STORIES
STORIES
SLIPPERY
What really started it all, I wonder? It would seem to be, I was seemingly bothered, I guess- yes I was. I was upset because a girl my age, youngish, who lived in my apartment building, climbed the fire escape to break into her apartment on the fifth floor and didn’t make it. Instead she slipped and fell on her head and cracked it open on the sidewalk.
That must’ve upset me. It did. And because I didn’t find out about it until 3 days after it happened, because I was somewhere, I don’t know where, because I was somewhere else other than home, I didn’t know that this particular something happened when it did.
What upset me was that, to the people that live in my building, the death of one of its tenants was not remarkable. In my building we abided by a strict live and let live, mind your own beez wax, try to avoid saying hello if at all possible, do not borrow an egg or cup of sugar (you go to the deli and buy it) policy.
In the past I loved this about my building. Separate lives- thank you God! Yes, we all lived within centimeters of one another, but once when I a bit of butter dripped onto the bottom of my oven—I am not a great cook (ordering out is a better idea for me)-- but I made a bad judgement call and decided to try a squash thing and the butter melted in the bottom of the oven and there was more smoke than a small apartment can accommodate and it was just a mistake, just the tiniest bit of a buttery error- well—someone called the fire department rather than just come up stairs and see what all the smoky fuss was about and as a result I was forced to make terrible jokes to a group of weary firemen- “Is this what you have to do to get a man to come to your apartment in New York?” “Fire in the hole!” “Don’t worry, it’s just my Burning Bush.” “I keep telling these people I am NOT a witch and they refuse to believe me.”
I get off on saying inappropriate things in uncomfortable situations. The firemen blushed at my comments, embarrassed for me, and moved on to more pressing emergencies. And I have no idea who ratted on me because I had no idea who lived in my building. None.
I did know, however, about the youngish girls living on the fifth floor because frequently when I was awake and sleepless at 5am, watching a DVD, I listened as they clomped up the stairway in cowboy boots, dragging slurred male voices into the morning with them. I was happy to accommodate the noise in exchange for the indication of life in the building.
Someone, her parents I’m assuming, had erected a small memorial for her near where she fell on the sidewalk, in the alcove of a clothing boutique. A laminated 8x10 paper plaque with her xeroxed picture and a short biography. The picture showed us that she was young and unformed. Her brown hair and soft eyes told us she had not yet grown up. The words of praise for her short life tried to make her sound like she had done more with her short life than she had. I’m sure her family didn’t realize how little she’d done until they had to write filler for her obituary. There was also a red candle in a glass jar and a small potted African Violet.
I flipped through several local newspapers, the kind you find in plastic bins outside of bars, for reporting on the incident but there was none. I’d never have found out about it if one of the neighborhood women hadn’t stopped me on my way to the laundry mat and asked if I had any news of the girl who had fell. Annoyed at being approached by a stranger, I told her I didn’t know what she was referring to, and she replied in disturbing non-sequiturs saying “Oh but there was so much blood- all over the sidewalk. She landed right on her head. She slipped. She locked herself out of her apartment, she must be dead.”
After that, I became disturbed with thoughts of her death. I’ve pulled stunts like hers, many times, and it never occurred to me that it might not work out. I would never think twice about scaling a tall building to get into my home- slipping just doesn’t happen to careless girls climbing fire escapes in cowboy boots. That would be insulting to the order of the universe. And if one of them fell by mistake they’d surely fall directly onto large bags of garbage arranged like a big fluffy mattress.
I wondered if she was wearing her cowboy boots when she died. I wondered if the other girl, her roommate friend felt broken, if this has caused her to grow up.
Even though we are so very private in my building it bothered me that I did not see a sign in the building, marking the accident in some way. Something like “Hey. Let’s all meet out back Sunday night to talk about what happened … A barbeque to memorialize the memory of our dear friend--” or “Free counseling to those recovering from the stress of…”
But there was never anything posted about this poor girl’s tragedy in my building. Someone did, however, post a note asking me to remove a rag that had been lying in front of my door in the hallway. It was mean spirited I thought. Especially in the absence of the meaningful signs that I felt should have been posted and weren’t.
