Dead Girl Pose

One 

The dead girl looked happy. Her doe-eyed gaze was muted from where she lay on the ground, not that the rain was helping the matter. As the grayscale of newspaper typically does, her picture was distorted. Familiar, but not altogether there from above the byline. And though the black ink was partially extracted from the disintegrating pulp of this non-archival daily print, its headline remained clear: Headless Body Posed in Rice Park Identified

 If Enzo had to guess, it was a high school portrait. A headshot. Something she would despise, and naturally what her parents would select to better suit their memories. She wore all that makeup to look younger, just to wear the same amount later in life to appear 17 again. That kind of girl. Back then the anxiety revealing how bad life can get didn’t exist around her eyes.

Saying that aloud would drive people away. They’d think he were cynical, unsympathetic. Then he’d remind them that, after all, she was murdered. Surely, she had been equally disenchanted to encounter a skin-ripping serial killer late in the summer like anyone else. So, there was his conclusion. The picture was a lie.

Thunder crashed overhead, violent enough to shake Bushwick like an earthquake. This was a good storm, the kind that puts people on edge, the kind that happens in the grip of hurricane season. Black folks cooped up on the east side would be hiding under their beds, while the offseason undergrads from the university sipped coffee in sweatpants. Somehow Enzo found his way into the middle of it, waiting—always waiting—for a bus. His cheap umbrella was no match for the apocalyptic wind and was torn to shreds on impact. Never even stood a chance. His natural disposition to avoid littering was forgone, and he threw the ruined umbrella in a gushing puddle. 

 Looking at the mud on his ankles, the scene felt like an allegory for what he’d become. Aimlessly battering the soggy newspaper apart out of boredom with his heel, Enzo realized there was a hole in the bottom of his boot. There was no point trying to save his socks, everything else had been soaked through anyway. He fucking hated waiting for the bus, mostly because it took him to places he never wanted to be. Enzo doesn’t look up much these days. Not even in the shower where washing himself is too big a task. Rinse and go, conserve the energy. Riding the bus, Enzo finds his purpose. He likes to see without being seen. They don’t realize it, but even strangers become friends within their routine. Just like the people boarding from their stops become familial through osmosis. Every inadvertent, scheduled encounter was an endless surprise to him, every time. 

Oh, it’s that angry man with the crutches again, Enzo might say to himself. Or, Hey, it’s that woman in the suit again. Who are they? Where are they going?

Sometimes Enzo would wonder, do they ask the same things about me? Although he wasn’t willing to admit it, he hoped they did. Think about him from time to time, that is. As his twenties were terminated, he realized there was a divide between the Y Generation and people like himself. Really, the difference was he couldn’t have fun without being embarrassed anymore. Not that there was much fun to be had. By 30, he slipped away into the margins of the city, in the cut where no one makes eye contact above dumpster level. Shuffling through every day like a shadow that refused to die in the sun, traces of his humanity barely shined though in his work at the gym. When he wasn’t mopping sweat off the polished concrete with bleach, he was snorting lines for the energy to train ersatz white boys how to box, their muscles inflated with helium and no stronger than the hair gel maintaining each coiffe. He couldn’t let himself feel too pressed when the bodega clerk would refuse to sell him cigarettes with an expired ID. It reminded him he was still a part of society. A pale, sour zombie edging his way into the spectacular nothing. He’d gotten a job email once from an employer looking for gravediggers, and the irony wasn’t lost on him. He could hardly wait to end up six feet under. But there still remained a small sliver of obscurity in his faults that reminded him of the way life could be. He just wanted the shit to stop. 

Now he watches people for entertainment, injects himself into their lives and, providing imaginary commentary, holds his breath for real conversation. As a child there were two women, these ugly old biddies with nothing better to do than sit outside the dollar store and watch people as they entered with nothing, leave with beer and toilet paper. To consider ending up alone, inventing details of other people’s lives as his own passed by drew sinister needles deep into the soft gray matter of his brain. Inching toward the idea of ending up like them, he anxiously chews his fingernails to the wick. 

Months ago, in the humidity of yet another gloaming summer storm, a whisper of judgement suggested he kill himself. Raindrops trailed down the window, two drops streaming in a race for the finish line. It was a child’s game he was willing to bet his life on. Then she showed up, and suddenly Enzo forgot which side he was rooting for. The dead girl, with her streaked hair and pierced nose, had been a regular fixture on this route. Someone stole her head; she won’t be showing up anywhere anymore. Her death just made him sad, and then scared. Who was he mourning, that girl or himself? 

More lightning cast hectic white slits over the sky, followed by thunder like blunt force trauma to the skull. Cause and effect, matter and particles seemingly out of nowhere and without agenda clashing together. Always leaving behind signs of life that tell us the world is still spinning. But here he was, waiting for the bus again when he could be at home with a beer. Ordinarily he loved thunderstorms. Having grown accustomed to them as a child, he embraced them in an effort to understand fear. Being caught in the rain reminded Enzo of how frequently he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And for fuck’s sake, where is this bus already? Enzo sighed, rain sliding off the caresses of his eyelashes, and reached into his pocket for some reassurance. In one hand he cracked a hard seltzer open, the other was holding his phone trying to check the operating schedule. 

Thunder startled his attention toward the furious sky, causing him to drop his phone into a deeper puddle off the curb. His knees cracked kneeling too fast in an attempt to save the submerged electronic. Cause and effect. Exhaling a brash expletive, he realized it was too late. There, in the murky waters of city drainage and bits of gravel, was the girl’s neck. Ripped just above her jaw. Pieces of the drowning newspaper article continued swirling by in throttled disarray. 

He might’ve chosen someone else. But he didn’t. It was her. Just to follow, that was the rule. To observe silently from a distance, living a stranger’s life alongside them like a ghost. She’d never take this route again. The thought made him shudder. He wondered who else was out there, watching from a distance alongside him and even more cunning. How many others had there been? How did he never notice were crossing paths? It was then he realized, just in time to be late for work, that the bus he’d been waiting for doesn’t run on Sundays. 

 Two 

He was already a little drunk by the time he locked the doors to the gym, and knew he’d be late again the following day. It was the heavy stuff at home he was looking forward to. And it was raining, which provided an excuse to drop into a bodega for a tall boy and the paper. Nobody reads ‘em anymore, he figured, and may as well while he had the time. It remained rolled-up, secured tight by the waistband of his pants, shielded from the rain by his hoodie. It wasn’t until he’d paid his fair that he could shuffle to a seat and produce the paper from his soggy person. 

A barrage of bold-printed letters affected the front page like propaganda, so loud he could practically hear it screaming. Another girl, Katy Price was found dead. Her body, which is to say, pieces of it: the missing head, and everything else, were arranged suggestively in the bathtub. Katy Price had been dead for at least a week, just long enough for the smell to fill a landlord’s answering machine with heated messages from neighboring tenants. 

Enzo gripped the pages framing diabolical prose, his eyes wide and reflecting each paragraph like radioactive pulp fiction. It was the picture that transfixed him, the dead girl’s smile that sent a chill down his spine, intensified by soaking wet garb. There was something different about the sheen of her teeth, the lilting of her shoulders. It wasn’t a normal picture. It was a portrait. The connotation, her pose, was meant to speak for her. Her face was trying to tell a story, like she were coyly withholding a secret. Versatile. Enzo chewed on his knuckles. A sharp flexing sensation prodded at his insides, coiling around his intestines. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. It was the Smirnoff’s, probably. Or maybe it was shock. Both, he decided. Either way, was this a coincidence? He looked around at his fellow zombie passengers, each minding their business. Nobody else knows, he realized. His stomach somersaulted. Alcohol and sugar interrupted train of thought, as if his stomach and brain were co-conspirators. He felt sick, inwardly as well as mentally. As he buckled over as best he could to vomit discreetly in the back corner, nothing could assuage his outburst of terminal lucidity. Without a doubt, he had followed both of those girls before.

 Enzo burst through the door into his apartment, soaking through from his three-block sprint. There was no time to change into dry clothes, the space heater would warm him up in the interim. Even before he powered on his ancient computer to Google research Cerina Profit, the first decapitated dead girl, and tonight’s revelation, Katy Lee, Enzo knew there would be little information the Internet could provide that he didn’t already know. 

Of the two, Enzo started with Katy, or had pursued her before Cerina, rather. There had been dozens over the years, all women. While they all fit a similar profile, he pursued them with no insidious objectives outside of the standard taboo, the invasion of privacy. And souvenirs, which the law called burglary, but the treasures were always small. Barely noticeable, even in plain sight. Katy and Cerina’s respective tubes of lipstick were in individual sandwich bags under the sink. Each had ridden the same bus route as Enzo regularly, at some point in time, before moving to bigger and better neighborhoods. 

He memorized their bodies, knew their ticks, had conversations with them in his head. Both had faces like a blank palate. But Katy was petulant and spoke obnoxiously into her phone, which was always on speaker. She enjoyed making a spectacle out of her rage and successes. It made her feel important. Occasionally she was accompanied, and in those times appeared proud of her syndromic disinterest in the child crying in its carriage. Cerina was gaunt and pale. European, if Enzo had to guess. Maybe Polish. And at first, he suspected she was hitting the hard stuff. As it were, models are skinny by profession. What they both shared was an instantly identifiable trait of height. Both were very tall, and now, very much deceased. The world is a small place, he’d heard. “But not like this,” he said, turning in his swiveling chair to watch some invisible specter pull away from him and slowly back away into the dark. Where was he going with this?

He ran to the fridge and cracked open a beer, chugging it down as he paced the rotting studio. Was it possible, he asked, that it didn’t actually matter if these two girls rode the same bus? It’s the city, after all. Everyone knows their neighbors, even if from a distance. And their overlapping riding times were distinctly opposite. It’s likely one didn’t know of the other’s existence. Dropping his empty can into the sink, he switched into high gear and opened the freezer. He spoke out loud while pouring a glass of frozen vodka. Each of them had ties to the modeling world. Not even the news outlets reported that in either case. Unless they were waiting for some reason or barred from doing so by investigators. That, he figured, had to mean something. And so what? he reasoned. This town was full of girls trying to make a career out of their appearances. Things like this…well, every killer starts somewhere. It may as well be his own neighborhood. Cheap vodka splashed into his belly like gasoline. 

Pacing back and forth, he realized he needed to call someone, to unleash his theory on someone who’d tell him to stop. For once, he wanted to be told he was wrong. Carmichael wouldn’t have that problem but would also suggest he be committed. There was no one else to call. Except his Mom. But sometimes he wanted to feel like a man, find someone else to list as his primary emergency contact. A problem had presented itself that needed to be discussed with an outside perspective. On second thought, he decided it best to do it alone. Discover what he was trying to prove first. And, if there were any validity to his theory, what was he going to do about it anyway? He had to try. The murders felt close to him, resurrecting the will to live from the cage in his chest. He’d call his mother later, he decided. At the end of the week. But would keep dead girl talk to himself.

Grabbing the soft pack of Reds next to his bed, he thought saying it out loud may make more sense. 

“I ride the bus every day with a serial killer,” he declared, and struck a match. “Jesus Christ.”

It felt right. It felt true. Enzo trembled lighting the cigarette, unable to smell the bleach on his hands anymore.

“If that’s the only thing you took from all of what I just told you, then I spoke for nothing. And I’m sorry. I’ll just keep my mouth shut.”

Rita had reached her limit for the day, not that she ever expected Enzo to relieve her worries. She swallowed a nerve pill all the same, knocking it back with a sip of wine. On the other end of the line, Enzo was pacing in his room bursting with theories he continued to withhold. Calling his mother had always been a weekly test of his spirit. From one day to the next, Enzo would attempt to make his life feel like something it wasn’t. Hoping by the time the Sunday Scaries kicked in there would be at least one good thing, one humorous anecdote, a lovely comment from a stranger, that would be worth mentioning and put his mother at ease. Before bed, and after taking his prescriptions, he called. The vodka was drowning his head.

“I feel dead inside,” he’d said tonight, sparking a long-winded motivational speech from his Catholic mother. Enzo knew he failed her in all respects. His mother had given birth to a mannequin whose façade seemed only to mimic a human being. Rita sat at her kitchenette with a tremor in her hands.

“You’re doing ok,” she’d reply, “It may not seem like it now, Lorenzo, but you’re doing ok.” 

She doesn’t mean that, Enzo thought. He could hear it in her voice, the effort it took to ask him how things were, knowing he would eventually arrive at how the cancer of mental illness was still alive. 

“Are ya down on your luck, son? Are ya not feelin’ so great? Well, guess what! I’m still grateful for the things I can’t control. Being able to walk, to see the sunlight outside every day. It’s the little things that sometimes are gonna get you by. And that’s where God is. He’s there when you least expect it.”

“God isn’t real, Ma.” He sneered into the receiver, busying himself with the dirt under his nails. In Philadelphia, a wooden dining chair screeched against the floor, loud enough to make Enzo the phone away from his ear. Rita took a stance on diminishing their religion.

“I did not raise my son to talk to me like that. And I’m gonna pray for you. And I’m gonna pray for you every day, so long as there’s breath inside my body. Do you understand? There is still good in this world, even for you, Lorenzo. Maybe even especially for you. It’s just you’ll know it once God decides to reveal it to you.”

Enzo disconnected the phone in his hands without saying goodbye, once again. He didn’t want his mother to hear him cry. From his seat on the couch Enzo watched as the evening sunlight inched across the floor, feeling well-acquainted with the notion that God had been working against him. Outside his windows, life reacted in accordance with nature, leaving him behind. People are dying, but the show must go on. Time drew his hair out into unkept greasy curls. Only when the streetlights flickered on and his bottle was empty did it occur to him that another day of possibility had escaped, a single day replicated into years of staring at the same blank walls. The older he got the slower his metabolism worked, filling the void with tunnels of fat. Sleep was an achievement, the only kind that made him feel any sense of normalcy in comparison to other citizens of a city that never sleeps. Adults were supposed to be tired. Even in his dreams he was sleeping. The mind of a millennial too far gone to replenish that glittering kind of economic optimism. How did this happen?

The answer, which was more of a mystery than absolution, was one he had directions to. A map drawn in crayon from his bed in Brooklyn to Philadelphia. From there, he’d have to find a house. If the house were to materialize through the haze of cigarette smoke, he could find the doorway. The kind that opens to a flight of stairs going down down down into the shadowy depths of…he considered what happened there and deemed it Hell. But it was just a room, nothing more. It was a confined space no more unpredictable than the ocean, and no smaller a basement than a child can’t be dragged under, buried in tragedy within its bowels. 

The memory of that time and place remains partly clear. The flash of Polaroids dropping to the floor. The silhouettes of two men, whose erections remain unnaturally large in his adult mind. The thought makes him wince. It was a room behind a room. One mattress, the kind with springs and stains and synonymous with death. And he was beginning to believe a piece of him is still down there, lost behind the brick walls of a maze built by inner demons that refuse to set him free. 

Three

Among other things, Enzo needed a fix and to think happier thoughts. Before arriving at the gym, he’d become fixated on a chance encounter. That girl he used to know, Mackenzie Malone, with the kind of name a superhero’s girlfriend would have. In middle school he’d press himself into the Spiderman sheets covering his mattress and fantasize about saving her. Years later, she’d be sitting right next to him on the bus, unaware of who he was or that his childhood bedroom looked exactly the same.

Enzo startled awake as his head cracked against the window. Another pothole jettisoned him out of sleep. 

“You good?” 

He nodded at a girl to his left, blinking into consciousness through the spins of hangover. 

“Is this a bus or a fucking covered wagon,” he muttered. 

The girl suspired a cautious attempt at amusement, slipped a set of chunky red headphones over her ears. Fearing he’d missed his stop, he jolted up in his seat. It hadn’t been the first time Enzo ended up at the end-of-the-line because he thought he could rest his eyes responsibly. When notable landmarks gauged the bus’ location, he relaxed. The day wasn’t completely ruined yet. But it was still early. There were two missed calls from Carmichael on his phone, vibrating with urgency for return. What difference would it make if he called back? It’s not that Enzo didn’t care he might get fired; he simply no longer knew how to not be a disappointment. 

The sun was blazing, targeted at his face. He couldn’t escape its feverish rays. As he tossed up his hood, Enzo stole a glance at the person next to him. Her hair was in blonde moon buns, pointed liquid eyeliner, heavy hoop earrings. This girl turns heads, he thought. An immediately identifiable knockout who could kick the shit out of a truck driver. A rush of adrenaline shredded his insides—Enzo knew her.

“MK?” He asked, which was out of character. An accident really. Conversation terrified him.

Raising her polished eyebrows, she lifted a single earpad as though to ask, who the fuck are you? 

“You’re Mackenzie Malone, right?”

“Yeah? Why?” 

Holy Shit.

He tried to gather his bearings and ask how she’d been. Last he heard she’d taken a shot at acting, which hadn’t panned out thus far. Her edgy temperament agreed with the same affecting grief that comes with an abusive boyfriend and broken bones. If she wanted to perform for a living, she would have to do so in the interim at In-Cahoots, the high-end strip club near the financial district. “That’s the one,” she said flashing a set of pretty, crowded teeth. It was more of a sneer, disingenuous and tired. It made his face flush. The lines around her lips wore the agonized prognosis that men are entirely, virally predictable. He’d come off too eager. She’d probably attracted the wrong kind of attention from men her whole life. Living under violet colored lights on a stage since puberty. Men doing thing so shameful to her in their fantasies, not even their priest could know about it. In groups, men have always been allowed to act like little boys. It’s an illness of society. So long as they can see her from behind the curtain of anonymity, she was free game. They don’t understand she knows them better than they know themselves. And she sees through them, clearly. Even from the pole. Right into their pockets.

“You were always a nice to me,” he said. “I remember that. Maybe I’ll see you around?”  

Mackenzie eyed him from head to toe and shook her head. Enzo wanted to read her mind, to understand what she was thinking so he could change her opinion of him for the better. Finally, she responded, “You were nice too. Not many of them were.” Them. If he were one of the good guys, why didn’t she go steady with him back then? There were nameplates he’d have bought her. He would have kissed her up against a brick wall during free period, holding their hands together above her head. He would have said nice things to her. And in this moment, Enzo felt he could dissolve into the floor. She remembered him too.

Enzo ignored his boss’ third furious call to watch from the curb as the bus pulled into traffic. He was prepared to dismiss his ravings about the killer as incoherent mania fueled by vodka. But as he plunged toilets and sanitized towels, the thought manifested like a cluster of flickering lights in his skull. Enzo was no superhero, not even close. He was a voyeur with too much time on his hands. But It was becoming his responsibility. This kind of sentimental, yet unnatural notion filled him with shame. Yet he knew it was true: If there were a girl on that bus someone would want to murder, it would be her.

Weeks must’ve passed and he couldn’t let it go. And he wanted to change the conversation they had on the bus, turn it into something sweet like hard candy that would melt slowly in her mouth. Mackenzie should be living the kind of success story she’d been promised at graduation. Turns out his teenage dream, most likely to succeed, also saw her star burning out too quickly. He could read it all over her face; she didn’t smile much either, had to keep the hordes at bay. The conversation between them ruminated in his mind, distracting from his acrimony toward his boss, but especially the gym members. 

Enzo’s job was makeshift. He acted as a filler, taking on a myriad of roles for the gym, should the occasion call for it. A just-add-water livelihood bestowed to him as a favor, and his only security was knowing the owner would never be able to find another person willing to put up with the literal shit he handled daily. 

Shock-white towels lay in a reckless heap by the showers, sopping wet. At some point the men who frequented this joint forgot where the laundry bin was. Fishtailing his way through naked patrons, he concentrated his line of sight to one spot on the wall ahead of him, lest he decide to punch someone in the face. Carmichael trailed behind him shaking his chubby finger in the air and littering the locker room with obscenities. A years-long defense mechanism drew Enzo into himself, allowing his walls to close in on his thoughts. 

Amused patrons craned their necks to witness the show unfolding in the locker room. They dodged the hardened beer-gut jutting from under Carmichael’s exhausted Polo as he chased the weird maintenance guy. He’d been on Enzo’s ass all day, and in a litany of “motherfuckers” and “selfish pricks,” the man was causing a scene. Sure, Enzo had been late again, but why should this time be any different? “It’s the principle of the matter!” Carmichael bellowed in response. His cousin Sammy tried to raise the boy as his own for some reason, eventually leaving the kid to him as a kind of inheritance. Damaged goods. If Sammy were still alive, he wouldn’t be in this position, and Carmichael was in the mood to let Enzo and everyone else in on his personal thoughts. The tirade drew on, pulling Enzo away from his daydreaming. His boss’ words were cutting their way in, making Enzo’s blood pressure rise. Casual beratement didn’t tend to bother him unless Carmichael brought up Sammy. Mostly his mood was dependent on these cocksuckers and the way they treated this gym like a pigsty. And he couldn’t do nothing about it because it was, after all, his fucking job.

