I ran my finger along the edge of Detective Kirchbaum’s card in my pocket.
It was starting to warp from the amount of grease and sweat I had been rubbing into it all day.
Say hi to Nathan for us.
How was I going to pull this off?
Verona steered the car with one hand, resting the other on my leg. “You know, we should really update your wardrobe,” she said, looking at my shirt—the one with pink floral patterns and the half-faded semen stain. “A whole new country, a whole new you.”
We stopped at a red light. On the sidewalk, some homeless man slept in a cardboard box with a dog. His chest rose up and down but the animal’s didn’t. Flies buzzed around its bloated stomach.
Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.
“I think this car’s following me,” Verona said, side-eyeing the rear-view. As the light switched back to green, and she turned onto a canyon road, the dark sedan stayed right on our bumper. A giant vulture. Sunlight bounced off its tinted windows as we both drove further up the mountain.
“So, how about tomorrow?” Verona asked. “We can go to the mall, get you a new shirt, make a day of it.”
The detective’s card tore against my unclipped fingernails, and she turned onto a street with a large, iron gate that blocked the way. The dark sedan crept closer.
“Shit,” Verona pulled out her phone. “What did Stacy say the code was?”
Just outside my window, the street dropped into a cliff. No guardrails. No breakdown lane. The setting sun cast long, jagged shadows across the open valley below, and it looked like the town was being devoured. How fast would I die if I jumped?
My fingers trembled. I let go of the business card and reached for the door handle.
“There we go,” Verona said.
Something beeped, and the iron gate creaked open. I put my hand back into my pocket as she drove into the suburb—the dark sedan following close enough behind that it wouldn’t get shut out.
How was I going to pull this off?
Verona pulled into a driveway bigger than her entire apartment—big enough to hold a fountain of some dog shooting water from its mouth. What was this place?
The dark sedan stopped when we stopped.
“I guess they’re coming to the party too,” Verona said.
My heart pounded against my throat, and I could barely swallow. Verona reached for her handle.
“Wait!” I shouted. “I…uhh…let me get that for you.” I pulled off my seatbelt and stumbled out of the car before she could respond.
Music pulsed from the giant house at the top of the driveway. Its windows stretched floor to ceiling, and behind them were all the party-goers. Silhouettes that melded into each other like swarms of locusts.
Engine exhaust floated over the dark sedan, vanishing into the dusk, but no one got out. The doors stayed closed. The windows stayed black. I walked around to Verona’s side and opened her door.
“Why is your hand so sweaty?” she asked.
As we made our way towards the mansion, music engulfed us—something digital that sounded like a pig melting to death.
“Umm…Verona?” I asked, as she opened the door. The music roared over my voice. I pulled at my shirt to get some air, but it didn’t help. A dead coyote lay in the middle of the entryway. “Verona?”
The slammed shut behind us. From the floor, the dead animal looked up at me—skinned, eviscerated of all its innards, cut from jaw to dick, and stretched apart.
A rug. A dead coyote rug.
Beware of dog.
“Verona!” Jade emerged from the tangled crowd in a sheer top. Stacy followed behind, and her paper bag neck somehow looked tighter than mine felt. As Verona gave them both a hug, they almost stumbled over the dead, furry head.
What was I doing here?
“Isn’t this place great?” Stacy yelled over the thudding bass.
Someone watched from the back of the crowd. Someone with her shirt cut all the way down to her belly button, and a flower tattooed to her chest.
She blew me a kiss.
I fingered the detective’s business card in my pocket.
“I’m going to find a bathroom,” I shouted.
Verona cupped a hand to her ear. “What?”
I pointed in the vague direction of where I thought a bathroom would be, and began pushing my way through the herd of people.
I could breathe again, in this part of the house. It wasn’t as packed as the front, and I could even hear my footsteps echo off the marble floor as I opened some door that led into a den. Smoke floated around the room. Pot. Incense. Someone counted pills on a glass coffee table, and a giant portrait of a pet dog hung over them.
“Ouch,” someone muttered as I tripped over a pile of what I thought were dirty clothes. A girl. Her hair looked like it had been caught in a blender. Matted.
We locked eyes, and her face drained of what little color it had left.
What was I a ghost?
“You?” she whispered.
She looked like someone I had seen a thousand times but couldn’t remember the name of. I ignored her, wandering further into the den.
She raised her voice. “It’s not going to hurt, okay?”
The dog’s painted eyes followed me, and I started to walk faster, towards a half open door at the other end.
“Okay?” she shouted.
It was a bathroom. My throat closed back up, and I ran the rest of the distance so I could lock myself away.
The wallpaper came up to my waist, repeating the same wolf, coyote, fox pattern over and over and over again. This was all too much. I twisted a crystal faucet handle until water splashed into the raised sink.
