This is the second entry in my newest series of stories based on photos taken around Kami-Amakusa. This photo was taken in Ryugatake, a small fishing town towards the lower end of the island. The woman in the picture is a fellow teacher, Charlotte Delautre, and has nothing to do with the contents of the story. Fear not.
Perspiration dripped down her face and collected in the hollow of her neck. Her shirt was wet underneath her breasts from the constant sheen of sweat that never seemed to dry. The earth was glorious and vibrant but the price for it was tacky skin and a never ending cloud of mosquitoes. Heat brought the earth back from the dead and its children were intent on swarming the glass surrounding Selena.
The dial tone blared in Selena’s ear whiting out the sound of cicadas buzzing in the trees. She wasn’t sure how long she had been standing there with the phone pressed to her ear. The bus ticket crumpled on the counter said arrival time was 9:30 and it was noon now, where those hours in between went Selena couldn’t say. She got off the bus, that part she remembered, and then there was a man sitting in the waiting station, thin legs, emaciated body, and familiar face….
No. It was just residual paranoia from her last job. Selena cleared her mind and focused on her reflection in the glass. There were new lines feathered around her mouth and crinkles at the corner of her eyes. Lack of sleep on the journey over hadn’t done her any favors but even still, she looked like a ghost with one foot in the grave. Some days she felt that way. Her muscles didn’t dance as well as they used to around her prey and this last job?
Well, Selena thought, this might be my last outing for a while. Sel dug through her cluttered memory for the right numbers and quickly punched it into the dial pad before they slipped away again. She wound her fingers around the green cord despite the coat of grime stuck on the plastic.
Ring. Ring.
Out of the corner of her eye she caught a pair of dull brown eyes staring at her. There he was again. A pale man with pinched features and sunken cheeks sloping downwards into a weak chin. If Selena looked down she knew she wouldn’t see a body attached. She knew because he had been popping up lately, sometimes in the shower when the mirror was marred with fog, sometimes flashing at her on a bus window.
He watched her though his eyes were dull and flat. Every once and a while Sel could see bits of her face superimposed on his own and in those moments she felt the most fear. As if he was slowly peeling pieces of her away until they were one in the same, reflections forever stuck on this grimy glass.
There was something stuck on his face this time. A mole? No, too big. Selena peered closer bringing her face right up against the hot glass. The misshapen lump suddenly changed form, a piece of it breaking off to flutter vehemently against the booth. It was a June bug, half smeared across the glass doing a funny jig trying to pull its body free from the gummy cage its innards created.
When she pulled her gaze back away from the dying creature, the man was gone. It was just her tired face staring back at her and the June bug dancing on her cheek.
“Hello?”
***
“Hello?”
A weak voice poked out from around the corner, coming from the hallway. Selena, eagerly waiting for him in his room, took a haphazard step forward to catch a glimpse of her prey. She accidentally knocked into a bookcase and announced her presence early with a dull thud.
“Sel?”
He turned into his room and at first there was a look of pleasant surprise on his face. It lasted there even after Selena stepped forward, the momentum carrying the knife in her hand straight into his gut. This was the closest Selena had ever allowed him to get. She wanted to him to see her clearly so he could finally understand the disgust he inspired in her.
“Ngggh….”
She half expected him to fight her. Instead he gripped her arms, falling further onto her as though she were a life raft and not his killer. The room was filled with a symphony of pain filled grunts but he never spoke a word.
His knees hit the floor and the knife slipped out of his abdomen, a steady stream of blood trickling from the open wounds and onto her socks, soaking them through. She had left her shoes at the front door out of a strong compulsion for etiquette – her mother had never allowed them to enter a house with dirty shoes. That must have been why he knew it was her.
His face pressed against her abdomen as he knelt on the floor, struggling to breathe. Spittle seeped through her t-shirt and the warm material stuck to her like sweaty clothes on a hot summer day.
She wrapped her arms around his chest and lifted him up noting how unnervingly light he was even as a corpse. For one moment their bodies were flush together and right before she swung him onto the bed she felt something sharp catch on the hem of her shirt.