Tension electrified between Enzo and the crowed of egos casting judgement in his direction. He tried to make himself small. If he couldn’t be invisible, he’d settle for being less insecure in front of these real men. Except Carmichael’s ravings were true. Had it not been for Sammy’s favor Enzo would be out on on a curb begging for change. They tried to build him up when Sammy entered Enzo’s life. They give him the resources to be somebody. And he had the talent for it, being a boxer. In retrospect the old man was trapped in his obligation to accept his cousin’s final wishes. “Look after the boy, will ya Joe?” Sammy wheezed, stretching his oxygen tube. “Make sure he stays out of trouble.” But trouble stayed in him Joe realized as he watched the kid flush his talent down the drain. He was reckless. And ungrateful. When was the last time Enzo didn’t stink of shit?

Enzo picked up a towel with his callused hands, wringing it like a noose. A group of buddies were yammering in the wet room, laughing at him. Gripped tight in his hands, he strangled more water from another towel and tossed it into the tattered yellow tarp. One of the guys matched his evasive glare and made a point to piss on the floor in Enzo’s direction. That was all the motivation he needed to sabotage himself, allowing rage to supersede mindfulness. Acting thoughtlessly, Enzo craned his neck to argue with the old bastard. He’d had enough, he said, and wasn’t in the mood today. Pushing buttons, always saying the wrong thing. Despite Carmichael’s physical limitations and age, and shocking even the most patronizing onlookers, he snapped across the room like he was back in the ring. He pushed Enzo to the wet tile where he grabbed him by the collar and yanked him back up, snarling under his mustache. 

“Today?” he seethed. “You think I’ve got the time or the money to put up with any other kind of shit these days? Look at this place! It’s falling apart, Lorenzo! I’m too old and tired to be raising my voice at you, little boy.”

Releasing his collar, Enzo dropped back to the watery floor. There were too many eyes on him. He wanted to die. Carmichael took his time walking to the office as sparring partners pressed themselves against their lockers.

“You’re an embarrassment, Lorenzo. Sammy would be fucking embarrassed of you.”

Bam. His habits came back to hit him like a rouge wrecking ball. An itch enveloped his entire body like a rash. Don’t let them see you cry, he prayed as tears welled in his eyes. Scars between his legs were rising up like organs rejecting his body. He could never talk himself out of doing the inevitable, pain was too seductive. The man from the shower had dried off, dropping the towel on Enzo’s head as he stepped out of the wet room. Proudly walking back to his locker, he turned back and offered Enzo a final criticism with a sardonic frown: “Loser faggot.”

o    

In the alley with his sweatpants around his ankles, Enzo came on the stained brick wall. Heavy, deep breaths bated through eventual sobs. It had to be done now, there was no way around it. Once the poison was released under his skin, he had to bleed. Sliding down the back-entrance door, he ripped off his gray hoodie and hugged his knees. Years of damage had rendered his own naked body into a single brutalized white muscle. Scars ebbed over his shoulders and arms, across his nipples and lower back. Strikes of white tissue appeared on his legs where hair no longer grew. It was as though he’d been struck by lightning. Of his preferred options, he had to take wrist cutting off the list. Pangs of vicious memories screamed hot and bloody into his face: 

“How long you been doin’ this to yourself, bud? Mrs. Lastra, your son isn’t anemic, he’s a wrist banger. It’s a sign of self-harm that may collude with additional mental health disorders.”  

 His mother’s fingers trembled at her mouth. In his mind, Enzo was dismembering the doctor for exposing him so explicitly. 

 “What are you talkin’ about? A wrist banger? What the hell is that? He does boxing, doctor, that’s all.”

He’d tried stealing, deciding it was too risky. Beating the hell out of his wrists was the safest way to work out his aggression. At first that’s all it was, as all habits tend to gestate. Then came the cigarette burns on his neck and chest. Those led to people with clipboards coming to their home, Mom whimpering in the kitchen. Defending him. Defending herself. 

“My son, he’s got habits, alright? But this? This is just crazy. I know my son, I mean how does a little boy even learn to do something like this? Oh, God, I haven’t smoked since I got pregnant, so you can just put that pen down. I said, I do not hurt my child. Understand me?”

“When you say your son has habits...?”

A boxcutter really is the better tool. Straight razors don’t allow much control, he’d learned that. Years of practice and self-education with serrated kitchen knives, Mom’s leg razors and broken glass. Sharp objects he’d developed a palette for like fine wine. Each varietal unzipped the skin with cunning vindication that made his eyes roll to the back of his head. Although in the early years, cutting wasn’t the cleanest, it still proved the most effective long-term solution. 

His finest work was in the bathtub at 27, when he got released early for good behavior. If he couldn’t find a job after college, how was he going to get one after prison? The human body was a permanent cell. He had to get out, try for the great escape. By the sight of him, you’d know he should have died that night. He almost did and remembers getting close enough to see the deceiving white light of eternity. Except she wasn’t supposed to be home until after closing the salon. 

Dropping her keys in the candy dish by the door, Rita’s falsetto echoed through the silent house, asking if he were home. There’s a presence of death in a house where someone is dying. Looking back, Rita believes might have smelled it. Whisps of metal and soot were slung in layers of atmosphere, like perfume and cut grass through an open window. When no one answered, she began flipping on the lights, removing her jewelry from room to room. Crossing the hallway to her bedroom, her first reaction was to think the cat left an accidental puddle on the floor. But it wasn’t urine. Water was coming from the bathroom, rippling under the door. The mind subverts the truth in an attempt to protect itself. Rita wondered who left the water running. She said a prayer pushing the door open with the pads of her fingers and found Enzo there, submerged in an insidious baptism. His dilated, yellow eyes skimmed the reddened water. 

“Enzo, hunny? Oh my God. Okay. Lorenzo… Lorenzo! Oh, God! Somebody please! Okay, it’s gonna be Ok. Please, someone!”

 Rita screamed, falling hard on her knees as she slipped across the drenched floor in her nylons. The pearl sheen of her satin blouse changed color reaching in to pull her son out of the tub like a baby from the womb. She cried out with the agony of a mother giving birth. The pain of trying to close his wounds was just as congenital. There was enough blood drained from his body to make the tub overflow, and the best of her strength couldn’t lift his body out of the water. It wasn’t until she clamored for the landline to call 911 that she thought to drain the tub. Pushing him forward, Rita climbed underneath him to keep him warm. His lips were blue. Even as the EMTs burst through the door, she wanted to hold him, cover his body to shield him from shame. 

In an alley by the dumpsters, he could shameless. Through adolescense he satiated his sanguine habit like a junkie with no end in sight. It’s too late for me, he thought. And like so many times before, Enzo put the blade to his skin, pressed down, and took out the trash. 

o    

In the middle of the night, Enzo dozed restively in a tangle of blankets, writhing at the hinterland between dream and reality. He languished in the black hole of intoxication until the pain refused to be ignored. His eyes felt hard, like polished stones in the back of his skull. He had a heart like a sensory deprivation chamber. In the euphoric nothingness where he preferred to spend his time, a garish fanfare invaded his sleep. One of many alarms on his phone was erupting at full volume. Enzo cringed as he grew aware of the misery that awaited him, stalling the inevitable.

After a days-long bender, Enzo appeared out of nowhere. He woke up on the floor again, not a rare occurrence, but the fallout was endlessly disorienting. His body felt mangled. A puddle of drool clung to his cheek as he groaned, begging a higher power to end his suffering. He tried to remember headaches as a teenager, back when drinking was for fun and everyone had their never-drinking-again moment. His insides felt like a vat of melting plastic. The headaches got worse with every year. Had hangovers always been this bad? He couldn’t recall. Now, he couldn’t remember what month he was living in. 

He jutted a blind hand onto the floor in a search for his phone, willing the ostentatious ringtone to die. At last, its shape manifested in his hand from under the bed where he hit the silence button. Forcing his eyelids to peel from the crust of sleeping in all day was a chore, blinking through the optic neuritis. He needed water and Visine. The blood vessels in his face were dilated red in a cry for nutrients. Even his tongue felt like sandpaper. It was late afternoon; Carmichael had called three times before texting, what am I paying you for? Anyone else would have called him ruthless, answering Enzo’s calls with an instant and relentless beratement that the disheveled employee had come to know as endearing. This time he responded, lucky that his phone still had some charge. 

“Hey,” he coughed, “Yeah, sorry. No. I’ll be right in.”

A pile of Benzos were out of reach on the nightstand. He fumbled, knocking over his lamp and water glass in the process. Gravity paralyzed him on the floor. The will to pull himself together was a bitter pill to swallow. If he didn’t throw up now, the static asphyxiation of bleach would force him to yack when it was least convenient. Eventually he made it to the bathroom where he braced himself on the sink. Bile churned in his gut, activating the salivary glands. Moments later tears would stream down his face and he expelled his demons, rinsing them down the drain in murky dredges. For hygiene, the best he could do was toss some mouthwash between his teeth before leaving the safety of home for public transportation.

Vertigo was catching up to him, playing shadow boxer with his equilibrium. He decided to eat the Xanax in his pocket and rest his eyes on the bus. Every day was an experiment in quiet entropy. This was the cycle he’d become trapped in. Drowning in the undertow of working for money to spend on alcohol, which in turn put his mental state in jeopardy—his body, his job. There were moments of euphoria in the day, a ray of sunlight falling across the floor a certain way as he swept where time seemed to stop. Beyond the floating dust and antiseptic veil of cleaning chemicals was a parallel universe where he was happy. The version of himself that did everything wrong but got everything right. 

In the peripherals of his stolid eyes reflected a nemesis, who with bloody fists throwing uppercuts and hooks, was fighting only himself. 

Four 

Something takes over my body, this animal feeling. It’s carnal, but not necessary. At least not yet. Tomorrow might be a different story. Sometimes I like to change my mind. This feeling glitters. It sticks to my bones between the tendons and muscle tissue. Whatever it is, it’s made itself at home. 

I remember the first time I stole something, and this feels eerily similar. It wasn’t something stupid like a candy bar from the corner store, but a ring. A diamond one, with blue sapphires. All I knew about it is that it was expensive. It was all by its lonesome in a glass case in the middle of this store. Everything in there was old, and back then old meant bad or worse. But diamonds? Diamonds are forever. While the shop keeper busied herself in the basement, cradling timeless woodworks with her eyes and ensuring the delivery men didn’t chip the veneer, I was lingering in the alley avoiding home. As they descended into the restoration room, I slipped in expecting to instantly get caught. But there was no one else around. And I saw the ring, nothing else. Using my elbow, I broke the glass, snatched the ring and ran out the front door, carrying the evidence under my tongue. Why under my tongue? Well, I thought they’d never find it there. Or I could swallow it if things got sticky. I wasn’t planning to keep it anyway. Which is why it didn’t make sense at the time, the way it made me feel. I’d done something cruel, irreversible, surreal. My heart, god damn, my heart…felt like it was lifting me into the gray September sky. That’s what it feels like to take a life. 

I look in the mirror, wearing nothing but the black leather driving gloves I wrapped around her neck and honestly feel like I might orgasm. Death is sexy, that’s why it’s a sin. I want to carry around this secret like stolen piece of art, or a drug with biological effects dissolving in the tender pink flesh under my teeth. I want it forever. But, just like that stolen ring, keeping it was never an option. If you’re planning to get away with this, the easiest part has to be letting go. 

I’m two people, I realize. There’s the person standing here and there’s the reflection looking back. A clear, violent reality check that no matter who you are on the inside, this is the person everyone will see. Everyone’s a liar, even I know that. It’s the truth I’m looking for in other people, and most importantly, who I’m trying to become. 

The fear in her eyes really has me worked up, and I may be looking at a new problem. There’s no guarantee that I’ll be able to stop. I’m strong, but not impervious to the human condition. No physical body says no to a drug once its inside. The only way to get it out is to let it run its course. Trip, but don’t fall. That’s my motto. Right now, I see a man. I see every man who’s ever taken advantage of the moment, every man who’s memorized a plan and had the balls to follow through. 

And it’s going to be perfect. It’s going to be flawless. Executed with such verve that when I’m done telling all these lies, even I will start to believe them. I look at myself now and want to come, kiss myself in the mirror and imagine the fluids releasing. But the man behind me won’t allow it. Can’t let it happen. Keep it clean. He has to forget. He must understand on a visceral, bloody, insane scope of cognizance, that what happened tonight Never. Fucking. Happened. Shed a tear for it now. Drink away the feeling of loss. Use the steps. 

Bury yourself into the peripherals. Hatchet your way into nothingness. Turn the radio on. Wash the dishes. Watch some porn. Have another drink while it’s still raining. He can’t remember you by tomorrow. 

Five  

“Did ya do anything good today, hunny,” his mother asked, “I mean did you enjoy yourself at all?”

Enzo shook his head. He could hear Rita’s long, red manicure tapping nervously against the phone’s plastic shell. She traded it from ear to ear, holding it in place with her shoulder. There was no need to ask, his mother was always cooking something. Since she purchased the salon, she had more time to do what she enjoyed.

I hate myself and I want to die.

“They found another dead girl,” he muttered. Not what Rita was looking for, but it would be a good distraction. The grainy sound of a cast iron skillet scraping against the gas stove made Enzo’s hair stand up. He knew Rita had turned the stove off. She’d be sitting down to excitedly open a bottle of wine. Now he really had her attention. 

“What the hell are you talking about? What kind of dead girl?”

The cork to her favorite sweet red popped, its bulbous green bottle chugging in air as she filled a glass. 

“Some guy is goin’ around cutting people up and leaving their remains behind. This time it was in an industrial park. Actually, I used to see her on my bus route.”

His mother exclaimed incoherently. Even through the phone he could see her crossing herself. It brought a sad smile to his lips. 

“Oh, my god! You’re wearing me out. You know, just the other day I was watching this special on 20/20 and the exact thing happened in California to this waitress. Or was she a bartender? Except they caught the guy, but only like 20 years after the fact. What was his name…”

She was worked up now, circling the dining table like the murder were personal to her. Hopefully he’d given her enough ammunition to stimulate the conversation for the rest of the evening. The other nail shop ladies would be calling each other back to back after this. Enzo set a timer for 10 minutes to help regulate the discussion. He could terminate the call before running out of opinions and he risked segueing from gossip to a demonstration of malicious self-loathing. 

Ice clinked and rolled forward on his lips with the last sip of vodka. This would be a precursor for the rest of the bottle. He was already feeling loose as the timer rang. If he didn’t cut this short, he was sure to say something horrible, or reveal how well he knew the dead girls. Enzo told his mother to give Baxter a kiss. Rita’s obscenely old tabby cat was asleep on the couch and glared at Rita when she ruffled its fluff. 

“Say, that reminds me, when are you gonna come over? Because—”

Without bothering to say goodbye, he quietly disconnected the call and cradled his face with both hands. It would hurt either way, but at least his mother wouldn’t hear him cry. As a rule, he only visited his hometown on holidays. Picturing the red brick walkways reminded him of running. At the end of seemingly endless terracotta rowhouses, there was a boy with no friends and a chip on his shoulder. Eventually friendship was a challenge. Other boys his age lived on the same block, the kind with fathers who worked on cars, or at least father figures in the shape of their mom’s new boyfriend who, if they were lucky, played baseball with them in the street. Even without a man of the house, his own mother was doing her best to fill both roles. Through adolescence he clung to an idea that people would inherently be nice if he saw the good in them. Getting his first black eye on the way home from school was incidental, at least for a while. Routine, like tradition, takes time.

Jangling the keys in his pocket one afternoon, he concentrated on the sidewalk, careful to not make eye contact with anyone. Every step was an achievement in not getting blood on his good shoes. His white shirt was a lost cause, another cost for his mother to replace working two jobs. And the holes ripped into his pants had been sewn over more than once. Enzo no longer had it in him to cry, having trained himself into playing the role of a fighter at home and a pussy in the school yard. Either way he played with his action figures alone, in the company of imagination.

“Shit,” Enzo hissed, tossing his bag to the ground. He had become caught up in his thoughts, subsequently allowing his bloodied nose to trickle onto his favorite patent leather Oxford’s. For a moment it was worth it, to distract himself. He fantasized over the felicific arrival of a new girl in class. He shrugged off his jacket, folded it atop his bag. Mom would have to wash away his defeat in the laundry once again, so he swiped the toes off with a newly ruined shirt sleeve. The blood never came out, not completely anyway. But his mother tried, throwing her hands up as she closed the washing machine lid. 

“You alright, kid?”

The voice materialized behind him. Enzo perked his head, eyes wide like a gazelle in the wild preparing to run from a lion. The child in him continued to struggle with the difference between fight or flight. A pair of running shoes the color of dishwater stomped to a halt in front of him. Already close to the earth, he wished he could bury his head in the dirt. Enzo’s eyes scaled upward past the man’s gray sweatpants and scabbed knuckles, coming to rest on the dark bearded mouth from which the man had addressed him.         

“You deaf? I said are you alright.” Finally, he knelt to Enzo’s level. Chucking him under the chin, he observed the damage with pursed lips. “Close your mouth, kid. Makes you look like a patsy.”

The man cocked his head and stood up, bounding toward the glass entrance of his storefront. He pushed the door open with one hand, knocking a tangle of chimes as he entered. Leaving one foot in the jamb, Sammy Connelly sniffed and took a final drag of the cigarette, which brought him outside in the first place. He flicked the butt to the curb and disappeared into the gym from whence he came. Relieved to be alone again, Enzo dusted off his bag, taking advantage of the moment to unleash a bilious sonnet under his breath. Better now than at home—his mother had put soap in his mouth before and would do it again. It might have been a typical day had he not entered the gym, but Sammy had other plans for him. The chimes rang again as the bearded stranger’s face burst around the door. 

“Christ, I ain’t got all day, kid,” he said, blinking inscrutable black eyes. “Get in here. It’s time someone showed you how to look after yourself.”

The rules were always subject to change: either don’t talk to strangers at all, or cling to every word they said. Today it would be the latter. Enzo jutted inside the building. He stammered an apology, though he didn’t know why. It killed him to question every decision he made. 

“Rule number one, you never apologize. And you never explain. If you do something wrong, just own up to it and don’t do it again. Name’s Sammy, by the way. Who are you.”

Sammy ushered Enzo into the gym and locked the door behind him. He must’ve passed this place countless times and never thought to look inside. Similarly, Sammy had seen him more than once, crawling home with his tail between his legs after a scuffle. What’s a 10-year-old supposed to do in a boxing ring, anyway? The space was dim and gray. Only two fluorescent lamps illuminated the space, humming voicelessly over the sparring ring and in the office upstairs. Their black wiring swayed against the current of an industrial air conditioner. Concrete and mirrors encapsulated every wall, and the austere mix of sweat and bleach was ornament. Maybe it was the kind of thing you had to adjust into, but Enzo wasn’t sure he could. 

“What’s the time?” Sammy snapped his fingers. “Aye, what’s the time?”

It was 3:30, which meant something to Sammy. He was training a class soon but told Enzo to toss his things on a folding table along with his shoes. They had one hour. 

“What are you wearing a tuxedo for? Catholic school kid, huh? It’s alright, I was too. Except the nuns were worse back in my day. See this?” He held his hands out to Enzo, where faint indelible scars had stretched over his knuckles over time. “They used to whip your hands with a ruler if you slacked off. Which didn’t take much back then. You got a shirt on under all that junk? Alright, that’s all the gear you’ll need. And take your shoes off, too.”

This felt like a recurring dream he had, which may have been reason to panic. It wasn’t the first time Enzo had taken his clothes off for a grown man. Sammy sighed, turning in place as he stretched his arms considering where to begin. Enzo was fragile and effeminate, like keeping his hands clean was a way to pass the time. Even a man with no children of his own knew this kind of chagrin was unusual.

“Look, no one’s going to hurt you in here. Not on purpose anyway, that’s kind of the point. I’m gonna show you how to defend yourself. Because I’m your friend. Now, here on the mat like this? Yeah, on the line. This is how you’re gonna set your stance up. Evenly distributed right? Alright, so first thing I’ll show you is a jab…”

He’d said an hour, but Sammy stopped the session after 45 minutes to clean up. The abruptness left Enzo tender, worrying Sammy had grown impatient with him. It’s not that he didn’t want to be there, learning to box was simply not part of his routine. Deviating from the plan was difficult for him. There were boundaries he’d cultivated for himself. Schedules let Enzo know he was in control. Then there was his body, so pale and scrawny. Sammy said he’d been spending too much time with women, but no judgement. Whatever that meant. 