The long spring days leaked into the summer and the small memorial remained undisturbed. Someone, I never saw them do it, continued to light the candle and water the violet. I thought about asking the snobby girls who worked in the little shop if they knew anything- “who waters the plant? Did she scream on the way down? What did it sound like when she hit the pavement? Did you dare touch her while you were waiting for 911? Did you stay inside your shop? How long before you could eat again? Do you feel cursed, special, embarrassed, removed? Did blood splatter on your shop window or spray through the screen door onto your fresh, snappy white linens?”
The incident made confrontational. My questions for the shop girls were meant to be unkind, I wasn’t trying to satisfy my curiosity. I had feelings about these shop girls that preceded the fall. They came off as elite and vacant, and fashionable; The kind of smoking east villager who made me want to spill coffee on their shoes.
From the day I moved in I cast them in the role of gossiping meanies glaring at my sweat pants and scrunchies. In my mind they never approved of my presence in the neighborhood and tisked each time I tainted the atmosphere by daring to walk past their window. It was a silly game- a fun imaginary antagonism to roll around in my head; an imaginary rivalry giving myself an outsider status that I didn’t really earn. And of course I am the one who never once stepped foot into their shops- did not support local business like the flyers slipped under my door requested Instead I bought cheap clothes made from synthetic fabrics, poorly cut and too young for me from stores with names that sounded like they were meant for pre-teen brands of lip-gloss.
Despite the gruesome interrogation I had brewing- that the memorial remained safely nestled in under the wing of their store front softened my fake vitriol.
All summer I sat in my apartment doing nothing. The cowboy boots stomped no more. I listened to people jangle their keys- locking and unlocking their home life and I contemplated slipping. Like the girl, I too was slipping but I didn’t realize it, or didn’t care. Until then I too had worn cowboy boots, carelessly and triumphantly stomping up and down relationships and careers.
If I got locked out of places or people, no matter. Like the girl, I’d hike up my mini skirt and heave myself up and over any obstacle- nothing could stop me from climbing up into my own damn window if I fucking felt like it. If I had pulled out a loaded pistol no one would have been surprised. Right.
Then I slipped. Quickly. Noiselessly I fell into debt, jobless and timid, fell into confusion and voicelessness and cowardice. My cowboy boots were replaced with one ratty bunny slipper and one flip flop and my existence was confused by the absence of red blood on the sidewalk and the lack of a percussive smack- missing the satisfaction that comes with the impact of my head with hard cement.
I continued slipping. And the slipping didn’t stop after the first time I lost my grip. It continued because I’d lost all traction, all ability for stickiness, adhesive and connection. I slipped over and over again and every time I grabbed and the more I reached the more the loss of what little equilibrium I still had was at stake. I was like an ambitious fetus kicking away in the womb with a will to do anything- anything besides floating.
It is maddening to feel like a fetus even when you are one.
More angering still, I discovered that I had removed all of anything I might have clung to during that time.
Believing that I was cleaning house, taking out the garbage, lighting a fire to smoke the mice out of the vents- I said goodbye to many groups of people- all activity and productivity. Even intoxicants of various kinds, I viewed them as crutches and I disposed of all my dependencies. How comforting it would be to smoke cigarettes again, late into the night.
And what lay at the bottom of the slide when I stopped struggling? For that young cocky girl it was pavement and death and probably silence. For me, I hoped there would be at the very least the feeling of rest.
With all this in mind I released into the downward pull of the slick mountainside and descended.
I had never dropped out this deep before. And it felt right, like being alone on the bottom of the sea, finally free to explore without anyone watching. It scared me and I loved it too- I kind of really loved it. Down there I could glide, I was sleek, slipping was a non-issue.
