After Hope Dies

by Lilly Haraden

  But it’s ten minutes past their usual meeting time. Dani is never ten minutes late, or even late at all. Ever. The school is dead quiet now.

  Ok, time to call. Here we go. Dani, I can’t work at the club anymore…The men scare me, the monsters kill me. I can’t work, but I want to, but…there’s a monster who…

  Janelle has her phone in hand with Dani’s number already dialed and dialing. The little speech falls into place inside her head. She doesn’t expect such a prompt or rude answer:

  ‘Who the fuck is this! How did you get hold of Janelle’s ID!’

  Janelle has to think clearly for a second but replies, ‘Dani, it’s me, Janelle! I’m at school, waiting for you to pick me up.’

  A crackle on the other end of the line then, in deep pessimism, ‘You don’t sound like J. Who are you?’

  This is the first time Janelle wishes she had her old voice back. Should she try and imitate old Janelle? Or would that constitute some flavor of double-reverse racism…Girl murmurs, ‘Please, Dani, just believe me. It’s Jan. Come pick me up from school, ok? I want to see you.’

  ‘…five minutes. If this is a set-up, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.’

  ‘Dani, stop it with the Taken references, nobody likes those old movies.’

  A little pause. ‘Oh my God, is that really you? Wait right there, I’ll be over asap.’

  Click.

  Tick, tock.

  A motorcycle screams in the distance. A couple of seconds pass until she sees the rider approach from the end of the street. The blacksuit pulls up beside the fence, veering dangerously onto the footpath and ramming the front wheel into the brickwork. Off comes the helmet and Dani appears, a wild flash of blue and white hair like a drugged-out zebra. Porcelain face set in shock as she hops off the cycle; she gives Jan the once-over. Janelle pops off the pillar and waves a little. Heya.

  ‘It’s me. See?’

  Dani breathes heavy for a moment, her eyes furious. In a flash, Janelle’s being squeezed snake-tight in a hug. The black leather snake chokes her whole body but Janelle wraps herself into the embrace and rests her head on Dani’s shoulder. She likes her hugs. Dani’s hands feel warm on her face, even through the gloves. Jan looks into the eyes of her big sister as the woman says, ‘What happened to your hair? Did you get—’

  ‘Extensions, yes.’

  And the next words turn the little girl’s blood cold.

  ‘Jan. We all thought you were dead.’

  Ice cream! Ice cream! Mother-fucking-ice cream!

  Excuse me, that was inappropriate. I know Americans hate swearing. Also nudity. Violence you’re totally ok with, but throw in a fuck and the entire country loses their collective mind. But surely you can understand her enthusiasm? Ice cream is a real, curse-warranting treat. This is the good stuff from Shenzhen, the jewels that come packed in their vacuum-insulated boxes. See, no real business can afford to import the stuff from Western America and keep it refrigerated over the no-power night period. It’s cheaper to buy the one-use, anti-gray market ice boxes from the mainland. And nobody wants to touch WA stuff anyway because all the milk powder is filled with lead. No way! Noodles are the limit when it comes to food from the West. But this place here is like a jewelry store. All the flavors glimmer behind the glass in their transparent packs.

  Dani offers, ‘What do you want, girl? My treat.’

  ‘Dark chocolate, please!’ Janelle presses her nose into the glass counter, peering into the vortexial darkness of the chocolate pack.

  One hundred and eight for two scoops. Dani gets crème brûlée. The two sit at the window of Stallwind East’s finest ice-creamery. Fancy shops line the view outside the window – you know the ones, all packed with overseas brand clothes and watches and chem-slot refills for your phones. Trinkets that hardly anyone in this city can afford, placed here and beautified as a false example of what rewards ‘hard work’ in Eastern America can bring. So, Janelle – study hard in school, suck lots of cum, and one day you’ll have your own pair of Chinese sneakers. However, the girl doesn’t pay the outside world much mind because – right here and right now – there is ice cream in their glass bowls.

  One hundred and eight for two scoops. The girl peers down at the icecream in her bowl and does the arithmetic. One hundred and eight: maybe just enough time for her to pull up her shirt in front of a client, make it rise, just a peep.