Generally, his mood felt lighter that evening, if not conflicted. Heating up his dinner in the microwave was customary. He ate silently at the dinner table with the TV on, listening to the harrowing story of a man Mom used to talk about. They’d convicted him of murdering a woman, just one. The other eight women would have to wait their turn for justice, which might take the Frankford Killer cutting down another victim. It would be his first in six years, and entirely possible since the guy they caught was black. Sketches of the real killer showed a white guy, but that never stopped the police anyway. This news was unnerving. Mom would be home late, as she usually was on Fridays, and Enzo worried for her safety. 

His small hands shook holding the remote, switching off the TV, running back and forth locking the doors. In the silence, hiding under his covers, Enzo thought Sammy was right. It was time he learned to defend himself. And for the first time in a long time, Enzo was optimistic about waking the following morning. Sammy wanted to work with him again, setting aside time together every day for the rest of the week. And they were on the house, his sessions. That’s what Sammy called them. And thus, he felt obligated to attend. 

“Now look at me.” Sammy wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He knelt to Enzo’s eye-level. “Was that so bad?” Enzo shook his head, it wasn’t. “Good. So, there nothing to explain or apologize for, right?”

 Right.

o     

A lonely man in love is a man full of bad ideas. Punch-drunk and cloying for release, Enzo entered In-Cahoots and immediately knew he didn’t belong. But he dressed the part, wearing all black, a long-sleeved tee shirt and shiny joggers from the thrift store. A pair of black rimmed glasses rested on the bridge of his nose, because he craved a good look at the stage and needed to look like someone else. Two birds, he thought. The bouncer took Carmichaels money at the door, stolen from the gym’s office safe. 

Everything was deep blue, speckled with tiny stars reflecting over the walls from several disco balls. Enzo explored the floor in a haze. You couldn’t touch anything that didn’t look wet and shiny. This was a different planet. He felt the way a strip club was indented to make a man feel, suddenly very aware of his dick and the location of his wallet. Topless women approached him every few feet as he stooped his shoulder low, trying to make a discreet move to an equally obscure table. When he claimed a seat near the back, he declined bottle service but ran to the bar. The service girls crossed their arms in annoyance.

It took three vodkas doubles to get to the main event. The lights dimmed as she commanded the stage. Men in the front row were offered plastic flashlights. Then the song began.

Mackenzie looked different from the girl he’d met on the bus. Her makeup was matte, dark shades of eyeshadow framed an already perfect face. Her lips looked bigger too. It was magic. Men dashed beams of light over thed stage, revealing pieces of her body. She tossed a chocolate colored silk robe to the ground and did a left hook on the pole.

Never gotta sweat that

Never gotta sweat that

The song itself was making him hard. It was a chance he had to take. Rubbing the head of his dick into his leg, he quickly glanced at his surroundings. No one even knew he was here. As the pole spun, Mackenzie changed positions, spreading her legs upside down in a way that defied gravity. Enzo’s heart pounded violently into his chest. He slipped his hand under his joggers. In anticipation of this moment, he went commando. Even though his arms were shaking, he couldn’t stop. The more she moved, the faster his hand worked. In high school he never dreamed of becoming this lucky. She was untouchable back then, and still is. 

Mackenzie slid to her hands and knees on the floor. Flipping her hair in a wave of blonde, she backed her ass into the pole, back and forth. Eventually, she crawled to the edge of the stage and allowed a man to unhook her bra. As she laid flat on the onyx colored stage, Mackenzie arched back into a tunnel and exposed her breasts. Dollar bills rained over her like a storm of green leaves.

Even when the sky comes falling

Even when the sun don’t shine 

Enzo’s breathing tightened; his nostrils flared. The warning signs in his head were telling him to loosen his grip, but he couldn’t stop. The end was near.

I got faith in you and I 

So put your pretty little hand in mine

Mackenzie threw her hair around, slipping back onto the pole like she was swimming in clear water. There was an art to how she moved. In spite of the context, she appeared innocent. Like a mermaid testing out her new legs. There was a grace to it. Enzo remembered watching her during pep rallies when she was a cheerleader and he was a nobody. He jerked off to her then, too. Things don’t change. For both their sakes, he prayed she couldn’t see him hiding in the nosebleeds, leering through the dark. 

The song was nearing its end. Enzo wanted to edge until the last note. She removed her panties and smelled them before tossing them behind her. Cheers resonated throughout the club like she’d won the Superbowl. It couldn’t wait anymore; his body wasn’t giving him the option. Enzo erupted under the table before he had a change to grab the cocktail napkin. He grunted into his chest, thankful for the shimmery tablecloth encompassing his lower half. 

We could do it baby, simple and plain

Cause this love is a sure thing

 In under four minutes, Enzo felt like his life had changed. Mackenzie Malone as a person was a religious experience. The only thing he would change is every single person in this room. They made it dirty. They didn’t feel the way he did. Even in his wildest dreams he hadn’t expected to be ambushed with so much surprise. Though nothing about this was elegant about his purpose here, it also wasn’t meant to be. 

Reality set in once his skin felt less sensitive. This was still a strip club, and he was still the guy who came under a table. He felt pathetic, but not ashamed. Not as long as she never found out. Who else has to pay $50 to see a girl naked? He couldn’t even afford the cover fee, had to swipe it from his boss. He was disgusted with himself and with his job, but what did he expect? That’s what he came here for. Enzo was a glutton for punishment.

Mackenzie would be out any second to work the floor. It was time to leave. He didn’t want to risk getting caught in the audience of a strip club where Mackenzie just told him she works. Ducking his head low, he homed in on the first exit, pausing momentarily to pickpocket the loudest in a group of drunken college kids. 

At security, a large black man with a cord hanging out his ear tried to make conversation. Enzo dodged him. He’d been caught stealing before and the resulting chase was never fun. 

“Leaving already?” the man said. “C’mon, man! What, you didn’t find what you were looking for?”

“No, I found it,” he muttered. “Have a good night.”

“Mm-hm.”

A line of cabs waited outside. Clamoring into the first one, a bored looking Jamaican driver asked where he was going. Enzo raced through the wallet he’d stolen to find out how far he could go. The security guard was touching his earpiece. Enzo saw his brow’s furrow through the glass door, then his jaw drop.

“Drive,” Enzo said. “Now.”

As the cab pulled out, the guard ran into the street. He was shouting into a walkie talkie. Enzo realized he wasn’t breathing. He was in the clear. The driver asked him again where he was going. “The address,” he demanded. “Please.” Enzo rested his head back, feeling the sweat drip down his temple, and started laughing. They came to a stop light and he finally provided his address. Smiling out at the city where a morning sun was breaking through the towers. In that moment he was happy, but only artificially. Something was in his hand. When he looked down, his smile dropped. There was semen everywhere. He’d came into his hand and held it there the entire time. It was smeared across his victim’s wallet, probably even the glass strip club door. 

A bag of was blow at the gym, in the janitor’s closet. He wouldn’t get to sleep before work, not at his own place anyway. Maybe he could nap at the gym before opening. Was it worth it, he asked himself? Yes, he concluded. He felt like he’d gotten away with murder. It was a memory he never wanted to forget, etching Mackenzie’s body on the stage into his brain. It would be on his mind all day. Her pussy wasn’t shaved. 

“Actually,” Enzo said, rapping on the cab’s plastic separator. “Actually, sir, change of plans…”

 Six

Excrement bludgeoned the last men’s room stall again. Enzo stood with a mop in his hand considering a course of action. Immediately despondent at the sight of it, he’d been staring at the mess for so long it was as though he’d passed through it into another dimension. The conversation he overheard behind a row of lockers brought him to a solution: burn the whole fucking place down with everyone in it. 

“Is the janitor still over there?”

“Yeah, dude, he’s just staring at all that shit like a robot.”

“Maybe he’s defective.”

“Or maybe he should’ve just gone to college. Then he wouldn’t have such a shit job.”

“I see what you did there. Are you proud of yourself? Are you proud of your little joke?”

“Fuck off, Tony.”

Knocking the mop against a wall, he reached into the dolly and pulled out a pair of rubber gloves and a spray bottle. This job was getting done one way or another, and like before he’d have to dive right in. As he scrubbed shit off the walls, he wondered how this even happens. And more importantly, when? The irony wasn’t lost on him either, on his knees again, working. The college diploma framed over Mom’s mantle worth was less than this guy’s bowel movement. The day was almost over, meaning very little to Enzo. He had no choice but to do it all over again in the morning. Not before catching a buzz tonight.

Isolation is slouching into the depths of an underground bar when you know you should be home sleeping. Big K would be working behind the bar, feeding a handful of miscreants tonic for their sorrows. No one in this joint had a face worth looking at. Strips of red light revealed the grizzled vacancies on the mugs where a personality used to be. The double pour of vodka waited for him at the bar. 

“Look what the cat dragged in.” Big K greeted Enzo facing the wall, his hands busy in the register. “What’s good?”

“Fuck all, man. Fuck all.” 

 Enzo gulped back his drink. Circumstance had made the two familiars, but neither would consider the other a friend. They hadn’t even been friends in high school, back when Enzo thought he could make something of himself and Marcus Rodgers dealt ketamine in the boys bathroom. Now that K was for college kids, he’d exchanged his practice for the hard stuff. But the name stuck, proving some people do peak in high school.

Lighting a cigarette, Enzo spoke to the floor. Today he wanted something to talk about. 

“I did meet someone,” he offered. “A while back.”

“You finally meet your dad?”

Enzo asked for another double and rolled his eyes. 

“Do you remember that girl, Mackenzie, from high school? Mackenzie Malone?”

Big K chucked his head in skeptical amusement and asked what she’d be doing with his tired ass. Just an encounter on the bus, he explained. The likelihood of his meeting her again like that were slim, he knew. Because he wanted it to mean something. And as history had shown time and again, what he wanted and what he was given were rarely the same. 

To emphasize his opinion explicitly, Big K dropped his dish towel in the sink and leaned forward with both hands on the bar. His point was clear, albeit in jest. They were, after all, slaves to the same dingy hole in the wall.

“That bitch weakens legs, man. Sophomore year she gave me head in detention. Right in front of Mr. Cahalan. The old fuck fell asleep at his desk and I made my move.” Big K scrutinized Enzo and shook his head. “Malone is so far out of your league you may as well be on the moon.”  

Although he was right about Mackenzie, Enzo hated Big K’s approach, nonetheless. Drunken logic told him to break a glass on the bar and slap the bartender upside his prickly, shaved head. Unfortunately, Big K also had a temper, and came back with a right hook to the eye. Enzo’s unconscious body cracked on the grimy tile floor, scattering in pieces like building blocks. He came to halfway through being tossed outside with the garbage. Looking for company in a seedy bar nestled in the malingering red-light district was the wrong idea, and yet Enzo knew he would be back.

o    

 For the first time in a week, he woke up in his bed, facedown and reeking of sewage. Clear sinewy film on his mouth indicated he’d throw up at some point, probably from a concussion. Why did he do that anyway? Big K was lowkey, but still not a person to fuck with. At the time, several drinks deep, throwing a tantrum felt like the masculine thing to do. Enzo wondered, dropping handfuls of ice in a plastic bag for his eye, why grown men can’t play nice when a girl enters the picture. All he wanted was to talk about something good for once. Overnight, his eye had completely swollen shut. Perception is reality, or so he’d heard. Getting stuck in the wrong perspective can make a person go crazy. 

Enzo tried to fumble back to his bed but got caught in the spins where gravity brough him to his knees. He was definitely still drunk, but lucid enough to want the congealed blood out of his nose. Writhing on the foul bathroom tile, he laughed at his own absurdness. It was almost like he’d stood up for himself last night. But only almost. The bile in his gut churned, finally unleashing the consents of his stomach into the tub. One round done. He hoped it was over. It’s never over. Sweat trickled out of his hairline. Taking advantage of a moment’s peace, he thanked God for relief. God responded with a blinding headache. Minutes passed until all his gut had left to offer was the tongue hanging from his mouth. He wadded up toilet paper and blew his, emptying swollen sinuses.

Light appeared though the blinds, and it occurred to him that in an alternate life he would have had a beautiful day. At only 5am, his day was over before it even began. Crawling to the mattress, he pulled a blanket up and cocooned himself into a fetal position. Childlike desire for his mom brought tears to his eyes. The walls vibrated around him, threatening to cave in. Big K was right. He was alone, beyond the moon. A ghost on Mars.  

 Seven

Variations of this moment had been conjured out of his mind through the last 15 years. Enzo was finally close enough to smell her. Kissing her neck with restored lips, he thought she would taste like cake batter. He watched with admiration as her tiny shoulders flexed to let down her hair. She turned, allowing him to unhook her bra like pulling apart the ribbon on a gift box.

“Don’t,” he whispered. “I like your hair like that. Reminds me of the day you found me.”

“It’ll get messy,” Mackenzie said, wrapping her hair in a ponytail.

 “I like messy,” he replied, biting his lip.  

Enzo didn’t need any more time. His body was ready. It almost hurt how beautiful she made him feel. Crawling behind him on her bed, he closed his eyes and felt her wavy hair fall over his face. The hem of his shirt was in her fingers, pulling up until his skin was bare. Maybe in semi-darkness the very sight of him wasn’t so bad, he worried. But she already knew the story written over his body and said she could read between the lines. She considered his scars with tenderness, leaving a trail of pink butterflies from his neck to his navel where she kissed him. Enzo’s sweatpants and briefs were on the floor, Mackenzie’s hands were in his hair. It had been almost two years since a girl had touched him, and he expected to feel shame. With her, he was naked, not invisible. He was able to feel like a man. 

“I’ll run you a bath,” Mackenzie said. “Don’t go anywhere. I have something for you.”

“Is it you?”

A bath right now was a lovely gesture, but he was bursting with testosterone. Do the right thing, he reminded himself. Do the romantic thing.

Tea candles burned like fireflies around the clawfoot tub. Mackenzie guided him in by hand before disappearing into the darkness of her home with a seductive smile. The water was purple. Bath salts. His muscles were sore. This was the best thing that ever happened to him, maybe even the moment of his life. He rested his head on a towel draped over the rounded edge. Steam filled his lungs as the water swallowed him whole. I bet she feels like God, he thought. He closed his eyes and smiled, imagining the feel of her in his mouth. 

“Enzo?” she called. “Lorenzo?”

A shadow darted by under the door. 

“Yeah?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. There was no response. “Don’t you dare fall asleep on me, girl,” he chided. 

Enzo felt himself grow hard under the water. He thought she was playing a game, like hide and seek, and called for her to join him. Mackenzie’s tone was off. Something in her voice had changed. Closer to confusion than fear, but definitely not seduction. The door swung open in the mist. She was holding a drink, vodka on ice. The sight of it caused a medicinal burn down his esophagus. Whatever veil of sensuality Mackenzie was wearing before had vanished, her face now paralyzed in gaping horror. She screamed, dropping the glass into shattered splinters on the floor where the alcohol set ablaze. 

“What did you do?” she screamed. It was his mother, wearing Mackenzie’s face like a mask. Streaks of red rolled off her chin and down her soft of her chest. “Baby, what did you do?”

A circle of fire engulfed him, the candles retaliating against anything optimistic this dream had to give him. Blood churned in the tub, boiling around his broken body. It poured out of his eyes, dripped from his ears. He could taste the iron of it as his faults consumed him, irreparable flaws that cremated any hope he had for love. He wanted to help her understand; the scars were only healed on the outside. Inside, he was still screaming. Sammy’s voice rang in his ears. Never apologize. Never explain. Unwelcome images avalanched out his memory, the deceased trainer wiping his hairy mouth with his hand. Mackenzie was screaming on her knees, drenched in rivulets of despair. She demanded answers. She wanted to know why. There was no other option.

“Please, don’t go,” he begged. Water splashed over the floor in waves as he stood up. He held his wrists out to show her the long vertical scars, bursting as they unzipped at the hands of some invisible force, an imaginary friend. As his eyes turned black, coagulating from the flames, he offered an explanation the best way he could: “Sometimes I bleed.”

Enzo gasped awake on his bed, reeling in horror. A minute passed before he even knew where he was. Never had a nightmare been so personal, so deliberately masochistic. It was like he was suffocating in a hollow grave. Heaving his way through breaths, he realized the bed was wet and patted between his thighs, hoping he hadn’t pissed himself. Enzo’s head fell back on the sweat soaked pillow. Fire alarms and hammers pounded inside his chest. It was early, close to 6 a.m. There was no way he’d be able to get back to sleep like this. He considered migrating to the couch and stood to remove his drenched clothes. The yellowed fabric of his shirt trapped him in like a cave as he yanked it overhead. Childlike body issues enflamed, recalling day camps spent wearing an oversized tee in the pool. Being laughed at for his insecurities. Vulnerability befell him, and he wondered why the past has to haunt us at our weakest moments.

Tenderness transformed into rage, like a midnight earthquake. Enzo had been prone to mood swings, but never knew himself to transition so quickly. A nearby water glass cracked into pieces on the floor, which he used to berate his forearm.

The kitchen sink felt miles away. He needed water in the worst way, which he toped from its faucet with the verve of an addict. With his metabolic erection gone, he could finally urinate. This was less of a nightmare and more of a hallucination. As though he dropped acid listening to death metal. His brain felt like a battery being microwaved. The fan oscillated over the bed to where he sat at his desk. Lighting a cigarette from the ash tray, he Google searched what was happened to him. Currents of electricity slithered through his veins like strange eels. This would have to be the worst fever he ever had, even worse than the detox he endured in prison. His hands twitched as he continued to scroll, thinking about jerking off to porn instead. He stopped, pausing to review statistics of unassisted withdrawal deaths. Jesus Chris, how long was this shit supposed to punish him for? Maybe he was cracking under the pressure that he might be too far gone. Sobriety had done a number on him. It had been less than two days.

Last week’s disastrous encounter at the bar shook something loose, a pearl of insight that had long ago rusted in his head. If Mackenzie were out of his league, he would have to change leagues. Before he’d come undone, Enzo wasn’t entirely unfortunate looking. He had a darkness to him, inherited from an Italian mother, and his father’s tall-ish lean physique. He was the kind of man who had the rare ability to look almost better with cuts and bruises. That was the boxer in him whom he tried to forget. Until now. 

Most nights, when he closed the gym for the day and killed the mumble rap blaring from the stereo system, he welcomed the silence. Like darkness, silence provided an absence of being that allowed Enzo to move though time like a ghost. Although it was uncomfortable wanted to face himself in the wall-length mirror. He stripped of his clothes and analyzed the misshapen body in its entirety. Black and blue inflammation on his eye dissolved into a gray half-moon on his left cheek bone. Enzo had his work cut out for him. 

Running his fingers through his long hair, he sat in shock at what he’d just read. As if the diagnosis weren’t completely obvious to him after past experience. The first step—he’d heard this before—is admitting you have a problem. When he pled guilty to stalking, he managed to escape without a conviction. His mother hired a good lawyer who reduced the charges to a misdemeanor, lowering the sentence to six months behind bars instead of two years. In lockup, no one bothered to hold his head up to vomit, or wipe the tears from his bulging eyes. How could he continue like this again? There wasn’t time or money to writhe on the bathroom floor throwing up all day. And he sure as hell couldn’t afford health insurance, let alone rehab. Maybe that’s not even what he was trying to achieve here. Any booze stocked in his apartment was dumped at the beginning of his decision to get clean. He slammed a palm onto the desk. “Fuck!” He got the idea to try something new, realizing it doesn’t have to be this way forever. 

In his late teens, a similar predicament set him back. As a pill-head, and still young enough that he merited a second chance, Rita never left her son’s side through the withdrawals. She mopped up his piss, scrubbed his vomit, held him down on the bed when the hallucinations came. There was so much effort and hopefulness on her part that he couldn’t ask her to do it again. Recovery would always be a lonely road with no time to waste. The plan was to pick up Xanax later and use it responsibly throughout the day. Not to abuse, like he had before. The pills would be an anchor to hold him steady this round, when willpower and chaos collided. And he would run like hell, work his body into the ground at the gym to sweat it out. It physically hurt, he remembered, at 19. There was no telling how it would go down this time. But he was willing to try.

The very idea of becoming sober had him itching for a gram of blow. Immediately a hot rash gnawed at his flesh, urging him to self-harm again. Cutting was the next best option, even if he bled himself dry. While not logical, it was a solution. He could only work on one addiction at a time. Right now, he’d try anything to get his mind off the short-circuiting electric forest of his nervous system. Grappling with his phone, he was prepared to call his mother. To rehash the same idealistic notion of becoming a whole person. Rita would answer the phone for him, no matter what time. She’d told him to call whenever he was feeling like he might “go over,” which he only half understood. 

