ethereal matrix of which all life is part was somehow encapsulated in that video transmitted for light amusement. She was a late and mysterious bloomer with a date on Friday with an eleventh grader and a plan to show certain somebodies just how much it was possible for a person to change, so peripeteia and what of it!
As she passed the rabbit hole something else came to view beyond the furrow—an incongruous patch of color—fabric, a shirt. At first she thought it might be a vagrant and she tensed, but … did vagrants wear pink? She crept a few steps to peek. It was a girl. Lying on the dried leaves, near Christina’s age, a little older. Face pretty but smeared clownishly with mascara and body glitter as though she hadn’t washed off last night’s makeup, and whoever she was Christina did not know her from school, though she had some inkling of recognition. The girl’s eyes were open and staring at the sky with a glazed, insensate look, what Christina would imagine a person hopped up on PCP would look like if Christina knew exactly what PCP was, except the twins’ dad occasionally had a cautionary story of people hopped-up on it.
Christina stepped forward and started to ask if the girl was all right but didn’t finish. She dropped the bag containing one spiral notebook, one Pilot Precise pen, one diet iced tea, and one box of condoms.
The girl was on the ground, twigs and leaf bits caught up in her splayed hair, arms twisted at all the wrong angles; her pink shirt had an image of a lewdly frosted cupcake on the chest and her skin and lips similar in hue to rubber cement, and, as had been obscured from Christina’s vantage: the girl’s lower half was missing.
Christina sagged against a tree trunk. No sir. Obviously this was a gag, some kind of cheap prop. It didn’t even look real after a second look. Halloween on its way and some guys got this from the mall and left it here for some stupid little girl just like her to stumble on and completely freak out. And she had probably seen the horrible thing on a wall display somewhere and that was where she “recognized” her from but still fell for it. Probably a camera on her as we speak. Okay, if that’s your game. She was making a few changes, here was a golden opportunity.
“Oh,” she said experimentally to the torso, “you gave me a real scare there.” She talked in the suggestive, wide-eyed tones of pornography. Which she wasn’t personally familiar with, but sometimes the twins imitated. “Ooh, you look a little pale. Do you need … mouth to mouth?”
She was greatly pleased with her own performance. The unseen conspirators somewhere in the trees getting a real bang for their buck. Well, hold on to your hats, fellas. She got on her knees, flushed at her own daring—what a little slut!
“Gosh,” she said, “you sure have pretty lips.”
She lowered her mouth to the dummy’s. The dummy’s mouth was moist and feculent like if you have ever had the unfortunate but irresistible impulse to smell a compost jar. Christina fell back, gagging. It was then that she caught movement in the gray-white gore of the lower abdomen, a pulsing that at first she thought was something trying to push its way out. But then it hit her it was actually lots and lots of little pulsing feeding things that were not trying to emerge; this was the last thing they wanted.
* * *
Who am I? What’s my dog in this fight?
I’m the killer.
Boo.
PART II
NUMINOSUM
The Order of the Dragon
From the archives of Dr. Norman Godfrey:
NG: No one’s used that word, Mr. Pullman.
FP: This is a fucking crazy house, it’s between the lines . Check my record. My luck is shit, not my head.
NG: I have. There’s no history of psychosis, and your MRI is clean, but that was quite a night you had on Saturday, would you agree?
FP: …
NG: Do you have any memory of it?
FP: Check my record. Nothing wrong with my head.
NG: Would you care to discuss it?
FP: You
As she passed the rabbit hole something else came to view beyond the furrow—an incongruous patch of color—fabric, a shirt. At first she thought it might be a vagrant and she tensed, but … did vagrants wear pink? She crept a few steps to peek. It was a girl. Lying on the dried leaves, near Christina’s age, a little older. Face pretty but smeared clownishly with mascara and body glitter as though she hadn’t washed off last night’s makeup, and whoever she was Christina did not know her from school, though she had some inkling of recognition. The girl’s eyes were open and staring at the sky with a glazed, insensate look, what Christina would imagine a person hopped up on PCP would look like if Christina knew exactly what PCP was, except the twins’ dad occasionally had a cautionary story of people hopped-up on it.
Christina stepped forward and started to ask if the girl was all right but didn’t finish. She dropped the bag containing one spiral notebook, one Pilot Precise pen, one diet iced tea, and one box of condoms.
The girl was on the ground, twigs and leaf bits caught up in her splayed hair, arms twisted at all the wrong angles; her pink shirt had an image of a lewdly frosted cupcake on the chest and her skin and lips similar in hue to rubber cement, and, as had been obscured from Christina’s vantage: the girl’s lower half was missing.
Christina sagged against a tree trunk. No sir. Obviously this was a gag, some kind of cheap prop. It didn’t even look real after a second look. Halloween on its way and some guys got this from the mall and left it here for some stupid little girl just like her to stumble on and completely freak out. And she had probably seen the horrible thing on a wall display somewhere and that was where she “recognized” her from but still fell for it. Probably a camera on her as we speak. Okay, if that’s your game. She was making a few changes, here was a golden opportunity.
“Oh,” she said experimentally to the torso, “you gave me a real scare there.” She talked in the suggestive, wide-eyed tones of pornography. Which she wasn’t personally familiar with, but sometimes the twins imitated. “Ooh, you look a little pale. Do you need … mouth to mouth?”
She was greatly pleased with her own performance. The unseen conspirators somewhere in the trees getting a real bang for their buck. Well, hold on to your hats, fellas. She got on her knees, flushed at her own daring—what a little slut!
“Gosh,” she said, “you sure have pretty lips.”
She lowered her mouth to the dummy’s. The dummy’s mouth was moist and feculent like if you have ever had the unfortunate but irresistible impulse to smell a compost jar. Christina fell back, gagging. It was then that she caught movement in the gray-white gore of the lower abdomen, a pulsing that at first she thought was something trying to push its way out. But then it hit her it was actually lots and lots of little pulsing feeding things that were not trying to emerge; this was the last thing they wanted.
* * *
Who am I? What’s my dog in this fight?
I’m the killer.
Boo.
PART II
NUMINOSUM
The Order of the Dragon
From the archives of Dr. Norman Godfrey:
NG: No one’s used that word, Mr. Pullman.
FP: This is a fucking crazy house, it’s between the lines . Check my record. My luck is shit, not my head.
NG: I have. There’s no history of psychosis, and your MRI is clean, but that was quite a night you had on Saturday, would you agree?
FP: …
NG: Do you have any memory of it?
FP: Check my record. Nothing wrong with my head.
NG: Would you care to discuss it?
FP: You
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