6. CONDEMNED TO REPEAT: A TALE OF THE SECOND GIRL (JANUARY 2008)

“In Italy, when you bring a script to a producer,

the first question he asks is not “what is your

film like?” but “what film is your film like?” 

That’s the way it is, we can only make Zombie 2,

never Zombie 1”

n  Luigi Cozzi, writer/director of Contamination.

Condemned To Repeat

A Tale of the Second Girl.

January 2008

Gwen’s parents were the first to die.  Found stabbed to death in their Niagara Falls home, the community breathed an extra collective sigh of terror when the stats were leaked:           

A combined 158 wounds were stabbed into the bodies of the Templetons. 

           Gwen was dating.  His name was Andy.  He was sensitive to her fragility.  He held her and rocked her gently when the cops came with the news of her parents’ deaths.  He did all he could to support and care for her.

            He was the next to die.

He burned to death in an apartment fire. 

Gwen’s best friend from high school lived in Miami Beach.  She was found face down in a full bathtub.

On and on it went:

An old boss was found in a dumpster with his head smashed in. 

The kids she babysat when she was a teen both died: one in a hit and run, the other poisoned.

Her first ever boyfriend was found in his home just outside of Portland.  He’d been renovating.  He was found with an electric drill sticking out of an eye socket. 

A girl she used to run in the park with was found decapitated in Long Beach.

Gwen saw a psychiatrist.  She confided.  She said that everyone she had ever grown close to was dying in horrible ways. 

The therapist found it strange but was unbelieving.  She cited the weird body-surfing accident her own sister suffered in Malibu.  The robbery-homicide that took her father.  They occurred in the same week six years ago.  Strange things do happen. Coincidences, horrible ones, do occur.

The psychiatrist was found electrocuted in her apartment two weeks later.

Gwen never got to tell her about the night that she survived John Jerome Mitchell.

***

The secret to Clayton’s easy-going demeanor was a stress-free life fueled by a relentlessly positive attitude. He got sucked into the PI gig by romantic pulp notions that rubbed raw against the reality of the work.

            He always landed divorce gigs.  He’s cheating on her.  She’s cheating on him.  Get the photos.  Contrive a situation in order to get the photos if you must.  It was enough to make most lose faith in their fellow man.  Clayton refused to get cynical.

            He got a lot of photos.

            He banged a few of the models he used to entrap stupid husbands. 

            He had a nice wardrobe.

            Things could be a lot worse.

A right spitfire of woman named Maggie Janson contacted Clayton.  Back in the mid-seventies, Maggie survived an attack by a man she swore was John Jerome Mitchell. 

            John Jerome Mitchell was the boogeyman.  John Jerome Mitchell was urban myth.

            Clayton got interested fast. 

            Maggie hired Clayton to dig into a bunch of cases involving girls who claimed to have also survived John Jerome.  She wanted to him to find the girls.  She wanted to know if they vibed authentic.  Not an easy gig. 

            Clayton asked why me?

            Maggie said she heard he was a people person. The persons she needed tracking weren’t.  She needed his charm as much as his ability.

Maggie had done digging of her own.  Clayton was impressed.  When the two met face to face the woman with the curls and the curves handed him a thick file.    

            It was all too kooky and odd for Clayton to resist.  He was tired of photographing Johnny Corporate fucking Jane Lapdancer.   He quoted a crazy retainer for the fuck of it anyway. Crazy job = Crazy money.

It was met without so much as a blink.

           They clinked beer glasses and the deal was sealed.

It was a job that took him cross-country.  It was a job filled with dead-ends and lies and exaggerations. 

            He began to disbelieve.

 Then he found Pumpkin Dwyer.

            Clayton busted out his camera.  Clayton snapped pictures of the pretty girl hanging with losers and deadbeats.  Clayton watched dumbfounded, through his lens, as Pumpkin and a sorry partner slashed each others wrists open deep.

            Too shocked to move, Clayton watched as a surely dead Pumpkin got to her feet.  Rubbed her healing wrist wounds.  Dressed and blew the scene.  History’s hottest corpse.

            Clayton wiped spew chunks off his Italian loafers soon after.

            He first spoke to her in a bar several days later.

Clayton found Selina Burdett next.  He talked to her in a trendy little sushi place run by a hot Japanese chick. He tried not to stare too intently at her scars.  Selina had spent her entire post-Jerome life building up the muscle and the guts to exact some payback.  She was in.

Her man was rehabbing a blown knee.  He stayed home.  He didn’t like it.  Selina told him to deal with it.  Clayton got drunk with him.  Clayton smoothed the rough. 

Elisha Maher was easy to find.

The famous Fifth Girl had gone pinup.  Nude pics on a nude celeb site.  Bikini shoots in cheesecake men’s mags like Maxim.  Her movie gone huge. 

Clayton hated Hollywood.  Kenny Loggins has a star on the walk of fame. 

            Kenny.  Loggins. 

            He met her, laid out Maryanne’s plan.  Elisha scribbled things in a pad.  Elisha gushed enthused. 

            Clayton felt like he’d pitched her a flick:

            Six past victims of an immortal serial killer picking up the pieces of their shattered lives team-up for a fierce and bloody vengeance. 

            That isn’t how he’d said it; but that’s how she heard it.

Millie Grant was cute and sweet and quiet. She was reluctant to talk but he got there.  Maryanne did all the hard selling and she was onboard.

Gwen Templeton was last.

            She vibed FUCKED-UP in a way more potent than any of the others.  A heady brew of survivor guilt and cabin fever.  Clayton fell for her anyway.

HARD.

He read some article about the CRAZY things that people do when love-chemicals bad trip their brains.  The doctor who wrote it said there was a fine line between love and obsession. 

Clayton had honestly no CLUE which side of the line he was on.

Some detective.

*** 

Niagara Falls.  Mid-January:

Grey and brisk.  Wet and weird.  So quiet, it was Matherson’s I Am Legend gone retro pop.  A post-apocalyptic theme park where scarce survivors scarfed down over-priced Burger King. 

John Carpenter’s Halloween theme blended into Bernard Herrmann’s Psycho strings and played over and over.  It attracted no-one to the horror fun house from which it blared. 

A bored girl sat in the ticket booth of the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! Museum.  She put down her celeb rag.  She yelled cut-rate ticket prices at an old man with a young grandson. Her amplified voice android-distorted.

Tourists guessed at the identities of wax dummies that didn’t much look like the celebrities whose names they bore.    They peered into dimly-lit shops.  They wondered if they were open.  They bought t-shirts with slogans like:

GOD BROKE THE MOLD WHEN HE MADE ME

NIAGARA FALLS

            and went home.

Bored shop assistants couldn’t summon the service etiquette to greet those that entered their shops.  They gossiped amongst themselves. They looked forward to quitting time.  To quick sex with Bud-drunk boys.   To the change of seasons when more people came through and they could turn the lights on in their shops.

No rides were active.  Giant models of Frankenstein and King Kong hung out.  They looked abandoned.  They looked like attractions the freak show left behind when it blew this joint for a far hipper North America.  A North America that had better things to do than play mini golf at Dino Park in the rain.

Gwen’s parents once owned a brightly-colored motel near Casino Niagara.  The man they sold it to got lucky at the casino.  He vowed to never leave town.  He made Gwen’s parents an offer so ridiculous they couldn’t refuse.  He remembered Gwen.  He made sure a room was kept for her over the winter months.  He gave it to her on the cheap.  He never once asked her why she spent her winters in a town merely biding its time until spring.

Gwen looked just like any other bored tourist.  The guys she bought her coffee from recognized her but never started much of a conversation.  Her beauty scared them. 

Gwen dug on the melancholy of the lonely.  She wandered around town.  She went to the Ripley’s museum.  She sat in her hotel room.  She watched TV.  She masturbated.  She online shopped.  She held one-woman designer fashion shows in her room. 

She tried to forget her past by embedding herself in a colorfully numb present.  A present filled with color, cartoons and clothes.  She allowed herself to do whatever she liked.  The one exception was leaving town.

The scariest thing in Niagara Falls was an unemployed actor in a Dracula costume.  The horror houses that littered the main part of town were cartoon parodies of her own past traumas.    They made her feel oddly at home.

But she still stole glances over her shoulder.

She still opened her hotel room door in paranoia-induced slo mo.

She still sat on her haunches and peered through her blinds at any sound.

She still held an itchy finger on the nozzle of a handbag-stashed mace can.

***

Gwen had the coveted face of a film star. She adorned it with the thoughtfulness of the intelligent and romantic.  Gwen had the pneumatic body of a playmate in no need of photographic re-touching.  She clothed her curves with style.  She had an innate sense of what looked good on her.  She didn’t suffer trends. She had the slinky swagger of a fashion model. 

She used all of this to her financial gain. 

Pictures on the internet/items for sale:

Gwen sitting on the toilet.  Panties round her ankles.  Sneakered feet daintily pointed together.  Holding up a bottle of her own piss, wide-eyed.

Gwen wearing a sheer black thong.  Ass thrust out towards the camera.  Tugging at the thin black elastic on her hip.  Steely come-hither look on her pretty face.

Gwen with thin white briefs.  Legs spread wide.  The dark strip of pubic hair visible beneath the diaphanous fabric. 

Gwen ass-up.  Miniskirt hiked up.  Blue panties exposed.  Head down on the pillow.  Biting at a thumbnail.  All I’m-a-naughty-schoolgirl.

Gwen sitting on the floor.  Ruined sneakers on sockless feet.  Looking at the camera lasciviously. Her big tits impossibly hiked up by a black lace bra.

Gwen with a nail clipper chewing through a big toenail.  A nice CU shot of the nail being severed.

On and on.  More and more.

Fetish freaks love the Internet.  Fetish freaks loved Gwen.

The early pictures, the first few shoots, were taken by a couple of friends also in the fetish supply field.

Jasmine and Amy’s pictures were part sartorial satire, part cheesecake gone filth. 

Their pictures struck right at the particular proclivities of the particular fetishist. 

Gwen became an icon.   Some said she looked like Edwidge Fenech. 

