by Scott Hale
In an oral presentation that was one-part beat poetry and one-part verbal assault, Lux and Ramona laid out the class and the teacher with a caustic retelling of the women’s suffrage movement in the United States, and how women were still fighting for rights that should’ve been granted to them since, and this was quoting Ramona, “The dawn of fucking time.”
After the ten minutes it took to, this time quoting Lux, “drop a knowledge bomb” on the class, the students sat there in silence—the guys staring at the girls from out the corner of their eyes, waiting for their reaction to tell them how they should react. Their knowledge bomb had left the whole class shell-shocked, and not because of the content, but because of the fiery impact and the crater it left in their pre-conceptions. All the teacher could do was tell them to take it easy on the language, and when he clapped, everyone else clapped, too. Most of the students had forgotten about the presentation by the end of the week, but for Fenton, it had left such a ringing in his ears that he couldn’t hear anything else.
In a haze of Lux and Ramona, a few days later, Fenton, not thinking or caring about where he was going, walked home from school and ended up in the cemetery. His ever-scientific mind had been weighing the pros and cons of approaching the girls, how they would react if he did so, and how he could tell them he appreciated their presentation without seeming as if he had an ulterior motive, when he tripped on a broken grave that looked like it’d been stamped into the soil. The name placard read Fenton Laurent, 1890-1940. And after he did some research into the matter, Fenton found out that this man had been a distant relative. The most his father could say about him was that he was completely unremarkable.
“So, I’m not named after him?” Fenton had asked his father that day.
“Just a coincidence,” his dad had said. “If I’d known we’d name you after such a waste of space, your mother and I would’ve come up with something else.”
He remembered his dad laughing and shaking his head, and nudging Fenton to make sure he knew it was just a joke. But that was a lie. He knew it then, and he knew it now. His dad had, and continued to have, almost impossibly high expectations. Even compliments were lies. Fenton could see the truth through the cracks in them all.
In his reminiscing, Fenton’s body had steered him to that sad and forgotten plot of Fenton Laurent. He stood over it now, the same way a sailor stood over a maelstrom, wondering how they’d gotten here.
But he already knew the answer; that was the downside of having all of them. He was here because he had found a grave that not only shared the same name as him, but also his crippling normality. As a sixth grader, he’d seen his whole life ahead of him. There would be grad school and acquaintances in the place of friends, and he would drink often and alone, and end up marrying someone he didn’t love, because they were easy and, for all his supposed smarts, he didn’t know any better. Nothing made a person a better augur than having to look up to those everyone else looked down on.
He was here because of the grave, and because of the two girls who’d infected his belief system years ago. Back then, he knew they would’ve never accepted him as he was, so he became something else, instead. Not because he didn’t like himself. He liked himself well enough. He did it to get closer to them, to be something more than intelligent and talented; to have the chance to leave a mark that amounted to more than a dog-eared page in a book only he and a few other nerds could comprehend.
So, he made a mask for himself from the truth of his being and molded it to his liking, making sure to obscure every crack of every lie, until some days, even he struggled to find the seam of where the mask ended and his face began. He emphasized his French background, and studied the language in his spare time. He became bi-sexual and re-interpreted every strange encounter he’d ever had with the same or opposite sex as a result of his sexuality. He immersed himself in gender studies, and denounced himself as a man as much as possible. He became more childish, withdrawn; he dampened his emotions, so as to emphasize Lux’s and Ramona’s. And when he had the chance to funnel money into Lux’s blog or her projects, he did so without question, because as long as his family’s fortune was going to a “good cause,” then his over-privileged status could be ignored.
It had been good while it lasted, Fenton thought to himself, catching his reflection in the golden placard of the adjacent grave, but now he’d outgrown his mask, and if he didn’t take it off soon, someone else might do it for him.
“Imposters” were being murdered, and it didn’t take a seasoned detective to see the connection between the cases and Lux’s blog. For those in the know, it was obvious who Lux had been targeting with her writing. His first thought had been that she might be the murderer, but she had an alibi for every victim.
His second thought was that it might be Echo, and that thought had been echoing through his head the whole morning. Like the ringing in his ear from Lux and Ramona’s presentation, he couldn’t be rid of it.
Stinging in his other leg now, on the skin underneath his phone. Annoyed, he ripped his phone out of his pocket. Staring at the screen, he stopped breathing. It was a message from Caleb.
It read thusly:
We need to talk. All of us. This is big. My buddy at the police station has a buddy at the lab where they’re checking the evidence over. First off, said there was way too much blood at the crime scenes for the wounds inflicted. Second off, the lab nerd said there’s something wrong with the blood. Said it’s not just the victims’ or the perp’s. Said the blood was from a shitload of different people. Like… hundreds. Maybe thousands.
What. The. Fuck?
Echo sat in the greenhouse section of the local Lawn and Garden and ran hands down her legs, feeling their smoothness, admiring the way her pale flesh caught the light from the overheads. She kept telling herself Lux was missing out. Aside from her head, Echo had shaved every inch of hair off her body. Lux liked her like that. It took a lot of work, but relationships were work. If there was anything to be learned from trashy talk-shows, that was it. Relationships were work, and the payouts didn’t always arrive when they were expected to. Echo was still waiting to get hers. Had been all her life.