Deep in this darkness I found that things glowed, and I didn’t understand how that was possible. Isn’t light reflective, doesn’t it come from the sun? Or does it? What the hell is light, anyway? Why did I feel bright down there without cause? Was it self-generated?
I went inside myself. I ate plankton and algae- the nourishment floating all around me. I enjoyed the coolness and heaviness of solitude. I fell in love with the unknown, I fell in love with blindness.
Everything disappeared. There was only the dim light of the girl’s candle and the softness of the leaves on the violet plant. I could just barely see the laminated placard with her xeroxed image only slightly visible. I could hear my breath like the tides. It soothed me. The sound of my own life force is a life force. If I was going in circles it didn’t matter. I began to sense that it might one day matter, that things could one day make an impression.
I sensed an elevation of some kind, a rise in temperature. The emergence of oxygen into my bloodstream. I felt the pressure of complexity returning and the buzz of activity wind its way in through my ears. Aches and pains and pangs of hunger bringing an awareness of a form and a flimsy one at that. Redness spread along a prairie that hovered above me. And beyond the redness there was a world- I was sure of it.
Awareness of a world brought with it awareness of certain causes and certain effects that may have brought on the lack of awareness. I was beginning to know that when I opened my eyes there would be much to contend with. I began to understand that while there was slipping and then there was gliding and a heaviness that healed- the lifting of what I suspected were probably eyelids would bring a quick and sudden eclipse of what I had experienced.
Had. Experienced. Was no longer experiencing. And now what was this? Not there in the deep- and not…Here.
My eyes opened and looked directly at a familiar but arresting image. It was the look of love strangled by concern that had lived on my mother’s face since the day she first caught me lying in fifth grade.
I lied about spelling tests. I said we weren’t having them that year. And she believed me. I don’t think that was my fault. I don’t think as a fifth grader I was in charge of her gullibility- but for her it meant that she would never know anything about me for sure ever again. For me, it was like I had tasted first blood.
And here the face was now, again, and I knew that I was about to be told that I had done something mistaken- that I had made some kind of terrible mistake when I only intended to go exploring.
I lied about my spelling tests because I didn’t test into the highest group and I didn’t want to admit it. I wondered what I would lie about this time.
I made the first move. “What happened,” I asked disarmed by the deep unused scratchiness of my voice.
“Don’t worry about that now,” said my mother smoothing my hair back.
“Did I do something wrong,” I asked always the concerned patron, always looking for a way to smooth over my inadequacies.
“Why don’t you take a few moments to get your bearings,” said my mother, she was tearing up, looking at a stain on a blanket I did not recognize. I investigated my surroundings. White tile ceilings, a light blue curtain on a track, metal railings along the sides of a bed that was not my bed.
“Am I in the hospital,” I ran my fingertips along the worn nylon of the foreign blanket.
“Yes honey. Well…we think you had some kind of accident, but- God, should I be saying any of this?”
“Go ahead…” I said touching the top of her hand, stroking her tan knuckles.
“Well, you had an accident, we think you had an accident.“
“What accident?”
“You accidentally fell when you were taking a shower. You slipped, honey. And you hit your neck, and--”
***
They found me when the water from the tub leaked into the apartment downstairs. They ignored it for as long as they could, filling up buckets and pots and pans hoping the leak would stop on its own. When it didn’t they called the superintendent who, when I didn’t answer, checked the plumbing and heating systems before finally breaking into my apartment. I’d been unconscious for fourteen hours before they found me black and blue, unconscious, but thankfully still breathing.
I wish that I understood myself well enough to know if my slipping in the bathtub had anything to do with the mysterious forces of my contemplations. If my fascination with the girl who fell and what it means as a symbol. If maybe she loosened the psychic grips that normally kept me standing while taking a shower and balanced without difficulty while shaving my legs. I doubt I’ll ever get so deep and dark again- so close to my ID, to ever know for sure.
