen, this was a whole lot funnier when it was hypothetical,” says Diana.

Mara checks the backpack one more time as Diana drones on and on about consequences, mistakes, Mara’s lack of impulse control, and blah blah blah – keys, glitter, penknife, crowbar – before shutting her car off.

“You can stay here,” Mara reminds her friend as she steps out into the cool night air. The light from the streetlamp illuminates her deep exhale in a puff of smoke. “I have my ‘Diana Wussed Out Playlist’ that I can queue up for you while you sit in the car.”

The wind whistles, high-pitched and trembling like Diana’s scream when she watches a scary movie. Mara leans back into the car to press the dog button on the dash’s screen, chuckling when the display lights up with an animated dog and the words, “Don’t worry! My owner will be back soon!” with the car’s temp just below it. She installed it the same day she got her dog, Pennywise, who is in the back seat of the car looking at her.

Diana’s eyes harden, glaring at the CGI dog like it’s done her a disservice. She leans forward and turns it and the stereo off before Mara can start playing “Afraid of Everything” by Milo Greene.

“That’s an unnecessary playlist gumming up your account,” Diana grumbles in discontent, half her sentence muffled when Mara shuts the driver’s door. Mara smirks down at the asphalt Diana gets out of the car to continue the argument, preaching about de-escalating situations and taking deep breaths. “You made it in 2017. It’s probably wildly outdated anyhow.”

“I added five new songs last week. It’s fifteen hours long.”

“I don’t care,” Diana snaps, her tone implying that she kinda does. “I’m only stating all the things that you should’ve already thought of.”

“Wren screwed me over, Ana,” Mara reminds her, yanking on the backdoor handle to free her red and white mutt. It obeys with a squeak that sounds more like a shriek than anything else, and the noise plus the dark look on her friend’s face make Diana flinch. “He literally ruined everything so spectacularly that there’s no salvaging any of it.” She puts more force behind the close, slamming it hard enough to rattle the door that’s hanging on with duct tape and prayer.

“I know,” Diana placates. She lets her sentence trail off because even she knows that there’s no real way to defend Wren. The pair spent their whole friendship defending him, and there’s nothing left in the tank.

Mara takes another deep sigh. “You really can stay here, jokes aside. I’m not about to force you to do anything you don’t wanna.”

“Oh, I want to,” Diana responds, her round face turning as red as her hair in anger. Her freckles always stand out when she gets embarrassed (which is often) or angry (less common yet treasured all the same), and it never fails to make Mara smile. “There’s a lot of things I’d like to do to him, but I’m very small and very anxious, so I don’t do them.”

This rage is what they bonded over in elementary school. The only difference between the two is Mara’s impulsivity. It’s why Diana’s on an honor roll and Mara practically owns the corner desk in ISS.

“Still,” Mara says. “There’s no shame in not wanting to commit a felony.”

“I feel like you’re lying to me.”

“Nothing’s expected of you,” Mara says. “You wanna be lookout? It’s why I brought Penny, but it’s up to you. You’ll still be an accomplice, but it’s better than being my partner.”

“I have a feeling that nothing’s worse than being your partner.”

“Can’t argue with that. Nothing is worse,” she agrees. “I think it’s something that takes a lot of effort for not a lot of payoff.”

Diana gives her a rare, deadpan look. “I was kidding.”

“I’m not. And I’m not really in the mood for a pep-talk. Come on,” she urges gently, looking down at her dog when he listens to the command as if she’d been talking to him. “Wren always parks in the same spot.”

[…]

Mara gazes at the parked Plymouth Fury the way an artist gazes at a blank canvas. The body is polished black, the exhaust and accents shining chrome that flicker in the low light. Behind the tinted windows, the seats are bright red, buffed, cleaned at least every other week.       

“Just think of the freedom, the potential,” Mara whispers.

 Diana stares at Mara, “I feel like you’ve been planning this.”

Mara doesn’t look away from the car, but she flinches like her friend’s voice shook her from a reverie. “Hm?”