  ‘Say ‘ahh’!’ Jan spoons a little of her dark chocolate into Dani’s mouth and the woman’s eyes say wow. In return, Jan takes a slice of her friend’s crème brûlée and keeps it in one place on her tongue, treasuring the feeling of the sweet build-up. As she washes it down with some of her intense chocolate neutron star, Dani leans in and says slowly, ‘Tell me what happened to you Saturday night, Jan. We didn’t realize you were missing until the night was over and you hadn’t collected your pay. ‘Corse, you’ve pulled runners before, but I couldn’t find you the next day. What happened?’

  Jan can tell when Dani is play-acting calm – there’s a tick in her voice, something in the way she smiles. But it doesn’t help calm the surge of fear. Resting her spoon on the bowl, the girl looks down into the mess of her ice cream, lost. Her voice falters and for a moment she thinks she might break, but Dani’s there with a hand over her own. Warm, gentle. Jan finds her friend’s eye and feels the panic die. In its place comes an empty void.

  Thank you, Mirror. So Janelle murmurs, ‘A monster took my voice away.’

  Dani doesn’t make a peep. Oh. Please, big sister, please, believe me. Jan staggers on, ‘He brought me back to life after…’ but she has to reconfigure her story so that it makes sense. Another quick glance to Dani – infinite patience. Here we go.

  ‘I was with two men in the red room. I was working on the first man while the other watched; the watcher grabbed me right after the first had finished. He beat me, then he wrapped an arm around my neck and dragged me into the alley. One filmed me while the other took me on top of a pile of garbage. I remember a knife. I remember something hot cutting my neck open.’

  Janelle picks up her spoon and makes a circle in her dessert. Voice low and scratchy, she continues, ‘But I’m still alive somehow. So those two leave. And then…then the monster from the bar finds me out in the trash. Remember I told you about that thing I saw? You laughed it off. Anyway, he reached into my neck and ripped my voice out. And when I woke up, I was alive, in the same spot.’ Janelle points to the line across her neck – see – and Dani leans in, inspecting the beautiful, thin cut.

  Simple as that, right, Janelle? Easy as all that? Do you want to tell Dani about you wetting the bed in the aftermath? Oh, Permission works wonders, doesn’t it. Sometimes. Sometimes, your life’s troubles can be edited away like video stripped of the audio: facts, an impression. Someone else can listen to the sweet music for you. Someone else.

  You didn’t tell Dani about Mirror, did you. Dani doesn’t need to know about her.

  Mirror girl, Mirror girl. Was your throat slit open too? Were you one and the same with old Janelle right up until the moment that monster cut you free from the voice box prison you knew so well? Did you take the fallout, the waste, the missing piece of audio with you? Do you play it to yourself every night before you sleep: rape, cutting, screaming, pleading, urinating, trickling down the legs, bitterness and remorse, the demonic shade of obsession that crunches on any prospect of sleep, red eyes sore from crying…?

  Jan sniffs her panic away and looks to big sister. Dani shakes her head slow, mutters, ‘A monster.’

  Girl nods. Please, Dani…The older woman sighs deep. Says, ‘Bax was right. One of the clients wanted you erased.’

  ‘Erased,’ Jan repeats the word, unknowing.

  A lick of crème brûlée then. Dani tilts her head in thought and those sea lines of blue and white flow across each other. In a low voice, Dani explains, ‘This happens sometimes when clients get spooked and try to cover their tracks in a violent way. Say, you’re servic
ing the mayor, but later the next day the mayor has regrets and asks for his history to be erased to save his political career. Or marriage. Most likely career. So, his history is erased. We’ve got counter measures at the club to try and prevent that but it looks like those two slipped through.’

  Jan narrows her eyes. ‘You’re not going to ask why it is that I’m not dead? How I can survive having my neck cut? Grill me about the monster?’

  Dani ignores the questions so Jan fires another, ‘Why didn’t you call my phone to check where I was?’

  ‘I did, idiot. I’ve been ringing you non-stop since Saturday night. Even drove to your house to find you.’

  ‘My phone was stolen.’ Jan brings out her new phone and shows Dani the call logs. The woman stares at the blank list, narrow-eyed, then shakes her hair in a hurricane storm. ‘Ok, fine, the tech failed us. But Jan, why didn’t you call me?’

