by Scott Hale
He remembered his phone had gone off at some point. His phone was his lifeline. Bending down, it felt as if the whole world were going down with him, like the dying in their death throws, yanking a curtain from its rod. He grabbed the phone, forgot how to use it for a moment. Ramona had sent him another text, an image. A screenshot from Lux’s blog.
It was as follows:
Gay men are still men. They are one of us, until they are done with us. An ally can just as easily become an enemy. There are impostors amongst us, and they can most easily be found in those that possess male traits or qualities. These are members of the minority who wish to be part of the majority. They want to have their cake and fuck it, too. They will act feminine, or transition to the opposite sex, but they are fooling no one. They are not one of us.
I can think of one gay man in particular. A would-be writer who’s formed an allegiance with a group of people with real problems. He is a hyena; a greedy creature content to sustain itself on the scraps of our labor. He thinks that, by being one of us, we will forget that he was always one of them.
In a famous psychology experiment, people were recruited to be both guards and prisoners, and they were encouraged by those involved to carry out those exact roles in a prison-like environment. Those who were guards did as we can expect all pig law enforcement to do, while the prisoners took their beatings. Some even sympathized with their captors. The gay man has taken his beating and aspires to be a guard. He has forgotten what it means to be a prisoner.
Women have raised this world. We have forgotten the value of eating our young.
There were thousands of likes, thousands of comments.
Crying, Asher covered his mouth and swiped farther down Ramona’s text to another message. It was from several hours ago, about when the killer had arrived, or perhaps shortly after it had vanished.
The second message read as follows:
Are you okay? Jesus Christ. Look now. She took it down.
The third message had arrived sometime in the witching hour. It read as follows:
If you’re still awake, Lux wants us to get together. All of us. She said it’s time for us to track down the killer.
After Lux’s episode at the Grindout and the subsequent death of Ansel, the server who worked there, the augurs decided to move their operations from the coffee shop to the larger, but far less sexier safe space in the old, unused band room of Bitter Springs Junior High. Depending upon how one looked at it, to call the band room a safe space was fairly ironic. Being that it was an abandoned and relatively unsupervised gathering spot for horned-up high schoolers, it was only natural that, over time, it would turn into less of a place for people to discuss pertinent social issues, and more into a convenient location for people to get laid. Because of this, and because of teenagers’ tendency to forsake even the most basic of hygienic practices, the walls of the band room were practically dripping with STDs.
It was an after-school special’s wet dream.
Ramona was the first to arrive. She sat in the parking lot, in her car, hugging the steering wheel, as she watched through the dirty windshield the stragglers making their lonely marches across the campus. It was Friday. They should’ve been high-tailing it home. But she got it. Home was heartache. What was the rush? It wasn’t going anywhere; at least, not until they did.
She could still see the both of them, her mother and father. Her mother, and how she used to pinch her stomach and her arms, the same way butchers used forceps to measure the thickness of meat. Her father, her father, and how he used to make inappropriate comments and jokes whenever an attractive girl passed the two of them in public. To understand her, he had tried to emasculate her.
Fenton arrived shortly thereafter and parked one space away from Ramona. He acknowledged her, and she him, but they stayed in their respective cars. He leaned into his armrest, covered his mouth with his hand; he breathed in the dish soap still sticky in the creases of his palm. It’d taken him a long time to wash the blood off his hands. His pants and underwear were taking their fourth tour of the dryer and washer back home. He’d dressed sharply to hide the fact he hadn’t slept well these last few nights. Try as he might, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something had been standing over his bed, watching him. When he had finally dozed off, he would immediately awake to a tingling sensation on the edges of his face, as if something had been stroking him.
He knew what it was, though. It was the mask he wore on his face. His body was pushing it out finally, the same way it would the deepest of childhood splinters. This had been a long time coming, but being back here at Bitter Springs Junior High had been the final shove he needed. This was the place where his two hard crushes and him sick of being picked last for everything had led to Fenton forsaking himself for the sake of them: Ramona, Lux, and to a lesser extent, Asher and Echo. It was his last-ditch effort to survive the killer at large by going back into the closet he’d never really come out of.