“You said you came up with this plan – and calling this a ‘plan’ is giving you more credit than you deserve – earlier today.”

“So?”

“So…that,” her small hand comes up in Mara’s line of sight and takes on a circular motion, seemingly, “that look.”

“What look?”

“You’re all…determined. You look like you’re sure you wanna do this.”

Mara pauses, blinking at her for a moment. “Because I am sure.”

“But you’re you. You’re not sure of anything ever.” Diana gestures again, this time taking in Mara’s body language, her tone, the furrow of her brow. “That’s not impulsive, adrenaline-fueled excitement.” Her eyes widen. “Oh god, you’ve literally been dreaming about this, haven’t you?”

 “We were friends with him for a long time. You can’t tell me you didn’t imagine trashing this goddamn car whenever he pissed you off.”

“I can tell you that!” Diana argues, stomping the asphalt.

“Really?” Mara waits and lets Diana frantically nod so hard her curls bounce around and she has to tame them back from her face. “Not even once?”

“No. I’m not a violent little cretin like you.”

“Sounds boring,” Mara quips back, dumping her pack at her feet. “You should let the intrusive thoughts win every now and then.”

Pennywise starts to wag his swishy tail back and forth, a low whine working its way up from his throat. Mara spares him a glance. He stares intently at her hands whenever they disappear into the bag. He even leans down to give them a sniff every other item or so, snorting like he’s offended when he doesn’t sense anything edible.

“I don’t have any treats for you, clown man,” she tells him with exaggerated sympathy, “but I do have a various assortment of sharp and blunt tools. It’s always nice to be well-rounded.”

Pennywise chuffs, affronted, but sits obediently next to the growing pile.

It’s colder than it should be tonight, windier, and it’s clear that Diana didn’t dress warm enough. She shivers the longer she stands there on the cracked, unkempt sidewalk, occasionally shuffling a step or so away from the car like she’s afraid it’s going to come to life and mow her down into the pavement.

Mara stands with a small groan, dusting the chunks of asphalt off her destroyed jeans. “I need a brick,” she says, clapping her hands together on the last word in a way that makes Diana jump a little.

“You don’t,” she protests, pointing to the pile that will do more damage than a brick. There’s a damn crowbar, what the hell could a brick do that a crowbar couldn’t?

“Or maybe a rock.” Mara carries on like she didn’t hear her, trotting off to where the sidewalk breaks out into a small, wooded area with her dog beside her. Pennsylvania’s just like that – small town to farms to woods you could get lost in – and Diana thinks it’s giving Mara too much freedom with her vandalism.

“What for?” she calls out, clapping a hand over her own mouth a second later when she hears how loud she was in an attempt to reach Mara’s ears. People die on backroads like this, especially when they’re being loud and doing illegal things. She tries her voice out again, quieter this time yet still carrying, “Mar?”

Mara hadn’t even gone into those woods with her phone flashlight on, and Diana can’t fathom how she’s willing to traipse around like that. She’s also the person to get behind the wheel without checking where to park on maps, or ducks outside without her phone or her wallet or her house keys. It’s absurd. She’s absurd.

The longer Diana stands alone without even Pennywise as company, the more and more likely she is to dart back to the sanctuary of Mara’s car a dirt road and a block away. Wren lives behind the super-rich Clocktower neighborhood, and Mara’s car looked comically out of place parked there with all the cars that are, you know, not falling apart.

“Marianna!” she shouts for a final time, convincing herself that she’ll leave if she doesn’t get an answer in the next ten seconds. (It’s a flat out lie, there’s no way she’d ever leave Mara alone despite how capable she may be. It’s the principle…but let a girl dream of a lack of codependency.)

The full name, at least, seems to be enough to pull Mara’s attention. “Uncalled for!” she shouts back, not yet in view, but Diana can see some rustling shrubbery that she hopes to God will take the shape of her small friend dressed in all black and not, like, a Skinwalker. Do they have those in Pennsylvania? Probably. “I haven’t done anything to deserve that.”

“But you’re about to,” Diana grumbles. “You also ditched me here.”