She looked down to see herself covered in blood and a pencil poking out of his jean pocket. Bright yellow save for a smudge of red near the led. A Ticonderoga, the kind his mother always bought him and the kind he always drew spirals on.
Selena tucked it back into his jeans and in the process noticed a dark trail of moisture snaking its way down from his crotch and down to his ankle. Selena forgot to take account for that, not that it mattered. The duvet would have to go anyways, what was a little bit of piss along with blood?
Because she knew his parents wouldn’t be home until late Selena took her time appreciating what she created, the sight, the smells, the electric charge in her own body. The carpet behind her was streaked with blood and her own feet were tracking maroon footprints around the bed. The duvet underneath the body was slowly turning from a light grey into dark black as the material became bloated with blood. To Sel it was a beautiful mosaic that she had created with an idea and a knife. Part of her didn’t want to get rid of the body but rather leave it so that moment of release stayed permanent in that room.
In that moment she saw herself clearly. She was a part of something bigger, a movement in the world that quietly shuffled those without a place out to make room for others, not unlike a virus or an otherworldly power personified. In that moment, Selena did not think about the dead boy behind her.
***
“Hello?”
“Tamra?”
“Sel, is that you?”
“It’s done.”
Sel watched her lips move in the glass but they didn’t look like hers. They looked fleshier somehow, as if someone had stripped a layer of skin from them. It was the moisture in the air turning everything into a bloated, shinier version of itself.
“Bout time. Starting to think I wasn’t gonna hear from you this time around. Where are you now?”
“Where we agreed.”
“You have the address then. The key should be in the mailbox. The box code is 4361.”
Selena wrote the number in the grime of the window. Bits of pristine green cut through and she caught herself wondering if his face would peek in right at the clean gaps, but all she saw was her own dour skin. The older she got the more Selena felt like a carton of milk left in a hot car, slowly churning until she transformed into something else altogether.
“So there wasn’t any trouble? Everything went according to plan right?”
Selena thought about the body waving back and forth along with the other lake vegetation. She flexed her free hand and let her fingers walk across the glass cutting into her reflection. The memory of yesterday was still fresh in the muscle and even now her fingers recalled the way the man’s sweaty skin spilled out over her grip.
“Of course. See you in a few weeks.”
***
When Selena first met Mark she was afraid of him. It wasn’t a fear of being hurt though; at least then she might have understood or known what to do. She could have gone to a teacher or a police officer, asked them for help. There was a protocol set in place for things like that. People were always ready to tell teens her age what to do if they felt threatened or how to stay safe.
But no one ever told her what to do if she felt someone was in danger from her. There was no one to confide in but even if she had, the adults would have laughed and agreed. Because Mark was in danger from everything. He was barely as tall as the girls in Selena’s class and he had to poke extra holes in all his belts just to keep his pants up. And unlike most of the other boys in his class, Mark’s arms never filled up the sleeve of a t-shirt but rather stuck out like sharp knives, cutting into anyone that walked by.
He was pathetic. And for some reason he liked Selena. She didn’t understand why, she was never particularly nice to him and once she realized how dangerous her repulsion for him was she did her best to put a wall between them.
But he never gave up. He was always there sitting next to her, in class or on the bus and she always knew when he was nearby. His chest would rattle with almost every breath like some TB-riddled whore right out of the Victorian age - the sound alone sent electric shivers down Sel’s spine. There were days when Sel dreamed of cutting his chest open with the biology scissors and poking a hole in his lungs with her pencil to drain the phlegm out.
Sometimes during class he would have to leave to take some new pill, something that was meant to cure him of whatever mysterious illness that wracked his weak body that week, and usually those were the only moments she was given reprieve. It was then the fog of utter disgust would finally lift and Sel saw the world the way she figured everyone else did - normal and boring. A teacher droning on about the human reproductive system and a badly illustrated textbook from 10 years ago staring up at her with crude drawings left over from other disgruntled teens.
But then Mark was back with his rattling lungs, his bad back, his watery eyes, his clammy hands, and Sel was pulled back into the dark pit of hate. From the corner of her eyes she saw his pale fingertips reaching for his Ticonderoga pencil, his skin sallow from bad circulation, and there was always a moment where he tried reaching farther than necessary so his cold fingers could touch her own.
