“What’s your name?” the officer asked.
Reds and blues bounced off clouds in the night sky, and there were too many other conversations going on.
“I think I’m going to vomit,” someone cried.
“Not on me,” another person said. “My outfit is already ruined enough as it is.”
The officer leaned in closer. “I said, who are you?”
In the driveway, the giant dog fountain had stopped shooting water, and the dark sedan was gone. An ambulance had taken its place.
“That’s when I tried to tackle her,” some kid without a shirt yelled. “And each time she fired, I tried jumping in front of it.”
Fingers snapped in front of my face. “Hey, do you have an ID on you? A license? Anything?”
“This is bumming me out,” someone in a silk tie told the person next to him. “A real mood killer.”
Beneath them, a girl sat on the curb. She cried into some dress that looked like it belonged in a kids movie.
“I’m going to ask you one more time,” the cop said.
I was standing outside Verona’s apartment, and a horrible squeal howled from inside.
For all you night owls out there, it’s time to play “Guess that sound!”
The front door was cracked open enough for light to shine through. Did we forget to shut it all the way when we left? Or maybe she had come home. Maybe this was all one big prank.
Sorry, wrong answer. Next caller, please.
She was going to kill me for walking all the way back from the graduation party without her.
I pushed the front door open, and something metal scratched along the floor. Her radio. A high-pitched yell cut through its speakers, and the clock display said it was 2:44 AM.
I’m going to guess…a knife being sharpened.
There was broken glass spread over the floor. Did I accidentally knock something over earlier?
Sorry, that’s not quite right. Next caller, please.
The mess continued further into the apartment. The broken glass turned into scattered silverware, and I accidentally kicked something into the baseboard. An eyeball? I bent down, pinching the thing between two fingers. Not an eyeball, a nazar.
Verona’s lost necklace.
“Hello?” I asked, pocketing the trinket as I went further into the kitchen. All the drawers had been pulled. They lay across each other in broken piles on the floor.
“Verona?”
Something squished under my shoe, and long pink strings crawled away from it. Raw meat. Even the fridge had been ransacked.
A cat. No a bobcat!
No. And no. Sorry. Let’s give it another spin.
Another mechanical squeak filled the apartment. It sounded like giant ambulance doors opening. The defrosting beef bled across the floor, and Verona’s face gasped to life in my head.
“Fuck.” I steadied myself against the counter. It was littered with torn newspapers, bills, takeout menus, and loose keys. What had happened?
Think you know the answer? Give us a call and we’ll bring you on right after this break.
Something whistled in the bedroom.
“Verona?” I asked again. The radio cycled in and out of static as I scooped the loose keys on the counter into my hand, pinching each one between my fingers. A makeshift brass knuckle. “Is that you?”
A shadow ruffled beneath the gap in the door.
“Are you okay?” I asked, turning the knob.
As I pushed it open, the whistling got louder. Someone stood at the opposite end of the room.
Not Verona.
Bright red stains ran up their shirt, and my legs froze.
Do it. I wanted to say, but nothing came out.
They didn’t speak either, just kept their eyes glued to mine. Wide and white. Claws jutted from their hand, and another screech tore through the apartment. I stumbled backwards.
The person across from me did the same.
Is it the sound of brakes locking up?
I raised my fist. My knuckle of keys. And the person copied me again, except his hand stretched and shrank as he lifted it.
It wasn’t someone else.
It was a mirror.
“Jesus,” I muttered, sinking to the floor. Was I going insane?
Almost, why don’t you try one more time?
I couldn’t stand back up. I didn’t want to stand back up. Bobby pins, broken pens, dirty laundry, and pieces of glass pressed against my skin. My pupils traced them, the bits of glass. They led to a broken bowl. A vase?
How about…a trash compactor?
I leaned over, picking through the pieces of the shattered container. A rotting stem lay curled underneath. When I went to lift it up, its brown leaves crinkled apart and sprinkled across my jeans. The lily.
The now dead lily.
Verona was gone.
Ding, ding, ding. You’re a winner!
She squeezed my hand, Verona. “What have you always wanted to do?” she asked.
A frozen image from her favorite movie flickered on and off through the cracked TV in front of us. A bird's-eye view of the dying villain. What were we doing on the floor?
“That’s okay,” Verona assured me. “We’ll find you something. We’ve got our whole lives ahead of us.”
One of the cracks in her television spread. Edge to corner.
“Why do you like this movie so much?” The question came out of me. Unprompted. Immediate. “I mean, it’s all black and white.”
A line of static rose over the flashing image, and I still couldn’t remember how I got here.
“First of all,” she said. “It’s not black and white. It’s monochrome. There’s a difference.”
The room, her bedroom, was a mess. Torn curtains. Scattered paint brushes. Laundry hung from an overturned chair, and something smelled like raw meat.
“Second of all,” she continued. “It encapsulates the quintessence of all German expressionism. It’s like a moving Franz Marc painting.”
Bigger bands of static ate into the fading television screen, and I didn’t know who Franz Marc was. Verona’s fingernails dug into my palm.
“After this movie came out,” she continued. “Artists everywhere started painting what they felt instead of what they saw.”
“They started asking themselves who they really were,” she said.
A trickle of blood appeared beneath the collar of her shirt.
“Do you know what they thought?”
The blood ran up her neck, against gravity, so it could pool in the ditch of her throat.
“Hey.” She snapped her fingers in front of my face. “Earth to Kurt. Is there anyone in there?”
The distorted frame on the television blinked off and stayed that way. The only person in the cracked reflection was me.
“Anyone home?”
My eyes shot open.
“I’m going to ask one more time. Is there anyone in there?” The voice wasn’t Verona’s. It belonged to someone else. A man. “This is Sego Valley Police Department, if there is anyone in here, announce yourself!”
Light filtered through Verona’s bedroom window and against the wood floor. Pain pulsed into my hand. My fingers were still clenched around the set of loose keys. Not Verona’s hand. She was gone.
“Randy, please stay back.” The mysterious man pleaded. It came muffled from somewhere in Verona’s apartment.
Shit. The front door. I forgot to close it.
“Why should I? Look what he did to my daughter’s home, the piece of shit!”
I slipped the keys into my pocket so they wouldn’t make any noise as I went over to peer through a crack in the bedroom door. A tall man in jeans and a cowboy hat stood all the way down the hall. Detective Kirchbaum.
He leaned his head into a black box on his shoulder. “I’m going to need backup at, uhh—” he turned to look at the number on the door, “217 Oryx Drive.”
“Paintings?” A man behind him cried. “Are any of her paintings in there?” His skin looked like tanned leather. Randy. Verona’s dad.
Kirchbaum sighed. “Just stay here, please.”
I crept away from the bedroom door as the detective turned from Randy. His boots clacked closer and closer.
Shit.
“Sego Valley PD,” he shouted. A door slammed open, and the few signs still hung from Verona’s bedroom walls shook. He was in the room right next to me. Verona’s makeshift studio.
Wind whistled through an open window behind me. The one by the balcony.
…the balcony.
I stumbled backwards to the sliding glass door, fumbling to click the latch open.
“Announce yourself,” Kirchbaum shouted, boots still stomping around Verona’s studio.
I pulled the door part way open, but the frame kept sticking. Jumping and creaking. Wasn’t this place supposed to be brand new? I wrapped my fingers tight to the handle and gave one hard tug.
Kirchbaum’s boot stopped.
Shit. Too loud.
His boots echoed back into the hall, and his silhouette grew taller behind the crack in the bedroom door. Before he barged in, I squeezed through the balcony door and threw myself over the railing.