by Scott Hale
The killer’s hooked limbs went taut and then, slowly, it began to peel. The skin of Asher’s face ripped away from the muscle. A curtain of blood poured down his face as his forehead separated from the meat underneath. He shook and moaned, but the killer would not, could not, stop. Loose flesh flapped around his eyes, near his jaw. The air got into the tender, glistening patches and called forth greater agonies. He could hear the skin pulling away with stomach-churning clarity—the subcutaneous fat coming apart with sticky, snapping sounds.
By the time his face was loose enough that he could feel it bunching up on his lips—the thick of his cheek prickling his tongue with its sweaty, coppery heft—Asher went into shock and then, seconds later, died.
The killer handed Echo the hunk of flesh that had been Asher’s face, and threw his lifeless corpse into the river.
By friends and family, Asher would be remembered as having died tragically at a young age. For the weeks and months and even years to come, they would recall his big personality and his even bigger eating habits. His mother would be steadfast in her assertion he could’ve made it as a writer one day, while his father would throw-in all the work Asher had done for the gay community. A man Asher would’ve married would end up married to a woman instead, and the son they would’ve adopted years down the line would stay in foster care, to be beaten and abused.
By the Internet, Asher would be remembered as a cisgender, black, depressed, self-harming, fat-shaming homosexual who pretended to be gender fluid as a way by which to garner sympathy and quick fucks from otherwise uninterested parties. His writings would be unearthed by anonymous sources and reinterpreted to support the narrative that Asher hated women, especially lesbians, because they stole attention and resources from gay men. As an overweight man, Asher’s interests in nerdy activities would have him eventually labeled as a neckbeard that spent most of his time stuffing his face and masturbating to violent porn. He would be outed as an impostor and an informant to the straight community. Rumors would spread that he had AIDS, and supposed former lovers and flings would state Asher had been abusive towards them. He would be held up as a shining example of how gay men are not supposed to be by the vocal minority of militant feminists and white knights abroad. The Internet would forget Asher by the weekend, but his death would be one coal after another in the fires of outrage that would burn for validation for years to come.
Ramona and Fenton stood in front of the table beside the stairs to the second floor and, together, shouted over the music, “She wants us to do what?”
Sitting at the table, behind a battlefield of fallen glasses and puddles of swill, sat Jessie and Cole, a small, wooden box that held index cards between them. The two looked three sheets to the wind. Jessie’s eyes were glazed over, going different directions, while Cole kept stroking and smirking at the rope that blocked off the stairs, as if he were trying to get digits from it.
“Sit here,” Jessie slurred, “and when it’s the right time, r-read the next c-card.”
Cole gave the rope a nod—clearly, they’d come to some sort of agreement—and joined in the conversation. “Yeah.” He dug around in his crotch under the table.
“Fucking hell. You two are blasted,” Ramona said.
“Hiroshima-style,” Jessie squeaked. She turned her hands into guns and shot at them. Then, to Fenton, said, “Sorry.”
“Sorry, my dick got in the way.” Cole laughed and heaved a microphone onto the table.
An ear-splitting screech shot through the Wharf from the speakers on the walls. Those inside crouched and covered their ears and started hurling insults and peanuts at Cole.
“Read into this,” he said, turning the microphone off. He opened his mouth, trying to catch some nuts. “And… goodbye.”
Sprier than he looked, Cole backed out of the chair, knocking it to the ground, and melted into the crowd.
Jessie, too drunk to get up, simply reached over to the nearest table, grabbed an empty stool, and transplanted herself onto it. “I’ll stay… here. Make sure you… jokers… do it…” She fell asleep. And then woke up. “Do it right.”
Fenton glanced back at the speakers on the walls.
Ramona noticed and did the same.
They both turned to the Wharf’s entrance and searched it for signs of Asher and Echo. Fenton thought he’d seen Echo, but it was just a scene girl with gauges in her ears large enough to have a picnic on who’d walked in. Ramona could’ve sworn she’d spotted Asher, but it was actually Billy, a gay man who wore colors so loud they wouldn’t even let him into the library.
Two thick basics that reeked of pumpkin spice pushed past Ramona and Fenton, grabbing at each of their asses as they passed.