  The girl places her phone on the table, lowers her eyes. ‘I-I…I don’t know why.’

  Spoon like a sword, pointing to Janelle’s heart. ‘Kid, you know that we’re your lifeline – Bax doesn’t like getting the police involved in anything club related, you know this. You should have called me instantly…’

  Janelle nods, feeling the sting of embarrassment eat her. ‘I just had a lot of things to…’

  Dani orders her with another jab of the spoon, ‘Get a new phone immediately next time, download your Central and message me. Or call me. I’ll always fight for you.’

  Janelle nods and a question immediately strikes her. ‘Wait. You said you came to my house…yesterday?’

  Dani nods. ‘I did.’

  ‘I was out shopping all day, Mom was working at the Hyatt.’

  Dani puffs out her cheeks. Jan can see her big sister is considering her next words very carefully, so she doesn’t encroach. Then, ‘Jan, when I went to your place at ten in the morning, I spoke with your mom. She was high, way off her face.’

  December arrives in the little girl’s belly. That horrible, horrible fear. Scrambling into defense, Janelle replies, ‘Mom was out working yesterday; she came back in the evening with a pay packet and we made dinner together. She was functioning, I swear to you that she wasn’t high.’

  But something’s not adding up in Dani’s head. The woman rests her spoon by the ice cream and replies, ‘Hear me out. I asked your mom if you’d come home last night – Saturday night – and she said she hadn’t seen you since the Saturday morning. I left. I checked back again last night, six PM. Still no sign of you. I asked your mother what she had planned for dinner. She replied she’d eat pizza or make do with whatever was in the fridge. By then, she was coming down hard. She wanted to call the cops. I convinced her to let us handle it. I left. I called your phone again. No answer.’

  Dani opens her palms – that’s the facts, kid – and waits for Janelle to reply.

  The fear subsides. Janelle thinks she understands. Not entirely, but just enough to make sense of this situation. One need not know all paths through a forest save the one that brings you to a safe place.

  Janelle replies, ‘I think we’re both right.’

  ‘Eh?’ Narrow blue doubting eyes.

  The events sound almost…mirrored. ‘Maybe what I saw happen, happened. Maybe what you saw happen, happened too. Maybe they overlap. Or maybe they run in parallel. But I know this for certain – I came home super late on Saturday night, I ate breakfast with Mom on the Sunday and we cooked dinner together that evening. I even visited my neighbor – he can back me up. I am entirely certain I am correct, and I don’t doubt your version of events either. And maybe that’s why my phone has no record of your calls too.’

  Mirror has something to do with this. Two girls, two sets of events. The real and the real, the fake and the fake. Dani rubs her temples and says, ‘God, it’s like a bad sci-fi movie.’

  ‘Maybe it all comes down to this: why have you been ignoring that I said I came back from the dead after being killed by a monster?’

  Dani polishes off the last of her crème brûlée and clucks her tongue. ‘Because I don’t want to admit that stranger things have happened. Far stranger things. Come on, eat your ice cream. We’ve got to sort everything out with Bax before the evening starts.’

  Jan frowns. ‘And you’re sure Bax is completely, one hundred percent fine in dealing with something supernatural?’

  ‘Oh yeah, definitely,’ and Dani nods it off like it’s the most casual thing in the world. But rather than serving as reassurance, Janelle feels unease strike at her mind. How can monsters and resurrected children be that basic, that blasé, Dani? What sort of undercurrent flows through the world that Janelle was always unaware of? Weight descends between them and for a long moment, Jan doesn’t meet the eyes of her best friend. Outside the window serves no solace – no fairytale streetscape to lose anxiety in. Just gray. Face up, girl. ‘Dani.’

  ‘What is it, Jan?’