There were days she wished he had. Then at least she would have an excuse to take their large Biology textbook and slam it onto his hand over and over until the bones broke. In her daydreams it only took two tries before his fingers snapped.
***
It was night time when Selena reached her new home. It was a five story apartment complex and her room was on the second floor. The key was in the mailbox just as Tamra said and after Selena dialed the key code in she lugged her modest belongings as well as two grocery bags brimming with food. The plastic handles dug into her hands leaving behind red angry marks and by the time she wrestled the door open she was too tired to think about the day’s events.
The place was modest, little to no furniture save for a bed frame with a deflated mattress, a few bar stools in the kitchen, and an old dresser pushed against the window. But there was a gas stove and a refrigerator and in Selena’s experience as long as she had that and a roof she could make do.
Selena grabbed her camping set and pulled out a pot, pouring a can of black beans into it before placing it on the stove. She watched as the viscous juice bubbled, pockets of heat escaping into the air each time the beans shifted. Sitting on one of the bar stools, Selena popped open a beer and carefully toasted a piece of bread on the other burner.
Her gaze pulled back to the pot and her vision tunneled turning individual beans into a single shiny black surface. It reminded her of chemistry class in high school, waiting for the Bunsen burners to light and watching the reaction transform whatever concoction they created that day.
Selena rarely found herself thinking about the past. She had always kept her mind focused on the present, it was the reason she considered herself so accomplished at her career. But now it was as if old age demanded she recall every last bit of her life before it disappeared for good. First she couldn’t stop seeing his face everywhere she went and now she was forced to remember what it was like to sit next to him…
No.
Old age or not, Selena refused to be a slave to her own brain. She was sure there would be a time, perhaps sometime soon, where her thoughts would not be her own but rather crazed delusions caused by misfiring neurons. When that time came she would have no choice but to accept her entrapment but until then her shriveled husk of a body was still her own.
And if her mind wished to recount the days then she would oblige with thoughts of her most recent kill, a good habit not unlike a soccer player reviewing old matches. Selena replayed those days back starting from when she arrived in the backwoods of West Virginia. She downed the beer in her hand and opened another one – it had not been an easy job.
She had slept horribly in a dingy house with only a thin palette and a sleeping bag as a bed. Her mark was living in the neighborhood and for days Selena watched him in his front yard with a Lynyrd Skynyrd t-shirt and a Miller Lite beer can perpetually glued to his left hand. For a short while Selena believed she would have to give herself up and trick him into his house or slit his throat right on that lawn until she found him slinking off to find work at a nearby metal factory.
It was easy to trap him there in one of the many maze-like exits to the parking garage and with the constant flow of new workers no one would noticed when he didn’t show up. Selena stuffed him in the back of a clunky wagon she picked up and drove for a good while until she got to the run-off lake she plotted on her map that week. It sat right at the ass end of a retirement community and since the zombies locked inside, already victims to their own neural disconnect, were too gorked to go swimming it was mostly used as a means to get rid of human waste. No one would be poking around in that mess.
Selena stirred the beans and quickly dipped a finger into the hot liquid to check the temperature. Her skin came out pink and tender and she licked the shiny juice off quickly. Now she was back in civilization with no mosquitoes buzzing around her ears, no hounds barking at every car that drove by, and no redneck neighbors screaming at one another to shut up. She could relax in peace and polish off the six-pack without worrying about any surprise visitors.
Tomorrow she could think about getting a T.V. but for tonight she would appease herself with the small comforts of hot food and a dog-eared paperback she had been sitting on for a while. And she would quiet the past back into empty static.
***
Selena’s toes were wet. Whenever she took a step liquid seeped out of her socks and spread afresh across her feet. The toes were the worst, all that wetness bubbling in between each one and it was all she could do to stop from wriggling them around in that mess. At least the blood had chilled. When it was fresh the warmth of it scared her. She never stopped to think before today about the blood rushing in humans, never stopped to think how hot it must be traveling from organ to organ.