Penny lopes out first, nudging against Diana’s legs in an attempt for attention that Diana’s just a bit too distressed to give.

Mara doesn’t answer her at first, but she comes back into the light clutching the faithful rock that’s so big she can’t even wrap her fingers all the way around it. When she’s close enough for Diana to make out her dark eyes and wild, wavy hair that only ever looks good messy, she’s unsurprised to see an unamused, raised brow.

“Well,” Mara says. “I didn’t go to Narnia.”

Diana doesn’t realize she’s pouting until Mara procures a sharpie from her jacket pocket, using the capped end to tap at Diana’s chin like she’s trying to lift that half of Diana’s face from its slight frown. “Enough of that. You know I wouldn’t have left you here.”

Mara’s got the red sharpie cap trapped in her teeth before Diana can come up with a reply beyond her blush. She silently watches Mara’s freckled brow furrow as she scribbles something on the smoothest side.

“How’s my handwriting?” she asks around the cap when she’s finished, showing off the part of the rock where she’s scrawled the word ‘SNITCH.’

“Just as bad as usual.” Mara’s handwriting had always been terrible. Diana can remember elementary school when Mara had to go to after-school remediation to work on her letters. She thinks too fast, Diana knows – her brain has always moved faster than everything else around her, including her hands.

“Think it’s too subtle?” asks Mara.

Diana looks at the strange seriousness on her friend’s face, her eyes that are so grey they might as well be black in the dark, and genuinely can’t tell if there’s any sarcasm there. “No…” she answers carefully, like she’s afraid she’s on the butt-end of a joke that she’s too slow to clock. “I think it’s pretty forthright.”

“Good,” Mara chirps, and that’s the only warning Diana gets before she winds her arm back and proceeds to send the rock flying through the air and right through the driver’s side window.

Diana can only watch in shock, clapping her hands over her ears to try and muffle the intense, frightening shattering sound. She still feels the low hum of it as she watches the tinted glass spray inward and onto the plush, red leather. She thought that was going to be the worst part of the entire act, so it gets pretty horrible when Mara deftly slides into that same glass-covered seat through the chipped, destroyed window. Diana would’ve been a bit impressed by her friend’s dexterity (especially coming from the girl who perpetually refers to herself as an indoor cat) if she weren’t so horrified at the prospect of all that glass digging into her friend’s skin.

“Mar!” she cries, her hands held over her mouth because she can’t believe what she’s seeing.

“What?” Mara asks back, sounding confused. She leans down to fidget with some unseen thing on the dashboard before unlocking the door from the inside and getting out the old-fashioned way. “He put a silent alarm in there. I had to break it before it sent him a text.”

Diana gestures helplessly to the open door, then remembers herself. She darts forward to start dusting glass off Mara’s coat, her pants, spinning her friend around like an inanimate object to search for more sharp material or blood. “Couldn’t you have just…popped the latch from the outside and opened it? And maybe, like, brushed some of the glass away?”

“I wanted to be fast!”

Diana can’t help but gawk as Mara shoves her away gently, tired of being coddled. It’s not something she’s used to, Diana guesses, despite how long they’ve been close.

Mara’s knife is out a second or so later, the blade sliding free from the handle with a little snick. Diana flinches once, then again when Mara turns back to the car and starts to drag the sharp tip through that perfect black wrap. If she thought the broken glass was a bad sound, there’s no way she could’ve prepared herself for the metal-on-metal shriek. It’s like the car is screaming in agony.

Mara wraps around the car in a full circle, making sure each door has received a slice before throwing it open. She leans a hip against the hood, testing the sharpness of her knife after its trip around the exterior of the Plymouth. “Wanna do the glitter?” she asks, gesturing to the colorful vials that, up until now, looked out of place with the crowbar and knife and hammer. “It’s, like, the least damaging thing I planned on doing.”

