“Can we change the channel?” I asked. “This is just the same thing over and over again.”
The newscaster with golden eyes talked about Nathan while digitally rendered birds flapped on the screen behind her. By all accounts Mr. Torres was a bright and promising young student before his life was cut tragically short. The TV cut to a helicopter’s eye view of the torn up driveway surrounded by yellow tape. Still no word from police on any apparent motive.
Verona stayed glued to the TV. “You know, that could’ve been you,” she said, holding my hand in hers. “I’m just so glad you’re out of that now.” My blue and white nazar hung from her neck, raising up and down with her breath. She had found it while doing my laundry and assumed I’d gotten it for her.
“Me too,” I whispered.
Several pink petals sprouted from the top of the single lily I had saved. It rested in its new vase, next to the TV. Verona and I had bought it after dinner with her dad. I wasn’t sure how the flower had managed to survive for so long. Welcome to Your New Home. Verona changed the channel.
“Oh, I love this movie,” she said.
It was something in black and white. An actor with long legs ran through a city while a mob chased behind him. Grayscale buildings loomed over like prison towers, and I couldn't tell if they were real or not. It was like someone had drawn them with charcoal, like they belonged in an art gallery. Verona squeezed my hand in hers.
“When did you realize you loved to paint?” My question came out of nowhere. Unfiltered. I wasn’t even sure if I asked it out loud.
“What do you mean?” she asked, keeping her eyes on the TV. “I hate it.” The actor carried an unconscious woman in his arms, ducking beneath twisted branches and darting up a triangle-shaped hill.
Verona looked over at me, noticing my confusion. “Well, yeah. I love being an artist when I’ve actually finished something, but before then it stresses me the fuck out. There are just so many choices to be made. Should I use a round brush or a Rigger brush? Do I use bold or muted colors? Am I emulating another artist or just plagiarizing them? Is there a theme? Should there be a theme? Ugh, there are too many ways to go wrong. It’s torture.”
The mob caught up to the kidnapper, and my palms started to sweat.
“I don’t think I’ve felt that way about anything.” I admitted.
Verona scooted closer to me. “Well, what have you always wanted to do?” To get away from the crowd, the kidnapper dropped the unconscious woman he had been carrying and darted into a narrow alley. When I didn’t respond, Verona squeezed my hand and continued. “We’ll find you something. We’ve got our whole lives ahead of us.”
The camera panned away from the crowd, following the kidnapper into the dark alley. He zig-zagged around several corners, even though no one was chasing him anymore, and finally stopped to catch his breath. The words What have I done! flashed on screen. His chest rose up and down, as he braced himself against the black and white brick wall. But it wasn’t enough to keep him upright. He collapsed onto his knees and fell onto his side. The camera zoomed outwards, like a bird flapping higher and higher, as the kidnapper’s chest eventually stopped rising.
This young woman here used to be a model, a rising star in the film industry. Today, she lives in a homeless camp hooked on opiates and alcohol. Her skin, once a selling point for beauty magazines, is now a festering facade of scabs and puncture wounds—
The narrator spoke with a soft English accent while a bunch of stoners sat at the edge of the couch, hypnotized by the screen.
“Can I steal a smoke?” Mark asked.
He seemed more lucid than usual today, and I extended my open pack towards him. Several of the stoners were slowly nodding off, while I tried to remember why I came here.
“You know these earthquakes are the real deal, right? The end is at our doorstep.” Mark paused to light the cigarette. “Tell me you haven’t been noticing all the weird shit that’s been goin’ on? Famine. Pestilence. Everything.” A stream of smoke rose from between Mark’s fingers and twisted into the yellowed wallpaper that was hanging off the wall behind him.
“Pestilence?” I asked.
“Oh yeah, dude. Diseases. But not just the body, the mind too.” He tapped at his head. “Biological warfare. Complete power. It’s always been about power. They’ll try to control anything they can. I know for a fact that they’re experimenting with population control.” Mark’s voice combined with the British narrator’s made me lightheaded. What was I doing here? Some stoner with a porcelain face rolled off the couch and against the floor.
—’I just did what everyone else was doing,’ the woman told us in an exclusive interview. ‘But now that I think about it…maybe I hung out with the wrong people’ —
The stoner on the floor jerked awake before immediately falling back asleep. His face was so round, not a single edge to it. He probably had never done anything hard in his life. Mark’s mouth kept moving, and I nodded my head along with it.
“Kurt?” someone asked. I turned to see Stacy and her friend Jade standing in the entrance to the living room. The complexion in their faces had faded since I last saw them. “Sorry. I didn’t know you were already here,” Stacy said. “Let me grab that stuff for you. I’ll be right back.”
—’I don’t remember anything anymore. I don’t remember what my life used to be like before all this.’ And this poor woman is not the only one. As you can see behind me, dozens of people live here, passing in and out, and even away, on a daily basis—
Jade sat down next to me, and the couch didn’t even squeak under our combined weight. When was the last time I ate?
“I heard you’re moving to Europe,” he said, pulling out a bag of coke from his satchel. “It’s beautiful there, honestly.”
He twisted the bag open and dumped the contents on the coffee table. His fingernails looked like they were chewed into butchered talons, and dug my own into the worn out couch fabric. Verona wouldn’t notice if I only took a small bump. Jade snuffed out a line with his nose.
“I’m going to miss you two,” he said, rubbing a pinky around the rim of his nostril. “Especially you.”
—unwanted, unloved. To modern society, this isn’t a community, this is a leper colony. And they’re discreetly tucked away in the shadows, where those more fortunate don’t have to bother with them—
“Jesus,” Stacy said as she came around the corner. She almost tripped over some unconscious girl with matted hair. Hair that looked like super-glued taxidermy. The invalid didn’t even twitch as Stacy continued back over to us.
“Here you go,” she said, holding out the stuff. I grabbed it from her. Verona’s sketch book and a couple paint brushes. Jade cut another line of coke on the table.
I nudged him. “Do you think…maybe I could—”
Mark cut me off. “Hey, Kurt. Can I steal a smoke?”
I blinked several times and curled my fingers open and closed. “Uhh…yeah. Have the rest.” I reached for my pack and tossed it over. “I’m trying to quit.”
Wind whistled around Mark’s porch. The heat wave had broken, and pages from Verona’s sketch book flapped against my arm. The earthquake must have knocked over the Detour sign that Mark had left out. Instead of pointing towards the sky, it was now pointing down the mostly empty street. No birdwatchers. No men with gloves. Just a couple cars. Mine, and some rusted truck idling behind it.
Was that Jimmy truck?
I kept my gaze down as I walked towards my own vehicle and got in, tossing Verona’s sketch pad against the passenger seat. She had doodled several birds in a nest on the front cover, and one of them had a long, red mohawk. I turned on the radio.
Alright, next caller. I couldn’t avoid it, looking at my rear-view. All college does now is teach kids how to more effectively sell their body, and I don’t just mean prostitution. The orange glow of a cigarette lit up Jimmy’s face, along with the mark across his cheek. But he wasn’t watching me. He stared at the front door of Mark’s house. Do you know how much a bottle of shampoo costs these days? And it’s not just one bottle you need anymore. No. Don’t forget about the leave-in conditioner, the apricot scrub, the moisture repair mask.
Mark’s door opened and some girl stumbled out. She saw Jimmy’s truck and started running fingers through her mess of hair as if it were possible to detangle and flatten. Appearance is everything these days. God forbid I have to buy another loofah. As she ran over to Jimmy, I put my car in drive and slipped away.