The truth of it was she hadn’t prepared very well. That morning she packed an extra shirt and an extra pair of pants for good measure but it never occurred to her she might need new socks. Sel also brought a book with her, in case it took a while for him to get home and two granola bars in case her energy got low. The funny thing was throughout the entire encounter she’d never felt more alive in her life.
It wasn’t until afterwards when the adrenaline finally tapered off and the world turned from spectacular Technicolor back to drab reality that the exhaustion finally set in. She polished the chocolate granola bars off one right after the other without bothering to clean up. It didn’t occur to Selena that her hands were covered in blood until milk chocolate turned into a copper tang in her mouth and she saw the blood lining her nail beds.
The taste alone should have turned her stomach. Then there was the smell – the blood wasn’t as offensive as was the stench of urine. She hadn’t moved him since she tossed him on the bed and now it turned into a stagnant pool of piss beneath him. It occurred to her the longer she left the body there the harder it would be to scour the room clean but for some reason the urgency of her situation no longer reached her. It was as if the moment her knife slid into the body all the tension stuck inside Selena had been released and when she pulled the knife out all the energy in the room ran out along with the blood.
So Sel enjoyed the peace. She took her time unwrapping the second granola bar and once again found herself absentmindedly licking dirty fingers as she examined her toes wriggling inside her bright red socks. She had never been covered in anyone else’s blood before.
There was only one question nagging at Sel, only one question that threatened the calm in the room.
What should I do with the body?
***
Selena finished her meal and was about to soak the dishes to wash in the morning when she heard a knock on the door.
The rat-tat-tat cut through the beer haze surrounding her sobering her up and adrenaline kicked in turning the world back into a crystal clear image. Everything was audible at 50 decibels, the dust falling onto the carpet, the soap bubbles popping in the sink, the person outside rocking ever so slightly in a standing position by her door.
“Coming.”
She carefully set down the bowl and wiped her hands on her pants. She reminded herself that no one knew she was here. She had no friends or acquaintances and the only person with the address was Tamra. It was probably just a Jehovah’s Witness waiting with the word of God. How many times had she been waiting in the safe house answering the door to find a girl scout or a Mr. Rogers-type welcoming her to the neighborhood?
Despite that her feet moved slowly, preserving each step with a heavy fsssh every time her foot sunk into the carpet. Was the person behind the door counting her steps? That’s what Selena would have been doing. She would have been waiting with an ear pressed to the door and something heavy in her hand.
“Hnnnn……haaa……hhhnnnnn…..”
Selena could hear whoever it was from the other side of the thick door. Rattling sips of air that lent to images of a leper leaning against her doorway releasing stale air from chapped lips.
“Hello?”
She swung the door open and firmly planted her feet in the ground. There he was again, all dull skin, sunken cheeks, and lackluster gaze. Dry lips turned upwards into a smile and then began to separate, dead flakes of skin clinging together until the seal was broken and blackened teeth were revealed.
But then she blinked and like the reel of a stereoscope the image was gone and there was nothing in front of her but empty hallway.
Selena’s first thought was to blame the beer. Maybe she heard someone else knocking in the hallway or it was someone with the wrong apartment number. As for the man? Well, Selena expected to see him again. These days he always seemed to be lurking in the back of her mind, perhaps her imagination manifested him into reality just to have someone to blame.
Maybe that rest home isn’t so far away after all, Selena thought.
The hallway disappeared behind the heavy wooden door as she let it swing shut when she heard a dull thunk. A sliver of light remained visible and Saffron looked down to see something blocking the door from closing. She bent down and reached out to pick it up, her fingers rooting out an oblong shape that felt oddly familiar in her grip.
Ticonderoga.
A number 2 pencil, mustard yellow with bright green lettering, harkening back to younger days of crowded hallways and hot classrooms packed with sweating bodies. She immediately recognized it and was not surprised at all to find a spiral drawn on the top.
She was even less surprised when she turned it over to see a single smudge of red staring back at her, bits of carpet lint clinging to the nearly dried blood stain. So, he wasn’t going away then. She should have known it would only get worse. Without another thought Selena bent down near the entrance and grabbed her shoes. She stuck the pencil into her front pocket and walked into the empty hallway, letting the front door close behind her.