She leaned back in the metal chair, propped her feet up on the glass table next to it. Her cheeks felt tight in the places where the tears had dried. She imagined she must’ve looked like one of those washed-out statues at the park, where the acid rain had carved away their faces, leaving them in a permanent state of mourning.
The automatic doors opened at the greenhouse’s entrance. A man pushed a cart through, and his wife followed after. They were young, and black. While he leaned over the cart, deflated and defeated, his wife flew back and forth between the various flowers on the shelves and ground with all the energy and insanity of a coked-out hummingbird. Her excitement was exhausting him; his exhaustion was exciting her. They were pulling away at opposite ends, and yet somehow, probably thought this would balance their relationship out, help them meet in the middle.
Echo scoffed and tipped her head back, letting the overheads print their afterimage into her corneas. She hated heteronormative gender roles. The oafish husband who only showed enough interest in his wife’s interests to keep the peace, and to make sure he kept getting a piece. The neurotic wife who kept herself busy at all times, doing everything for everyone, and silently hating everyone for everything she’d ever done for them. The recently married and the marriage certificate they practically carried around, like it was the key to the kingdom the marginalized could only dream of one day entering. The little girls who only played with dolls, and the little boys who played with action figures. The monotony of monogamy.
Shaking her head, she positioned herself so she wouldn’t have to see the husband and wife, because they were triggering her feelings of depression regarding the fight she and Lux had earlier. Those two stupid, heterosexual shitheads should’ve known better than to come here with that lovebird crap. This was the place where Salinger Stevens worked before
his death. For the straight to come here was like a serial killer returning to the crime scene. Or, at least, that’s what Lux said.
It was so annoying how much she missed Lux. Lux was the love of her life, the woman she wanted to settle down with. She’d done everything for Lux, been everything for Lux. Damn it, she had even planned to make dinner for them at the end of the month so she could propose to Lux. It hurt so badly knowing that Lux was mad at her. It was like when her Dad used to tie knots or tighten screws so much so that no one but himself could ever get them undone. No matter how much she tried to unravel this feeling inside her, the only hands it would loosen to belonged to the woman who had put it there in the first place. The only way to feel better was to make Lux feel better.
Echo was secondary; it was the curse of her name. She wasn’t the source, but what came back to it. Lux, Ramona, Asher, and Fenton didn’t have to pay attention to their surroundings, because they simply superimposed their own worldviews onto it. Echo was her surroundings. She had never been known to have been anything else.
These blacks are pissing me off, Echo thought, hopping to her feet. She crossed the greenhouse, went through the automatic doors into the Home portion of the Home and Garden.
The Home in the Home and Garden was a small warehouse jam-packed with every unnecessary necessity one could ever guilt themselves into wanting for their quaint, suburban getaway. It was shelf after shelf of things for the kitchen and the bathroom, the living room and the family room; tools and containers; hardwood, lightbulbs; bird feeders and water fountains; couches, chairs; paint of every imaginable soccer mom-manufactured color. It was endless, too; stacked to the ceiling, the stock seemed to be coming out of the ceiling, as if it were being deposited from the corporate mothership hovering stealthily above the store.
Lux had said she always thought the hippie movement was for pussies, but even then, she could see why the Home and Garden and places like it would make them sick. Naturally, Echo agreed.
Remembering why she had come here, which wasn’t to sulk around until someone felt sorry for her, Echo dug her nails into the heels of her palm and headed for the paint department. That was where Salinger Stevens worked, and where his last best friend, possibly boyfriend, was on the schedule today. Lux was convinced Salinger, as well as Zoe/Zeke and Ansel, had been impostors of the LGBTQIA community. Echo agreed with her, even though by being here at the Home and Garden, she was sending another message entirely. A message all her own. For a person named Echo, that didn’t happen a lot.
Salinger Stevens’ main squeeze, Paul Zdanowicz, wasn’t at the desk when Echo came around the corner. His cell phone was on the large, wraparound counter, though, and it looked to be sitting in a pool of red paint. Echo looked around to see if there were any other sales associates nearby, but it was just her—her, and all the forty-something, failed high school football stars, eyeing her like a rare dish they hadn’t seen, but were itching to try.
Or at least, that’s what it felt like to her, when she caught them staring at her.
Echo shivered, as if she was physically ridding herself of their ocular filth, and twisted her mouth, concerned. She needed to find Paul. A friend of a friend of a friend had said Paul was with Salinger the night he had been killed. He might’ve seen the killer, Echo told Lux, after having shared this information. He might’ve seen the killer, and he might’ve seen where the killer had gone, after murdering Salinger.
That’s when Lux had lost it.
“If you want to suck Paul’s dick, just go ahead and do it!” Lux had screamed at her, her irises rimmed with light, as if something had passed in front of them. “He’ll tell you anything you want to hear after that!”
Echo had only been able to shake her head and stutter out, “What a-are you talking a-about?”