“Come on,” I whispered to myself.
The exact same picture of the dog from the den was also hanging next to this bathroom mirror. The plaque beneath it said, Rest in Peace, and I splashed cold water against my face.
“Don’t ruin this.”
I looked out the bathroom window. The dark sedan still hadn’t moved. Even its brake lights were still on. A champagne bottle popped from somewhere in the house.
How was I going to pull this off?
The answer came out of nowhere. Like a road sign at the top of a hill. Like a title-card in a silent movie.
I had to let Verona go.
The sink shook as I steadied myself against it, and my throat opened. I could finally breathe again.
Would I even get to say goodbye?
I pulled the Detective’s card from my pocket.
Was he going to arrest me too?
I pulled out my phone.
Both items shook in my hands. They shook so hard that I could barely see the phone number, let alone type it out.
891-125-0003
Shit.
882-126-0002
Fuck.
Another bottle popped in the party somewhere. People cheered.
992-125-0003
Finally.
The picture of the dead dog watched as I steadied my breath. The line rang, and rang. As it did, the crowd outside the bathroom got louder. But they weren’t cheering. They were screaming.
I opened the bathroom door, phone to ear. The line stopped ringing, and Kirchbaum’s voice buzzed through. “Hello?” he asked.
People tumbled into the den from the hallway, all of them yelling, but the music had gotten too loud to hear what they were saying.
Where was Verona?
The guy who had been counting pills was now on his knees, crying and scooping them into his hand. The girl with matted hair was gone.
Someone brushed past me into the bathroom as I stumbled out. Then someone else. The pot smoke and incense got thicker as I squeezed through the growing crowd. Shoulders. Tits. Thighs. It was like I was being digested. Broken down.
“Hello?” Kirchbaum repeated.
The tangle of bodies pulled me along with them. Each person I got around, another one pushed me back. I was stuck in place. Someone with a flower tattooed on her chest stepped on my foot.
Not Verona.
She looked up, noticing me, and opened her mouth. Nothing came out. Or maybe it did. It was too loud, too hot, to hear anything.
“I can’t hear what you’re saying,” Kirchbaum said from my receiver.
The current of sweaty bodies dragged her away, and I grabbed a bright pink polo shirt to pull myself forward. Into the hall, towards the front of the house.
“I’m hanging up now,” Kirchbaum said.
The line went dead.
It was almost empty by the time I got there, the living room. Jade and Stacy knelt on the ground over the coyote rug where wet clumps of fur stuck together. Something red leaked onto the marble floor.
How could an already dead animal bleed?
My legs wobbled with the pound of the repeating music as I approached. The red blood turned into a fan of red hair.
Shit.
I pushed Jade out of the way and knelt against the wet fur. “Verona?”
Her eyes were open, but they looked right past me, up at the ceiling. Dark brown blood pooled in the ditch of her neck.
“Verona?” I shook her shoulders, but her eyes didn’t move. They just kept looking at the same spot on the ceiling.
“911,” I shouted. “Did anyone call 911?” Blood smeared across my hand, and without thinking, I wiped it across my shirt. “Can anyone help me!”
A voice quivered. Not Jade’s. Not Stacy’s. Not Verona’s. Someone else’s. “He…said it wasn’t supposed to hurt.”
The speakers must have been knocked over in the chaos because the squealing music started running in slower and slower circles—fading until it sounded like one long, drawn out moan.
“Why…would he lie to me?” the mysterious voice continued.
It was a girl’s, the voice. She stood over us, pointing something at my face. A gun. A small, silver gun flecked with blood. She shook worse than me.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” she said, emphasizing each word with a shake of her weapon.
Patches of scalp covered her head like she had shoved it in a blender. The girl with matted hair. The girl that looked like dirty laundry. The barrel stayed trained at my forehead.
Do it. I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t tell if any words came out.
The music slowed to a stop.
Verona coughed.
Strings of pink blood stretched between her lips, and her eyes had moved, finally looking at mine. “Hey,” I said. “I’m sorry. Okay? I’m so sorry.”
I kissed her. I tried blowing air into her mouth. I didn’t know what to do. Her lips tasted like hot cough syrup.
“911,” I said, bringing up my phone.
822
914
Verona’s eyes drifted away. “No. No. No.” I said, trying to dial the right numbers.
011
921
Her eyes raised higher. To my forehead. The wall. The ceiling. It was as if she were following a bird through the sky.
“Please, don’t,” I cried. Tears covered my vision, turning everything into blotches of color. Sky blues. Vulture browns. Roadkill red.
912
922
“I love you.” I said.
The girl with the gun, the person shaped blur, she raised the silver blob in her hand to the white blob of her face.
“I’m…so sorry,” she said.
The gun went off.