***
The first time Selena seriously considered acting on her hatred was junior year. Summer had been a dazzling reprieve from sickness, ailments, and the constant nausea that followed Selena whenever Mark was around. He had disappeared to a summer camp meant for students with an eclectic assortment of problems. He explained it in great depth while Selena nibbled at an egg sandwich ignoring the acrid stench of antiseptic that hung about him.
He stayed there for two months holed up with kids his age that had everything from asthma to degenerative disorders. He sounded thrilled to join them in modified games of football that involved no running, swimming that became paddling in two inches of water, and nature hikes in a controlled room with carefully chosen vegetation.
While he was away Sel never once thought about that wracking cough Mark could never quell or the weak apologies he made while following her home from school asking for a reprieve from the sun. She ran and ran and ran enjoying the burn in her muscles and never once thought about what it must be like to be unable to push her body to that breaking point.
And then September rolled around. Sel had finished unpacking her chemistry supplies when she saw Mark’s skeletal figure poke in from the doorway. Seeing him struggle past the crowd towards the seat next to her, Selena suddenly realized what had been missing in her life for the past two months.
It was that underlying current of nausea in her stomach. It was the frustration constantly simmering inside her when she watched his unnatural fight against the world. And that day she finally understood where it all came from; it was an infection borne from his insides and it threatened to bleed out onto the world around him.
If he touched her, if any part of his defective body brushed against hers, he would transfer that sickness to her and she would become lame. The mere idea of being trapped inside her own body with the world threatening to kill her terrified Sel to such a point she knocked his pencil case over spilling a half dozen Ticonderoga pencils onto the linoleum. She looked back only once to see his pasty face gaping at her and the spirals atop his pencils rotating in an endless loop on the ground.
She didn’t remember running down the hallway or pushing past the stragglers on their way to class. The next thing she knew she was dry-heaving into the toilet. It was then that Selena understood what needed to happen next and despite the pains in her stomach she felt relief. The malleable existence that graced all adolescents hardened that day for Selena, solidifying into a set path.
She would have to take on the role of healer, the role of mother mercy floating down from a higher order. There was no other word for it but mercy, Selena thought to herself, slumped against the filthy bathroom stall with spittle running down her chin. If Mark was an infection then it stood to reason the only option that was left was removal. She would rid herself of this disease and rid the town of it as well. And Mark?
He had come out a mistake. A bad line of DNA that needed to be crushed before it spread into a larger gene pool.
That was the first time she planned a murder, on the cracked tile of the second floor girl’s bathroom with the chatter of daily gossip bleeding in from the halls.
***
The hallways were empty when she left her apartment and Selena didn’t bump into anyone in the complex on her way out. The pencil was in her pocket slightly poking into her thigh every time she took a step.
It didn’t bother her though. Each jab was a reminder that it had been real and she had seen him in the hallway. Even if he was only visible to her, even if the pinprick of the sharpened pencil was a broken connection misfiring in her brain, Selena could rely on the slight discomfort reappearing each time she lifted her foot.
She could have easily stayed in the apartment. There was a giant mirror in the bathroom not to mention the window by the bed. Selena was sure if she stood in front of one long enough he would show up, older with a receding hair line and leathered skin not unlike her own. Was it some cruel joke her brain played on her that she had to see him as an adult? If so it didn’t work, he looked just as she imagined he would if he had lived to see old age. Unimpressive.
But an empty apartment was not where the ensuing conversation needed to take place. It needed to be somewhere that belonged to neither of them, somewhere that had already been forgotten by most and yet was constantly surrounded by an endless cycle of life and death.
Selena walked quickly without pause. She was certain of the location, she had just been there this morning. She could have gotten on the bus or taken a cab but that didn’t feel right. She needed the half hour or so it took to get there, to piece together where this all stemmed from. She knew she had to go back to the beginning otherwise he wouldn’t show up. And she needed him to show up. She needed this to be over.