Only the most dedicated of her fans noticed the drop-off in pic quality when she started taking them herself.  Her self-portraits lacked the genius, old-school glamour composition of the earlier pictures.  They replaced that with an edgy self-awareness and the haphazard composition of a peepshow snapshot.

She was making more money than she’d ever made in her life.  It supported her reclusion.

***

Jasmine was clockwork regular. The result of a healthy lifestyle

Plenty of exercise.  Plenty of fibre. Lots of raw food.  A refusal to travel to places with running water you couldn’t drink. These are the things that make a life stomach-trouble free. 

Jasmine had never been constipated.  Never.  At eight o clock every morning she’d make her daily motion.  Her shits swirled away like they never were.

            Tonight was different.  Spicy Creole had caused some problems.  She shied away from spice generally but she was on a date.  The guy wanted Creole.  The guy was cute.  He was an underwear model.  She’d never been with one of those before.

            They ate Creole.

            Jasmine holed up in her bathroom.  She thought she heard a noise at the door.  No time for that.  She lifted her left cheek up off the bowl.  Stuck the Tupperware container in her left hand under her ass.  She shat into it. 

            It was messy.  She didn’t know if her Feek Al was into messy. 

            Then again.  With a handle like that he couldn’t be too picky. 

            She wiped clean.  It was a job that took some time.  She reached for the digital camera on the floor.  She held it at arms length.  She smiled coquettish.  She snapped herself on the can.  Panties down.  Holding the Tupperware.  She checked the pic:

Nice.

            Again there was a noise.  A tap.  A faint scratch.  A weird little creak.

            Jasmine said Hello.  She got no reply.

            She figured Playboy was just moving about in his cage.   Playboy was her budgie.  Named so because he chirped at all her girlfriends.

            Jasmine hiked up her thong.  She buried the strap deep in her ass crack.  A few more days coating in her stink and they’d be good to go.  She pulled her Rock & Republic skinny jeans over the top. Red topstitched details.  Red and orange signature “R” embroidered on the back pockets.  Librium wash.  Made in the USA, baby.

            Jasmine paid for the jeans with six pairs of her pussy-soiled underwear and a bottle of piss.

            Jasmine checked herself out in her full-length mirror.  She was Fine. 

            The $460 Italian Emilio Pucci Lava Print Satin Chiffon Poncho topped her outfit off.  Chic, retro and oh-so diaphanous, the poncho was paid for with a week’s worth of shit, some old running shoes and a pack of used pads. 

She wore a $100 bra underneath.  She couldn’t recall the brand.  It was paid for with used socks and several bottles of Hershey’s chocolate syrup she’d squeezed all over her feet and then rebottled.

Jasmine realized she still gripped the used TP.

She dropped it into a ziplock plastic bag.  Ziplocked it.  She inspected her shit.  Mouth pursed.  Nose crinkled.  Bits of shit bobbed in the liquid like Shocking Asia’s bodies in the Ganges. 

She sealed the container shut.    Reached for toilet spray.  She’d heard that when you smell someone’s fart, you’re actually inhaling traces of their shit.  It grossed her out some, but led her to wonder if she could bottle her farts.  Put them online too.

She sprayed the spray.  The two scents butted heads and wrestled with each other.  Neither won, creating a mutant offspring stink far worse than the shit smell.

She walked out of the bathroom.  She forgot about the noises she heard.  She thought:

I’m one piss away from the $258 Juicy Couture Silk Three-Quarter Sleeve Mod Dress with keyhole cutout at rear neckline with button closure.

She slipped the container of shit into it’s own ziplock bag.  She put both ziplock bags into a box to be priority mailed first thing.  She emailed Feek Al to inform him of the consistency change.

            Her small Brooklyn apartment was lit only by the glow from her PC and the light spilling from the bathroom.

            She peered into Playboy’s cage. She stuck her finger between the bars.  She wiggled it.  She whistled.  She saw something was wrong and took a step back.

            The bird was lying on the paper that lined the cage.  Its head was missing.  Its neck stump leaked red.

            Jasmine turned away.  Hand over her mouth.  Remnants of Blackened Red Fish rising in her stomach.

            Despite herself she thought:

            How much could I get for my puke?

            Then the gloved hand covered her mouth.

            Then the knife sliced open the $460 Italian Emilio Pucci Lava Print Satin Chiffon Poncho.  The $100 forgotten-brand bra.

            Then the knife entered under her ribcage.  Then it entered just under her throat.  Her chest.  Her neck.  She fell to the floor.

            Playboy’s head lay next to her.

            Jasmine looked into the bird’s dead eyes. 

            The last thing she thought about:

A Paul Smith Chocolate Leather Double Handle handbag.  It was down from $1000 to $699.

            As she died her computer made a pinging sound.

            The killer wiped the blade clean.  The killer checked Jasmine’s mail:

            Feek emphatically gave the go ahead. 

The killer took a pre-printed Thank You letter from Jasmine’s desk.  The killer added it to the box and taped it shut.  The killer would post it the next day.

The killer figured: You should get what you pay for.

*** 

Amy had a stall at an open air market at Union Square.  She sold fridge magnets.  She sold tight-fitting t-shirts with retro designs silk-screened onto them.  She did the silkscreening herself.  She claimed she stitched the t-shirts together herself too.  Truth was she bought them but frequently did alterations on them, so the lie was slight.

She did okay out of it.  Business was improving.  She didn’t do well enough to pay the rent, but that’s why she sold her soiled panties and bottled piss on the Internet. 

            Amy’s day had been pretty shitty.  The cold and the rain had driven customers to the nearby hot cider and gingerbread stall instead.  Hardly T-shirt weather.

            She didn’t blame them.  The cider was good.  The gingerbread was kick ass.  Ludmilla, who ran the stall, often saved the softest pieces for Amy.  Not this day, sadly.  Business, for them, was too brisk.

            Still, she made a sale.  A cute guy, all bundled up against the cold, took a fancy to a black tee screened with an old Italian movie poster.  The movie:

            L’Uccello Dalle Plume di Cristallo.

            The artsy poster featured:

            A long black knife blade.  Embedded deep in the throat of a woman.  Blood dripped from the wound.  The woman’s shape was crudely cartoonish.  Rendered in simple black, colored with a rust orange tint around her jawline, her nose, her cheekbones.  Her left breast was exposed.  Black strands of hair alive with motion as the knife did its cutting.  Around her were swirling confused clouds of blue and grey paint.    Above the jagged red movie logo an angular, glimmering crystal bird sat.  Tailfeathers razor-sharp.  Cruelty in its eye.  

            Amy liked it for its near-kitsch surreal pop gruesomeness.  If comic artist Sam Keith went into horror movie posters, they might look something like this. 

            The guy said, ‘You know this movie?’

            Amy said, ‘On the shirt?  Uh.  No, actually.  No, I don’t.  I just, uh, like the artwork, you know?’

            ‘The Bird With The Crystal Plumage.  It’s a classic giallo movie.’

            ‘A what?’

He smiled.  He had nice teeth.  ‘Giallo’s like a sub-genre of horror.  Or mystery.  Shit, you pick.  A guy named Leon Hunt wrote that giallo is possibly the missing link between protoserial killer novels and early American slasher movies.’

            Amy didn’t know what to say to that.  She adopted a kind of dumbfounded look.

            He flushed as a result.  He said:

            ‘Sorry.  I kind of geek out of this stuff.’

            Amy laughed.  ‘It’s ok.  I’m glad you like it.  It’s been a slow day.’

            ‘You got this in a bigger size?  I think I might give the world a bit too much midriff action in this particular shirt.’

            Amy dug through several short piles of shirts. 

            ‘Sorry.  But, uh, give me a couple of days and I can do it.’

            ‘That would be cool.’

            ‘If you want, you can leave me with, uh, your cell number and I’ll, uh, be sure to call you when it’s ready.’

            ‘Don’t actually have one.’

            She shot a look of disbelief.

            He said, ‘Yeah.  I know.’

            She passed him a card.  He looked it over.  It was shaped like a T-shirt. 

She said, ‘You can contact me on this number.  It’ll be ready in a couple of days, but feel free to call me for updates.’

            He smiled.  He looked over the card.  ‘Maybe I will…Amy.’

            She said, ‘That’s me.’  Felt stupid for doing so.  Shut her mouth in case something else ridiculous popped out.

 She watched him as he bought some cider and walked off.  The wet slick street caught the lights from shops and traffic.  Amy thought there was something romantic about it. 

She did some stocktake.  Someone had swiped a magnet.  She didn’t care.  She called it a day and packed up. 

She lugged her dufflebag full of merchandise home. 

Wet, shrieking girls poured out of Forever 21. 

They jostled her.

            They jostled the person who followed her.

*** 

Amy got home.  Looked up this giallo stuff online.  She wanted to know her shit.  She wanted to ask her new customer out.  She heard Jasmine hooked up with some underwear model.  It pissed her off.  She tried calling Jasmine. She wanted to give her some shit.  Jasmine never picked up.

Amy went back to her research.  So far it was all:

preposterous plot twists hinging on outlandish past traumas

lingering shots of gruesome deaths

sartorial excess

paranoia.

A writer named Gary Needham said that giallo was:

‘…a conceptual category with highly moveable and permeable

boundaries that shift from year to year.’

It went over Amy’s head.  She didn’t even bother with the psychoanalytic shit.  She looked at pictures from some movies instead. 

Most of them featured well-dressed women being attacked by some obscured dude in black gloves.  Big knives were customary. 

Even Amy knew what that meant.  She rolled her eyes and went:

Whatever.

She wondered what she was thinking.  The guy buying the shirt was clearly all sorts of pervert. 

She checked her panties.  Decided they were crusty enough to sell. Maybe one more day.  Her phone rang.  She took the call.  The news was bad.

           

***

Elisha Maher was missing.  Clayton knew it was serious.  He saw it on Entertainment Tonight.

There were no signs of any struggle.  Her neighbor was a former porno star trying to transition into movies where she didn’t have to munch any rug.  She reported seeing Elisha in the company of a man she described as:

Scruffy.   Handsome in a ragtag-good-ole-boy kind of way.