“Hey, get the fuck off!” Ramona cried, forgetting about Asher.
Fenton shook his head and waved them off. He went around the table and sat where Jessie had sat. He grabbed the small, wooden box and took out a handful of index cards. There were names on each of them, and times. The ones that’d already been called were crossed out. And looking at the clock over the entrance, they were supposed to be calling a name here in the next five minutes.
“What is this?” He held up the next card—Gulliver Grandin, his contact.
“Lux’s got some… exclusive shit going on… upstairs.” Jessie closed her eyes and leaned so far forward, Ramona had to rush to push her upright. “You know. You… should know. You’re her besties.” She burped, and then licked her lips at the semi-decent looking dude who she’d noticed a few feet away. “Some big… to-do. It’s… whatever. Cole and me were just… filling in… since you niggers were… late.”
“Jesus fucking Christ.” Ramona came around the table and took Cole’s seat. “Jessie, is Lux upstairs right now?”
Jessie slid off the stool. “She’s in the… kitchen. She’s… going to make some… big entrance. Just… keep sending them up. She said… she’d get you… soon.” She waved her hand and then disappeared into a fog of candy-flavored vaporizer.
Fenton leaned into Ramona and said, “This might not be a bad way for Lux to throw together a ton of alibis.”
Ramona wrung her hands until the itch of mutiny left them.
“If we do our part, she might give us everything.”
“Did we fuck up?” Ramona checked the entrance for Asher. “Should we have been watching Echo?”
“They might need equipment for upstairs.” Fenton picked up the microphone. Before switching it on, he said, “Text Asher.”
“Yeah.” Before reaching into her pocket, Ramona grabbed the box. “How many names did they go through already?” She flipped through one crossed out name after the other. The party had started about thirty minutes ago. Fifteen names had been selected since then. “Damn.”
Fenton turned on the microphone. Nervously, he rattled, “Gulliver Grandin,” and then quickly turned the mic off.
“Fuck, where’s my phone?”
Fenton stared at Ramona. “What?”
“I can’t…” She turned her pockets inside out. “Fuck. I don’t have it.”
Fenton reached into his pockets, too. His phone was missing as well.
“Dude.” Ramona stood and stared out into the crowd. “What the fuck? Who lifted our—”
Out of the wall of designer clothes and carefully maintained grunge emerged Gulliver Grandin. He was wearing a sharp looking suit and a hickey on his neck. Without a second thought, he went to the stairs, moved the rope aside, and started up them.
“Gulliver,” Fenton called. “What’s going on up there?”
Gulliver threw up his left hand and shouted, “Bye bitches!”
Ramona slumped into her seat. She grabbed the next index card in the box and gasped.
Fenton, still focused on Gulliver, watched him walk the top of the stairs, where he disappeared into the stacks of tables and chairs.
From the speakers, a new song blared. Thudding bass and a crisp snare with some awkwardly placed, looping sample from an obscure ‘80s movie. O
ver it, the rappers repeated money and family ad nauseum, as if they’d had a stroke mid-recording. One rapper was a white, art school dropout, the other an Asian refugee. It was a big hit with the Wharf’s crowd.
“Fen, what is she doing here?”
Ramona slipped him the index card. The name it bore was Geneva, and she was due for her appointment with the Light in the next two minutes.
“Was she even invited?” Fenton clicked on the microphone, muffled it against his shirt.
“Let’s not kid ourselves, not everyone is here for Lux.”
“Does Lux know that? We need to get up there.” He pressed the microphone to his mouth and shouted, “Geneva!”
“No. No thanks,” a woman cried.
Only a few feet away, in the center of the circle that’d formed around her, was Geneva. She’d had a last name once, but her fame on the Internet helped her ascend beyond such trivial things. Fenton and Ramona had no choice but to be familiar with her. She was a cisgender, straight, white woman; age twenty-four; average Body Mass Index; offensively normal. According to Lux, she was over-privileged, but most agreed she came from a modest background. If Lux was the sun, then Geneva was the moon; her opposite and her equal. Lux may have shone brighter, but Geneva’s pull was greater. She could make oceans move, whereas Lux could only dry them out.