Diana, in true Diana fashion, hesitates as Mara picks up where she left off. There’s something strange about watching her friend with that knife, watching her cut up the custom red leather with just the barest hint of a smirk on her face. It’s scary, but she’s not scared of Mara…she’s scared for Mara. She has half a mind to say no to the glitter, but then she remembers the absolute devastation at the beginning of this month, the way Mara’s life crumbled in just the span of a few hours after Wren’s meeting with the superintendent. Diana’s known Mara for over a decade, and she thinks that’s the only time she’s seen Mara cry.

Mara’s her person. And Wren hurt her person.

It takes two whole vials dumped over the backseats, the passenger, and the dash before Diana finally admits that “This is actually pretty cathartic.”

She gets all the memories while she’s in the car, thinking back on all the times the three of them went out and about in Downingtown after school. Mara was always the one to convince them to go out, that the new film showing at the Movie Tavern was more important than homework. And Wren had always been the one to volunteer to drive, just so he could show off his refurbished Fury. Those times are certainly gone for good now, but Diana isn’t as jaded as Mara to admit that she won’t miss them.

Mara takes a hammer to both of the circular headlights and the rearview mirrors, making the car and Diana in the car sway with the force behind each swing. “See? I told you: sometimes it’s nice to let those intrusive thoughts win.”

She shoves the hammer into her black belt, moving a step or two away before kneeling on the sidewalk as Diana extracts herself from the backseat, dusting silver and gold glitter off her shins and knees. Diana wonders if Mara’s taking a breather. She comes back up to her full height with the crowbar. Diana can’t for the life of her get over just how imposing Mara looks in that moment. She’s by no means tall or muscular, actually the opposite, but she’s spent her whole life making the people around her feel like they’re looking up at her. Diana feels that way now even though she’s never, ever felt the need to cower in her friend’s burning gaze.

“I saved the best for last,” Mara reports with an evil gleam in her eye, standing in front of the hood with both hands on the dark, slightly rusted metal. She puts her right foot back two steps, twisting her shoulders and swinging the crowbar through the air like she’s a baseball player taking some practice swings. Her eyes never leave the windshield, staring at it like her coach told her to keep her eye on the ball.

Only Diana notices the flash from a camera. It has her whirling on the spot, the sudden light so out of place in the rapidly encroaching darkness. It’s like an alarm cutting through the fast-moving, action-y part of a dream that’ll have you jolting awake if it was allowed to continue. It makes her gasp, and she’s halfway through convincing herself it was a possessed lamppost until she sees it again, its origin somewhere off the road and in the woods on her right.

Diana feels…off. Something’s not right about it, and not just because it implies that someone’s spotted them committing what is very much defined as a felony. Why are they off in the woods, why have they been watching for so long, and why did they happen to have a camera on them in the late evening? This is Downingtown and it’s cloudy, so it’s not as if it’s an artsy passerby on their way back from some sunset shots.

“Mar,” she calls, not wanting to take her eyes off from whatever that flash is – because god forbid it moves when she looks away – but she’s forced to when Mara acts like she didn’t hear her. “Mara!”

Thankfully, Mara has the presence of mind to read her tone this time around. Diana’s always frightened, sure, but there’s a difference between her typical amount of apprehension and the amount she injects into Mara’s name.

“What?” Mara is there in a flash, stepping around the broken headlight to stand by Diana.  Diana feels the heat of her, but it’s not enough to get her to relax.

“Hey, what is it?” Mara tries again, her tone softer and more like the girl Diana knows is buried beneath all the denim and kohl eyeliner and resting bitch faces.

Diana looks over, finding Mara’s freckled brow furrowed in worry and confusion. She’s got the crowbar in her right hand still, and Diana hates that she feels just a bit safer for it. “I think I saw a camera flash,” she admits in a whisper, feeling a bit foolish and stupid now that she’s said it out loud.

And she’s half-expecting Mara to tell her as much, which is why she lets out a tiny gasp of shock when Mara tucks Diana behind her, shielding her.

“Where from?” she asks over her shoulder, spinning that dangerous metal in her hand as if she’s testing which grip feels the most comfortable. There’s a light clinking sound whenever it presses against the backs of her rings. “They took pictures of you?”