An identikit face was made up from her lame description.  It looked like a redneck Sam Rockwell with a hangover.

Hungover Redneck Rockwell escorted Elisha off her property.  According to the porn star, it was far from forceful.

Elisha and Rockwell drove off together.  The ugly ass HOLLYWOOD sign became an illegible white smear on the hills. The couple headed for Whoknowswheresville. 

            Clayton didn’t really give a damn. The shitbird was probably some sadsack singer from some woe-is-me, everything-sucks rock group. 

Clayton figured Elisha took off with him for four weeks of blow.  For four weeks of fucking.  For four weeks of carefully staged tropical look-at-my-tits paparazzi shots.

Clayton figured she’d emerge from a coke haze.  She’d wipe the singer’s cum from her lips.  She’d apologize to all her fans.  She’d apologize to the production company losing cash by the assload waiting for her to come back and finish shooting her next fucking movie.  She’d finish it.  It would do gangbusters.  She’d make a shitload from her points alone.  She’d have a bona fide rock and roll rep.  She’d be famous for being famous.  She’d never be poor again.

Clayton figured she’d surreptitiously slip footage of herself fucking the absolute shit out of the singer onto the Internet.  Then she’d not only claim total innocence but outright outRAGE. 

DVD sales of The Filthy Workshop were skyrocketing.  The longer she was gone, the more units got moved. 

Clayton smelled publicity stunt.

He bought his own copy anyway: The two-disc collector’s edition.

Partly because he allowed himself to be pop-manipulated.   Partly because there was a little piece of him that thought:

This COULD be for real.

If so, he wanted a document to remember her by.  It sat on his shelf at home.  Still sealed in the original shrinkwrap.  He was looking at it.  He was wondering how close the remake of her life was to the original.  He got a call.

It was Gwen.

He picked up.

She said, ‘It’s happened again.’

He drove on out to her.

***

In Clayton’s mind:

Gwen’s fine face was always held high.  Her full lips never quivered.  The slight dimple in her chin never trembled. Her large dark eyes never watered with fear or panic or confusion.

In reality:

She was a mess.  She rarely left her room.  She was paranoia-exhausted.  Neurosis-riddled.  Shock-scarred. 

She would weep and cling to him.  She would sink to her knees in front of him.  She would look at him impossibly wide-eyed.  Mascara-colored tears tracking down her face.  Fragile, her body would shake and curl up in front of him.

And he would whisper deeply and softly.  He would comfort her. 

He would say, ‘Everything will be alright.’

And he would make soft gentle love with her.  And, for a while, he would believe that with his love --

He had made her whole once again.

   ***

Clayton stood outside Gwen’s hotel.  He stared up at her window.  He blinked away raindrops.  Her room was dark; no lights were on.  But he knew she would be home.  She was always home. 

            He walked up the small flight of stairs separating first floor from second.  He took a moment to look at the colorful poor-man’s Vegas that was Niagara Falls at night.  He walked down towards her room.  Shook his head at the garish hotel paintjob.

His hand hovered over the door to her room.  He knocked softly.  He forced a nervous smile into the peephole.  She’d be on the other side, no doubt.  Squinting into it.  Verifying the face behind the door.  Checking it against the face she had in her mind.  The face she had in photos.

            The door opened several inches.  Jarred taut as the thick chain bolted to it pulled tight. 

Her head poked partly into view.  Bisected by the door.  Clayton caught:

One of her big, dark eyes.  Thick lashes surrounding it.  A black curving slash of an eyebrow above it.  Some smooth pale forehead.  Some long dark swirls of hair.

            Gwen:  ‘You came.’

            Clayton wiped rain off his forehead.  Flicked it off his fingertips to the ground.

            ‘I did.  As always.  Hi.’

            ‘Wait.’

            The door shut. 

Clayton sighed huffy.  Already she was acting brusque. 

The chain was undone.  The door opened again and there she was. 

She had too much make-up on.  She was trying to hide the exhaustion under her eyes.  Oddly, she had her right hand behind her back.  She tried to disguise this by standing in a hip-jutting sexy femme fatale way. 

The pose accentuated her choice of costume.  She steamed it up in a black sleeveless V-neck Cheyenne Silk Crepe Halter Dress.

But Clayton knew her too well – she was packing.

            She looked him up and down.  She admired his outfit.

            He prided himself on perpetually looking sharp but with Gwen he upped the sartorial stakes.  He had to.  Gwen lived her life in fancy dress.  He wore a Saxon of Sevile Row seventies vintage single-breasted jacket.  Bole, a few shades lighter than his skin.  Matching pants.  A white Ben Sherman mod-style dress shirt. A Costume National caramel Bands and Red Roses Woven Silk Tie.   It was a little much, but Clayton knew Gwen would like its boldness.

On cue, she said: ‘I like your tie.’

            ‘Thought you might.’

            She turned her back on him.  Her way of invite.  Her dress was backless.  Clayton traced the curving line of her vertebrae with his eyes. 

            He was right.  In her hand, resting against her ass, was a .38.  She held it daintily, like a runway accessory.

            ‘Lock the door behind you.  Put the chain on.  I know what a tough guy you are, but you never put the chain on. Many things are tougher than you are.  Few things are tougher than that chain.’

            Clayton checked it out.  The new chain was indeed tough.  He wasn’t so sure about the door hinges.

            Clayton locked the door.  Put the chain on.  The place was a mess.  Clothes and take out boxes were scattered.  The scent of freshly-sprayed perfume failed to mask the stink of garbage.  Least her desk was clean.  A bright white Mac sat on it.  A screensaver picture of a lava lamp bubbled away onscreen.

            Clayton: ‘Where’d you get the gun?’

            Gwen:  ‘Bought it.’

            Clayton: ‘Is it loaded?’

            Gwen:  ‘What do you think?  Lover, what good would it be if it wasn’t loaded?  Huh?  You think with all that’s happened to me – with all that continues to happen to me – that a fucking deterrent is enough?  Get real.  I don’t need something that goes click, honey, I need something that goes boom.’

            She waved the .38 about.

            ‘This, this only goes bang, so just be happy that I compromised.’

Clayton: ‘Baby, I really don’t think you’re in any condition to be owning a gun.’

Gwen dropped the .38 on top of a rumpled designer dress covered couch.  Said:

‘Come on.  You love it.  It feeds into your hardboiled sensibilities.’

Engrossed in her role, Gwen vibed bizarre.  She took a step forward.  She sashayed over to him.  Traced an arm from his shoulder to his biceps.

Clayton felt the weirdness rising in him: vertigo giddiness with an amphetamine spike of paranoia.  He backed away slowly.  Found himself against the wall.  He reached over to a small shelving unit.  Pulled a bottle of whiskey.  Thought about a glass.  Thought again, fuck it.  Took a slug straight from the bottle.  Said:

‘You’re acting like Elisha.’

            Gwen shot him a look.  It made him drink again.  She looked away, said:

            ‘I AM Elisha.  I’m Pumpkin and Selina and Millie and Maryanne.  We’re all the same person.  Born at different times and in different places, but we’re all the same; just taken down different paths breaking off of the same horrific event is all.’

            She reloaded her look.  Shot it again.  ‘Haven’t you figured that out yet?’

            Clayton shifted in his seat.  Gwen wasn’t done:

‘Elisha told me once, she said that each of us, each of the girls, when she looked at us, it was like watching simultaneous remakes of her own life.  And that got me thinking, where does that all end?  Where?  One night, while I was sealing up a used tampon for postage, I thought, it ends for all of us exactly the same way.  It ends with all of us dead.  And don’t you give me the we’re all going to die eventually bit.  You know what I mean.  For us, It’s going to be ugly and…and it’s going to be gruesome and inhuman. We’ve been tainted and poisoned by the violence of all this and we don’t get to slip off to the netherworlds quietly in our sleep.  No.  We’re going to be TAKEN there.’

Clayton stared at her face.  So beautiful in her ravings. 

Gwen took the bottle from his hands.  Sipped at it herself.  Said:

 ‘I thought about putting my chunks of Jerome on ebay.  Difficult to authenticate, I know, especially since he doesn’t exist in any documented way.  But they twitch every now and then, those bits.  Maybe that will be enough.   Make me an offer ebayers, because nothing good is going to come of us babysitting these hacked-up pieces.  It’s hubris.  Pure fucking hubris.  Doing what we did, I thought it would help.  I thought that my life would somehow return itself to normal and all that came before would seem like some sort of bad trip flashback.  Well, it hasn’t.   People I know are still dying.  And soon it will be my turn.’

Clayton took the bottle from her hand, took her body in his arms.

 ‘Gwen…I would stay with you, but you never let me stay. I would help you to fix this, but you slam the door in my face the minute you’re done grieving and you open it up again the next time someone goes in the ground.  You’re difficult to protect.’

She looked up at him from his embrace.  ‘It has to be that way.  If I let you stay with me you’d be dead.  If I open myself up to you, you’d be dead.  I’m amazed you’ve lasted as long as you have. I don’t want you to be dead.’  She pulled away from him.  Continued:

‘Now, just because I don’t want you to be dead, that doesn’t mean that I love you, don’t go getting that notion in your head again.  It just means I have quite enough on my conscience thank you very much.’

‘I can take care of myself.’

‘You’d be just more weight on the burden that I carry around with me because of what I did that night.’

‘You survived, Gwen.  That’s what you did that night.  Aren’t many who came up against what you did can say that. 

Gwen flashed back:

Saw the monster reducing her friends to meaty hunks.  Heard one of them screaming out her name as she turned her back and ran.

She snapped back to the now by the latest in the long trail of her dead.   She drank again.  ‘Her name was Jasmine.  I want to go to her funeral.’

Clayton: ‘Sorry?’

Gwen: The girl.  Who I knew.  Who died. She’s being cremated in Long Island.’

‘You serious? You want to go to the funeral?’

 ‘I am.  I want you to come.  I need you there.  I can’t go out that far alone.’

Clayton held her tight.  With measured delivery honed by much practice he said:

‘Of course.  Whatever you need me to do, I’ll do it.  It will be alright.  I promise it will be alright.’