***
The handle of the knife dug into Sel’s back, slapping against her with an even rhythm each time she took a step. Her dirty socks, clothes and the last bits of the duvet were stuffed along with the weapon in Selena’s backpack. Her plan was to burn it and scatter the ashes along the dump at the edge of town. The knife would have to be tossed into any old pile of rubbish though Selena would have preferred to keep it.
There wasn’t much traffic on the road at this hour and Selena was grateful. Though by her slightly ragged appearance and plump backpack she figured most people would mark her as a stray runaway, there was still the chance someone might recognize her.
By the time she reached the dump, it was close to three in the morning. It was easy to jump the fence by the parking lot and since this had been the town dump for years no one thought about putting in overhead lights or cameras. Everyone trusted everyone here. Selena wondered if that would change after what she did.
She found a nice round pit where someone else had already burned their refuse and got to work setting up her fire. Her father taught her a long time ago how to start a fire with every day trash around the house in a heavy handed attempt at bonding. He had intended for it to be useful information should she ever get lost or should an unforeseen doomsday event occur. Selena was sure he hadn’t expected his information to be put to such horrific use.
Once the flames grew tall enough, Selena pulled out the dirty clothes one at a time and tossed them in. With each addition the fire roared anew sending a blast of hot air that blew across her face. When there was nothing left but the backpack and the knife wrapped in cellophane, Selena tossed the pack in as well and quietly waited until there was nothing left but ashes. When all was said and done she grabbed a broom from the trash heaps and swept the gray dust high into the air, letting it scatter into the night.
On her way out, Selena found what she thought was a nice enough junk pile – a heap of T.V. sets with tangled wires weaving in and out of the broken screens. They looked like intestines to her, pressed up close to one another and diving straight into the heart of the pile. She tossed the knife in and watched as the cables swallowed it up until the only sign of it was a faint glint that caught the glow of passing headlights.
Then Selena headed back home. Her duffel was waiting for her there and all she had to do was grab it before she left for the train station. People would look for her she didn’t doubt that and they might even curse her for what she did. They wouldn’t realize her action was born of pragmatic compassion but that didn’t matter to her. Soon they would forget about her because the town cared as much for her as they did for her victim. Selena was sure once she was sitting on the train she would never think of this place again.
***
“Hello?”
Selena cradled the handset on her shoulder, the dial tone droning pleasantly in her ear.
A broken street light flickered nearby, illuminating her reflection in the phone booth in Morse code. She didn’t expect him to show up right away. He would keep her waiting and Selena couldn’t blame him for wanting to keep her in suspense.
But he would show up because he would want his revenge. She knew that and she wasn’t about to deny him. If she was being honest the reason she never thought about him before, not until recently, was because she knew if she did her memory of that day would look much different
She wasn’t the hero she made herself out to be. There was nothing merciful about what she did even if she believed that wholeheartedly as a child. She was the monster that hid under the bed for Mark and now it was his turn to play bogeyman.
“Long time.”
The flickering light beat out a new code, the empty blackness that switched back and forth from Selena’s face was replaced by a new image – Mark.
“What? Cat got your tongue?”
The dial tone filtered out into rough static and in between the white noise was a hoarse voice. It sounded nothing like the boy she knew. Back then his voice had always been heady and it brought images of sinuses clogged with mucus. Now it was raspy and old, like that of someone who hadn’t spoken in a long while.
“How are you?”
Her green eyes turned brown then green then brown again. The face was much, much older this time. The corners of his eyes sprouted off into a spider’s web of wrinkles and the hair at his temples was peppered with gray streaks. The weak chin that Mark never seemed to grow into only became more pathetic with age dropping off into a turkey neck. His skin was just as yellow as Selena’s, though, but with far more liver spots. Or was that dried blood?
“Dead, my dear. Just as you left me.”
Thin lips turned upwards into a smile. Behind those cracked lips were rotting teeth. They flashed onto the glass and off again, melting into the dark woods every other beat.
“Why did you wait so long to come back?”
Selena asked him. The static came back stronger and suddenly she was the only one left in the reflection. This time she saw how old she truly was. She looked no better than Mark and her own hair had gone wiry and white.