Geneva stomped her way to the table, shaking her head as she did so. “I’m not here for whatever she has planned. I’m not here to do any social ‘work.’ I just want to hang out and get a buzz.” She smiled. “You two are too good for her.”
Ramona shrugged.
Fenton gave her a subtle nod.
“Sorry social ‘work’ isn’t fun for you anymore,” Ramona snapped.
“Is that what you’re having right now? Fun?”
Fenton groaned. “It does get old.”
“I’m putting together a fundraiser for the victims next weekend,” Geneva said, “not recruiting an army.” And with that, Geneva turned away from the table and slipped back into the center of her inner circle.
Ramona punched the table, and sprung to her feet with the impact. “Fuck it. Let’s go up there.”
“An army?” Fenton reached over and undid the rope blocking the stairs. “Wait, look. There’s Echo.”
As the smell of rain hit her, Ramona turned to where Fenton was pointing. A dark, hooded figure was slinking along the edges of the room, moving in and out of the human roadblocks that stood in its way. Fenton said it was Echo, but no, that wasn’t Echo. It was Asher. He was in a rain slicker, holding something underneath it.
Thunder rocked the Wharf. The lights flickered. Everyone lost their shit for a moment, and then laughed hysterically.
“That’s Asher, dude. What the hell’s he doing?” Ramona started after him, but Fenton inched past. “What are you doing?”
“I’ll grab him,” Fenton said. “He looked bad, like Echo might’ve…”
A table and several chairs fell over on the second floor. Ramona backed towards the stairs, trying to get a better look at what was going on up there.
“I’ll get him,” Fenton said. “Get up there before Lux comes back.”
Ramona said, “Okay,” and took off up the stairs, her self-diagnosed ADHD in full-effect.
Fenton didn’t like being separated from Ramona, but he had a better chance of running into Lux this way, and if he could do that, he could keep her distracted long enough with his confession of heterosexuality to give Ramona time to figure out what was happening on the second floor.
Trailing Asher, Fenton pressed himself into the human waves that swelled and crashed all around him. It wasn’t intentional, but as he ducked and weaved and went sideways through the crowd, he found himself auguring everyone that he went past. White male. Black, no African American, no black lesbian. Able-bodied. Hearing-impaired. Nerd. Dweeb. Neckbeard. Over-privileged catholic. Brave Muslim. He saw scars on wrists and assumed self-harm. He spotted an overweight woman standing by herself and presumed asexuality. A hipster with a moustache large enough that he had to go sideways through doors triggered Fenton’s misogyny meter. A college girl with a Brooksville University tank top had the voice of Lux whispering into his skull that she was a slut. A zhe. A zhe. Quirky white trash with barely eighteen written all over them. A bald man at a table by himself, nursing a glass and staring at nothing in particular, probably planning his next nightly rape. A business woman sitting at the bar, her pants suit hanging low in the back, probably scoping the scene for easy money. An Asian. A Latino. A drag queen reaping laughs, smashing their cheap heels into all their, no Lux’s, efforts to promote equality for the transgendered. Cisgender. Queer. A non-binary punk forging a new link in the chain of sexuality by rocking a yellow star-shaped badge on their jacket—victimsexual. Two gays. An African American, no Black, no African American with a cowboy hat. And then, in a mirror on the wall, some asshole: Him.
Fenton called out to Asher as he slipped down the hall towards the bathrooms, but Asher didn’t stop. Lubricated with sweat, Fenton squeezed past the last few tables and the server serving them. He hurried down the hall, barely catching a glimpse of Asher as he went into the women’s bathroom.
Fenton looked around to make sure no one was watching him—it was cute, he realized, that he thought anyone would be—and followed after Asher.
There was nobody else in the women’s bathroom except for Asher, or at least, who he’d mistaken for Asher. Her back was turned, but even then, he could tell it was Echo. The rain coat was down around her ankles, and there appeared to be some discoloration around the sides of her face.
“Echo?”
Fenton looked at the lone mirror in the bathroom—a small piece of smudged glass—and crept closer and closer—
“Hey, Echo, are you… what’s—”
—until he could see her profile in it.