She looked him in the eyes.  Held the gaze.  Said:

‘Don’t be so naïve.’

She extricated herself from him.  Walked over to her bedside table.  Rolled a double-paper joint with nimble hands.  Wetted it some with her spit. 

Clayton wanted to tell her not to smoke.  Gwen was paranoid enough.  When she smoked, her paranoia seeped out in the dope she exhaled. 

She fired it up before he could complain.  Said: ‘When we met, when Maggie sent you looking for me, I worked at that little coffee stand on Broadway, remember?  Amy, a girl I worked with there, she’d always have these new sneakers.  Designer stuff.  She was an art history student and I always wondered where she got these things.  So one day, when it was quiet, I asked her about it.  She’s a cute girl, I figured she just had a few rich guys, but no.  She told me straight out – she made extra money selling her piss and her shit to guys online.  She told me all about it, how to do it.  She told me I should get into it.  I figured what the hell, right?  She came over one night with Jasmine.  She was doing it too.  They found it hilarious, you know.  They’d sell some dirty old underwear and buy some designer stuff with the income.  They looked so good.  I like to look good too.  Survivors should always look good.  They deserve too anyhow.  They took a bunch of shots.  We uploaded them.  They got me rolling.’

Clayton knew what she did.  He’d seen the pictures.  They sent him reeling.   They touched something taboo inside him.  He wanted everything she was.  He was envious of these others.  They knew her more intimately than he did. 

Thinking about the pictures now, he wanted to go to the barfridge.  He wanted to greedily quaff one of her coke-bottled pisses.  He fought the urge. 

Gwen seemed unaware of his twitching.  She continued.  Her eyes were glazed with grief and dope.  The joint burnt down to the roach.  She singed her fingers.  The room smelled like burned cardboard.

‘I mean, who knows how many people I made coffee for are now dead.  I read obituaries daily, but I don’t know who these people are.  And how far does it spread?  Have people who’ve had contact with people who’ve had contact with me been killed?  Does it spread out further than that?  I don’t know.  But then think about it: who’s going to be killed by looking at pictures of me holding a used pad online?  Who’s going to be killed by buying one of my turds?  They don’t know me.  They don’t know anything about me aside from a username and what I look like.  Whoever has been doing this to me for all these years, they watch me right?  I mean you came to the same conclusion.  You told me so.  Well, they can’t watch me doing this.  I’ve effectively found ways to both survive and to keep myself quarantined.  The only people I talk to are online or on the phone.  The only person I ever see in the flesh is you.  I figured it was foolproof.  It’s been two years since somebody died.  Two.  Years.  I figured it was over.’

‘I know.’

She walked towards the bed.  Stopped.  Looked at him over her shoulder.  Said:

‘Generally, I’m powerless to stop this from happening.  I can’t warn everyone I ever knew.  I tried a few times, you should have seen how that went down.  But I can do something this time.  We’re going to go to Jasmine’s funeral, we’re going to bring Amy back here with us and we will keep each other alive.  Because all there is now is you and me and her.  There’s nobody else left.’

Clayton nodded.

Gwen’s shoulders slumped.  Her head fell forward.  She sobbed. She pushed herself into him as far as she could.

Clayton took her in his arms.  For the millionth time, he said:

‘Everything’s going to be all right.’

Her mask cracked.  Her noir-chick skin shed itself from her.  She began to cry.

Clayton was giddy from the madness.  Giddy from the booze.  Giddy from the beauty.  Sighting her tears, he threw himself into the craziness once more.  He took Gwen to bed.  He felt her edginess bleed into him further as they fucked.

And he dug it.

***

The funeral service was well attended but strange.  It was a red carpet fashion affair gone grief. 

            Clayton had never seen so many beautiful people gathered together. Women sheathed in black designer dresses dabbed at teary eyes.  Their waterproof mascara held up fine. 

Handsome and dapper men also abounded. Dozens of Bond types, rugged and gym fit under hand tailored suits and Italian silk ties.  They sported carefully cultivated forty-eight hour beards.  They patted the hands of their funeral dates.  They numbed grief with their gorgeousness.

            Clayton and Gwen were as striking as any couple there.  Clayton sized the others up.  He put his arm around Gwen.  He proved he was as protective and empathetic and handsome as any of them were. 

He was the only black man.  It heightened his sense of alienation.  He still felt a little paranoid.  Gwen contact high residue.  He said sweet things to Gwen.  His role here demanded it.  He didn’t know what else to do so he acted his part.

            Gwen looked smoldering but respectful in her black evening dress.  It featured very subtle black and grey tie-dyed lines, simple spaghetti straps and a floral lace neckline. 

Gwen made grief sexy on a daily basis.  In this little number, she made it hot.

But it wasn’t all respectfully covered cleavage and loungeroom yoga-toned thighs.  Gwen was freaking out behind her movie siren façade. She tried to hide the neurosis and fear on her face.   The looks of envy and astonishment she got only heightened her paranoia.  She wished she’d worn a veil.  She’d seen some nice ones on e-bay.  She looked around nervous and skittish. She scanned faces seconds after they scanned her. 

Clayton was unsure what she was doing. Then he got it: there was no sign of Amy.

Clayton looked the assembly over himself.  Washed out by grief or by the weight of faking it, they all looked the same.  In their fashionable attire, their styled haircuts, they all looked the same.  They even smelled the same.  Clayton wondered how you go about choosing a funeral cologne. 

He spotted the grieving parents.  They looked older than they were.  They seemed unaware of the army of youthful clones around them.  They were lost to their pain. 

Clayton hung his head.

*** 

Outside, a pretty redhead dressed in black cocktail dress and a shawl shivered with the cold.  She fired up a cigarette.  She exhaled and waved at Gwen.  She came tottering over in heels too high. Clayton gave her once over.  Amy was a hot redhead of paradigmatic proportions. 

‘Hi.  Hi.  I was late.  I got stuck in the back.  I feel fucking horrible about it.  I get a lot of shit for my punctuality or rather lack thereof, but it reaches a whole new plateau once you start being late for funerals.  Quite a collection of hunks and high-class dames in there, huh? Our Jasmine liked to surround herself with the sharpest of the sharp.  Superficial bitch…oooohhh…listen to me.  Stage Two: Anger, anybody?’

Clayton scrutinized Amy further.  She was BOMBED.

            Gwen touched the redhead on the shoulder.  Gave a delicate squeeze.  ‘Amy.  I was wondering where you were.  I was worried.’

            Amy sucked back on her cigarette.  The butt was lipstick stained.

            ‘I’m okay.  Well, I think I am.  You look kind of shell-shocked Gwen.  This is terrible I know.  Fucking terrible.   They called me.  The fucking police called me…’

            Amy wiped away tears with the back of her hand.

            Clayton gave a slight sympathetic smile.

            ‘Ahh Fuck.  Look, I’ve got to sit down.  Christ knows what I was thinking wearing these shoes.  I stumble around like the Bride of Frankenstein or something.  Tsk. Stupid.’ 

            Clayton:  ‘You look good.’

            ‘Yeah, when I don’t actually move.  Thanks though, that was sweet.  Oh.  Hi.  I’m Amy.’

            Amy extended a hand.  Dropped her cigarette.  Clumsily ground it out under the arch of her shoe.  Blew smoke in his face.  Wafted at the haze that hovered over Clayton’s head with flapping hands.

            ‘Ahhhh, Fuck.  Sorry.  The pinnacle of social grace today, I swear…’

            Clayton shook.  ‘Clayton.  Don’t worry about it.  It’s a shock to all.  These kinds of things are never…easy.  Sorry.  I have a gift for platitudes.  I don’t mean to sound –‘

            ‘No, No.  Forget it.  It’s nice.  The effort.’

            Amy watched Gwen watching mourners file out of the church.

            Amy to Clayton:  ‘Introductions aren’t this one’s strong suit, clearly.  You got her out though which is pretty good.  I didn’t think she’d show.  Look, I need to sit down and I need a drink.  You guys want to come?  We could get drunk in the time-honored tradition of mourners.’

            Gwen turned back around.  ‘No.  I think we should be getting back.  Amy, I’d like you to come with us, please.  Neither of us should be alone right now.’

            Amy played with her hair.  Mulled it over.  ‘Actually, that sounds kind of…proper.’

            Clayton:  ‘We’ll drive you back to your place.  You can pack a bag.  You got a passport?’

            Amy laughed.  ‘Of course.  Why?  Where are we going?  Somewhere tropical, I hope.’

            Gwen:  ‘I’m staying at a place in Niagara Falls.  Across the border.  It’s safe.’

            Amy: ‘Safe?  What does that mean?’

            Clayton scratched his head.  Said, ‘Nothing.  It doesn’t mean anything.  Let’s get going.’

***

During the drive back, Clayton ruminated on his state of mind.  His verdict was:

Not Good.

He found himself constantly bilious.  His left eye had developed a small tic.  His head was spinning.  Things were beginning to grow scarily psychedelic.  When he closed his eyes, things swirled like a Saul Bass title sequence.  He thought: 

Maybe it’s the prolonged exposure to Gwen. 

He felt the weight of Gwen’s fate for the first time fully.  He would see this business to its end.

            Clayton and Gwen had to dissuade Amy from visiting the Falls when they arrived.  Amy liked the falls in winter.  The chill on her skin as the mist settled on her face.  They lured her to the hotel with promise of booze and the cathartic outpouring of grief. 

The first promise was true.  The second was a lie.  Gwen’s grief manifested itself in many ways.  A healthy outpouring was not one of them.

Back at the hotel, Gwen showered.  She took the long, hot, scalding showers of the traumatised on a daily basis.  Showers lasting up to and over an hour.  She lost herself under the spray.  She managed to attain a Zen-like state of peace that faded as the hot water slowly ran out.

Clayton joined Amy on the sofa. Scotch glasses ready for the filling.

            Amy stared out the window.  She wondered where everybody was.  She envied them their homicide-free day.

            She thanked Clayton for the drink and raised it to her lips.  She said:

            ‘Should’ve gone to my place.  It’s cleaner.’