She shakes her head, red curls bouncing. “I…I-I don’t know, I just–”

A flash cuts her off, brighter this time like the person behind the lens has moved closer in the thicket of woods, and Diana whimpers, “Shit.”

“Don’t be scared,” Mara instructs, her eyes trained on the source of the flash, her voice so low that there’s no way whoever’s in the woods can hear. “Don’t let ‘em see that you’re scared.”

(Later, much later, Diana will wonder if those are the words Mara lives by day-to-day.)

Diana obeys, hiding her face in the back of Mara’s shoulder. She wonders if Mara only wants her to hide her face so she can’t be identified, like she’s standing in front of Diana because she wants to make absolutely sure that she’s the only one going down for this. Diana doesn’t know, can’t think beyond the fright, hoping to God this is some sick joke. Something Mara planned? A prank?

She dismisses that thought at once when she finds herself digging her hands into Mara’s sides, nails pressing into the thick fabric of her jacket and tugging. She feels how tense her friend is – that way she gets right before she’s about to drop someone to the hallway floor, so far gone in her decision that not even Diana can talk her out of it – can see even in the darkness that Mara’s gripping that crowbar tight enough for her busted, constantly bruised knuckles to bleed white.

“Wanna come out, you fuckin’ creep?” Mara shouts into the dark. She sounds fearless, Diana thinks, and if not for the slightest, smallest tremor on the last word, Diana would’ve been fooled too. “Or are you gonna hide in the dark behind your camera the whole night?”

Pennywise has caught onto the tension, and Diana looks over to see his hackles raised, his whole body tensed like Mara’s. He’s snarling, and Penny never snarls. Mara named him after a killer-clown/space-monster, but that’s only because his coat and his little smile matched said killer-clown to a T. Seeing him so distraught only makes this worse.

“Wren?” Mara calls seemingly out of nowhere. Diana wants to peek out, wants to see if Mara saw something to identify him, but she’s too afraid. “I bet it’s you, huh? You hang back and wait until you can rat me out, don’t you?” Somehow, Mara’s bitter chuckle is genuine and cutting enough for even Diana to feel the sting. “Fuckin’ snitch.”

One of her boots steps forward like she actually plans on confronting whoever’s out there herself. Of course, Diana thinks that’s Mara’s first instinct. God forbid they pack up and run from what could be either a murderer, a creep, or their very irate former friend. No, no, don’t be silly – Mara would rather die than run from a fight.

“Maramaramara! Don’t!” Diana fists her hands in that denim and yanks so hard that Mara has no choice but to turn around and meet her frantic stare. “Please don’t,” she all but begs, mouth opening and closing like a fish because all she can see is Mara sprinting into those woods and never coming back out. She’s been watching too many serial killer documentaries for sure (and she has Mara to thank for that, now that she thinks about it) but sue her. “Don’t leave me here. Don’t leave me–”

“Okay, okay – hey! Okay,” Mara’s saying, and Diana doesn’t even realize Mara’s cupped her flushed face until her thumb brushes across her cheekbone with one hard pass, the ring there pressed into the round of it. Grounding. All at once, she feels grounded. “Make for my car. Take my dog.” She shoves Diana lightly but firmly, just enough that Diana has to let her go but doesn’t stumble with the force of it.

She grabs  Pennywise’s collar, tugging him in the direction they came from. She hesitates, looking back when she sees Mara kneeling to retrieve her bag without much sense of urgency. “Go,” Mara urges, glancing back towards the woods and banging the crowbar against the pavement just once almost warningly, as if to remind whoever’s there that she still has it in hand. “I’m right behind you.”

That’s not entirely true, Diana thinks, because she hears another telltale shattering sound that implies that Mara stayed back just to finish at least one thing she started. She wants to turn around, wants to see whatever remains of the windshield, but she’s too afraid she’ll see some stranger chasing after her.

Thankfully Mara’s running beside her a second later, her dog between them, grinning with glee.

“Enough of that. You know I wouldn’t have left you here,” she echoes a bit breathlessly, drifting just enough on the asphalt to shoulder-check Diana.