The question presently on his lips was unanswerable, one Rita been tasked with concluding before and never could. Who were the men who did that to me, Ma? It wasn’t Sammy, not the first time. That was different, their little secret. He couldn’t risk telling her that his boxing career was built on the expectation he would never grow hair down there. When he did, Sammy put Enzo on a shelf and hardly looked back. For a second time, he was abandoned by a father figure.

It was too much for her, she said, to know that the clues to this mystery would never put themselves together. But it would kill her to know the man who came to dinner at their house every Sunday was fucking her son through junior high. Enzo heard his mother asking God, how and when these criminals got their dirty hands on him. She always dropped him off at school in the early days before work, and his father would pick him up before abandoning them both. How did no one, not a single person, notice his absence during all that time? No, he didn’t remember the building where it happened or the faces of his abductors. There were other boys he didn’t recognize that were never heard from again. The two men who stole his soul, even before Enzo recognized his own humanity, were somewhere out there free as birds. It was a viscous kind of murder, he thought, the kind that doesn’t let you die. The kind of evil that won’t stay dead. It was eating him alive.

Rita worshiped Sammy. Enzo let her. Because Sammy used his mouth on him in ways the other men never reciprocated. He felt obligated to let it happen after the first time. When he was cleaning blood off his shoes and looked up. The then-stranger’s hard-on pressed urgently away from those loose gray sweatpants. Enzo had a choice, he could have left and gone straight home. But he didn’t. Sammy said come inside, and he did. They both did, trading places over the years until Sammy grew tired of tasting the same cake. That was the difference, Enzo leveraged, between the first two men and Sammy. The latter, he’d grown to love. It wasn’t average, and maybe it was cruel, but Sammy provided something he never had. A father. Figure. To this day, his mother would never guess something was wrong. And what are the odds? How did one boy draw in so much affection from the next boy’s boogeyman. 

He pulled at his cigarette, recalling Sammy’s lips.

“Let’s get cleaned up. Don’t want your mother mad I let you go home all sweaty. The showers are back this way…”

The older he got, the more suspicious he became. It hadn’t occurred to him before that Sammy’s cousin Joe Carmichael might know, but Enzo never asked. And there he stayed. Dead in the water. Calling his mother would be a mistake, a conversation filled with words he’d regret later that day. 

He put the phone down, considered shattering it on the wall to protect his mother from himself. As he rubbed his temples, he didn’t see the bird flying at his window, a direct target as it cracked the glass. Enzo startled like he heard a gunshot; the shock threw him from the chair to the floor. Pulling himself toward the window’s ledge, he inched up to examine the damage. 

Tiny slivers of red slipped into the windows cracked glass, glowing like a painted spider’s web. It was a crow the size of his gym shoes. Opening the window, he studied the bird, whispering a prayer that it could still be alive. Wasn’t there a superstition about birds? If one flew into your home, it was good luck. What about if it died trying? He held the bird in his hands, a feeling he’d never experienced before. Its weightless fragility, the empty look in its eyes. He never had a chance. Its neck was broken.

Memories are traitors; they have nothing but contempt for the person whose mind fires off all the neurons to give the past a place to exist. Sometimes he remembered Sammy when they first met, who side-eyed him with, Enzo feared, suspicion. But it wasn’t. It was something else entirely. Enzo gawked up at him from the sidewalk, the taste of blood still at the back of his throat. 

“Who’s your dad, kid?” Sammy asked.

“Dom Lastra,” Enzo told him. 

The man pursed his lips and nodded. Sammy looked left, then right like he was crossing the street. There was no one around. It was early fall, late September. Leaves were piled high atop the city in bursts of orange, pink and red. The trees weren’t dying, just disappearing for a while, shutting themselves down for winter.

“I thought so.”

As the braces on Enzo’s teeth came out, Sammy’s interest in him dissipated. He ruminated incessantly on what Sammy was thinking or who he was with. At 14, he crept into Sammy’s office, waiting for a training session to end. Busying himself with the clutter, Enzo pilfered in the man’s desk. When he appeared in the doorway, Enzo held up his discovery, a Polaroid. “What’s this?” he asked. “Is this me?” Sammy hissed, where did he get that, snatching the picture for his hands. 

Why, he asked on so many occasions, had God made Enzo the object of so much depravity? In his teen years, Enzo had to be careful who he let it. One wrong person could catch on about his hustle, nights spent sloughing the streets when school was out to make some money in a stranger’s car. Married men in their midsize sedans wrapped their mouths around Enzo’s cock, or vice versa. Every time the car door slammed shut on his way out, he left a little more self-esteem behind.

It was too late to do anything about the men who took Enzo for themselves, he’d never remember who they were. Not on his own. Sammy was untouchable territory. Enzo wasn’t willing to dissect their relationship yet. All he knew was a life spent as an experiment in daddy issues. But he did love Sammy, and believed the feeling was mutual. At least he thought he did. All that time had to mean something, right? He didn’t want it to be a waste. The Sammy died, neither of them had anything to say out loud. A secret language in their eyes whispered things that made Enzo cry. When his brain dredged up the past like this, he tried to treat these thoughts like the dead crow now in his hands. He threw it away.

Five

In public, his hands reverberated with unease. He clawed back at the inevitable mood swings, digging his nails into the vinyl seat of the bus. Clenching his jaw, Enzo concentrated the blood into the tips of his fingers, hoping no one would notice the wacko having an attack of panic. Mackenzie was on his mind, an unlikely motivation to get sober. But a motivation, nonetheless. Moving forward he would do better, recover what he’d lost. She did show up on the bus a handful of times since there last meeting. The first time, sitting in the back, he witnessed her boarding. His legs jumped anxiously as he stared at the back of her head, memorizing the freckles on her shoulders. If Mackenzie saw him, he would’ve said hello. Except, she never looked up from her phone long enough to be aware of someone watching her. 

Typically, she got off after him, he noted. But not on Sundays. From what he gathered, neither of them had anywhere special to be. Most of the time, she was alone, shopping or running errands. He memorized her drink orders and what food she liked to eat. As luck would have it, he needn’t be the one to provoke contact. The synergy would have been bizarre anyway. It was Mackenzie, in a visibly good mood, who saw Enzo. Gripping the handrail, she did a double-take. He’d been caught staring blankly out the window when she captured his attention. As if by magic, with a polite smile, she waved. 

The Xanax he’d taken was struggling to press down on the withdrawals but did provide Enzo some room to breathe. They sat together at a wicker table in some French patisserie in Midtown. In sweatpants, Enzo felt he didn’t belong here. But he’d taken the chance. Seized the moment. And here they were. 

Mackenzie rolled the stem of a tiny daisy between her thumb and forefinger, having plucked it from a small blue vase centered on the table. She was wondering what she was doing here with him. The wave wasn’t even meant to be an inviting gesture. It was just a thoughtless reflex. Mackenzie respected a man who was polite though, and he was bold to approach. It would never go anywhere, obviously. Enzo may be sweet, but he was clearly broke. And he was dealing with the shakes, another red flag. They could be friends, she thought. Good friends were lacking these days, and Mackenzie decided she wasn’t a great judge of character thus far. So here she was, feeling at the very least he was probably a good listener. 

The man in her life had a lot of money. When Enzo asked what the guy did for a living, she said he takes pictures. And lies. Men with money are always liars. It’s second nature to them. And she blamed herself for moving in with him too quickly. That’s how she learned his passwords, or that he clenched his hands when he placated her. All she had to do was observe him to know he was lying. And still she made the mistake of reading his emails. His inbox revealed an embarrassing amount of transactions from some lame sugar baby website—everyone wants to be a sex worker until it’s the only option they have left. There was more than enough correspondence on the subject of little girl fetishes to fill his inbox twice over. 

One day she printed all the emails and laid them out side by side on the hardwood floor. She hid in the bedroom and waited for him to explain himself. Just so she could say she confronted him like a man before breaking it off. Instead, he broke her hand. Threw her over the kitchen island. Heavy things followed. The scales of an abusive relationship are always tipping in a direction, and usually not the one in favor of idealism. 

Enzo was furious a man would treat a woman like that. Shifting in his seat, he asked if Mackenzie wanted someone to break his neck. After a pensive pause, she got up and walked away. He had to run after her in a panic. The last thing she needed was another man coming to her rescue. This time she could rescue herself. With his hands up, he apologized. He didn’t mean anything by it, and coerced her back to the table. The hurt in his heart fought back against the truth, that it was him who needed rescuing. Enzo wanted her to give him a chance to be the man he wanted to be. But he knew she could live the rest of her life never thinking about him again. This moment, a simple coffee outing, could just as easily be a stray thought overpowered by the grander scheme of things. 

Heavy silence separated them. At this rate, they’d end up talking about the weather. She drank her latte, pursed her lips, waiting to see how he’d respond. She set a boundary and it was up to him where to go with it. Excusing herself for the ladies’ room, she turned on her heels and retrieved her purse. She didn’t trust him yet. That hurt. But it made sense, he supposed. Naturally, he still had peer over his shoulder to watch her walk away. The lines of her body were well defined in black leggings. Her honey colored hair was draped down her back from a high ponytail. Families ambled by, either with strollers or someone’s grandparent on their arm. The neighborhood was all foliage, brick and mortar. Happy people. What they fuck was he doing here? 

He realized that the sunshine was different here. Or maybe it was the same sun and for once he wasn’t alone. This neighborhood was only a few minutes away by bus, but Enzo felt like he needed a passport. Moving forward into the afternoon, visibly, in the company of a friend. This might be the best day of his life, he considered. If not for Mackenzie, he would have ordered a black coffee, but opted for tea thinking it would settle his stomach. Taking a moment to stretch his arms, he pulled out his phone and found himself reading a text message. His mother had called him twice. Invested in the story now, Rita sent a link to the article. Its headline fogged his concentration. He slipped another Xanax under his tongue. 

Noticeably somber, Mackenzie asked Enzo if something were wrong. 

“No, I’m good. Was just thinking about something stupid.” 

“It’s not stupid. What’s up?”

“Do you ever think about,” he trailed off in thought, “Do you ever just watch people? And wonder who they are or where they’re going? Are they happy? Have you ever thought about the people you see every day? Even on our bus, you know, and wanted to follow them. Just to see what their life is like.”

Mackenzie listened intently, unsure of where this had come from or where it was going. But she could at least be honest. Because, as a matter of fact, she had pondered that very same thing. Everyone has. It was his purpose for bringing it up that she wanted to know.

“Actually, yeah. All the time now that you mention it.”

“Really?”

“I mean, I’ve seen you,” she shrugged. “If I hadn’t, we wouldn’t be sitting here having tea. But you asked me, and I said yes. That’s why. I didn’t need to follow you around to get inside your head. Actually, I’ve seen you more than once when I’m pretty sure you didn’t see me.”

“Really?” Enzo was beaming. “What was I doing?”

“You were just…staring?” She began massaging lotion into her hands. “You looked sad.”

Mackenzie bit her lip, realizing he might just be the saddest person she’d ever met. Then she wondered what that would mean for her—did she have time for sad. That’s when she changed the subject. 

“Oh! My god, that reminds me.” Mackenzie dove into her purse and rummaged out her iPhone. “Did you hear? It’s so crazy you brought this up. I mean, it’s kind of relevant, but not really.”

Enzo leaned forward. Whatever she had to say would be worth his full attention.

“I was getting ready this morning,” she said typing on her phone, “And anyway, I was checking Twitter and saw this story was trending. But a girl I know died. Well, she was murdered. Creepy, huh?” 

Placing the phone down in front of him, Enzo realized where she was going with this. The same link was just provided to him a few minutes ago by his mother. Dead Girl #3 stared back at him. She was mutilated, same as the last two. Whoever did this was starting to get an ego. Once they start, they don’t stop. Until their stopped. That’s what the procedural dramas have taught him. 

Enzo’s stomach turned. 

“You knew her? Shit, I’m sorry. How? I mean, how did you know her?” Needles pricked callously at his arms, his subconscious laughing at him. 

“We weren’t close at all, to be honest. I worked with her before, actually, for a set during Fashion Week.” Mackenzie continued. “We must’ve been neighbors or something, but I know she and Katy lived close.” 

“The other one?”

“Yeah. They’d been roommates, I guess. Before.”

“Are you serious?” The voice behind his ear egged him on, telling him his theory was tracking. She knew Kiara Johnson, even if only through work. Still, that was a connection.

“So serious,” she laughed, stirring her tea. “Are you okay? You look pale.” 

 He couldn’t tell her that he also knew Kiara, in his own way. He knew which side of the bed she slept on, what kind of shampoo she used. He knew she kept diet pills in the refrigerator…

“Oh shit, do I?” He rubbed his eyes, compensating with too loud a laugh. “It’s just so sad. Like, I just don’t understand what could go wrong in a person’s life that would drive them to do something so horrible.”

What do I do when I’m blacked out?

“Well, as I recall, she was kind of a fucking bitch. I shouldn’t say that, but it’s true. Actually, I’m surprised it took this long, in a roundabout sort of way. Katy also had a reputation, like Naomi Campbell but without the talent. That’s bad right?”

Enzo shook his head. “You’re entitled to your own thoughts and opinions. You sure as shit weren’t obligated to like her.”

“Frankly, we’re all getting a little nervous.”

“Who?”

“At my agency. The girls who were murdered were either signed with the agency or about to be. It hasn’t been printed yet and we’re not supposed to say anything. But eventually someone’s going to make the connection. They’re snooping around a lot, the police. If my managers find out I’m still at In-Cahoots, I’m fucked.”

“Did you all live in the same neighborhood?”

“I don’t know. I like to live close to work, like most people. Maybe they did too?”

“Maybe you should stay with a friend or something.”

“I can take care of myself. I know what I’m doing. For example, a guy behind you has been smiling at me since we got here.” Mackenzie leaned forward and raised her middle finger, turning a few heads, including Enzo’s. There was a man, sitting at a table across the street. His face dropped into a pitiful frown before he stomped off. 

“Does that happen a lot?”

“Every fucking day. Sometimes I’ll get recognized. You know, from the club. Never for my professional work, god knows,” She said rolling her eyes. “Most of the time I ignore it, but today I’m not in the mood. You could have been my boyfriend, brother, sponsor, my fucking priest. 

Guys don’t give a shit. They’ll hit on anything with tits regardless of who they’re with or when. Every girl is just another opportunity to get laid.” She shot a cautionary glare his way and poured more hot water into a porcelain cup. Finally, she sighed. Her shoulders dropped. “Anyway. I need more honey.”

There are moments he wished he’d been a photographer. When he least expected it, it was as though a filter had been lifted from the dismal predictability of self-loathing that allowed him to really see people. She belonged in California, he thought, drinking in her skin like milk. Mackenzie was casual today and prettier without makeup in his opinion. Light ricocheted off the shop glass, casting lucid streaks of purity across her features. A world opened up in the translucent blue of her eyes, like a room uninhabited filled with lots of windows and heavy books. Stillness. She held the tea string up, pressing water out of the bag with a spoon. 

“I love when you wear your hair like that.” The complexity of his comment was an unexpected trigger for Mackenzie. She paused, to look up. A face full of shallow blue and gold water. 

“What?”

A city bus roared by, a seemingly deliberate interruption, replacing the scent of lemons and little heart shaped flowers with toxic fumes. As they said goodbye and went their separate ways, only she held up her side of their bargain. Enzo remained, falling back into the mirage of anonymity in the crowd, watching. He’d be her superhero, finally make it as the underdog. As he followed Mackenzie for the rest of the day, he had one item on his agenda. It’s time to catch a killer. 

The sun had set an hour ago. Mackenzie was now walking home in the dark, the pointed heel of her boots created a metallic scraping sound on the sidewalk that echoed off the surrounding brownstones. Ordinary people passed by occasionally, gripping groceries or walking their dogs. When she became alone on the street, Mackenzie wasn’t sure. The sensation crept up on her like a spider. You are alone, she realized. She thought about a conversation she’d had earlier; with a man she probably shouldn’t have engaged with. She felt the eyes of an uninvited stranger watching her. Mackenzie stopped and, for the first time in her life, looked over her shoulder. 

o     

Rita was hysterical, as predicted. Enzo had come to accept his mother’s nuances. She reacted to bad news with such ardor. It used to make him nervous. Even if the circumstances had nothing to do with their little family, she became like a bird trying to escape its cage. 

“Can you believe this?” she screeched. A breaking story with new information bombarded news outlets. Someone broke their vow of silence, Enzo thought. Officials were now using the term “serial killer,” inciting a frenzy. “I just can’t believe it. Three dead girls, and now someone’s mailing pictures of the crime scene to reporters? This is too close to where you are Lorenzo. You better keep one eye open if you know what I mean.”

“He’s targeting girls, Ma.” 

The pause in her statements told him she was chain smoking again. It was a revelation, had to give her that. The city had a serial killer on its hands, and now the creep was sending pictures to the local papers, who of course printed them in hopes of receiving a Pulitzer. The pictures were grizzly, even if they were censored. The girls were laid out like props. Reportedly there wasn’t a single fingerprint on any of the photographs. 

“This is close to everyone, Ma. It’s the city. Shit like this is always happening. They’re probably putting him in cuffs as we speak. Anyway, what was her name?”

“Who’s putting who in cuffs?’ she scoffed, “officers of the law? What a joke. Let me tell you about the police and how well they’re doing at their jobs…”         

If he didn’t stop her now, he’d never hear the end of it. 

“Mom!”

“I’m serious, baby. Listen, I’ve already discussed it with Laurie and Carmen, and they agree with me.” She took a drag of her cigarette. “These people are up to no good, even the boys in blue. I never trusted ‘em. Even before your troubles.”

A highlight reel of his arrest for stalking flashed before his eyes. He panicked under their force, crying for his mother, and they laughed at him. They laughed and laughed…

“Ma, I gotta tell you something.”

“Well, if this tells me anything,” she continued, “it’s that this guy is looking for attention. And he’s playing with the detectives like a can ‘n’ mouse game. I’ve read every book by John Grisham and could probably solve this case myself.”

“Yeah, you read my mind. What was her name again?” He asked even though he already knew, placating his mother’s enthusiasm. 

 “Who?”

 “Jesus, the dead girl. And can I please tell you something?”

“Oh, let’s see… Ah. Kiara Johnson. But she went by Kiara Lane, like a stage name.” 

Turning into his shoulder like a sleeping bird, Enzo whispered, “Does it say what she did? Like, as a profession…or where she lived?” He gripped the phone hard, as if he were having a seizure.

“Oh, yeah,” Rita said, returning to business. “Looks like she went to art school…did some acting…had been signed with the ANTI Agency—who declined to comment—for three years. If I had to guess that’s probably modeling or something else fancy. Hey, but before either of us forgets, what were you gonna tell me?”

He closed his eyes tight. This was the worst timing. A stretch of uncomfortable silence lingered between them. He determined his mother would already be in the bedroom with the door closed, even though she was alone, putting her cigarette out to concentrate.

“What’s wrong,” she demanded. “Lorenzo, if you’re in some kind of trouble again, you have tell me right now. I swear to god, it’s like my heart can’t take it. I’m serious.”

I’m doing it again. I’m following people and I can’t stop. 

“No, Ma, nothing like that,” he lied.

She was lit another cigarette when he put her mind at ease. Enzo would stick to the good news.

“Ah,” Rita put her hand to her forehead. She moved to the living room. “Thank god.” A single tear fell off her cheek and she sniffed. “Anyway,” she went on, “What is it.”

“Finally. I nearly forgot with all your yammering. Do you remember a girl I went to high school with? Mackenzie Malone?”

“Well, now, let me think for a minute…” The sound of a recliner spring twanged as Rita came to attention in her Lay-Z-Boy. Enzo waited, picturing his mother in her closet digging out his old yearbooks. Neither said anything as she flipped through the pages of his senior class. Rita wanted to respond with her own semi-educated hypothesis of the girl. “Okay. J, K, L, M. Malone…Malone…ah. Ah! Yes, of course I remember this one. Hard to forget a face like that.”

“She looks even better now, if you ask me. She’s a dancer.”

“Oh, I love ballet. So, she’s in a company then? It’s a cutthroat industry, dancing. I hope she’s one of the good ones, or she’ll age out pretty soon.”

That stung. Even strippers have careers past their 30s, but there wasn’t any need to bring age into this. Enzo felt a hundred years old. Did she think he was quickly aging out of life as well? Any strides he’d made to get back in shape still wouldn’t prepare him to be as good as the younger fighters. But he could set an example. Maybe he’d even get the girl in the process.

“So, tell me, are you seeing this girl or what? I can tell she’s a keeper, Lorenzo. I hope I taught you to treat a woman with respect.” 

“I’m not Dad, Ma.”

“Hunny, I never said you were. I just want you to be happy. This kind of thing doesn’t come around in life too often. Are you feeling OK? You sound different.”

“Been working out again. Smoking less.”