She lit another cigarette.  She smoked it with an elegance long since lost to the realm of old film noir.  She fixed her green eyes on Clayton.  Said though a smoky haze,

            ‘I haven’t seen Gwen for six months.  We talk, of course, email and whatever.  She keeps up a brave front on the phone.  Today, today though, man…’

            Clayton loosened his tie.  ‘She’s seen an inordinate amount of death in her time.’

            ‘I know.  Well, I always got that feeling about her, you know?  The first time I saw her…we used to work together in a little coffee shop, did you know that? The first time I saw her I knew.  I could smell the trauma on her.  She would be super-confident.  All smiles and quips.  Then she’d drop a coffee cup or something and she’d shatter.’

            ‘How did you know Jasmine?’

            ‘Jasmine and I went to college together.  She introduced me to my…current line of work.’

            ‘It’s okayI know all about it.’

            ‘Really?  Oh, well, phew.  Didn’t quite know what to say about that.  I mean, shit, I’ll tell you whatever, you know, I don’t care.  But Gwen, she’s a regular woman of mystery.  I didn’t want to go and ruin things for her…with you.’  Amy drank.  Stubbed her cigarette out in a generic steel ashtray. 

            ‘So, uh, how did you meet Gwen anyway?’

‘A friend of a friend.’  It wasn’t really a lie.  He considered Maggie a friend.

            ‘Wow.  I figured online.’  She sipped her drink.  ‘Sorry.  That came out catty.  I didn’t mean it quite like that…’

            Clayton smiled.  ‘It’s okay.  I understood what you meant.’  He drained his drink. 

            Amy lit another cigarette.  She felt curious and morbid and drunk.

            ‘Will you tell me?  What happened to her?’  She caught herself.  She shook her head.  She apologized.  ‘I’m not normally this macabre, swear to god.  I’m blaming the booze.  Stage Four: Depression.’

            ‘What’s with the stages?’

            ‘Huh?  Oh.  Just fucking around, I guess.  Five stages of grief.   I looked them up online this morning.  I’m a Wikipedia junkie. Did you know that, originally, it was called the Five Stages of Receiving Catastrophic News?  Jasmine…poor Jazz.  I still can’t believe it.  Few things more catastrophic than what happened to her.’

            ‘Amy.  I’ll tell you what happened to Gwen.  I have to, so you’ll understand what we have to do…You might want to sit down.’

            She sat.  He told her.  She switched to tequila before the telling was done.

*** 

Amy was silent a full five minutes after he finished.  Finally, she said:

‘So what you’re saying to me is that if you get close to this girl, there’s an extremely fucking good chance that you’re going to end up dead.  Is that right?’

            Clayton swirled the scotch round his glass.  He thought of ways to sugarcoat it.  Gave up:

            ‘Yes.’

            ‘Oh, that’s great.  That’s fucking great.  Is this for real?  This can’t be real, right?  I mean this…this is impossible.’

            ‘It’s far-fetched, I know.  But it’s the truth.  Why do you think she’s withdrawn from everything and everyone?  Why do you think she lives on take out and does yoga in front of the TV and won’t come out and see you?  She doesn’t want you to die.  She doesn’t want anyone else to die.’

            Amy slung back the rest of the scotch in her glass.  Filled it up again.  This time to the rim.

Clayton continued:

‘The deaths have been so seemingly random, so spread out geographically and carried out with such variety that the police haven’t even put all of this together.  It’s not like following the links in a chain here.  It’s like taking that chain, breaking up all the links and then scattering them around the country.  Not a very good analogy, but the scotch is getting to me.  Imagine your parents died yesterday.  Then imagine some guy you went out with one time died the next week.  Then imagine some girl you had a friendly coffee with once after a chance meeting died two days later.  Who would suspect that you were the sole reason for all these deaths?  NOBODY.  Nobody believes it’s the work of a single killer.  That’s the bottom line.’

            ‘Do you believe it?’

            Clayton drank.

            ‘Fuck, DO YOU?’

            ‘Maybe.  Yes.  Yes I do.  When I first heard about it, I thought it was just really, really shitty luck.  But over the years…’

            ‘Well then, what have you done about it?’

            ‘It’s complicated.’

            ‘My life’s on the fucking line here and you’re telling me that instead of trying to help out your fucking tortured, fucked up girlfriend by stopping this, what, YEARS AGO, you’ve let it go on and on and on.’

            ‘Gwen’s your friend.  Don’t call her fucked up.  And I didn’t let anything continue.’

            ‘Gwen’s not my fucking friend, okay?  Gwen’s a total hysteric charity case that I check in on from time to time to make sure she hasn’t offed herself.  I wanted her to come to the funeral because for once I thought I needed some fucking support instead of the other way around.  Jasmine was nice to her too, okay, it’s only proper that she came and showed her fucking respects.  And now I find out she’s pretty much responsible for what happened and then there’s YOU.  You’re fucking complicit in all this mess.  You’re guilty of inaction and you’re guilty by association.  This is bullshit.’

            ‘According to the killer, we’re all guilty by association.’

            Amy ran her fingers through her hair.  Rubbed her face.  Hard.  Continued:

            ‘Fuck.  Fuck.  I cannot believe this day.  What a fucking day.  I cannot believe I tried to help that messed up girl.  All I want to do is make cool t-shirts and I get dragged into this bullshit.  Jesus and I’m back to stage two.  Fuck THIS.  I am so out of here.  If what you say is true, then I’ll just take my chances on my own thank you very much.’

Amy made for the door. 

‘We need to stay together.  It’s safer if we’re all here together.’

            ‘That’s SUCH bullshit.  Do you actually believe that?’

            Gwen came out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around her.  Clayton smelled her.  Another dizzy spell came on.

            Gwen said, ‘You could get it a million ways out there, Amy.  You stay here with us, we’ll protect you.’

            Amy snatched up her bag. Continued her stride to the door. Said, ‘This is NUTS.’

            Gwen: ‘Clayton.’

            Clayton got up.  He grabbed Amy.  He threw her back down on the sofa.  He said: ‘Maybe.  Maybe it is nuts, but, honey, it’s for your own good.  Believe that.’

            Gwen went for her handbag.

            Amy:  ‘You let me go, or I’ll scream so loud –‘

            Gwen pointed her .38 at Amy.  Said:

            ‘AMY.  This IS for your own good.  Trust us.  We’re going to save you.’

            Amy looked at Clayton.  ‘You’re not serious.’

Clayton dragged a wooden chair into the center of the room.  He pulled Amy up.  Sat her down in the chair.  He said, ‘I’m afraid we are.’ 

Gwen rummaged through a drawer.  Pulled out several pairs of pantyhose.  She said, ‘Guaranteed silky smooth.’  She stepped forward.  ‘This is just until you calm down, now, Amy.  Okay?’

*** 

It was several days before Amy calmed down enough to be untied. It was a calmness she quickly learned to fake.

Amy’s first thought was to manipulate Clayton.  She flirted with him.  Wrapped in a tiny towel, she showed him post-shower expanses of thigh and cleavage.  He was oblivious to her charms and wiles.  His train of thought was a Gwen express.

Amy rethought her approach.  She cozied up to Gwen.  Offered her a form of sisterhood she’d long been without. It was slow and painful going. 

The girls dressed up for each other to alleviate the boredom.  They looked at clothes online, complimented each other’s taste.   Watched Romantic comedies online.  Laughed at some losers on YouTube.   As the days went by, Amy regressed to her teenage self.  Played it like a slumber party.  Gwen was responsive to this.  Gwen regressed with her, born again as the girl she was the night before everything went bad.

Amy bred dissent and distrust.  She chose her words well.  She subtly put the question in Gwen’s head:

            It COULD be Clayton…

Clayton divided his time between pacing the room and cleaning his gun.  He slowly grew frustrated at the ever-increasing whispering Gwen and Amy did.  He called them on it.  The girls denied conspiracy.  ‘Girl Talk’ became their chosen euphemism.  The truth hidden behind giggles.

He began to feel the wariness in their gaze. 

            He wanted Amy out.  He wanted to throw her to the wolves.  He wanted to end the growing cabin fever and run with Gwen.  He wanted to secure them new identities and set up house somewhere quiet.  Somewhere where neighbors talked to one another and shared beers on twilit porches.

            Gwen wouldn’t hear of it.   She was convinced more than ever that the hotel room was her bomb shelter.  She stepped up her Internet shopping.  She was stockpiling supplies.

            The girls slumbered in each other’s arms. 

Amy questioned whether she’d made the right move. She’d won Gwen over but was no closer to escape.  If anything, Gwen kept a tighter watch over her now.  She rarely let Amy out of her sight.    Amy decided it was time to push it. 

             Gwen slept in short half-hour cycles before the paranoia woke her.  She clutched Amy to her.  She vowed that she would neither lose nor abandon this friend.  She would look at Clayton, feel the sickness and doubt rise in her.  He was unraveling before her eyes.

It COULD be Clayton…

Clayton looked on, eyes dark and heavy-lidded.  He was scared.  Of what, he wasn’t sure.  The muffled whispering sounds of the girls inexplicably sent a chill up his spine.  He had to get Gwen back.  That was all he knew.

***

While Gwen took one of her showers, Clayton said,

            ‘I know what you’re doing.’

            Amy sneer-smiled at him.  ‘Really?  I could give a shit.  Let me go and she’s all yours again.’

             Clayton often thought of just tossing Amy out the door and being done with it.  But he knew Gwen would have a shitfit if it happened.  There was also the near-fact that Amy would have police surrounding the hotel within hours of her freedom.  Clayton needed more time to convince Gwen to pack her shit and leave with him.  He wasn’t going anywhere without her.  He said:

             ‘Can’t do that.’

              ‘If you don’t let me go, I’ll tell her you’re the killer. She’ll believe me, she halfway does already.’

              ‘You can’t turn her against me.’

              ‘Give me a break.  The only relationship you have with her is in your own head.  You think you matter to her hotshot?  You don’t mean shit to her, buddy, and let me tell you another thing, okay, I don’t have to convince her.  She’s so fucked up, I only half-mentioned it and she’s been convincing herself ever since.’

                ‘But it’s completely illogical.’