Ten minutes later, narrowly missing a teacher who looked like a nursing home escapee, Asher careened into the parking lot. Not seeing Ramona or Fenton, and yet seemingly drawn to them all the same, he double-parked behind them and immediately got out of the car. He shut the door as fast as he could, locked it even faster. His invisible stalker in the passenger seat caught the light as he caught a glimpse of it through the window. The killer had been with him this entire time.
Having had a brush with Death, it seemed Asher’s mind had made up its mind about him living any longer. He hadn’t slept; the only thing he’d eaten was the skin off his lip, and the only thing he’d drunk was the bile in his throat. He was sickly, in that numb haze of singeing aftertastes and bad jitters that followed sleepless sleepovers. The world seemed to be moving faster than he could keep up with. He was never meant to be an augur, and now it seemed he wasn’t even meant to be here, on this earth. And yet he was. Why had he been spared when the others hadn’t? Or had it been following them, too? Where had they gone wrong? What could he do to make this right? Would anyone else see it? Would anyone believe him, even if they could? Was it because he was gay? Or because he hadn’t been gay enough? He scratched his chest through his shirt, raking the blisters with his nails. It felt as if he had the world’s worst sunburn.
Caught at the light outside Bitter Springs Junior High, Echo stared at the other augurs in the parking lot from the road and wondered if they’d pieced it together yet. She was surprised to see Asher still alive. Lux had put up and deleted blog posts on each of them, Echo included, over the last few days, but Asher’s had received the most attention. Lux’s lambasting of men, gay and straight, had really resonated with a lot of other true believers out there. The community was spread too thin, Lux had said, and because of this, any justice they managed to raise meant next to nothing, because everyone had their hands in the pot. Echo had agreed. She always did. That was why they had gone to Maidenwood, to meet the Sisters’ apostle. If Connor Prendergast hadn’t wanted anyone to do that, then maybe he shouldn’t have written it in his stupid, misogynistic book, Black Macabre Occult, or whatever the hell it was called.
Red to green—the stop light gave her the go-ahead, and Echo made a sharp left into Bitter Springs Junior High’s parking lot. She nodded at Ramona and Fenton and parked between the both of them. Glancing in the rear-view mirror, she watched Asher for a couple of seconds as he stared into his car, eyes nearly bulging from his black-rimmed sockets. They, but him especially, had taken Lux’s love for granted. They thought it would be easy, and maybe it had been, but things were different now. Extremity was the only way to trim the extremities from the gropers, the fondlers; the cat-callers, the leering; those who took advantage of the things they took for granted; raging hard-ons, soft snivelers; the cocks gathered at all the long tables, and all the cunts who’d willingly taken the short end of the stick. They’d all been there that night, in the black, with the black, on the pavement, beside her. Hundreds of years of dehumanization and systematic discriminatio
n had paved the path by which he found her and gagged her. Blinded, bleeding, she had called out, and her call had been heard. Until then, all she’d known were echoes of her own, catching on the indifference of the world around her, taunting her like an image in a mirror. Until then, but never again.
Echo took a deep breath and killed the engine. She turned to Lux beside her and said, “Ready?”
Lux, not looking up from her phone, took Echo’s hand and squeezed it. Echo noticed there was still blood underneath Lux’s fingernails, but didn’t bother pointing it out. She wore it well.
Lux led the way into Bitter Springs Junior High, and the augurs followed after, first Echo, then Fenton. Asher was farther back, and noticing this, Ramona stopped and fell in beside him. He smelled ripe, like sweat and garlic, and he was going so slow that, if he went any slower, he’d be going back in time. And that might’ve been exactly what he was trying to do.
“Hey,” Ramona whispered, “you okay?”
Asher didn’t look at her on his left, but to something on his right. He side-stepped, bumped into her.
“Sorry,” he said.