The line went silent for a moment. Rita’s breath grazed the phone’s receiver. She pursed her lips in a line, tentatively proud. “Well, I think that’s good, Lorenzo. I think that’s really good. I can tell this girl means a lot to you.”

“I’m just trying to be better, ya know? Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just like, change our situations? Instead of waiting for it to happen?”

“Those are my thoughts exactly. Listen. I’m proud of you. You just make sure whatever you’re doing is for yourself, first and foremost. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders. Use it. I love you.”

 Six

I think by then she knew what was coming. Kiara Johnson was beginning to crack. The resulting paranoia was an unexpected and unequivocally delicious motivation to tear her apart. When girls are scared, they shrink into obscure, fragile things. Like rats, they think they’re in a maze, where there’s always a way out. The more you change their surroundings the faster they realize there’s no hope.

She’d been on the phone with a reporter, dishing out any salacious detail she could conjure about her contemporaries, the dead girls. With them out of the way, Kiara saw a prime opportunity to get her name in the papers. I saw a similar opportunity. When one door closes a window opens, which is exactly how I found myself under her bed. Playing the boogeyman is kind of fun.

Kiara hung up the phone triumphant and exhausted from dry crying. Not one of these girls had been friends in life, but after tonight she’d be associated in the same category with them forever: a victim. She rolled her long expensive hair into a nest atop her head and ran the water for a bath. When she reached for the lavender oil on the sink, she paused, sensing something amiss. The bottle was misplaced on the far end of the sink. When did she do that? This seemed to be happening a lot lately. Had Cerina or Katy felt the need to talk to one another, they might have discovered they were sharing the same phenomenon. Too late, now.

The thing about models is everyone already thinks they’re ridiculous. It was an industry dedicated to beauty and acting as lame as possible to everyone else. I have the knife in my hands, watching as Kiara’s ankles traipse through her apartment. Kiara removes her bra, tosses it on the floor by my face. She thinks she’s alone. In the bathroom she’s free to expose her bodily needs, and I wretch at the odor. Kiara weighs herself after, pleased with the work her laxatives have done. At last, she sinks into the depths of her bubble bath and tells Alexa to play her favorite songs to die to. 

But I wait. Bathtubs are too messy and leave too much to chance. I’m not in the mood tonight. Instead I count my breaths until she’s clean and dry and standing before the mirror. My gloved hand is disguised by semi-darkness of flickering candlelight, but she wouldn’t notice me anyway. She’s too preoccupied with her gorgeous face. The knife gleams the color of fire as it glides out to hover at Kiara’s feet. It takes a muscular arm to cut through thick cartilage in this position. Again, I count my breaths. One…two…three… And with the singular venomous strike of a rattle snake, separate her Achilles tendon with the blade. 

Blood sprays over my masked face, trickling over my eyes. Kiara doesn’t scream. Rather she falls to the floor with a confounded gasp. She’s in shock and doesn’t know what’s hit her yet. Nor do I allow her the time to figure it out. I appear from under the bed like a spider, and with equal speed. Her big green eyes take me in. She drinks me, quick like bad medicine. The tears follow. She’s wondering where her phone is but can’t remember. It hurts to much. I watch as she rolls over to crawl away, thinking how sad it is that she will die so vulnerable. Her pussy is clean shaven. I admire its beauty, speculating when it was she was last fucked. 

My boot is heavy, more so as I press down on her neck. Did she know how much pressure it took to crush a person’s throat. That’s a fact I should probably know, but better not ask after tonight. It’s all in the ligaments anyway, that give way to the vertebrae. From there, it’s just a matter of how long I want this feeling to last. 

Seven

The 28-day mark had passed. It was the first victory Enzo could legitimately celebrate. He continued to lose weight, but already a noticeable difference had transformed him. His body glowed. Mackenzie ran her hands through his fresh haircut when they met again. 

 Enzo moved through Mackenzie’s apartment, entering from the front door this time, which was progress. He simply knocked and she invited him in. It felt like he was seeing everything she owned for the first time, and he took his time observing all the pieces between Mackenzie and the world that made her tick. Lots of shoes with pointy heels, expensive makeup. A pair of ice skates hung over her bed. There was no TV, which he always found odd. 

“I don’t need one,” she claimed. “They’re just a distraction. Read a book instead.”

“Not even to listen to,” Enzo inquired, “when you go to sleep?” 

She pointed to the corner of the living area, said that’s what the record player is for. He moved to the window and looked out to the fire escape where a row of potted plants huddled together. Some nights before, he’d knocked one over. At the end of its fall, the ceramic pot exploded, bringing Mackenzie to the window and nearly catching him red handed. Vinyls, new and old, were catalogued on a shelf below the sill.

“Records just sound better,” he said.

“Exactly!” she called from the bathroom, locking the door behind her. 

Enzo licked his lips, separating the album covers looking for something upbeat, but stopped with a new idea.

“Hey, out of curiosity, what’s your favorite song? You know, to dance to?”

Water was running in the bathroom. Girls take forever to get ready. When she didn’t respond, he pulled out a record and experimented with the stereo, careful not to break something. He turned the knob down low. “Real Thing” by Miguel massaged the speakers. When she appeared, he was sitting on the bed, hands folded characteristically in his lap. 

“Ready?” he asked.

“Born ready,” she declared, and whisked them out the door.

The pair meandered down the street, poking in and out of shops on their way to one café or another, thinking about movies in the park. Mackenzie had texted him back, yes, they could get together this afternoon. Had it not been a brunch date, she probably wouldn’t have responded. But this was easy, and early enough that she could make an excuse to leave if necessary. The moment of courage on his part was paying off, even if the invitation was influenced by a string of murders. 

Enzo tried to uncover private information subtly, asking if it were true that strippers are escorted to their cars at the end of the night. Mackenzie said the security guys were very protective of the girls. Parking areas were high risk and took priority. Enzo wondered why, if she had a car, did she so often choose to ride the bus. “It makes me feel like one of the people?” she joked. But really, she only drove when she was working at the club. And no, despite her livelihood’s reputation, she said she didn’t feel damaged. But that didn’t mean she wanted to drop anchor on being a stripper forever. People expect the girls to be these impossible lost souls or blow-up dolls diddled by their fathers in second grade.

“We have aspirations too,” she said. “A lot of the girls are fucking geniuses, actually.”

“Have you ever tried waitressing?” he asked, which Mackenzie found funny enough to throw her head back and cackle.

“There’s less respect in that industry than dancing, if you ask me. At least I get to call the shots. When you waitress, if a guy grabs your ass, you can tell the manager who will do what? Ask the guy to leave? Tell you to get back to work during the evening rush because they don’t want to lose patronage? No fucking way. And the lifestyle! Oh my god. People arriving to work for this thing called family meal—IF the place even does that for you—and servers literally gorge themselves with food before a shift or else they won’t eat that day. But they think that’s better than what I do? No thanks. 

“Nobody tells me what to do. I’ll eat whenever the fuck I want to. I’m in charge. I make the rules. And when I dance the night before an audition, forget it. I can walk in with a killer body and my rent is paid. It takes talent to do what I do. At least it’s a great fucking workout. You’ll have sore muscles you didn’t even know existed. Nothing scares me anymore.”

Eventually he knew Mackenzie would ask him what he’d been up to over the last decade, which was the last thing he wanted to think about. But to his surprise she never mentioned the scars. Not even when she wanted to. Enzo could see it. The fleeting nuances one’s face makes when they spot something out of the ordinary. Obvious, yet impolite to bring up in conversation. Like a colostomy bag exposed on the beach. He knew it was there, as did everyone with sight, and what more was there to say? Pain manifests in different ways. Instead, she asked about boxing, a subject he was able to stammer through. 

“I’m trying to get back in shape,” he said, skirting around the issue. “Maybe I should try stripping, too?”

Mackenzie clapped her hands and buckled. “I would love to see that. I’ll run it by my boss and see what she thinks!” She hooked her arm through his, shocking an erection awake. While bells and whistles clanged in his genitals, it felt comforting to have a girl like her on his arm. 

They sat down at the same café as last time, a chaotic and exciting environment amid the brunch rush. The joint was thriving with a large weekend crowd, making Enzo self-conscious. A middle-aged man nearby bemoaned a waitress’ timing with his coffee, gesturing around the room as if he were the only person there. 

“See what I mean about waitressing?” Mackenzie said. 

Enzo scanned the menu for something to eat. When he looked up, he found Mackenzie squinting at him, resting her chin on her knuckles. 

“You know what?” she finally said, “You should be a bouncer at the club. If you need a side-gig. I can ask for you.” Enzo was blindsided by the offer and froze like a computer shutting down. “You don’t have to answer now or anything, it’s just an idea. But I think it would be nice. Especially with all this shit going on right now. It’s horrible.”

The working theory that a killer observed his victims in plain sight pinched a nerve. Every corner block had an edge to it, people stiffening up under the streetlamps as they walked home, clutching their mace. 

“It’s bullshit. The police been harassing the agency for information like they don’t have a clue. And they’ve been interviewing the girls nonstop. It’s insulting.”

“What did you tell them?”

“What’s to tell?” Mackenzie feigned a harsh laugh and flipped her hair. “I barely knew them. Now, it’s like, there’s these other two girls. It’s not a coincidence; we know that now. But who’s fucking protecting us? I feel so stupid saying it, but like…are we all in danger?”

“It’s not stupid.”

Tiny hairs raised on Enzo’s neck as he realized they were both reaching the same hypothesis.

“I’m sorry. I’m just so sick of talking about this. And I’m sorry I just laid all that on you. The last thing I want is to panic and make a spectacle. You know some of the girls are leaking shit to press? It’s depraved. Fame-starved animals.”

“I thought models are supposed to be hungry.”

“Good one. Anyway, let’s change the subject. You said there was something you needed to talk about?”

“Actually,” he shrugged and slipped his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “we kind of just did.

He took a breath, said he’d been thinking about the dead girls too and how he made the connection that they were all models. “Obviously, the police knew. But I think they were waiting.”

“For what?” Mackenzie asked. “For enough bodies to pile up that he’d warrant a promotion?”

“Actually, yeah. And to hold back on formally announcing he’s a serial killer. I’d say they didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. Sorry. Mom was a true crime junkie,” Enzo muttered, gripping the seat of his chair. He worried Mackenzie was about walk out on him. 

Her face was pensive and unreadable. Mackenzie shook her head, and to Enzo’s surprise, she smiled. 

“It’s been a long time,” she said. “You remember that day in the park? I think that was the only real conversation we ever had.”

“Yeah, I remember. You took my last smoke.”

“Sounds like I did you a favor,” Mackenzie said, tossing a napkin at him. 

“Do you ever miss it?” Enzo asked. “Being a kid.”

“Yeah,” Mackenzie nodded, “Yeah, I do. Sometimes I wish I could do it over again. Stop myself from making the same mistakes. What about you? You were always there, and somehow never there. Sorry, that didn’t come out right.”

“It’s ok.”

“You were nice,” she said. “To me, anyway. Once. I guess no one really knew what to make of you. You were always dressed in black and didn’t talk. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just…people thought you wanted to be alone. It’s weird, I had so many friends back then. Now I don’t have anybody. I tried so hard and still ended up alone. I wonder what that means. Life is crazy.”

“I’d do it over again too,” he said, leaning forward. “Everything except right now.”

Mackenzie sat before him with a sadness in her eyes that made Enzo think she was reading his mind. She bit her lip as if to say, I’m scared too. Life was wearing her down. Mackenzie carried the burden of balancing life’s unsympathetic requirements with vulnerability and courage. There was no in between. It was the moment he’d been searching for, being in the right place at the right time. Sunlight, sieved through the changeling branches of caramel colored leaves, cast its celestial gaze over her face. It felt like a sign, the antithesis of sorrow and isolation captured in the warm blue of Mackenzie’s eyes. 

We’re exactly the same.

 It was his turn. He may never get this chance again. As he chanced a step toward her, Mackenzie began to whisper, “Don’t you wish things could have been differe­—” Before she could finish this thought, Enzo didn’t need to tell her no. This moment was perfect. All the pain he experienced would be worthwhile if he could just kiss her. Even her face fit in his hands. There was surprise in her shoulders, tension that dropped like mist as he kissed her rose petal lips. He felt like she was breathing into his chest, resuscitating him. They were a pair of lungs filling with simultaneous explosions of life. Enzo said two words he never thought could be reclaimed.

 “I’m happy.”

The nights spent sweating out his withdrawals were growing apparent. Muscle mass continued to blossom on Enzo’s arms. The middle section of his gut had diminished significantly. Xanax was helping, sure. But working out saved his life. It was so out of character for him to appear healthy and alert that Carmichael actually suspected something was wrong. When he apprehensively approached Enzo, one evening as he replaced the dumbbells on their rack, it was Enzo who spoke first. 

“Did you love your brother?” he asked. 

The question stopped Carmichael in his tracks. What kind of question was that? Enzo was looking at him in a way he didn’t appreciate. 

“Of course I loved Sammy. He’s my family. What the hell’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing,” Enzo responded with a shrug. “Just going through changes.”

Carmichael felt uncertain, like someone was about to yell fire in a crowded room. Enzo was doing well for once, and Carmichael felt shame for wanting to criticize him. That night, when there was no aspect of this new Enzo to complain about, Carmichael left him to finish up. In the privacy of his home, he poured a drink, sat down at the kitchen table, and cried. This was a good thing the kid was doing, he knew that. And yet, some unwelcome thought (or foreshadowing, he wasn’t sure yet.), plagued his subconscious. What did Enzo mean, asking did he love his brother the way he did? Carmichael gulped down his whiskey and pondered tentatively in silence. Changes, the kid had said. He felt it, under his skin, that something terrible was about to happen. 

I’m building a house, Enzo thought, sweating through cardio. He was doing something for himself. That was the goal. The gym was spotless, silent save for the sound of his shoes thrusting into the exhausted treadmill. He looked good naked. He was saving a little money. He was ready make a move. Before dawn he would take a taxi to In-Cahoots and surprise Mackenzie after she got off work. It was going to be perfect. Nothing on earth could stop him. 

o    

Mackenzie swayed like an undercurrent in the ocean. Clinging effortlessly to the silver pole, she felt weightless, free to live in her own private world and get paid for it. But she wasn’t expecting, as some of the girls did, to have a guest appear in the audience and wait for her set to finish. The bouncers were suspicious, as was their job, of any man who might be too eager or too drunk to be there. But never with Jerome, who knew them all by name. 

At 5 a.m., Mackenzie was ready for a bloody Mary and then bed. He threw his arms around her and kissed her deeply, if only for the credibility. Then, to show what a great guy he is, opened the door for Mackenzie on their way out.  

“I told you not to come in when I’m working,” she said wryly. “It’s weird.”

“Then don’t ask me for a ride home. Why didn’t you just take your car, anyway? And I’m the one who told you we need to be discreet. Half of those girls in there still know Lindsay.”

Mackenzie realized she didn’t a damn anymore. Jerome was the one who wouldn’t let it go, and she couldn’t say no. Regardless of how mad she got, or how close they came to getting caught, she always came back. 

“Look, I just don’t want you to leave there alone with this crazy guy running around.”

“Well, actually, that’s what I was going to ask you…”

“What? Have I been cutting your friends’ heads off? Nope. Sorry.”

“Jesus, Jerome. No. Would it be OK if I stayed with you and Lindsay for a little while? Just until they catch this guy? People keep talking about it and it’s making me paranoid.”

Jerome’s face softened. “Yes, you can stay with us. It’s my place anyway, she just lives there. Let’s get your stuff now while we have some time to ourselves. Lindsay doesn’t get back from LA until Monday.” 

Historically, Jerome was a scoundrel. But he was also a widely renowned artist. Over time, she accepted this was him being sweet, and reciprocated a gentle hand over his. 

Please don’t say anything else, she thought. Please don’t say something horrible.

“I can’t imagine if something happened to you—”

Please don’t.

“Then I’d be stuck with Lindsay’s bony ass all the time. You know she went through my emails? As if every guy doesn’t watch porn.” 

Mackenzie removed her hand and sighed, looking out the passenger window of his Maserati as the sun painted watercolors across the skyline. 

“Yeah. I heard.”

“I hate that paranoid girlfriend shit. I gave her a career and an apartment on the Upper West Side. Like, just leave it alone.”

“She’s your wife, Jerome.”

“Exactly,” he seethed. “And you’re her best friend. Or, you used to be. I don’t know what the fuck you two are these days. So, I guess we’re both scumbags. Let’s get your shit and get brunch at that place you like. Yeah?”

“Sure,” she said, rolling her eyes. 

Jerome wasn’t wrong, but at least she had regrets about sleeping with him. You know, felt human? Even if it didn’t look like she’d learned from her mistakes, Mackenzie was at least aware of them. That had to count for something, right? Jerome was just being a man, born with the exemption box checked on emotional maturity. Every time they were together, he was simply exercising his natural right to seize the world. There’s something fundamentally wrong with a man who has everything but refuses to have just enough. Mackenzie realized that even this morning, she was in the presence of a dangerous man. And for what? She wasn’t even having a good time. And out there? Anything can happen in New York. Perspective is everything. 

This was the same rain drenched city that set the backdrop for Seven as it was the technicolor romanticism of Sex and the City. It’s all in the eye of the beholder and what they chose to make of it, which is terrifying in its unpredictability. There are two sides to everything. Images of the city’s brightest parks panned around her brain like a paper lantern. Not even the most familiar parts of our lives, friends and surroundings feel safe when the lights go out. Part of her knew that a victim had already been selected, a new doll for a killer to play with. All of New York was just waiting, waking up to strain their necks over the skyline to see who would be next.

o     

In-Cahoots was across the street, no more than 50 feet away from where Enzo stood, leering with hooded bloodshot eyes. It was an impossible trek to manage with the burden of heartache on his shoulders. A heap of spray roses kissed the concrete, their long green stems barely secured in the grip of his hand. His feet were paralyzed, growing roots deep into the earth. The Maserati had long ago sped out of the visitors parking lot, bringing his unusual presence outside the gentleman’s club to a menacing crescendo. While he was across the street on the sidewalk, the security guards could do nothing outside of monitor from a distance. When Enzo saw them together, he’d reacted as though plunged into a pool of icy water. The idea of bringing Mackenzie flowers abruptly became a ridiculous notion. It was downright fucking insane. 

Neither Mackenzie, nor Enzo were aware of the activity taking place at Brooklyn Harbor. Law enforcement personnel shielded their faces from the wind. A team of squad cars rushed toward the ocean’s briny edge to secure a perimeter.   

Blink, Enzo chanted, just blink. Snap out of it. 

Daylight was breaking over the waves, climaxing through the city’s glossy, towering voids. A woman wearing surgical gloves opened a large, clear evidence bag. Her sensible black shoes sank deeper into the wet sand. She thought of her daughter, how she was planning to shield her from this ugliness by bedtime.  

Blink, Enzo. Blink. As the film on his corneas grew dry, tears excised from their oily pores, itching like poison. The tick, tick, ticking of his mother’s nails tapped on his brain.

The flowers fell out of Enzo’s hand to the ground. His large, heavy foot stepped over the subdued pink and yellow petals, crushing their delicate flesh. The air held in his lungs threatened to explode. 

On the beach, yellow Caution tape whipped against the wind. A forensic examiner looked down. The rotting cataracted head of an African American female gaped upward at him, seeing nothing. His partner explained, “Some teenagers were out here getting high when they say this came ashore…” 

Snap out of it, Lorenzo. Snap out of it. Tick, tick, tick… 

He’d gone blind. Mackenzie’s body was on his mind, but also Jerome’s, whose hands were groping all over her. Mackenzie’s nipples were in his mouth. His member—bigger than Enzo’s—was fucking her tight holes, in and out in and out until until until… 

“It’s the model, right?” a young CSI asked, bracing himself to hold a human head in his hands. “Come on,” the woman said. “Let’s get this to the lab.” This, the man repeated silently.

Enzo didn’t want to die. He would rather transcend sadness, breach through the definition of rage and create a new emotion entirely. There was no exposition to his pain, just the nuclear core of an emerging sun, burning bright and preparing for impact. Another person was dredging through the viscera, like Enzo had spent the summer staring directly in a mirror, warping his reflection. Dynamite tingled in his fingertips. He pictured Jerome with a hand on Mackenzie’s neck, spitting onto her pussy. His teeth gleam through a grimace of pleasure because she feels too good. In and out. In and out.

In 6th grade, Kiara Johnson was told the human head weighs about as much as a gallon of milk. That day, she went home and prepared her after school snack. Kiara paused, leaving dry cereal in a bowl. “Put that down, baby.” her Dad said, perplexed. With the gallon jug of milk held up in both hands, she giggled. “Daddy, did you know my head weighs as much as—.”  The remaining digastric muscle of her neck detached, separating in a deluge of saltwater within the evidence bag. Her jaw remained open, rigor mortis claiming the expression of her face after a knife penetrated the jugular.  