And that’s when Lux’s eyes had darkened, and retreated into the recesses of their sockets. “If you go looking for the killer, he might find you.” Her lips had thinned, her cheeks had become razor sharp. “If you think I want something bad to happen to you, then go ahead, you groupie slut.”
That’s when Echo had shed her subservience, and the two of them cussed each other out and pushed each other around, until Lux locked herself in her room, and Echo, wanting to add insult to injury, left to go find the now mysteriously absent Paul Zdanowicz.
Echo went to the wraparound counter and leaned over Paul’s cell phone. The red paint underneath seemed to have spread farther. It looked watered-down, though; less like paint, more like… Echo laughed, swiped the screen. Without a password to prevent her from pursuing Paul’s personal shit, she pulled up the last thing he’d looked at.
It had been Lux’s blog, and there was a new post.
Echo didn’t need to read it. If she was an expert on anything in life, it was of the wills and whims of her love, Lux. Like the light of the sun, she moved in a constant, predictable pattern. In the spring, she gathered her strength and energy, and those who had missed her presence began to seek her out, to elevate her to her rightful place on all their horizons. In the summer, she came into herself; she was the center of everyone’s attentions; the searing threat; the harsh wake-up call. Summer saw her in her element, in that harsh in between—in between the rebirth of spring and redeath of winter. It was in summer that all her work was done, and all her projects completed; and all transgressions tilled from the patriarchal field, to make way for the bones of her oppressors. At the first signs of fall, she fell into a depression, and by winter, she was seldom seen; preferring the confines of her “woman cave” and the sex she demanded from Echo to “keep the light inside her alive.”
So, yeah, if Echo was an expert on anything in life, it was the wills and whims of her love, Lux. Which meant that was blood coming out Paul’s phone. Which meant he wasn’t far from here, fighting for his life. Which meant there was still time.
Echo tore down the aisles of the Home and Garden, keeping her eyes peeled for the killer’s familiar trail. She dodged customers and carts, and felt herself already getting winded—the consequences of smoking at the ripe age of eleven. Stopping, sniffing, she caught the telling scent pressing into the aisle. The large fans above had carried it here, and the heavy musk of it seemed to be slowing them down. It was the killer’s scent. Sea salt and sulfur. The forever and the fatal, intertwined; the brood from the breast that’d birthed it.
They should’ve never gone into the forest.
Lumber up ahead, and a short-lived scream. Echo stopped, stumbled forward. Her knee went out. She grabbed a coil of garden hoses that capped the end of her aisle and righted herself. Another scream. Wet appendages smacking against tile. Then she saw it, that distinct signature: numerous, tightly bunched smears running along the cement floor; crusted over, and reeking; sexual secretions from the promise of sadism. It was here.
Echo crept towards Lumber. The aisle was narrow, and empty. On each side, long, restrained boards towered over the walkthrough. Whitewood, spruce, fir, pine, poplar; amber-like Douglas and technicolor-red Redwood. Wildly different trees that, as Echo walked past them, began to look the same. They lost their individual qualities and shades and shifted into the dark, contorted oaks that formed the dense corridors of Maidenwood. And just like that day, this corridor ended in a faint light, and a beckoning hand.
Echo shook her head, and the memory lifted from the scene. The hand vanished, but the light remained. At the end of Lumber, there was a single-person, unisex bathroom. The door was slightly open, and the light leaking out strobed, as the shape inside moved rapidly back and forth in front of its source. It was driving its appendages downwards into something; a primal display of power; relentless, emotionless; mechanical.
“Stop!” Echo whisper-screamed, taking off towards the bathroom. One arm out, she wheezed loudly, “Stop it! Stop it!”
Echo barged into the bathroom. Paul Zdanowicz was on his knees, his body thrown over the toilet; naked. The killer was standing over him, holding his head up by the hair on the back
of his head. In the killer’s snaking tentacles, Paul’s degloved face hung. Catching the fluorescent light, the skin turned transparent; there were blush-like blood splotches on his ghoulish cheeks; and broken capillaries like purple webs around the ragged eye holes. His mouth was crooked, his lips swollen; they glistened with spit and blood, like two throbbing egg sacs.
The killer released Paul. His lifeless corpse fell raw face-first into the shitty toilet water. It turned to face Echo. As it did, it soiled itself with the substance of its making. That glassy brimstone. The milk of hell.
“Give it to me!” Echo ran at the killer and wrenched Paul’s flap of a face from its squirming grip. “I’ll take it to her. She doesn’t need to know!”
Three members of the LGBTQIA were dead, and Lux wanted to throw a party? As insensitive as this might sound to others, Asher thought it was a pretty damn good idea. What better way to bring an at-risk community together than to bring them together on the same night, in the same place? Together, they could be strong, and safe. Together, they could clash craniums and find the fucker who was thinning out their herd. Lux had given him a list of names of people to invite, but Asher wasn’t feeling this new drive of hers for exclusivity. He was going to invite everyone he could get his hands on, and whoever he could get his hands on… he’d save for later.
“Too many lesbians,” Asher mumbled, stopping his car at a stop sign to look over the list again. “Too many high school sophomores, too. Lord, Lux. Predatory much?”