“It’s about—” she waited until the others were farther ahead, “—Lux’s post, isn’t it?”
This time, he did look at her.
“She deleted it. I don’t think she meant it.”
Up by the Junior High’s front doors, two nerds were leaning against the bricks. They’d said something to Lux.
“Why’d she write it, then?” Asher asked, a single tear in each eye barely clinging to their lids.
“I don’t know. I’ll talk to her.” Ramona squeezed his arm. “Did something happen last night?”
Asher rasped as he breathed his foul breath into her face. “I’m good, girl,” he said, smiling a pathetic smile.
“Fuck you.” Ramona pinched her nose. “Smell like something the sea shit out.”
Asher laughed, and then there were more tears in his eyes. “Can you see what’s—”
The nerds kicked off the wall. Like sacks of raw dough, they ambled awkwardly towards the augurs, practically tripping over their sagging sweatpants.
“What’d we do wrong now, huh?” one of the nerds asked, grinning.
The other nerd shoved his hands into pockets and rocked back and forth on his feet. “Not all guys are bad.”
“We don’t all rape women.”
“I don’t… mansplain things.”
“All we’ve ever done is be nice to girls.”
The nerd with his hands in his pockets was suddenly struck with anger. “People like you make us feel like shit. Everyone reads your stuff at school—”
Lux beamed.
“—all the girls always talk about how bad guys are.” The nerd wrinkled his nose. “Most guys haven’t done anything wrong! We haven’t.”
Echo sighed. “Just because you don’t do it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.”
Lux smiled, threw her arm around Echo, and planted a sloppy kiss on her lips. The nerds’ anger gave way to surprise, and they walked off, shaking their heads, but looking back often, just to make sure they weren’t missing out on anything else.
“Everyone loves a lesbian,” Asher said, the words coming out with a sling of spit.
“Don’t start,” Ramona said. “Please.” She squeezed his arm harder and stared at Lux as she disappeared into the building. “Please, don’t.”
A few furries were getting fresh with one another when the augurs came into the old band room and sent them packing with their tails between their legs.
“We have a lot of work to do,” Lux said, taking her place at the head of the cheap, plastic table.
Echo and Fenton sat on opposite sides of her. Ramona grabbed a seat in the middle, while Asher sat across from Lux, at the farthest end. He turned, as if he wanted to be ready to get up at any moment. Small glimmers of light danced around him. The others, apparently, didn’t think much of it.
“Asher,” Lux said.
He gave her one eye’s worth of attention.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” He frowned instead of smiling. Then, woodenly, like a total try-hard: “It’s the room. Can feel all pre-pubescent pregnancies weighing down on me.”
“Huh,” Echo said, smirking.
“They give out condoms at the nurse’s station to the guys. Can’t be that bad,” Fenton said, naïve as ever.
Ramona kicked Fenton’s foot underneath the table. “Girls can get them, too,” she said, playing her part as best as she could.
Lux cleared her throat. She pressed her elbows into the sticky soda stains that ran in rings around the table. The yellowed fluorescent light covers buzzed, making the bug carcasses collected inside dance. The bulbs blinked. Outside the abandoned band room, someone laid into a trumpet, blasting out a dooming note.
Eating up the theatrics so much her mouth was moving like an old woman tonguing peanut butter in her partials, Lux leaned in and said, “Who is the killer? They will be at the party, I’m sure of it. Who is the killer?”
Everyone looked to Fenton, their facts man, and so Fenton began. “A white, cisgender, over-privileged male who—”
“A woman,” Echo interrupted.
“Yes,” Lux said.
Ramona, Fenton, and Asher exchanged looks with one another, the color in each of their faces like the soda stains on the table—faint and sickly.
“A woman,” Lux said, echoing Echo. “The killer is a woman, not a man. That is how they go unnoticed. She’s defected to the other side. She’s taking out the weakest of us, working her way up the food chain.”
“Why?” Asher rumbled.