  ‘I don’t know if I can work at the club anymore. I mean, I need to work there, I used to love working there. But that monster...Dani, he killed me. He reached into my throat and violated me. And I know he’ll be there if I go back. And…how can I be sure that what happened on Saturday won’t happen again? Those men did…’

  Dani sighs and crosses her arms, thinking. Janelle has seen this look before. First, a smile, and then words perfectly crafted to reassure. Light of a sun, summer-warm. Firm. ‘I understand completely. Jan, you should do whatever is right for you. Right now, though, this monster is our biggest problem. We need to sort him out. Then we can deal with those men, and as much as I’d like to say it’ll never happen again, it might. But after Bax hears of what happened, I’m sure he’ll beef up security for the club and try his best to protect you. Hell, even I’m worried…Do you trust me?’

  Janelle nods, earnest.

  ‘Then I need to call Bax. He will help us. What he suggests might be difficult, it might sound dangerous and unsafe, but I trust Bax as much as you trust me. And then, after this is over, we can think about your work situation. Ok?’

  Janelle feels Dani’s decision weigh on her heart. She doesn’t like the sound of it. Is she heading them both into confrontation? A dangerous remedy? Take heart, young creature, in the trust you place in your friend. It sounds hollow, doesn’t it. Nerves rise and dance, but as Dani takes out her phone and connects the call, the girl knows that this is for the best. Maybe.

  ‘Bax, Jan’s alive and well. We need your help. Janelle says there’s a monster lurking inside the club…’

  The last little bit of dark chocolate always goes down the hardest. Jan sits and waits for Dani’s solution.

  Will Bax really believe her?

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  ‘After school lessons’ – that’s what Mr. Davis called their sessions together. Some thin veneer of authority to gloss over the rotten core of their activity. Call a spade a spade, right, Mirror? Janelle would saunter in after all the children had departed for the assembly lines. She’d unfold a book, batt a few eyelids, pretend to work for a minute or two like a good girlie should. But somehow – imagine the bad luck – the end of a pencil would always magically find a way to dip into her lips. A tongue would slip out and suck the rubber cap. Or the end of a finger. Sometimes not even her own.

  Mirror stops outside the classroom now, hand on the door, and watches the shadowplay on the other side of the bulletproof, frosted glass. There’s a certain motion to the dark figures that Mirror knows and understands perfectly well. Off to the side, off to the back. Whispers of light. Yes, a very intimate understanding. Any passerby walking down these after-hours deserted halls would perhaps see only flickers. So Mirror waits for just the right moment as the shadows reach a particular climax. The lock mechanism slips undone under Mirror’s supernatural touch. And the girl enters, so quiet.

  Perfect timing.

  Well then. Turns out Mr. Davis takes the education of his students very seriously. A Janelle-replacement kneels at the back of the classroom, her hands spla
yed on either side of Mr. Davis, head at his crotch. Back. Forth. Gently so. Teacher has his eyes closed, head lolling to the side with pleasure. Listen. The sounds are incredible. The juicy suck and pull as tight lips work their way into unjust places. Slurps and moans.

  Quite a sight, for certain. Mirror makes her way down the aisle of chairs and desks, watching the spectacle unfold. They do not notice. Ghosts are hard to hear as they scamper closer, closer. They do not notice. So the Mirror places her bum on the edge of a school table, right in front of the pair, and swivels around. Pulls out the dagger from her short short’s belt loop. Waits.

  Waits a while, actually. Maybe he will come before he notices she is there. Well. This is an opportunity to see what it looks like, Mirror, from the third person perspective. Just imagine this precious little thing is you and watch your teacher undo himself all over a child. Mr. Davis brings a hand around from the lockers and presses the back of the girl’s head deeper into his embrace. Smiles in bliss, chin down, eyes open now, watching her, watching the little girl work his dick and suck him off.

  Mirror is right. He does come first. Girl goes very still while the teacher grunts and breathes out long, loud, fierce.

  He puffs out his cheeks, raises his head, and locks eyes with Mirror.

  Oh, the look on his face. Mr. Davis flings his arms out, gives a sort of panicked, nervous sad-laugh. Girl spins around on her knees, cum spilling down her chin, smeared across her lips, nose, eyes alight.

  Mirror stays very still, leaning over the back of the chair, legs dangling free, dagger point digging into her thumb. After the fun of watching, the aftermath seems kind of…dull. Is there really any fun or pleasure to what comes next? The flavor of murder and disemboweling too stale and wilted, like second sex, like used gum.