On her face was another face. A black face. Asher’s face. Stretched and held in place by pieces of duct tape. Watery trails of blood ran down her chin and neck, as if she’d taken a bite out of some strange fruit. She looked into the mirror, too, and Fenton could tell she was smiling behind his friend’s ragged lips. She liked what she saw. Spinning around, that smile beneath Asher’s flesh turned from joy to hunger, and Fenton knew she wanted more.
“I walked right in here, and nobody said a thing.” More blood cascaded down Echo’s heated skin. “Right under their noses. An impostor posing as an impostor. Ha.”
Fenton’s body shook violently. His mind was desperate to reconcile the sight of Asher’s face over Echo’s own, but it was no use. Every time it did, his skull swelled and his gut churned, and years-worth of memories begged, no, pleaded to differ. Asher was dead. They had killed him. That was the truth of things now, and Echo was the lie masquerading as otherwise. He had to stop her.
Fenton ran at Echo. Two feet from her, and outside the bathroom, someone belted out a Scream Queen wail. He stopped. Over the howling came words, just as loud. “Are you hurt?” and “Blood?” and “Oh my god, where is all this blood coming from?”
Echo laughed so hard the duct tape that kept Asher’s ear fixed to hers came off. “Dumb trust fund baby, I told her to dump your phones in here.”
Fenton remembered the two basic bitches that smelled of pumpkin spice, and how they’d gotten all handsy as they pushed past him and Ramona.
“Doesn’t matter.” She pointed behind Fenton. “Hate finds a way.”
Fenton didn’t turn around. He didn’t need to. Before he knew it, he was on the ground, on his back, staring into a bulbous, marbled orb—captivated by the captive audience within. Each face inside the orb was as small as a speck of salt, and they were elevated by roiling plumes of dark smoke. He could feel their hate and see its discharge; throughout the orb, veins in the shape of sentences ushered along an uncanny liquid that triggered every painful, shameful memory within Fenton’s shrinking mind. He could feel the hate of thousands coursing through his arteries, picking him apart like ants at a pi
cnic; so as to be taken back as easy to digest tributes to their faceless, nameless queen.
The killer’s bell-shaped body split open and hundreds of pale fingers shot forth and clamped down onto Fenton’s arms and legs; hands and feet; chest and neck; ass and genitals. The fingers pinched his skin and broke through, teasing out red rivulets. Between his legs, he could feel the greedy digits forcing their way inside him, and then stopping. They didn’t know what to make of the layout. He hadn’t either, and now it didn’t matter.
Pinned beneath a nightmare, Fenton no longer found comfort in reason. He dipped his head back, his eyes meeting Echo’s within Asher’s sockets, and spouted, “You won’t get away with this!”
Echo laughed at his last words. “Did Lux teach you nothing? Feelings Trump facts. Every time.”
Silently, gracefully, the killer pushed itself off Fenton. The pale fingers drove into him, through layer after layer of skin, blood, veins, and arteries, and hooked their nails into the musculature spasming across his body. Precisely, effortlessly, the killer tore Fenton’s flesh off in one uninterrupted sheet. Blood exploded across the bathroom in every direction. Echo took the gory blast without blinking, her arms and legs spread. Behind her, on the wall her body had blocked from the spray, was the outline of her, like an angel left in snow.
The killer dropped Fenton’s skin at Echo’s feet, on top of her rain coat. She smiled and started to get dressed.
By family and former professors, Fenton would be remembered as having died horribly at a young age. For the weeks and months and years to come, they would recall his quietness, and how incredibly intelligent he was. His mother would seek retribution on the augurs and blame herself for not having seen this coming sooner. His father would disappear into his work and think of the procedures and if they could have, in some way, saved his child; he would remember things Fenton used to say and wonder if they meant more; unfinished sentences, and small moments of bonding—laughing at a bad a movie, long drives on summer nights—the both of them outrunning sleep with ‘70’s rock on the wind. Fenton would have gone on to be a prominent speaker for intersexed individuals. He wouldn’t have married, but he would’ve dated often, and those he might’ve loved, for all their fights and incompatibility, would think of him fondly later. He would not have been remarkable, but he would have been something.