“Is that guy still standing out there?” Alvin, head security guard asked. He crossed the foyer to look through the glass door. Hadn’t he seen that dude before? Another guard in identical black uniform unwrapped a jolly rancher. “No, he left like two minutes ago,” he replied. “It’s cool, I watched him walk down the street and get on a bus. He was fucking talking to himself, man. Creepy.” 

Tick, tick, tick…

Until, until, until…

 Eight 

Rita wasn’t home. The door splintered at the handle where he kicked and heaved until finally giving way to the air conditioning within. Her house was small, unremarkable and thus largely unchanged in the years since he’d gone. Within these walls, there would be answers. Enzo could feel it in his bones. A series of losses finally jettisoned him into enlightenment. His mother was hiding something. She knew where his dad was, he was sure. The end was near, he could feel it reaching out for his soul. Consumed with reckless abandon, he tore through the living areas, flipping couches and tables. Mail and cooking magazines scattered about the air, falling like feathers to the hardwood. 

A tiny gray feline darted across the living room, seeking refuge under a chair. Where was Baxter? His big orange tabby wasn’t sleeping in the kitchen sink, or napping on the sofa. He was nowhere to be found. 

Above the fireplace, the Lastra’s sole family portrait hung suggestively. Enzo braced himself against the wall, screaming into the photograph, trying to deafen the smiling figures posed within. He ripped his grandmother’s antique frame off the wall, held it high over his head and sent it crashing through the glass coffee table. Debris scattered everywhere. Enzo dropped like a brick wall, screaming gutturally. What had he done? Enough, he thought. There would be no turning back from whatever came next. 

Rolling to his side, he crawled through the glass, deliberately pressing down. Each piercing felt like fireworks on the fourth of July, a rare flower opening its petals in the sun. The splintered frame revealed the ancient photograph of a family dissolved. Through his tears, he reached out a hand. Something else was there, hidden within the frame. Pictures, lots of them, behind the family portrait. With a single finger, he inched a Polaroid out from under the frame’s backing. It was the backside of the Polaroid, which he held tentatively in the palms of his hands. Enzo realized he’d stopped breathing, but his heart, very much alive, was making a desperate attempt to flee through his chest. 

As he tremored, daring himself to turn the Polaroid over, he began to question his entire life. Every choice he’d ever made had led to this. Deciding all on his own to change his fate, he would have to find the answers himself. Even if that meant destroying the world in the process. “No,” he said. “It’s not that.” It couldn’t be. He turned the picture over.

Paralyzed, he descended into a time and place where he used to be innocent, a pristine slate of opportunity. Back then he was just a baby, no one would pity him now. No one but himself, praying for the child in these pictures. And there were many. He crushed them in his hands as he turned his face toward the sky and begged for god to take this child’s pain away. The little boy he used to be. Enzo wished he could reach through the film and steal the boy away into his arms, where he would protect him. Where he knew he’d be safe. 

This updated visual history of where it all went wrong told a different story than he’d formerly believed. He looked so tiny compared to their adult bodies. Their hairy genitals a graphic contrast to Enzo’s clean, pink flesh. His mouth was too small for the things they wanted him to do. Their hands too big for what they did to him. Had the context been different, one might be looking at a father holding his son, both fresh out of a shared bath, perhaps. But not like this. Not wearing his father on his lips. It wasn’t their basement, he realized, and wondered if he could ever come to terms with not knowing the location. 

The other men, he didn’t recognize. They traded off, taking pictures for each other, it seemed. Unless someone else were there, but it didn’t seem likely. An hour passed, maybe more, organizing the pictures of his childhood, of his family, of his rape. There were so many. How long, he wondered, had this gone on for? And how did no one notice? It doesn’t matter. It’s done. A calmness washed over him. Sitting up, he moved to the couch, cracked his neck and stared at the blank space above the fireplace. His mother put these here. She kept them. The decision was made for him. They were going to hell. 

A person could almost asphyxiate, breathing in the air of a house drenched in gasoline. Enzo imagined the flames barreling around him, hissing like a room full of wild animals. A trail of chemicals led to the house from the garage where his mother always kept a spare can of fuel, a habit she said his father imposed. The kitten was in a crate on the sidewalk, shedding with anxiety until Rita discovered her. Outside, Enzo heard her calling, hello? Is anyone there? Lorenzo? He opened his eyes and turned on a light. Rita ran up the crumbling wooden steps, her hands hovered over the damaged door frame. 

“Lorenzo, baby?” She started into the house and recoiled at the smell. Her eyes glistened with fear as she reached out her hands. She spoke calmly, said she wasn’t expecting him. 

“Where’s Baxter?” Enzo asked, deadpan. Rita wondered if that’s what the mess was about.

“Enzo, I tried to tell you. He was sick, baby. I wanted you to come visit, to see him one last time.”

“You lied to me,” Enzo said, his face hidden in shadow. 

“What are you talking about, Lorenzo? Can you please come outside? Come outside and we’ll talk about it.”

Silence followed as she traced the damage in her living room with her eyes, holding it together surprisingly well, Enzo thought. When her head craned to double take at the fireplace, she exploded, falling against the wall behind her, wimpering incoherently. Enzo remained motionless, thinking she was stupid to believe this were about anything else. 

In his ears, or maybe his head, he wasn’t sure, but a humming sound sequestered his thoughts. The vibration grew into a shrill, piercing tone as everything else blurred around him. It was peaceful for a moment, whatever he heard, until his mother tuned in through the frequency: “I didn’t know.” 

He snapped. Awakening in the kitchen with his mother’s neck between his large hands. “How could you not know?” His words spoke from somewhere unconscious and reflexive. “All these years, Ma! My god, in the picture frame? Our family portrait? Sick. Fucking bitch! You fucking sick bitch!” 

“He was still my husband,” she sobbed. “I tried to stop him, I promise! I promise, I tried. But I couldn’t leave him, Lorenzo. I just couldn’t leave him. I tried to—” 

“Where is he?” Lorenzo shook his mother, her feet dangling an inch off the floor. Rita clenched her eyes shut, shook her head. “Where!” he screamed and threw her on the kitchen table. She howled in pain, threw a hand around to the small of her back. Enzo jumped on the table, squatting over her like a demon, holding her by the hair when she tried to pull away. 

“I said, where?” he growled into her ear. She cried out, kicking her legs under him and losing a shoe over the edge. 

“No!” she begged, “No!” 

When he produced the Polaroid from his back pocket, her fear collapsed into sorrow. Rita released her body, falling limp against the wood. Even in his fury, the wail she produced sent a chill down his spine. The truth was coming. 

“They killed him!” she cried. “They killed him, and it’s all my fault.”

“Did you do this to me?” he yelled, pressing the picture to her face.

“No!”

“Who did?”

Rita grabbed at the neck of her sweater, struggling to secure a solid breath. “Sammy!” she declared. “Sammy and his cousin, Joe.”

Sammy. That fucking hypocrite. His savior was also the sinner. All this time, Sammy and Carmichael hid that they killed his father. Enzo couldn’t process this information. Did Carmichael also know what Sammy had done to him throughout the years? The idea of his father selling those pictures to Sammy sent shockwaves through his body. Maybe Sammy just wanted Enzo all to himself. Or Sammy knew Carmichael would kill him too, if ever he found out his beloved cousin was a pedophile. Or both. 

“They made me swear I’d never tell you. But they knew! They found out after…”

“After what?” 

“After we left the church!” she sobbed, holding the rosary to her head. “Oh, God, help me!”

“Why,” he asked, “did you leave the church?”

“It was the priest, Lorenzo! He and your father had a business!” She was kicking again, writhing under him, not in an attempt to get away. The interrogation was too much. Rita was trying to escape the truth, not Enzo. “It wasn’t just you, there were others, and I swear I didn’t know until it was too late. But you told a teacher, I guess. And she told the police. And I had to hide all these horrible, horrible things, because without your dad we just weren’t going to make it. I wasn’t going to make it! 

“And I told your father he was about to be investigated, and he told Seamus, and together they buried everything. I don’t know how or where, but they didn’t get arrested for any crimes. And I thought it was over. But it never is. IT NEVER IS!

“So that great man who tried to fix you, Sammy and his brother, they did Seamus first, I think. Because one day he just wasn’t there, and no one looked because everyone knew why. And the people…oh god, everybody hated us. And they thought I was this sick mother, but I wasn’t in on it, but there was no convincing anybody. So when they came for us, oh my god they thought I was in on it, and they almost did me in too. Finally, they believed me! They took your Dad right down there in that basement and had me watch. And Lorenzo, they killed him! They shot it in the back of the head. And I was his wife, so I had to witness it all! With my hands tied and tape over my mouth, and it was all so HORRIBLE! I can’t sleep at night! I can’t sleep!” 

“And Sammy,” he choked through tears, “Did you know about Sammy?”

Rita’s chest and abdomen were heaving. She rambled through her words until all she had left were bated convulsions. Enzo stepped off the table, watched his mother struggle for air, hyperventilating. At some point, he rolled to the side and coughed bile onto the floor. Makeup melted down her face creating a nightmarish expression of desperation. 

“Sammy was in on it, Ma,” he nodded. “They had a ring or something, I’m sure of it. Sammy found me that day after school. And it started all over again.”

“No!” Rita grabbed at her chest, attempting extract her heart and give it to him.

“Do you want to know what he did to me, Ma? He killed Dad to protect himself. Not to save me.” Rita collapsed into a chest. She couldn’t hear this, but he’d tell her anyway. There were years sodomy, the thing Sammy would do with his tongue. He’d wear Enzo’s jaw out, stuffing his face until the boy thought he’d suffocate. It went on like this for a decade. Even after Enzo could recognize how abnormal his relationship with father figures had become. It had mutilated his sex drive. He feared intercourse with women, or that he wouldn’t be able to get it up. And for all Sammy took from Enzo, he’d replaced that with what? Boxing. Enzo knew how to fight with his hands, but not his mind. 

“For God’s sake, I can’t!” Rita screamed, pulling her hair. “I can’t! I can’t!”

“I think,” Lorenzo said, kicking at the gas can, “you don’t even realize how much you talked about what happened to you just now. You! What about your son?” 

Rita pulled at her hair as if trying to remove a mask. Her eyes went wide. Their expression was patronizing with the pretense of innocence. But underneath, Enzo could see: She knew he was right. 

“Your father was into some dark things, Lorenzo. But he hid it so well. I had no idea that it had gone that far until it was too late. For all of us.”

“You tried to protect him!”

“I tried to help him! I never imagined…” Rita sobbed into her hands, where the rosary she had been grasping for dangled off her fingers. “I wasn’t prepared. Nobody taught me how to be a wife or a mother. Those are the things I knew I could figure out on my own. But when your husband is raping children for money? NOTHING can prepare you for that, Lorenzo. There was nowhere to turn. No one to go to for advice. My mother taught me that divorce is never an option. You stand by your man no matter what. While I was doing that, I lost sight of you. Somebody had to actually work, Lorenzo! Jesus, I was so stupid. I never thought he would do it to you too! 

Enzo braced himself against the sink, staring at the reflection in the window facing a rat-infested alley. He felt so ugly crying. The house smelled like vanilla. It may have been small, run down a bit on the outside, unfashionable. But god knew it was always clean.

“I never told you this because I didn’t think you’d remember, but you did. Just enough to know how horrible life can get, but at least you didn’t know it was him! When your father was a boy, he and Sean were acolytes for the church. And it happened to them too. It ruined them. And for some godforsaken reason it tethered them together for the rest of their lives. Your dad ran deals in the street. Sean became a priest and ran deals in the church. At some point…I don’t know, they were thinking the same thoughts. They were sick, baby. They were sick and they paid for it. There’s no reason you should too.”

As he listened, Enzo was akin to believe his mother was, in her own way, a victim in this monster’s mouth. Rita considered him like a feral beast. Lowering herself from the table, she refused to blink. Enzo was too quiet, she thought, and there was no telling what he was thinking. Maybe she had him, talked her way out of the fire. One hand, emblazoned with ostentatious costume jewelry, reached out tentatively. Shaking, Rita placed her small palm on her son’s shoulder blade. Her throat was dry, her voice hoarse. The telephone was attached to the wall next to him. It wouldn’t take long to dial 911.

Before she could speak, Enzo muttered under his breath. His head stooped low and menacing. Rita inched back and prayed. 

“I was just a little boy, Ma.” His head glowed under the pendant light, making his shoulders appear broader than usual. Only a glimpse of his face was visible. His voice felt knew, as though another person were speaking. The demon inside him began to exhale. “You shouldn’t have had to turn to anyone for advice, shouldn’t have had to question what the right thing to do was.” Enzo turned his face toward the darkness, rolling his shoulders. She heard his neck crack down his spine and pressed herself into a wall when his eyes glowered into her. “He fucking killed me, mom!” 

Enzo felt his body flush, hardening like concrete pumped through his veins. A heinous ringing resounded in his head. A shadow on the wall behind him revealed a monster’s silhouette. He reared his head back to the ceiling. An electricity rippling under his skin. Although his eyes were closed, Rita sensed he were looking at something. Saliva dribbled from his open mouth as he swallowed in gulps of air, panting like a dog. Rita felt he house is shaking and braced herself on the table, but it was just adrenaline. She was spiraling, dizzy. The house was silent, and yet an undercurrent of explosions erupted loud within the walls. If she ran now, faster than she ever had, she could make it to the back door. 

Her son closed his mouth, slowed his breathing. His body also appeared to settle, as though a spaceship had just landed safely on unknown territory. His nostrils moved in gentle waves, inhaling, exhaling. Where was this going? Rita hummed a prayer for Enzo to come to his senses. Then he opened his eyes, and she realized there was no hope. One of them was already dead and gone, the other had only seconds to escape. She lurched toward the back door, slipping on her nylons. Both of her hands caught the handle. Once again, this time on her knees, she prayed as Enzo descended on her. His face was animated, almost glowing. It’s the happiest she had ever seen him, and the last thing she’d think about before she died.

Outside, the cat scratched furiously at her crate, the only witness to the scene. Yellow light set the backdrop of a terrible crime appearing within the house’s chipped, white window frames. The colorless silhouette, a human shadow, held a middle-aged woman by the neck. She disappeared when thrown with deliberate force to the floor below, hidden by the yellowing exterior wall. A set of antique lace curtains shuddered before being ripped from their rod. Hollow echoes of pots and pans clanged faintly from the floor upon which they were dashed. Glass shattered. The silhouette of Enzo appeared in the center frame before vanishing a second time. His large hand thrust upward, holding a sharp kitchen knife high in the air, its point threatening downward. The bug zapper hanging off the pergola pinched insects dead with blue electricity as red filigree sprayed across the curtainless interior glass. A destructive hand appeared sporadically, punctuated by the blood spatter of a thousand cuts.

When at last Enzo’s broad shoulders ascended from the hidden green linoleum floor, he appeared bathed in color, no longer a shadow or absence of light. He felt new, peering down at the unimaginable scene before revealing an object in his hands. This time the knife lay on the floor, replaced by his mother’s severed head. Enzo held it up, dripping with viscera, to examine its inner workings. 

He smiled.

The cat, scratching for freedom to no avail from the back yard, perked his whiskers to the scent of gasoline on the wind.

o    

No one but God heard a word from his mouth. The old saying, if a tree falls in the woods… 

Enzo stood close enough that his breath fogged the mirror before him, erasing his reflection as he exhaled. Light from the exit signs ricocheted off the walls, their reflective surfaces repeating exit exit exit as if attempting to control Enzo’s thoughts. 

He said he feels like he’s walking a bunch of empty rooms, and in a house he used to be familiar with, but not anymore. He said close your eyes. Tell me you love me. Hold me close. Let me be the shape of your dreams. Give me time to let the blues bleed out. I’ll be all yours. Say nice things to me. Tell me it’s not the end of the world. 

Clutching his hands into fists, Enzo pressed his nails into the skin as deeply as possible. It wasn’t logical, he knew, but couldn’t help feeling betrayed. All those nights watching over her, following Mackenzie home to make sure she got in safe, careful to tread on the sidewalks without making a sound. She didn’t ask him to, but he felt obligated to be her protector. And in the process, killed his spirit trying. 

The man held her hand, which is farther than he’d even gotten. She said his name, “Jerome.” There was no competition between the two men. Enzo didn’t have any style, just clothes. Even from a distance Enzo could see Jerome was entirely brand name and expensive. When Enzo saw them together, kissing on the steps outside Mackenzie’s building before entering together. He wanted to gauge his eyes out. The good guy never gets the girl. Not even superheroes. Someone always ends up dead. The progress he’d made to reclaim his body proved a useless effort to offer something worthwhile, and in the moment, he was chagrined to exist in this new suit of muscle and trimmed body hair. You’re an embarrassment, Carmichael had said. And no one really knew him, not his heart. They knew he was angry, that he swam deep in his thoughts and it was frightening at times. Because, he thought, inwardly he truly was frightened. Enzo was always just barely here. Existing only on paper, but never in anyone’s thoughts. 

He retreated to the empty gym to think. Shivering in the air conditioning, he stripped in front of the mirror. Below a single overhead light, he observed what the pursuit of love had done to him. Positive results were evident from head to toe. There was color in his face again, warm blood pumping oxygen into muscles that his body welcomed back from memory. New features he’d come to enjoy surprised him, revealed by the clean lines of a faded haircut, chiseled jaw and fitted jeans. His eyes were fire blue and alert. In certain angles a set of abs promised to continue developing under the skin. Taking a cue from the men observed in the locker room, he trimmed his pubic hair. Even his dick looked bigger. Enzo would be a man, and almost felt like one. But his chains weighed him down. The scars littering his flesh pulled tight on his skin like a biological straight jacket. The house he built was haunted, full of secrets and doors that open and close all on their own. Enzo’s ghost inhabited a space where no one else remembered or cared to be.  

Glass rippled under his fist as he hit the wall, creating a glittering, dangerous design where his face should be. Enzo punched the mirror again, over and over until his knuckles dripped blood. In his rage, he gripped a dumbbell and hurled it at the wall where it fractured irreparably, crashing in chunks and slivers to the ground. 

Stepping over the broken mirror, Enzo realized the appeal of exhibitionism. This is why the men on smut websites make a career out of their bodies. He felt powerful, strutting through the gym naked. I’m going through changes, he said. It illuminated a grand sense of power more than gratifying than killing Carmichael did. Entering the office, Enzo cocked his head at the man’s body, thrust back over his desk where Enzo confronted him moment’s ago. Again and again, he denied it, and appeared almost angry with Enzo for accusing Sammy of rape. Carmichael’s tears nearly did Enzo in, and he let the inherited godfather embrace him in a deep, emotional hug. 

“You need help, Lorenzo,” Carmichael had said. “We’re gonna get you help. Please. Please put the gun down.”

Brain matter burst onto the wall. Blood stained hands gripped pulled the trigger on an illegal revolver, the one Dom Lastra purchased some time before his death. Enzo retrieved it from its hiding place in his mother’s dresser before igniting the house on fire. And in spite of the interrogation, he never planned to leave this gym with Carmichael alive. Whether he was right or wrong, lying or telling the truth, a bullet was going through his head. Death was all Enzo knew. It infected him.  

Before he cleaned the evidence, he asked if he was going to get away with this. A voice told him yes. Yes, he would get his way. And the truth made him so happy he might’ve cried, but he didn’t want to cry any more. The hormones waking up his biological needs gave him a different, more pleasurable idea instead. 

Lorenzo Lastra had disappeared. 

Nine

If this shoot didn’t make her famous, Makenzie swore she’d kill herself. But she could feel it in her bones: the art direction would be a knockout. The majority of her headshots were mediocre, and she never felt like a woman in them. She wasn’t going to feel like a kindergarten teacher anymore. This time, she was going to get it right. 

She sat on a stool, wearing only a sheen of gold paint across her chest, crossing her breasts with her arms. Both hands rested like birds on her defined shoulders. The backdrop was concrete, and she’d asked a friend for a favor. High above Mackenzie, a chainsaw artist blasted red metallic sparks around her. Flash. It would be a meditation on her eyes, an icy-blue focal point to offset the golden warms of her shimmering skin. The viewer’s eyes would follow the liquid lines of her neck and forearms, juxtaposed by bone-straight Marilyn-blonde hair. 

The chainsaw was loud, the falling sparks disarming. Flash. The photographer’s lights eclipsed around her like a halo. Flash. In spite of the environmental stimulation, she defied the need to blink. Flash. Mackenzie couldn’t lose focus; her life was on the line. Flash. She refused to be rejected from another lineup. Flash. After this, it would be fucking impossible. Flash. I look fucking perfect, she thought, and tipped the corner of her lips into a coy, muted simper. Flash. 