                 ‘You think logic has anything to do with what goes on inside her brain?  DO YOU?’

                 He was tired of her slander, her attitude, her cloaked insinuations.  He couldn’t let her have Gwen’s ear any longer.

                  He tied her up again. 

                  It was a gamble.  He’d lay it all out one final time for Gwen.  If she didn’t see things his way, he’d have to make her.

                 Gwen came out of the bathroom.  She saw Clayton fitting the gag back into Amy’s mouth.  She threw herself against the wall.

                 Clayton said, ‘I need to talk to you and the only way I can is if this bitch keeps her mouth shut.  You and I, we’re leaving, Gwen.’

                  Gwen said, ‘I’m not going anywhere.  Let her go.’

                  ‘Gwen…please LISTEN to me… Your paranoia is dripping off the walls. Amy is feeding it for her own ends.  She’s not your friend.  All she wants to do is get out of here as quickly as possible.  Now, you and me, we pack up and take off.  Amy will be found.  The manager will find her, sooner or later.’

                    ‘No.’

                    ‘You are not thinking about this rationally…’

                    Gwen laughed.  ‘Amy thinks you’re the killer.’

                    ‘All the more reason to leave.  I’m not the killer.  You know that.’

                    ‘It all fits.  You had the means to track everybody down.  You go all over the country all the time.  You love me.  You obsess over me.  You worked your way into my fucked-up grieving process.  You’ve become my post-funeral fuck.  That’s all you are to me and when I wouldn’t give you any more, you worked out a way to get more.’

            Clayton grabbed at her.  His mouth a snarl, he said,  ‘She’s playing with your paranoia.  She’s messing with your head.’

            Amy grunted through her gag.  Amy shook her head from side to side.

            Gwen wiped Clayton’s spit from her face.  ‘Tell me the truth.  At least concede the possibility.’

            ‘Gwen.  There’s nothing to tell.  People were dying BEFORE WE EVER MET.  I didn’t do ANYTHING except love you and try to help you.’

            ‘Amy says the first few were just BAD luck…horrible coincidence, like my shrink said. Amy says YOU established the pattern.  You exploited my fear.’

            Gwen sobbed.  Her body heaved with the weight of her pain.  She crushed her fists against her temples.  She whirled around the room.  She screamed.  She felt something slip inside her head.

            ‘I don’t know what to think.’

‘I’m not the killer.  It doesn’t make any sense.  Amy’s still alive.  You and I, we’ve kept her alive.’

‘You didn’t know I wanted to bring her back here until I sprung it on you.  It was my plan, you just went along with it…I don’t know what to think.  If you’re not the killer and we leave here, then Amy’s dead. Sooner or later, she’s dead.  I will not leave her.  And if you are the killer…And if you are the killer…’

            There was a knock at the door

            Gwen: ‘Was that -- ?’

            Clayton: ‘Yeah.’

            He reached inside his jacket.  Drew out his gun.

            Another knock.  This one more urgent.

            Gwen folded her arms across her chest.  Hugged herself tight.  Shook her head.  Said, ‘Don’t you open it.’

            Clayton switched off the safety.  Went towards the door.  He snuck a peek through the peephole.  Paranoia made him nauseous.  He ducked quickly away from the peephole.  Feared a bullet in the eye.

The bullet never came.  But what greeted him hit almost as hard.

            ‘Elisha?’

            Clayton blinked forcefully.  Scrunched his eyes shut TIGHT.  Opened them again.  Peeked once more.  Ducked away once more.  Leaned against the doorframe.  Breathed DEEP.  Forced himself to calm the fuck down.

            It was Elisha.

            Gwen was freaking. 

Clayton’s urge to puke intensified.

            Gwen up to him.  Eyes wide and wired: ‘What?  What did you say?’

            Clayton couldn’t look at her.  He felt dizzy.  He managed to say Elisha’s name again.

            He looked at Amy, bound and bewildered.

            Another knock.  Elisha’s voice:

            ‘Open the fuck up.  Gwen.  Please.  Open up.  I know you’re in there.  It’s ME.  Open up.  Pleeeeeeaaasse.’

            Gwen refused to look.  She threw herself against the door.  She put her hands over her ears.  Repeated:

            ‘I don’t like this.  I don’t like this.  I don’t like this.’

            Clayton made for the lock.  Gwen slapped at his hands.  Gwen went hysteric:

            ‘DON’T YOU FUCKING OPEN THAT DOOR.’

            Clayton looked again.  Outside, Elisha whipped her head from left to right.  She was dirty and disheveled.  She was bruised and blood-smeared.  She stared into the peephole again.

            ‘Gwen?  What’s going on?  LET.  ME.  IN.’

            Gwen to Clayton:  ‘DON’T.’

            Clayton shoved her out of the way. 

            ‘I need to know what’s going on.’

            Gwen sank to the floor. 

            Elisha pounded the door:  ‘GWEN.’

            Clayton grabbed Gwen by the shoulders.  Hauled her to her feet. Pushed her face first into the door.  Forced her to look through the peephole.

            Gwen looked.

            Gwen said, ‘…that’s not Elisha…’

            Clayton said what?  Clayton pushed Gwen aside.  His head pounding, he looked again. 

            The woman smiling into the peephole was not Elisha.

            Whoever she was, she had a shotgun.  She raised it at the door.  She pumped it.  She blew two shots through it.

            Clayton dove.  His left ear was blown off.  Gwen screamed.

            The woman opened the ruined door.  She dropped her empty shotgun.  Pulled a Glock from the back of her jeans.

            Clayton scrambled to get in front of Gwen.  He took one in the stomach.

            The woman stood over him.  She flashed him an impossibly straight-toothed smile.  She winked at Gwen. ‘If you had just opened the door for poor old Elisha, I wouldn’t have had to do that.’ 

She saw Amy.  Said:

            ‘Now, what are you kinky-kinks doing in here?’

***

Clayton lay on the floor.  He had his hand over his gunshot wound.  Blood flowed over and through his fingers.  He breathed in monstrous gasps.  More blood went into his mouth from his ruined ear.

            The woman loomed over Gwen.  Still smiling.  She looked like a gun-toting GAP model.  She loosed a high-pitched tee-hee.

            Gwen sat on the floor, her back to the wall.  She caught glimpses of Clayton leaking away through the woman’s legs. 

            A man had come in behind the woman.  The woman was pacing.  Gwen couldn’t get a snatch a glimpse.

            He looked Amy over. He smiled all nice and re-assuring at her.  He patted her on the head.

            Amy grunted through the gag.

            The woman stepped away from Gwen.

            The man squatted down.  He looked Gwen in the eye.

            Gwen knew.

             Richie said,

            ‘I know about what you and Elisha and all those other bitches did to Jerome.  Really not so smart to have let Elisha set the house fire.  That girl is all sorts of fucked-up, Gwennie.  Trust me, I have to ride with her.  She wanted Clive alive…she’s nothing without Clive.  Anyway, how about you?  What’s new with you?  My wife and I, her name is Joanie, say hi, Joanie…’

            Joanie said hi.

            ‘…We saw your work on the Internet.  Imagine my surprise when I saw your sweet little heinie online after all this time.’

             Joanie: ‘Richie kind of took a fancy to it, I think.  He won’t admit it, but I think he had an eye on that pink thong with your pussy snot all over it.’

            Richie sighed.  ‘Now, honey, you know that’s not true.  The only panties I care to sniff are yours, baby.  Talk like that, it kind of gets me mad.’ 

            Joanie put the boots to Clayton.

            ‘Thank you, sweetheart…’

Richie picked up a roll of cling film from the small kitchenette bench.  He strolled over behind Amy.  Picking at the end of the film, he unrolled a good length of it.

            Richie: ‘My wife.  She’s just so excitable…’

            Richie held the cling film in front of Amy’s face.  As she thrashed in her chair, Richie mummified her head.

            Amy made horrible snort-suck sounds through her nose.  She thrashed so hard the chair fell backwards.  As she went down, she hit her head on the wall. 

            Joanie tee-heed.  Richie watched on intently as Amy asphyxiated.

            Gwen rubbed her eyes.  Wiped away tears but they just kept on coming.

            ‘Richie…Richie…I thought you were dead…’

            The guilt was back big time.  The guilt was ALL.  Gwen rocked and bobbed on the floor.  She hit her head against the wall.  She blubbered and wailed. 

                                                         ***

FROM AN UNPUBLISHED, UNPROOFED MANUSCRIPT TITLED FAMILY BUSINESS: THE UNAUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY OF THE MITCHELL FAMILY BY RICHARD JACOBS WITH JOANIE JACOBS:

                   Chapter Two

Ma Mitchell extended a bony hand to me.  She held out a battered, rusting flask.  It trembled in her grip.  I heard the liquid inside slosh about inside and thought it might well be my last ever drink.

     She said, ‘Take it.  I’m sure you must be parched.’

     My hand brushed against Ma’s as I took the flask.  Ma’s skin was rough and cracked.  I unAscrewed the lid and had a drink. was unscrewed.  My throat burned and I coughed.  The liquid tasted like mentholated spirits with an aftertaste of piss.

     Ma Mitchell laughed.  The geometry of her face changed.  It wrinkled up in unpleasant ways as she cackled.

     ‘My daddy brewed that up.  It slaps like the bitchiest of bitches, which is why he named the brew Beulah.  Beulah was my momma’s name.  And you take it from me, she could slap.’

     Ma Mitchell snatched back the flask from me.  she took a deep hit.  Her eyes watered a touch. 

     ‘You got left behind.  Who was that little girl with the piston-like legs?  She lleft you with nary a glance back.’

     ‘Gwen.  Her name’s Gwn.’

     ‘Gwen.  She was a pretty thing.  Least I think she was.  A blur is what she was to me, truth be told. That girl was fast.  Like a lightning strike.  How does it feel to be left like that?  Hmmm?  Left behind like something unimportant while my boy went about his business.’

     I had no idea what to say.  I thought that I’d better say something though, so I reachhed down deep and fumbled around with my complex thoughts and feelings.  Ma cut me off.

     She hissed, ‘Not good.  It doesn’t feel good, now, does it?   I can see it in there.  Behind your red-rimmed trauma-glazed eyes.’