“Mark?”
She reached a hand out to the glass. It was still warm from this afternoon.
“I could ask you the same thing. Why did you wait so long to think about me?”
He was back. Shaggy eyebrows furrowed down, watery brown eyes that used to be dull now held a spark in them, a spark of anger. The June bug from this afternoon was finally dead but now it was smeared across Mark’s cheek and every so often Selena thought she saw his tongue dart out to wipe it into his mouth.
“I thought I was doing you a favor.”
“No. You hated me. You wanted to know what it felt like to kill something. And there I was, pathetic and adoring.”
“I-“
“Don’t lie!”
A high pitched tone cut through the static piercing Selena’s ear. She nearly dropped the handset but regained her composure, focusing herself on the center of Mark’s forehead. Just keep that spot in your mind, she thought. Just keep it there.
Selena dug the pencil out from her pocket and laid it on the counter.
“You left this for me, didn’t you? You know what I used to think about during class?”
She continued, rolling the pencil back and forth enjoying the sound each raised edge made on the metal as it twirled.
“I used to think about jamming this pencil into your eye.”
No more lies, she thought. That’s what he said and she didn’t want to die lying.
“I know. You think I never noticed how you recoiled at my touch? I knew how you felt. But you were so strong and so sure of your spot in this world. I envied you.”
A fluttering of wings rapped against the glass distracting Selena from the troublesome words pouring out of Mark’s cracked lips. A fresh horde of June bugs dove in kamikaze formation into the glass attracted to the light. She was trapped, cornered by insects and confronted by old enemies.
“You think we were so different Sel, but the truth is you and I are the same.”
“Is that so?”
“No one cared after we were gone. No one came looking for you. Everyone knew it was you that did it. Even my parents. But you know what? They were just glad they didn’t have to pay for my meds anymore.”
“No one came looking for me cause I covered my tracks.”
Barks of laughter filled the headset. It sounded like there were hundreds of voices trapped inside, fighting to get out. Selena thought she could recognize a few of them. An old woman with a large inheritance. A young businessman with a jealous partner. The southern drawl of a drunk metal worker. All the dead inside Selena.
“Please. I thought I said no lying? That includes lying to yourself.”
“So what do you want Mark?”
“We belong together Sel, you and I. You’re just as weak as I am. There’s something rotting inside you and you can’t control it. You couldn’t back then and you can’t now.”
Mark. Selena. Mark. Selena. The stereogram was back but the images were interchanging so rapidly the two began to blur together. The cracks on her skin became the cracks on his skin. His rotting teeth infiltrated her mouth leaving behind decaying enamel. The color of her eyes slowly drained until she could only see Mark’s hollow gaze seeping out of them.
“You want to kill me.”
The monster in the glass laughed. The static in the phone grew and grew, no longer coming from the handset but enveloping her in an electric embrace. The phone fell from her grip and the voice from the glass reached out to her clearly.
“I just want you Sel. That’s all I want.”
The world shifted and in the blink of an eye Selena was staring at herself from the other side - her body left behind in the booth and her true self imprinted onto the insect ridden glass. On the other side a cold bony hand picked up hers and squeezed tightly. Mark’s dead fingers cut into hers but she held on just as tightly, relishing in the sharp sensation.
The old woman in the phone booth stared at the pair in the glass. Her eyes were clouded and milky and there was nothing left inside but slowly deteriorating organs. The two ghosts in the glass called out to her and the woman didn’t hesitate to respond. Her neck reared back and she used the built up energy to carry her head forward into the grimy reflection, splintered glass marring the smiling couple.
Buzzing mosquitoes created a halo around the chaos, fluttering above the frenzied attack until the energy was suddenly cut and there was no more movement. They landed on the crumpled body below and jabbed at the leathery skin for one last drop of blood before death set in.
The last thing the woman felt was a familiar sensation, though muted and far away as though it was happening in another world. It was her toes. They were warm and wet and they pressed against each other in search of the cause. Long after the woman left they wriggled like worms alongside one another, fluttering in futile like a Junebug beating its broken wings against the glass.