“Thank you so much, Lara, I appreciate it.” Mackenzie revealed a hundred dollars, but the woman refused to take it. The chainsaw artist told Mackenzie to pay her back next weekend at the bar. Solid friends like this were hard to come by. Then there was Jerome, whom she watched with curiosity as he packed up his equipment and drank a glass of champagne. He took her money, as she predicted, and would still expect a blow job afterward. As an photographer, Jerome was flawless. He couldn’t have the talent and a personality to match, that would be too easy. Neither had worked together before, as Mackenzie thought it might be weird or desperate. But was time, she thought, to try a new perspective. 

Mackenzie lingered, asking what Jerome were up to later. They were at the hinterland of the weekend, one of the last warm Fridays of the year before Fall. “Oh, I’m taking Lindsay to the wrap party for Lawson’s new music video.” Pouting, she pulled an 8-ball out of her makeup bag.

“Isn’t Lindsay on her way over? I thought we could pregame a little bit. As a thank you?”

Jerome slipped his sunglasses on inside, which Mackenzie always thought made him look pretensions as fuck. Behind the frames she saw his eyebrows raise. 

“You’re in a good mood.” His black iPhone vibrated from a nearby director’s chair. “Speak of the devil,” he said, shooting a fiendish look at Mackenzie. “Hi babe. No, Mack was just asking about you. Actually, come in for a minute. Mackenzie has blow.”

The studio was Jerome’s, and Mackenzie knew it well. It was a nondescript brick building, which provided an inadvertent posh-ness to its glass and concrete interiors. From the upstairs entrance, which featured a lonely waiting area, clients used a stairwell that descended into the large warehouse space where Jerome worked. One wall featured a garage door, size appropriate for tanks. Next to that was an exit, which Lindsay opened with her key. Further into the depths of the studio was the dressing room, and office, storage. The usual suspects. With the lights out, moving through the hallways could be disorienting. 

Lindsay kissed her husband, who in turn groped her ass through tight leather pants. She was intimidating to be around if you didn’t know how to act, which is to say like an equally spoiled brat. Mackenzie embraced her.

“Hey girl,” she said, gripping the bottle as they hugged. “I brought champagne, too. Want some?”

“What is it?”

Mackenzie rolled her eyes as she turned to pour the bubbly. “Dom Perignon,” she said. “Here you go.” Lindsay had no choice but to take the glass. 

“Oh, Mackenzie, some building is on fire in your old neighborhood,” Lindsay mentioned. The tone she chose saying your neighborhood made Mackenzie want to scratch the bitch’s eyes out. As if Lindsay didn’t grow up in Frankford too. 

“Did anyone get hurt?” she asked, knowing Lindsay wouldn’t give a shit. “Come look what Jerome did for me.” She swigged her drink and picked up Jerome’s camera. Did they think she was sucking up too much? The last thing she needed was to come off desperate. Jerome knew for years that he could get her in a room with the right people, and yet facilitating a career opportunity like that never happened organically. This time had to be different. Now she had Lindsay and Jerome together. Her time had come. 

Jerome cut the lines on his desk and inhaled a rail, passing one of the $100 bill Mackenzie paid him to Lindsay. She held the rolled-up note to her nose and sniffed, tossing her head back. Mackenzie offered to go last. When Lindsay’s passive mood visibly improved as the drug hit her blood stream, Mackenzie asked, “Remember when we lived together? My god we used to get into so much trouble.” Pathetic, Mackenzie thought.

“I always forget you two lived together,” Jerome said, rubbing his nose. Mackenzie watched closely as he took the bill from her and snorted another line. “Thanks for taking me home that night, by the way.”

“What are friends for?” she replied, winking at Lindsay who grimaced. 

At first, they’d played it off as a joke. Mackenzie had her hands on Jerome first. She brought him home from the bar, unaware Lindsay was having a small party. Like tonight, they were doing blow. And like tonight, Jerome would leave with Lindsay, who got everything she wanted. Mackenzie laughed, feeling the electric strike of cocaine hitting her system. 

“You know, actually, Jerome. We should pick up a ball on our way to the party. I never think about it until like the moment of. Will you call laDon?” Lindsay had the nasal accent of an Orange County sorority girl. It was infuriating. What she really meant to say was she didn’t want to pay for it, even though she could afford to. She also wanted to point out the chic get-together Mackenzie wouldn’t be invited to. She chimed in, prepared. 

“Actually, I have another bag with me. In the dressing room if you want to get it.”

“Jesus, Mackenzie.” Lindsay eyed her sardonically, “You dealing now or what? Has it gotten that bad?” 

“You don’t have to take it if you don’t want it.” 

“No, no…we’ll take it. Right babe?”

Jerome passed her $250 and stood up to retrieve the drugs. Lindsay bent over the desk again, ready to take a line when the lights went out. A petrified squeak of fear shot through the darkness as Lindsay recoiled, grasping for Jerome’s hand.

“What was that?” Mackenzie asked.

“I’m not sure,” Jerome said, turning on his phone’s flashlight. 

“Maybe you should check the breakers.”

“Who?” Jerome responded, looking at a text on the glowing phone screen. He looked like he was telling a ghost story around a campfire. Mackenzie in turn wondered how a grown man could be so fucking stupid. She’d have to look at it herself to save her evening. As luck would have it, that wouldn’t be necessary. The lights flickered on again with a clanging hiss. Only Lindsay continued for the door, saying she needed to use the ladies room. “We should leave soon, babe,” she declared.

Mackenzie had said she’d go with her, as girls always do, thinking a moment of solidarity between them might help her situation. They left Jerome unattended with the cocaine and vanished into the hall. 

“It was nice of Jerome to do this for you,” Lindsay said from the stall next to her. “He’s so busy these days.”

Why can’t women ever just say what they mean? It’s exhausting. Mackenzie agreed from the stall, taking her time. She was nervous. Lindsay seemed to hate her. It was sad, they used to be so close. The lights flickered. 

“Oh my god, honestly. Do we live in fucking Mexico? This is ridiculous.”  

“Is it supposed to rain tonight?” Mackenzie asked. Again, the florescent lights strobed, tinging their ears with that tinnitus-like hum. 

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Because sometimes storms can…never mind,” she whispered. 

“Are you done? Shake it off and let’s go. Jerome and I have somewhere to be.” Lindsay hardly noticed the stall door opening, too busy considering herself in the mirror, adjusting her breasts. Mackenzie’s eyes were hooded, beautiful. Something violent erased the girl next door inside her. Flickering lights, Mackenzie thought, not expected but it does add a certain flare to the situation. Mackenzie waited for another blackout. Their phones blared suddenly with a severe thunderstorm warning. Perfect timing. Lindsay gasped like little girl afraid of the dark. 

“Okay, come on Mackenzie. This is freaking me out.” She didn’t realize her friend was breathing down her neck until she spoke. 

“It’s just the rain,” Mackenzie said. “Don’t be a baby.” 

Lindsay startled and dropped her jaw. “Excuse me?” She gripped the door handle to leave when Mackenzie spoke.

“Okay, Linds. Seriously, what the fuck happened between us? We used to be close. It’s like you can’t stand to be around me and I’ve never done anything to you. It’s sad.” 

“Sad?” Lindsday repeated “You’re the one who’s sad. You want to know why I don’t like being around you, aside from you disgusting job as a dancer?” She used her fingers to do air quotes around job and dancer. “It’s because I’m better than you, Mackenzie. When I realized that all you did was hold me back, I saw the opportunity to succeed and I took it. That’s the difference between you and me, and why I will never let Jerome help you professionally. Just stick to taking your clothes off. It’s what you’re good at. Maybe.”

“Has anyone ever told you, Lindsay, that you look like skin and bones?” As Lindsay turned to leave, Mackenzie put her hand on the door. She whispered in Lindsay’s ear. “I’ve been fucking your husband since you got married. Did you know he thinks your mangy cunt?”

“That’s it. Fuck this,” she said, throwing up her hands. “We are so fucking done.”

The shock of pain paralyzed Lindsay, who couldn’t find it in her to scream as the cutting wire passed over her face and cinched tight around her neck. There was a light scuffle, Lindsay’s attempt at putting up a fight. She flailed, faintly slapping at Mackenzie’s face, but it was no use. Mackenzie was right, Lindsay had virtually no muscle mass. She’d be dead in less than three minutes, even without the knife. But Makenzie was going to use it anyway. 

Down the hall, Jerome was growing impatient. The champagne didn’t stretch very far, and he wondered if the girls were bogarting something good or just having one of those sappy girl-on-girl self-esteem talks. Either way, he hated being ignored. “Hey!” he called out, we should probably just go, I’m not sure what’s happening to the electricity or whatever.” No one responded. He’d have to walk down the hall as if it were a chore. “I said let’s go! I’m fucking done.” 

“Sorry about that,” Mackenzie said, rounding a corner. “Took a little longer than I expected.”

“Obviously.” Jerome sneered. “Where’s my wife?”

“You didn’t see her come out? She said she was going to wait in the car.”

“No, I didn’t fucking see her. Jesus, I’ve just been sitting here with my dick in my hands is all. Anyway, give me that bag. I’m ready to leave.” 

“Can you be a little nicer to me? Jesus. It’s in the dressing room. I’m gonna grab my purse.”

“Great,” he said, slouching down the hall toward the stairs. Mackenzie watched from his office as he entered the dressing room. One of the vanity lights popped. The power surge was taking a toll and he worried there’d be damage to the building’s wiring. Remedially scanning the room, he noticed the purse in Mackenzie’s chair. Jerome rolled his eyes, wondering if she were really this stupid. “You’re fucking bag is in here!” he yelled and pulled out his phone to call Lindsay. He hit send, followed by a faint ringtone from down the hall, near the bathrooms. Mackenzie’s phone lay dormant on the vanity. “I thought Lindsay was in the car?” he called, staring at the wall trying to piece together what was happening. As he turned to investigate, he let the phone ring in his hand. 

There was barely time to register Mackenzie standing behind him, holding the champagne bottle high above her head. He screamed as it crashed down over his head, fast and unsympathetic. The bottle didn’t break but emitted the sound of a baseball bat knocking one out of the park. Jerome dropped the floor where his eyes jolted in his head, his body twisting in spasms. The computer in his head short-circuited. She knelt over him to make sure he was still breathing. A pulse was present, but faint. She needed to work fast but felt relaxed. 

The hard part may be over but killing them isn’t bigger picture. There were all kinds of evidence to disguise in plain sight. First, the cameras needed to be dealt with. Snatching the phone from his hands, she used his face to unlock the screen. Similarly, she logged into Jerome’s security system history, erasing a full 24 hours from the dates the other girls went missing. Each of those them had it coming, she figured. If Kiara would have been willing to keep her mouth shut about Mackenzie working as a stripper, she probably would have been spared. 

Plastic vials of the dead girls’ blood were her purse, hidden in tampon applicators. Retrieving them, she saw they had thawed from their time in the freezer. These would be distributed in various amounts and in primary locations throughout the studio before being cleaned up. Luminol would do the rest for her.

Even in an industry as superficial as modeling, she could never wrap her head around fucking her way to the top. Yet, letting an agent or photographer eat your pussy was apparently a prerequisite for success. She wouldn’t be able to look at herself in the morning, let alone act the way these girls did. The way they treated other people was abhorrent. As if they were worthy. As if they had achieved something. And then they had the gall to fuck it up and fall back on working as cam girls? No way. Whatever happened to solidarity? Mackenzie had what it takes to be in this business. They were never going to get away with stepping over her like they did. Mackenzie was a model. Not a porn star. She didn’t suck dick for a job. But she would kill for it. That, she could do. 

No one, not a single person had ever worked harder to achieve a position in modeling than Mackenzie. She was sure of it. It was exhausting. Time consuming. Life altering. The amount of effort that went into following these girls, coordinating schedules with Jerome. Tying up loose ends. All that time riding the fucking bus to places she didn’t want to be. She stayed up all night some days, taking a cab to the club, surviving on the kind of energy that only revenge can sustain.

It would be too risky to leave their heads in Jerome’s apartment, or here for that matter. She’d gotten rid of them immediately, respectively after each kill. Katy, Cerina and Kiara’s primary identifiers were now just a rotting set of dental records at the bottom of the ocean. Lindsay’s, however, would make a prominent fixture in the scene Mackenzie would create tonight. 

It was go time. She cleared her head and focused on the task at hand. Make it dirty but keep it clean. Jerome’s studio was an industrial building, converted from apartments. Any material evidence against her would go from a trash bag into the building’s furnace. The detectives were definitely expecting a man, which is what the champagne was for. She streamlined back to the office and snatched the empty bottle. Reentering the bathroom, she laid Lindsay in child’s pose, shoved the bottle inside her and began thrusting. Back in the dressing room, she stepped over Jerome and placed the bottle into the trash bag. An identical champagne bottle was hidden under the table, which she stamped with Jerome’s fingerprints before dumping its contents down the sink. 

Rolling his body over, she retrieved his wallet and placed three locks of hair next to the money she’d given him, each tied with a small rubber band. The dead girls would appear to live on as trophies in his back pocket.

The finale would have to take place in the studio space. She tied her hair into a bun and wrapped it in a stocking, then slipped a ski mask over her head, which would not help the sweating but at least deter it from dropping everywhere. To maintain her pace, Mackenzie dashed back to the office and snorted a line in preparation for the heavy lifting, careful to slip the rolled bill and its DNA into her jeans pocket. Dragging Jerome by the ankles was easy. Once they reached the stairs, Mackenzie worked deliberately. She hauled Jerome from behind, wrapping her arms under his and locking both hands together on his chest. Minimizing the amount of environmental damage to his body was important. Slapping his face to keep him conscious, he began babbling. His eyes were dim, rolling around in his head like loose marbles. Every step was back-breaking.  Mackenzie looked forward to killing him. 

If tonight were going to make national headlines, she needed atmosphere. The scene had to be beautiful. A hefty pool of blood had formed under Lindsay after multiple stabbings, which Mackenzie used to paint the long gray hallway with her corpse. The brash near-black trail drenched the stairwell like a hellish waterfall. Jerome had a clear resin bench he used as a prop. She dragged it to the white vinyl backdrop and hauled Lindsay to a draped, floating pose atop it. Streaks of thick red drizzled down, creating a macabre structure effect in the light. It would appear as though Lindsay’s own blood were lifting her up instead of pulling her down. Switching rubber gloves, Mackenzie took Jerome’s camera and began shooting. These unprinted portraits would be an addition to the hard copies staged in Jerome’s desk. 

 Before her own shoot started earlier that evening, she’d left a brick near the door, which would be used to help dismember Lindsay’s head, providing a similar force to that of a grown man holding a knife. Straddling Lindsay was gratifying. Revenge is the kind of follow through not many people can stomach. With the blade in place on Lindsay’s throat, Mackenzie held the brick up and said goodbye.

Tendons stretched, veins peeled, blood erupted endlessly around her. It was a sight she was becoming accustomed to. Lindsay’s expression was picture worthy as her head dropped with a rolling thud along the floor. If Mackenzie had to guess, it was an expression of disappointment rather than fear. The idea of it made her horny. 

A fresh outfit and pair of shoes were set out neatly in front of her stage. Mackenzie removed her bloodied clothes, tossing them into the trash bag. Baby wipes were used to clean her arms and neck of blood so she could let down her hair. Before returning to the furnace, she fingerprinted the murder weapon with Jerome’s hands, which she then unbound. Removing the zip ties on his hands and feet, inspected for signs of bruising. Clean and simple. She would run down and set the evidence ablaze, then return to create the fight scene. The baby wipes also removed the makeup at her wrists to reveal deep purple contusions, the kind she’d cultivated in private with the same zip ties she intended to use this evening. They would indicate she’d been restrained against her will. Additional faint bruises blossomed in a ring around her neck, and she’d let the police come to their own conclusion about them. Surface wounds only tell the truth during an autopsy. She would not be receiving an autopsy.

In the dressing room, she had the sensation that someone was watching her, like a ghost. She perfected her makeup, then ruined it with saline solution, a substitute for real tears. Mackenzie decided she was ready. Unzipping her sweater, she shrugged it off her body. Clad in only a bra, she licked her lips and slithered over Jerome. Her hair fell into his face as he kissed him, then wretched at his bottom lip with her teeth.

“You fucked me in your wife’s bed,” she crooned, tasting his blood, “and still made me pay for these fucking pictures?” The knife penetrated her shoulder and she screamed. Another slash tore across her neck, deeper than anticipated, but all the better. Groping his crotch, she asked if braindead pricks like him could even get hard. His body only allowed him to reach a semi, but the impulse was there and good enough for Mackenzie. Inserting him inside her, she made waves with her body, feeling his member grow inside her. Obviously, she couldn’t wait for him to come, if that were even possible by now. Mackenzie came prepared. His thawed semen was disguised in her purse as well. Just in case. Jerome insisted on bareback sex every time, so it didn’t take much effort. 

With her own sexual assault staged, she was free to move to the next step. Lifting him to his feet, she threw him back to the concrete floor in full force, slicing haphazardly at his arms and punching at his face. Bruises don’t appear on people who are already dead. She needed time for them to develop. Time for another line of coke. Maybe a cigarette. Once she’d made evidence of a struggle clear, she mixed their blood in her hands, steadied the knife over his abdomen, and plunged into him. The second stab was nearby and not as deep for aesthetics sake. It had to look erratic. The final incision to his throat was mortal. 

Tears unexpectedly appeared. She hadn’t planned on being emotional, but it was fair to recognize the longevity of her work. She’d done it. She took an idea, made a plan and followed through. Mackenzie was finished. This was going to work because it had to. There was no turning back. 

“I want to be a creator,” she sobbed. “I don’t want to be created.” 

She wiped her nose and crawled off Jerome. On her feet, she analyzed everything like a radar and took one last walkthrough of the crime scene. Thinking it would be more believable if she weren’t wearing shoes, she fell hard on her shoulder and tossed her boots down the stairwell indicate a struggle. It’s all in the details. Her phone was downstairs, turned off. She should call 911 while she was still congested from crying. 

At the base of the stairs, took a dramatic leap onto the concrete, sending a flash of thunderous pain over her knees. Pain is temporary, worthwhile. She would push herself as far as possible to be believable. By now, she was staggering to the dressing room. The phone was supposed to be in here. Panic momentarily consumed her. It was here somewhere, because no one else was around to misplace it. The dressing room was the last place she remembered having it but backtracked to the office. It had been a long night and she was tired. That last fall been somewhat disorienting. There it was, on a chair. When did that happen? 

“Fuuuuuck!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “Help me! Please!” It was a good effect, screaming herself hoarse. Authenticity was paramount. She dialed 911 mid-scream, for the tapes. She wanted them to be unnerving.

The following day, while the building was being searched, all the evidence Mackenzie planted would be found. There was no doubt. Jerome was the Dead Girl Pose killer. Investigation would come to an abrupt, satisfying end. Unless, in a bizarre twist of fate, one frightening detail presided over a case that would raise doubt. 

Before the operator could respond, the call would begin and end with a woman’s bloodcurdling scream. If our heroine killed Jerome Watson, as was apparent, then who killed Mackenzie Malone?

Ten

Mackenzie had heard, as most people have, and from no distinct source in the course of her years, that life flashes before your eyes when you die. This was a theory she only hoped to confirm if she knew in her gut that she’d really made it as a famous model. Nor did she expect to feel her past crashing down so violently over her head as it did. And despite its weight, the brick did little to Mackenzie’s consciousness aside from the stars glittering before her eyes. Blood trickled over her scalp in a direct line for her eyebrow.

The day started as planned. Hours passed in the hospital, unnaturally slow wearing an ugly paper gown. A soft-spoken OBGYN spread her open, confirming she’d been raped. Tissue was sewn together to stop her bleeding. It’s a harrowing amount of time keep one’s story straight. Once they’d seen her breakdown in real tears, she could rest. Anyone would understand if she dried herself out. Mackenzie refused drugs, as she intended. There was too much risk to get doped up on pain killers and start babbling strange details. Stick to Tylenol. They’d think she were brave, a hero’s mindset in the midst of tragedy born out of an inherent desire to help others. She’d killed someone. 

“I just don’t understand it,” she cried. Tubes and needles and little black stitches wreathed around her frail, muscular body. “He was my friend! How could he do something like this? What? Yes, they’d argue, but just over the usual stuff, I guess. Like married couples do.” 

They asked about the dead girls, if Jerome knew them. “He was a very in-demand photographer. I’m mean, he’d probably photographed thousands of—"

 Pause. Let your eyes burst like fireworks. Let your pretty mouth gasp in horror. 

“Oh my god! How could I be so stupid?” 