     ‘See what?’

     ‘The resentment.’

     There was resentment in me.  How could there not be?

     Ma smiled.  She drank some more and continued.

     ‘I see something else too.  Something you might not like to admit.’

     She picked at flecks of dried blood on my forehead.  I said, ‘I don’t feel…anything…right now.  I’m not even sure that this is real.’

     Ma’s hand quit its tremors.  It struck out with some snap and a more than some bite.  It caught me under the eye and I rocked back with surprise.  Ma’s yellowing ridged nails took some skin off.

     ‘Beulah wasn’t the only gal around here knew how to slap.  I inherited her sinewy arms and her smack-callused palms.’  She took another hit from the flask.  Her eyes lost focus for a moment. 

She grabbed me by the cheeks.  She squeezed.  She brought her face up close to mine and said, ‘This might not be real for you, but it’s as real as real can be to me and mine.’

Ma punched herself in the head.

‘Hear that?’

She did it again. 

‘That’s the sound of reality.’

Ma took another hit of Beulah.  She got in all close again.  Her breath smelled like old blackening bananas and cheapo hooch and a thousand crusty assholes.

Ma hushed her voice.  She wanted to whisper.  Wanted to sound conspiratorial.  She whisperedd,‘Can you walk?  I bandaged you myself and sewed you up too.  But that thigh was cut deep.  You’re lucky.  Jerome, he usually swings to sever.’

Ma got to her feet.  Beckoned me to follow her with a wave. 

Scared, I looked at the floor.  Odd sounds came from the basement below.  Grunts.  Muffled voices.

‘That’s just my other one.  Don’t worry.  He’s just down there playing with some video shit he pulled of some dead family man.  Movies.  He wants to make movies.  Has his head firmly entrenched up his own ass if you ask me.  He wants to make his mother proud, he should step on out, kill some folk instead of picking his brothers dead for spoils like some buzzard.’

That was my intorduction to Clive.  A man I was to meet years from this moment.

Ma turned back and saw her captive wasn’t moving. Her face crinkled up into a grimace.  She said,‘You’re here at my pleasure and I want you to get up.  So, on your feet.’

I sat up on the filthy mattress.  I was worried about my leg.  It throbbed badly and there was some infection setting in.  I put some weight on it, testiung it.  It held.

Ma smiled smuglyand barked,‘If I cared for this world one minuscule whit, I could have been a lady of medicine.  But I help this place in other ways instead.  Better ways.  Ways that maybe I’ll show you.’ 

Ma walked out of the room.  I followed.  I was relieved to be out of the small room.  Away from the mechanical sputtering of the generator outside the window.  Away from the confined solitude.  Away from stale air rich with the scent of disinfectant.

I looked about the house as we walked.  For the most part, it was clean, ornate, charming.  Then I saw that dried pools of blood stained the floorboards.  Charcoal sketches of corpses hung framed on the hallway walls.

     A masssive weird looking monster dog licked its balls in the living room.  He looked up me.  He bared teeth and shot me a look like he thought I was fdinner.  His name, I found out later, was Mitch and he is a chapter to himslef later in this book.

Ma led me to another bedroom.

‘How did you feel when this Gwen ran off?  Did the whole world seem to enclose in upon itself?  Did you feel cut open all the way down deep to your soul?   Did the entire senseless mess of your life come down on you?  I imagine that it would.  But I can’t say for sure.  I’ve never been left behind.  The only people Jerome leaves behind are his dead, so he wouldn’t know either.  You’re lucky that I was there this time.  I don’t go with him on his hunting trips usually.  He knows what he has to do and I have the complete, total confidence in him that all mothers have in their eldest. But I was bored.  It’s been so long since I’ve seen the slaughter.’

     Ma swung the heavy door open.  Grasped me by the arm and led meinto the room.  The room was dark and dusty.  A whimpering sound came from the far corner.

     Ma got close again to me.  I smelled her gassy breath again – it made me,cough.

     ‘Out there, in the deep and the dark woods, with Jerome standing over you, bits of your young friends sliding down and dripping off his blade, just before you passed out, you said – anything.  I’ll do ANYTHING.  Just don’t kill me.’

     The whimpering noises got louder.  They echoed round the empty room.

     ‘It intrigued me, so I had Jerome spare you from his culling.  I had you brought back here.  And so here’s that particular anything, you said you’d do if you were spared.  And It’s to be carried out with the forthright honesty and integrity I expect of my kin if you want to remain here drawing breath on this here particular revolving dustball we call Earth: I want you to let go of everything that you thought you were.  I want you to take the horror and the insanity and the trauma and the blood from that night and I want you to embrace it.  There’s something in you that needs to be released.  I can see it.  I can smell it.’

Ma reached up and tucked a cord that hung, swaying, from the ceiling. A lightbulb blinked on. 

‘Release it.  Release it and I will take you in as one of my own.  Not in name and not in blood, but I will promise you this: I will NEVER leave you.  I will be with you always…’

     Ma touched the centre of my forehead and Tapped it with her skeletal forefinger.  She continuedher weird monolgue,‘…in here.’

     The light wasn’t much, maybe forty watts, but the my eyes weren’t ready for it.  They did some adjusting and I saw a small wooden table in the centre of the room. It was adorned with crude weapons clearly made for violence.  I saw a small home-made cage in the corner of the room.  it had a  frame of thick iron bars, an ugly mesh of intertwined razor wire.

A naked prisoner lay bleeding within the cage, The source of the whimpering.  Curled in a ball and bleedingfrom razor-wire gashes.  It was a girl in her teens.  She looked up atme with hope.

     I stared wide-eyed.  I felt like I was in some kind of bad dream but Beulah moonshine rose in my throat.  It reminded me that this was real.

     Ma said, ‘You will recall I mentioned my boredom.  This little Philly here was a mother’s day present from my youngest.  I know, thoughtful gesture, isn’t it?  He’s a little self-absorbed, my Clive, and like I said, he’s yet to do any real killing, but he’s good to his mother on the odd occasion.’

     Ma walked over to the table. The girl in the cage tried to say help.  It came out the croak of a dyying frog.

     i walked to the cage and peered in through the razorwire.  The girl stuck a couple of fingers out through the wire and she nicked them open in the process. 

     I felt Ma’s presence  behind me.  I turned and looked up to see her holding one of the knives from the table.  It was thick, dull from overuse.  It was heavy and crude and built for bloodletting.

     ‘My Daddy did those drawings you were giving the once over in the hallway and he also made these knives.  They remind me of him: Mean, full of spite and violence, but a hypnotising violence.  A beautiful violence.  He’s upstairs in his room, sulking.  He misses his basement.  It was his place.  But there’s no fresh air down there and his lungs are getting bad.  Anyhow.  I ramble.’

     Ma held out the knife to me.  she said,‘Take it.  Take it and use it. I give you a brand new life and a brand new purpose. I repeat once more and for the final time for I grow irritable when I have to re-from my words ad nauseum: you will stay here for a time and you will be schooled.  You will be let loose to carry on our work in ways and places that we cannot.  You are to be this family’s undercover agent in the world of our enemies. You will be so hidden and clandestine that only you and I will know your true role.  And when the time comes, and I will see to it that it does, this Gwen, this fleeing little lamb, she will get a mercy killing at your hands.’

     I took the knife and held it and examined it and sensed the power in it. 

     Ma took another pull from her flask.  She passed it to me.  I drank the dregs.  The liquid was spit viscous.

     Ma pulled the leather strap from around her neck.  A key dangled from it.  She fitted it into the lock welded to the cage.  She turned it and swung open the door.

     ‘You will seal this deal in the blood of this girl. ’

     Ma beckoned me forward.  ‘Go on.  It will change you in powerful ways.  There’s no going back now.  Embrace the metamorphosis. The big bang creating your New World happens right here and now.’

I stepped towards the cage. I was nervous and sick. I had no idea that what I was about to do wouyld make me a part of history and set my life.

     Ma said, ‘And, lo, the universe was born.’

                                ***

‘I’m sorry I ran.  I’m sorry I left you.  I’m really really sorry, Richie.    I didn’t know.  I had no control.  I just ran.  That’s all.  I just ran.’

           Gwen wiped her eyes.   Struggled to compose herself. 

           ‘So now what?  Now you’re here to kill me, finally. After killing everyone I ever knew, my family, my friends, as what, as punishment for living?  For leaving you?’

           Joanie tee-heed again.

           Richie: ‘Oh, Gwen.  Gwen.  Geez.  You leaving me behind like that was actually the best thing that ever happened to me.  Seriously: THE.  BEST.  I kind of did die out there…it all gets a bit philosophical and I don’t think either of us is into that why-are-we-here stuff too much.  But that night changed my life.  Maybe there’s some residual …anger…in me because of that night, but I assure you that when Joanie and me did all those killings, your family and stuff, revenge was the smallest of the number of things motivating us…’

         Joanie:  ‘Fun was probably the biggest.’

         Richie stroked Gwen’s face.  Said:

         ‘Now, whatever…issues…lie between you and me, they have to wait.  See, we’re here as part of a Mitchell family effort to get back those chopped-up pieces of Jerome you all have.  We’re building a better monster, Gwennie.  That’s all there is to it.’

            Gwen shook her head, losing it.

            ‘I can’t believe you’re with them.  Jerome killed all our friends.  Have you FORGOTTEN that?’

            Richie got in close.  Said:

            ‘It’s everything I never knew I wanted.  For YEARS I waited for the Mitchell’s to contact me.  Joanie and I, we did our killings, we tinkered with our book, we talked to people who have Jerome ‘urban legends,’ we even correspond with other serial killers in jail.  All that, it’s a buzz.  But we got the call.  Finally.  It’s…you won’t grasp the wonder of it.  It’s like trying to explain religion to a child…’

Clayton looked up at Joanie:  ‘I don’t see the ‘X’ carved in your forehead.  Maybe your bangs are covering it.’

            Joanie self-consciously touched her forehead.  Said:

            ‘I don’t get it.’

            She put the boots to Clayton some more.

            Richie: ‘He means Manson, baby.  He’s talking about Manson.’