Lux’s eyes shone. “Let’s figure that out. Together. You’re the only friends I have in this town. I know it. You know it. You’re targets, for being who you are and for associating with me. I really do appreciate you. All of you.
“I know you’ve seen some of my blog posts lately. They’ve been pretty… militant. These deaths have had me thinking about things, reassessing our mission statement and what we’re trying to achieve. I think we created this killer.” She paused for dramatic effect. “We were too inclusive. There are a lot of sick people out there. An asshole is an asshole.”
Asher twitched. He gave her his full attention.
“Let’s put our heads together. Let’s figure out who the killer is.”
Asher turned in his seat, scooted it closer to the table. Sweat beaded on his brow. He looked tense, the way dead things looked after being left out awhile. A stink rolled off him, as if the air had shifted and unearthed the rot within. It smelled of sea salt and sulfur, and the sweet, eye-watering reek of piss. A black spot spread out along his shirt, where it was pressed to his chest. And then another, and then another.
“A woman,” he said, shifting his gaze to Fenton, the facts man. “A young woman.”
“Or older,” Fenton said. “Someone who could move around unnoticed.”
“White,” Ramona said. “Obviously.”
“A young, white woman,” Asher clarified. “Someone who knew the victims. Wouldn’t look…” He stared to his left. “Wouldn’t look suspicious.”
“Twenty-five to thirty, I think,” Fenton said. “Gender fluid, I think, and probably someone from our grade back in high school.”
“Over-privileged,” Ramona said. “If they’re tearing people’s faces off… they had to have learned that from somewhere. Probably reads a lot.”
“I think she reads Lux’s blog,” Echo shouted over the piercing flutes from next door.
The augurs, unanimous in their surprise, drew their breaths and held them until their bodies made them start breathing again.
Lux remained silent.
But Echo did not. “After every blog post Lux made, someone died. You have a lot of people who follow you.”
Lux nodded and said, meekly, “I do.”
“A lot of people who look up to you, believe everything you say.”
Lux’s cheeks quivered as she
resisted every urge to smile.
“Did you suspect?” Echo asked, her voice taking on an almost Hollywood starlet type of tone.
“Yes.”
Asher twitched.
Fenton and Ramona closed their eyes, opened them again.
“I meant every word of what I wrote, but obviously, someone is trying to use me. They want to twist our goals to fit their own worldview.”
Ramona said, “Why didn’t you stop writing, then?”
“I won’t be censored, not even by slaughter.”
As if in slow motion, Ramona fell back into her chair. The rusted metal that kept it together whined, made a crunching sound, as if the impact of her had broken through the pubescent gunk that’d been holding it up, holding it back all these years. She felt all the “I don’t knows” unspooling inside her brain. They pressed into its folds and formed the track on which a new thought could roar. And roar it did, deathly, violently, as the mechanisms inside her mind tried to derail it. She didn’t want to hear it. It was all she could hear.
“Mentally, she has issues,” Ramona said with trepidation.
Lux nodded, said, “Please. Tell us.”
“She’s… she has no empathy for others.” Ramona tightened her jaw, and then pressed on. “She’s self-righteous. She thinks her way is the only way. No one is as smart… as her. Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Sociopath” A shiver shot through her body. This was like spitting in the face of god.
“But I think she has an accomplice,” Fenton said, stopping the awkward silence before it could start. “People have seen someone fleeing the crime scenes.”
Ever since they had sat down, Fenton had felt the straps of his mask tightening around his head, digging into familiar grooves. He had wanted to shed it, shred it, and yet with a few prompts, he was back to wearing it proudly. It was too comfortable, too reliable. Now was his time to unveil himself, to show the others the impostor within the skin they’d grown to know, and hope and pray they’d accept him for who he was, even if who he was wasn’t what any one of them wanted him to be. He knew where Ramona was going; he could tell by the pain in her voice she was flying too close to the sun and seeing the truth in its lying landscapes. The truth was important, but not if they were all but ashes in its hands. There had to be a better way.