Real tears this time. Ask if it’s true. Let them tell you they’ve found pictures of those idiots in his office. Those bitches looked better without faces anyway. Scream. Hold your face in your hands but let them see you cry. Try to vomit if you can. 

Shock and awe, that’s what we’re going for. You’ve trained for this, Mackenzie, your whole life. This is your moment. 

The hospital was surrounded with press. A monkey would be able to that tell a break had been made in the case based solely on the amount of security barricading the hospital. No one was allowed in. Even Mackenzie’s name was changed. News trucks littered the block, small-time photographers flashing their lights at any window hoping for their big break. If she were lucky, people would hold a vigil for her safety. 

Mackenzie ran her fingers through her hair, limping to the window between interviews. She’d place a hand on the glass and gaze out at the twinkling city. But she would never look down. They would look up at her, this visibly, beautifully distressed survivor. Oh my, the things she must have seen. The perfect final girl. 

In some way, Mackenzie considered herself an innovator. She made an industry of her story. Her face was going to put money in people’s pockets. It was the right thing to do. She was helping people. 

Resting in bed, covered by layers of blankets, a nurse changed Mackenzie’s drip, poured her a glass of water. “Is there anything else I can get you?” she asked. Behind her, a bald cop standing guard watched sympathetically, thinking of his own daughter. Mackenzie blew her nose into a tissue and said, “I just want to go home.”

Anyone without prior knowledge would think Mackenzie had been hit by a truck. The beating was ghastly. A headache breached the line into migraine territory as she was discharged. Once she was home, she’d eat the narcotics prescribed and take a hot bath. Hospitals have their own brand of stench that clings to one’s skin. Even the food has an antiseptic aftertaste. Before departure, she splashed her bare face with cold water in the bathroom sink. Security pulled her black car to the side exit. 

A natural beauty smiled gratefully at her well-wishers; warm California sun personified. The stitches felt tight on her neck and arms and would definitely scar. But she’d decided to keep them. They’d be her version of Elizabeth Taylor’s tracheotomy scar, but with a better story. Bald Cop escorted Mackenzie through the halls, pushing her wheelchair to the vehicle where he also helped her in. People were yelling, microphones held high in the air for any comment she may muster. Reporters screamed her name. She would decide, as Bald Cop climbed in on the opposite side, that it would all be too much for her. Letting her face crack, she gazed bewildered out the tinted windows, and slowly held out her hand to the officer. He held her warmly, becoming emotional at the revelation of her vulnerability. When she cried on his shoulder, he wrapped her in his arms and kissed her forehead. It’s over, Mackenzie thought, heaving tears of joy. This is the start of something unequivocally, blissfully, new. 

The key barely inserted into her apartment door when it eased open, and she swore up and down that it was locked. Any city girl knew to lock the door on her way out or in, no matter how busy she was. Too tired to care, she entered her home, anxious for a cigarette on the fire escape and a bath. At some point, she’d have to call her mom back, who was flying in from Florida to be with her. As she reached up for the light string, she kicked over a strange object. It felt like a plastic box. Light filled the living room and in return a kitten screamed back at her. That’s not mine, she thought with a flush of adrenaline. In the moment, she’d forgotten who the bad guy was supposed to be. Nothing she’d done until now would help her situation. Now, Mackenzie was just a girl alone in her living room, unaware that she was in danger.

The cat yowled, putting Mackenzie on edge. She was in a tailspin of confusion, like trying to make sense of a bizarre dream. She definitely had locked the front door, which meant someone else had broken in. And they’re still here. She needed to get out. Move. Maybe the cop was still outside. But he had driven away when she turned the lights on. Officers would be patrolling her building intermittently, though. For her protection. The floor creaked behind her. Fear consumed her as she realized this is what it felt like for them. Turning to sprint for the door, she forgot to scream—it would have been impolite to the neighbors. When one is being chased, it’s difficult to be logical. Everything we’ve been taught to believe says our fear is a figment of imagination. We’re not meant to question if the knickknacks on our dresser have been rearranged, or consider that your keys haven’t been misplaced and somehow staged on another surface. She thought of the flowerpot, how the sound of it falling to the alley below woke her up on the couch. Until this morning, she thought she was going crazy. 

Making a break for an escape, she threw the door open and bolted down the hall. Halfway to the stairs, an unidentified man’s arms wrapped around her. His hands were clad in leather driving gloves, covering her mouth as she gaped in the air to scream. He began to drag her into the apartment, holding steadfast against feble attempts to wrestle and scratch at his hooded face. Every limb on Mackenzie’s body was swollen useless. Her nails scratched at the walls, knocking framed photographs and manufactured artwork to the hardwood. It was too late; he’d thrown her on the bed. Her odds of living through this were decreasing by the second. The irony alone made her want to tear her hair out. The apartment felt foreign. Frantic circumstances continued to confuse which drawer the knifes were in, or whether she kept a baseball bat in the closet. 

Hopefully this was a mugging, she rationalized, or some other extension of random violence. Huge bruises were bursting under the skin, rendering her nearly immobile. Calling out for help would be similarly futile, as she’d lost most of her voice at the studio. If he tried to rape her, Mackenzie knew she’d made it easy for him. Instinctively, she began to wet herself as taught by self-defense class. There was mace on her keychain. Had she dropped her on the floor with her phone, which cracking as it scattered across the floor during the attack. Was it Jerome somehow still alive? Or Lindsay’s reanimated body come back to haunt her? 

He was neither, of course, but a ghost all the same. The second blow to her skull was fast and deliberate, as though Mackenzie had planned the assault herself. A smatter of bloody pin drops bedaubed her vanity mirror, sizzling upon contact with the hot light bulbs. 

When he threw her face down on the bed, Mackenzie still wasn’t confident she was being murdered. She’d been trained all her life to believe anything else at all were happening—maybe the ceiling had caved in above her and this was all a dream. Blood rolled over her smooth forehead where it pooled into her eyes. Visibly, everything went cloudy and red. The floor would stain, and she worried the landlord could evict her if the boards needed sanding. Angles of the room were spinning, others blurring together. What was ceiling and what was floor no longer had discernability. Genuine nausea weakened her stomach. A celestial voice told her to scream, to remain calm but urgent, and never stop trying She cleared her throat. The room was dizzying the more he pulverized her, swirling with garish lights. Occasionally, she’d black out, spiraling into a kaleidoscope. Jerome’s name was on her lips when she eventually yelped. On a deeper level, this was clearly the work of someone else. Had someone really been watching her this whole time?

His large hand rolled her over so she could face him. Her delicate painted nails reached out for the exposed brick wall behind her, intending to use it as an anchor somehow. Instead she clutched handfuls of fuzzy white blanket. She pulled anyway, choking through sobs until stifled by the resurgence of pressure on her neck. At last, he would reveal himself to her. Silence only brought more hostility to her predicament. What was he going to do with her? The masked intruded held something behind his back. Each step he took felt like hours in between. 

She needed a miracle. Maybe Dan, the bartender who only worked nights was home and heard a commotion. When she tried to reason with him, he yanked her off the bed to the floor, knocking the wind out of her and dragging a steady stream of unmistakable fluid across the white bedspread. The angelic voice inside again whispered, this time instructing her close her eyes; it was the same voice that says don’t look down on a roller coaster. Either way, it said, it’s happening. Heaving a steel-toed boot into her chest plate sent a minute trace of blood out of her mouth. The begging stage had come into play. 

Enzo grabbed her by the hair, pulling her up just to throw her back into a pile on the floor. He rolled her over by kicking heavily into her ribs. There was something in her bloodshot eyes he wanted to see. Nearly a full day had passed, since she sat in this room doing her makeup for the camera. That expensive waterproof eyeliner remained steadfast, even under a cascade of blood and tears. It contributed beautifully to the confounded terror on Mackenzie’s face. 

 At last she was allowed to take in the masked, blank expression of another killer. Her equal. He’s holding a gym bag. Now he’s unzipping it. This is gonna hurt, Mackenzie thought. The head of a woman she didn’t recognize fell to the floor, rolling to a stop between her legs. The woman was older, with curly hair that was matted down. She was wearing lipstick. But her eyes were still open wide as if still asking for help. Mackenzie convulsed with repulsion. She’d been so careful. Was someone framing her after convincing the police Jerome had killed those other girls? It was like he was using her plan for himself, taking his own victims on the journey and letting another killer take the blame. Not than a late-aged woman was on brand. 

His rasping voice spoke, asking, of all things, “Why?” Mackenzie didn’t know where to start. Nor did she recognize the man’s face as he removed the mask. He would have been handsome, but his features were contorted in sorrow. Thus, began a story that sent petrified her with regret. He produced a large knife from behind his back and displayed it uncomfortably close to her face. 

“I can’t take it anymore,” he gasped. “I—I can’t take this anymore.” 

His face was broken, and wherever the emotion was coming from imposed a maternal feeling in Mackenzie. She continued to gaze up at him as though he were an injured puppy. 

“I made myself better for you!” he cried. “You made me a better person. Why did you do that? I was fine beforehand. I was prepared to die alone. Then you came along! Why do you just leave the good ones behind, the ones who care? For those fucking men who treat you like whores?” He held the knife while he cried into his hands. “Look what you made me do!” 

“I’m…so… sorry,” She tried to apologize, but couldn’t figure out what crime she’d committed. There had to be some way out of this. There’s always a way out, she just needed to think, strategize. But it was written all over her face. He knew she’d try to fight back, that’s why there was a zip tie around her neck. She struggled to breath staring up at him. His person seemed buoyant, bouncing up and down as if his whole body were breathing. Treading lightly, she tried to explore what he meant. 

“Who are you?” she asked, and he lurching to the floor, hovering over her on all fours. She screamed, holding her arms over her eyes. He grabbed her hands and gripped them above her head. Disgusted, she realized he wanted to kiss her. Instinctively, she pressed herself into the ground, getting as far away from him as she could despite his grip. The blue of her irises raced back and forth, memorizing every feature—so many scars—before realizing she didn’t have to commit anything else to memory. It had come, the moment Enzo had been waiting for. She knew him.

Him.

It was stupid, but there’s just no telling with some people. Never would she have expected to be alone in her bedroom with Lorenzo Lastra. His presence in her apartment would almost be comical if the stakes weren’t so high. Earlier in the summer, she was on her way to an open call and sat next to him on the bus. God, she didn’t even recognize him until he introduced himself. He wore an atmosphere of bonfire smoke and alcohol, but the scars were ultimately why she tried not to look at him. 

It was sad seeing him like that, and she thoughtlessly asked if he were alright, praying for a lack of response. There was gravel in his voice, adding unnecessary character to his accent like a beat-up truck, rusted and sinking into the earth after years of unuse. “MK?” he asked, raising the hairs on her neck. Men were unpredictable. Her mind went to the mase nestled in her bag as she took in his face. Hardened and seriously malnourished, but not entirely uninviting. Traces of alluring boyishness remained secret behind his eyes, in the cut where not many people were allowed in. “It’s me, Lorenzo,” he smiled, hand on his chest. “From Bodine.” 

They didn’t really know each other back then. She ran in a popular circle, while he didn’t have a circle to speak of. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t noticed. It certainly didn’t mean he was bad. Obviously, Enzo was a little off. “Alternative” is the term she’d used when they talked about him. Mackenzie didn’t want to care, that day on the bus that he wasn’t doing OK. But it was hard to shake the feeling. They were sweet on each other once, just one time, and nothing came of it. Mackenzie had nearly forgotten. She was 17, already at the park by the time he showed up, the weird kid shuffling by in baggy jeans. They were both skipping class, obviously, and she was bored. He found her there, much like he’d found her now, with intent, spinning on the playground carousel looking at the colors change in the trees. 

At first, she thought he was a creep, because so many of the boys were, and so crude. But he was more of a loner, which didn’t help deter thoughts of Columbine. When they got to talking, he asked her things. More importantly, he paid attention. Maybe she was wrong about him. Maybe he was quiet, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Most boys were brash, sex-starved idiots. 

“Can I bum one of those?” she asked, sitting up from where she lay on the carousel the instant she smelled smoke. “Sure,” he said, and pushed the carousel gently as they talked about the future, how he was going to box professionally. She was going to be a famous model/actress. “It’s all I have left,” she said, because her family was in ruin financially and emotionally after her Dad died. “There’s no way I can go to college. But I can act. I practice crying in the mirror, like every day. And I can pose.” 

“Show me,” he’d said. 

“Right now?” she laughed and feigned the purse-lipped attitude of a 90’s fashion model. In character, she slapped her hands to her bony hips and bowed her shoulders inward. The boy buckled, said, “What else ya got?” An invisible camera appeared in his hands, and he mimed taking a picture. “Are there different kinds of poses,” he asked. “Like do they all have fucked up names or do you just move around a lot and hope it turns out good?”

The carousel spun around and around, and Mackenzie flipped her ponytail from side to side keeping him in her sight. She’d spent years with her nose in magazines practicing how to model so she’d start off with a bang in the industry after high school. “Well,” she chuckled, “there is this one.” And she dropped herself into a pile on the rotating stage, fixing her legs and arms outward as though she were falling. Her eyes concentrated on the roofs of houses in the foreground. The carousel slowed, each bar padding on the boy’s hand until it came to a stop. 

“What’s that one called?” 

Breaking character, Mackenzie snorted through a laugh. Sitting up, she crawled over to him and smiled. “It’s this pose, kind of a faux pas for models. I don’t think you’re really supposed to do it anymore.”

“Well, what is it? Girls have names for everything. Bras, jeans, nail polish…”

“Shut up,” she grinned, playfully hitting his chest. “That one’s called dead girl pose.”

“Don’t move,” he said, and ran to the living room. He pulled out an album and turned up “Sure Thing.” It was him, she realized. The other day in the shower she was sure the stereo was turned on. Walking to the record player, she saw that it was off. But Miguel was on the turn table, not on the shelf where it was supposed to be. Racing for the door in her robe, she checked it was still locked. At the time Mackenzie couldn’t make heads or tails of it. 

Enzo smiled. She knows.

She wore the paralyzed shock of a victim drowning in premeditation. Now that she was here, injured and helpless, the pieces fell together. The record player, her broken flowerpot, little things moving around on their own. Enzo’s presence in her life was as tenuous and nondescript as a shadow in her peripheral vision. A person has neighbors in the city. The same people see each other all the time, probably every day: on their way to work, at the same bars, the gym. The bus. Maybe it was no coincidence he was here. Maybe all this time she was following her victims, he was following her. 

“It was you,” she said, “at the café?” Seated on the outdoor patio and arguing with Jerome, she spotted him first. In spite of the busy crowds he was definitely staring at them and appeared to be talking to himself. His mannerisms were peculiar, wiggling his fingers, lips moving under a smile frozen in place like a clay mask. 

The feline was out of its carrier, now fussing against Mackenzie’s leg, and she pet it instinctively. Fear wasn’t the emotion in her blood anymore. She felt stupid for not knowing better. It was almost comical. Like, what are the odds? All those nights sleepwalking into the kitchen for a glass of water or the bathroom to pee, stubbing her toe on a coffee table that was always an inch or two out of place. Earlier this morning, she picked up a pair of earrings from the box on her dresser and said, “These aren’t mine?”

They were kind of perfect for each other, she thought, crazy. And they might have been. Then he held the knife up. One last bomb of panic erupted inside her veins. The weight of his person grew, sucking all the air out of the room. He closed in in her like a tomb. Even in the middle of the city, in an apartment building surrounded by people, no one heard her muffled cries for help. Enzo was babbling to himself as she writhed beneath menacing hands. She scratched at her own neck, struggling to breathe. Mackenzie Malone may as well be on the moon.

“I’ve loved you so long,” he said. He closed his eyes tight, as in in prayer. It’s my time. I’m the one. He held the knife out, revealing a cluster of tiny hairs on his abdomen under the black hoodie. Pressing down on her windpipe with the other hand, Enzo drove the blade through Mackenzie’s throat. 

“I’m the one,” Mackenzie said to herself. Tears fell off her face, thick like syrup. Headlines would be printed about her. The name appeared on her glistening eyes like they were a marquee. Mackenzie Malone flashed by in a shimmer gold and cracking white lightbulbs. In the end, nothing went her way. But she could settle for fame, even in death, after all.

Eleven 

Thunder crashed overhead. He was drinking again, but not excessively. Enzo was still trying to figure that part out. All kinds of insurance money was coming his way, he learned. Turns out his mother was smarter with money than he realized. Rita’s body wasn’t discovered in the ashes of her home. For now, she was a missing person and would remain one. 

Carmichael left the gym to him, which he didn’t expect. Authorities suspected gambling debts. But there wasn’t much to go on aside from the theory he owed people money. If Enzo was a suspect, he didn’t know it yet. Cross that bridge, Enzo thought, and shrugged his shoulders. In the meantime, he wondered what it was all worth, who was he living for, where was God, etcetera; Enzo wanted to know if he could change. 

The idea returned, that he should kill himself after what he did. It wasn’t fair what he put his mother through, but he still had it in him to be angry. Probably his conscience attempting to defend itself, like the body attacking a virus. Mackenzie Malone was a different story. He needed more time to contemplate that. 

As Enzo stood in the storm, he watched his umbrella collect water in a puddle by the curb. The morning’s news stalemated him, numbing his emotions like a snuffed-out flame. Headless Body Posed in Rice Park Identified: Killer Still on the Loose? Beneath Mackenzie’s high school portrait, the journalist detailed a shocking death regarding the final girl, the only surviving “model murders” victim, who only hours later is found beheaded in her apartment. It was no coincidence, surely. The work of a copycat, perhaps? Did noted photographer Jerome Wentworth have an accomplice? The world will never know. 

Enzo gulped down a spiked soda, desperately trying to drown his broken heart. It wasn’t working. Mackenzie didn’t struggle against him too much when he killed her. She seemed almost…exhilarated. It wasn’t until he read the paper that he’d realized what she really was—his equal. He found the USB in her purse and downloaded it when he got home. Its contents were portraits. Stunning portraits. Of both Mackenzie, and the dead girls. At the time, he didn’t even know about Jerome and Lindsay. They were simply pawns in a game of fate, two players in a game neither knew they were playing. Enzo had been waiting in Mackenzie’s apartment for a day before he killed her. 

It was a tragedy, really. Had he known about Mackenzie’s secret life, things would have been different. The epiphany struck fast, illuminating his nervous system like being struck by lightning. He and Mackenzie were made for each other. He would have helped her, had she asked. Had he asked even once to buy her a tea. They’d have talked about it, really talked. It would have been the kind of conversation that lasted deep into the night. Instead, Lorenzo allowed himself to descend into the madness of a rabbit hole. In his pursuit of Mackenzie he’d come gradually come undone. In retrospect, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a real conversation with a human being that didn’t involve creating a scenario for himself, a plot of his own devices at the mercy of other people living their lives.

They could have lived together, Mackenzie and him. Made each other better with every day knowing, on a visceral level, that they had the same heart. He’d missed his chance as she was taking hers, and the crossfire left both of them disabled. Enzo threw his empty can into the street and yelled out when the thunder burst overhead. He had found the one who would make him whole and tore her apart.

The greyscale of Mackenzie’s face was gone in the drainage, representation of the opportunities missed or not taken. He was late for work, dropped his phone in the water. Couldn’t even call Carmichael to tell him why. The old man had even offered a compliment the other day, telling Enzo he was “looking good,” and to keep it up. That sentiment wouldn’t mean anything now.

It’s Sunday, Enzo realized. The bus he’d been waiting for would have never arrived anyway. In retaliation, he punched the glass of the bus shelter. He didn’t want to hurt anymore. A deep precipice of choices separated him from the earth. The first, he could waste more time crying in the rain, waiting—always waiting--for another bus. Or he could relax, enjoy the ride, reach every edge of the city in pursuit of the American dream. They could live on, Mackenzie and him, in continuing what they started, cosmically, together. 

It didn’t matter in the end that Lorenzo Lastra had lost his mind, or even that he had tried so hard to reclaim some sense of purpose by confusing his dreams with a stranger’s reality. His life was his own to explore alone, in loneliness, treading silently on human boundaries of which his feet will never firmly land. And that would be the greatest perspective man could ask for. The whole world and everyone in it, not one of them could ever be him. An individual. Even the angriest among them, or the most confident, beautiful, powerful, would never get the see that world as he did. And how wonderful that was.

Mackenzie had given him the gift of companionship, and as he boarded the train, he no longer felt invisible. Enzo was no ghost lingering between planes of existence to build a haunted house. He realized now he was alien, a superior invader, drawing a map of the world as he sees it. One cut at a time, one stranger he was compelled to linger behind. 

Heads will roll, Mackenzie’s voice whispered behind his ear. Enzo smiles coyly, nods his head in response. So long as there was breath in his body, he would be there. Watching. Waiting. Wondering, did the girl sitting next to him have a good head on her shoulders.