            Joanie snatched up some of the clothes that lay around the room.  Elisha needed new clothes.  She was stinking it up.

Heading out of the room, Joanie went, ‘Oh.’  Paused.  Went, ‘His music sucks.’

***

Seth dragged the dead old hotel owner into a rear office.  Took the old man’s keys from his pockets.  Locked the door behind him.  Noticed he got blood spots on his shirt.  He wished he’d been able to get the L’Uccello Dalle Plume di Cristallo shirt.  Pissed him off some that he couldn’t.   Thinking about the shirt got him thinking about Amy.  He’d pushed his luck approaching her as he did.  Richie and Joanie were pissed about it.  They complained to Ma Mitchell.  Seth was in the doghouse as a result. 

Whatever.  It was worth it. 

           Things would be different with the next girl.  He and Clive would see to that.  They hated being sidelined to bit parts when they ought to be featured players. Fuck Richie with his midday soap smile and his Joe Hip clothes.  Fuck Joanie too.  Fuck her bloodletting-Valley Girl vibe.

            There were entirely too many butchers manning the Final Girl abattoir.  That was all there was too it.

            Seth moved a coat rack from beside the door to reception to behind the main desk.  He hung his coat on it.  He arranged it so that the old man’s brains coating the wall behind it were covered.  He figured out how to change the sign from

VACANCY

            to

NO VACANCY

            Seth had got fake passports for the Clive and Elisha.  He acquired them through a subscriber to his old exploitation movie mag.  He thought, funny the contacts you make. 

Elisha’s passport bore the name LINA ROMAY.  A nice little in-joke he got a chuckle out of.  Clive wasn’t so amused.  He grumbled about what might come if the border cops knew the name.

Seth told him he was crazy. 

‘Who the FUCK knows Lina Romay?’

Clive got offended.  Clive got pouty.  But Seth was right.  There were no problems crossing the border. 

Seth sat down.  He put his feet on the desk.  He thought about how much Penny would dig Dino mini golf.  He hated to leave her behind but couldn’t risk a trunk search.  He untaped the exploded plastic bottle silencer from his handgun.  Threw it in the trash.  He turned on the little TV set on the desk.  Flipped through the channels.  Armageddon was on.  The narrator said:

It happened before.  It will happen again.   It’s just a matter of when.

Seth said,  ‘Suck-ass movie.’

He turned the TV off.  He picked at his teeth.  He farted.  He stuck the gun down his pants and waited.

***

In the room next to all the action: 

Clive and Elisha.

           Elisha peeled off her T-shirt.  Unhooked her bra.  Said, ‘When we’re finished here, can I keep riding in the coupe with you and Seth?’

            Clive lay on the bed.  Tapped his shotgun with dirty nails. 

            ‘No.’

            She turned slightly towards him.  Flashed him some side-boob.

            Clive looked away.  Said:

            ‘Ma wants you with her.  She doesn’t want us fraternizing.’

            Elisha looked at one of the dresses Joanie brought for her.  She held it up against herself.  Slipped it over her head.  It was a $370 Mod Square Print Baby Doll dress by Shoshanna.  It was short.  Stopped mid-thigh.

Elisha was all-round curvier than Gwen.  Didn’t have that skinny body-big tits thing going on.  Still, the dress fit her.  Better than it did Gwen, truth be told.  Elisha had the hips for it. 

            ‘We’re fraternizing now.’

            Clive sighed.  Did his best not to look at her.  Knew he was doomed.  Felt like his heart was counting down beats to the coming apocalypse. 

The dress was made for warmer weather.  Elisha’s nipples began to rise through the fabric. 

Clive hit the TV remote.  Armageddon.  He stared at the ceiling.  He wished a big fucking rock would come crush him right now.

            ‘Don’t have much of a choice there, way I see it.  Things need to be taken care of next door.  You and me, we’re not invited to that particular happening.  It’s a personal matter.’

            Elisha examined herself in the hotel mirror.  Noted the bruising round her neck.  When she traveled in the van, Ma Mitchell dog collared her.  Chained her to the side of the van.   It put her in prime position for the glowering and meat/shit breath panting of the devil dog.

            ‘You could be in reception.  Seth could be up here.’

            Clive had no comeback for that.  He ignored it.  He looked away from the TV.  He looked Elisha over.  He couldn’t help it.

            She fluffed and played with her short, shaggy hair.  She pouted.  She struck a hand-on-hip pose.

             Clive got a headache.  Bad one at that.

             Elisha:  ‘Are you going to kill me now?  Is this what’s happening?’

             Clive imagined her bleeding.  He popped a boner.  Said:

             ‘Don’t play with me.  You know we need you.’

              Elisha smiled.

              Clive got off the bed.  Walked over to her.  The dress was a right retro throwback.  It was the kind of thing Lina might have worn.

              Elisha said, ‘Did you ever see that fashion show video that Argento did?  The Suspiria re-enactment where the models got dragged off in clear plastic body bags?’

              Clive tried to lose himself in the Bruce Willis vehicle.  Failed.  He tried to think about some COOL Aerosmith songs.  Made back when they were all fucked up on coke.  Not this Armageddon shit.  Couldn’t. 

               He looked about.  He noted how the room was a warm orange from the lamplight.  It looked like a cheap film set. 

               Elisha continued: ‘Fashion and death.  Why do they go together so well? Look at me…I’m in an outtake from Strip Nude For Your Killer.’

                Clive tore the dress off her.  It hung off her breasts coyly.  He pushed his hand into her face and shoved her to the bed. 

                 The mattress was soft.  Elisha bounced when she hit it.  Clive had busted her lip.  She smiled up at him through pink teeth.

                 Clive cursed at himself.  He unbuttoned his fly.  He reminded himself:

                THIS GIRL WILL BETRAY YOU AGAIN.

His thoughts got sidetracked.  Reality was re-cast as film by her once again.  Creamy-skin cleavage beckoned in CU. 

***

                       

Richie squatted down beside Clayton.  Richie whistled.  Said:

            ‘Not long now, big man, rate you’re bleeding out.’

            Joanie raised a .38 at Gwen.  There was a moment of Leone-like face off.  Gwen went to her second bar fridge.  Pulled out a black garbage bag.  It hit the floor with a thunk.

            Gwen:  ‘Take your monster parts.  I don’t want them any more.  They’ll only bring you a speedier death than they brought me.’

            Joanie locked eyes with Gwen.  Joanie looked for the angle.  Found none.

Gwen: ‘I’m ready.’

            Clayton: ‘No. NO.  Don’t you do it, bitch…don’t you do it…’

            Joanie broke her eye-lock with Gwen.  She turned, put a bullet into Clayton’s head.  Turned back to Gwen.  Said:

            ‘You ever fuck my husband?  He says it never happened.  Should I believe him?’

            Gwen: ‘What?’

            ‘Nevermind.  Run.’

            Richie laughed.

            Gwen: ‘What?’

            Joanie said, ‘We want you to run.  I hear you’re pretty quick and you sure look pretty fit.  We’re going to replay the events of that night many years ago.  We’re going to see if you can do it one more time.  I’m going to count to five, then you run.  Then I’m going to count to five again and I’m coming after you.  See, I’m pretty quick too…’

            Gwen stood silent.

            Richie to Gwen: ‘I think you had better unglue those feet from the floor, Gwennie, or my dear wife will shoot you down right here.’

            ‘One.’

            ‘I’m not running.’

            ‘Two.’

            ‘I said, I’m not running.’

            ‘Three.’

            ‘Fuck you.’

            ‘Four.’

            Joanie raised the gun. 

            ‘Five.’

            Joanie put a bullet through the ceiling.  Joanie went: ‘RUN.’

            Gwen was out the door before she knew it.  She had no thoughts of Clayton.  She had no thoughts of anything.  Her mind empty, she ran.

            Joanie counted to three.  Richie winked at her as she strode out of the room.  Her leather-gloved hand touched his leather-gloved hand and Joanie was gone.

            Gwen was moving.

            Gwen reached the stairs. 

            Joanie extended out her arm.  Joanie squeezed shut an eye.  Joanie took aim.  The tip of her tongue stuck out between her full lips.

            Joanie squeezed the trigger.

            Joanie put three bullets in Gwen’s back. 

Gwen’s body tumbled down the stairs.    Shot and broke up from the fall, she clawed her way forward. 

           Joanie went down the stairs after her.

           Gwen knew she was done.  She rolled onto her back.  Looked up at the first floor balcony.  She saw Elisha.  Elisha was crying.  The guy next to her was smiling.

            Joanie stood on Gwen’s stomach.  Held out the gun.  Said:

            ‘And you call yourself a Final Girl.’

            Richie came jogging up behind her.  Husband and wife exchanged a wet open-mouthed kiss.

            Joanie said, ‘Baby.  At long last, she’s yours.’

            Joanie passed Richie the gun.  Felt herself choked up with emotion.  Said:

‘It’s the end of era…’

           Richie winked at his wife.  Stared down at Gwen.  Held the gun on her.  Said:

‘That is the truth, my love.  That is the truth.’

            He pulled the trigger.

            He turned to his wife.  Smiled.  They embraced like they just got voted cutest couple.

Seth came out of the office.  Clive, dragging Elisha and clutching a black garbage bag, wasn’t far behind.

           Clive said, ‘Vampire Ken.  Vampire Barbie. I wanted to go to that criminal wax museum in the morning, but I think all the gunplay put paid to that particular notion. Thanks very much.  Let’s blow this shitsville.’

            The group ran off towards their rental cars.  They were parked at another empty hotel nearby. Elisha turned back.  Saw:

             The gaudy motel.  Blinking attraction lights off in the distance.  Gwen’s ruined body in the foreground, lying on rain-dampened asphalt.  Her fashionable clothes bloodied. 

               It was the closing longshot of this film.  It was a foreshadowing of things to come.  It was symbolic and deep.  It was iconic and timeless.  It was beautiful. 

               She thought about pointing out to Clive.  Changed her mind.  The shot was hers. 

               She unfocused her eyes to blur the colors together.  She slowly closed her eyes.  She faded things to black.