I still live in the same building and I am fine knowing that had I died on the premises that there would have been no memorial barbeque in my honor. I am quite certain that not a single person who lives here will remember me when I’m gone no matter how I take leave of this place. I could burn it down and no one would care- and so what. What matters to me is that I found something to grab on to. I discovered my own small but sharp voice of personal conviction not five months after my release from the hospital and it was related not surprisingly to the little memorial still living in a corner of the boutique storefront.
When I returned home I was glad to see that it had survived. It was comforting to know that the vicissitudes of street life had not pummeled this rare little plot of remembrance. One morning not long after my mother finally agreed to leave me on my own, I was walking up my street in the early morning. It was rare that I would be awake at this hour but I was returning from an early physical therapy appointment.
I saw a dirty man standing in front of the memorial. I stopped, curious, and watched as he bent down, fingered and then picked up the laminated biographical plaque bearing the girl’s picture. I assumed that he would just put it back- and when he didn’t I stood in the middle of the sidewalk frozen and speechless as he shoved it down his pants. He looked around, saw me staring, turned and headed away from me, hoping that I would ignore his seemingly petty theft. Live and let live, to each his own, not my problem- the rumble of this familiar chorus played habitually in my thoughts. But then- much louder than the rumble, like an operatic soprano piercing fiercely through the grey cold morning- came the certainty that what he was doing was WRONG!
“Hey! Get back here! YOU!” I yelled and hobbled after him, my body still recovering from my alleged accident. I caught up with him. “Give me that right now.” I yanked on his sleeve.
“What,” he said not looking me in the eye, looking behind me at nothing.
“I saw you. Give me back that girls picture,” he hesitated, “GIVE IT BACK!” I screamed and held out my hand.
“She was my friend,” he said fumbling with his belt buckle.
“I don’t care. What you have done is wrong,” I started to cry. “Her family put that there for HER,” I made a move that suggested I was about to rip open his pants and he quickly dug out the picture and reluctantly handed it over to me.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” I said my voice filled with contempt and walked away not giving him another look.
I can honestly say that previous to that day it had never occurred to me to say the words “you should be ashamed of yourself” to anyone, not even to a serial killer or a terrorist, but that morning it came out with an authenticity that frightened me.
I looked around me, searching for a witness, a third set of eyes to confirm my stance. I needed support.
“Can you believe this asshole?” I would say to this supportive person.
And they would shake their head in disbelief and hold out their hand to me.
But there was no one.
There was never anyone.
WONDERKILL
Prologue:
I am living here because I am not living. Which is another story. Which is also this story.
***
I move to a city for no reason at all and I think about taking a math class and I start smoking cigarettes which I like because I like smoke, because I like seeing my breath because I like seeing a part of myself go out into the world without me. And I like the feeling of hastening life in a really stupid way. Something certain initiated by meaningless puffing. It's my underachiever's way of being successful. One day I come home from my job as a girl who puts books in alphabetical order on an old man's shelves and there is a glass vase choking on the stems of red roses that are acting polite in purple cellophane- posing on the breakfast table. I feel embarrassed for the roses. I crunch my nose and quickly throw them away to protect them from further confusion. I keep the cellophane for my cellophane collection and later the guy who sent the roses is in a beer commercial and I turn into a mold Popsicle when I speak to him. I don't remember what happened to the vase. I go to my other job as a waitress for fancy wedding parties and lately I don't want to be a mathematician anymore. Instead I want to be the sexy butcher's daughter with all of my guts wailing on the surface of my apron. Instead of smoking cigarettes I want to be a golden tree made of saxophones growing on a man made island sticking out of the center of a laser light dancing water show and... someone is talking to me. A man. I reach in my pocket for a cigarette but I forgot to remember that I forgot them at home. Damn! I mean, Fuck! He likes, the man says, the bloody apron I am wearing and then, ahhh shit! I blush like a damn school age child octopus and swish away scooching dainty white chairs that remind me of tiny little wooden girl trees pretending to be chairs. I push them into cliques of four and eight and twelve. The man swaggers in close, looking for wine glasses-- clear shafts of hope that will later be filled and emptied by dilettantes. I dig out clumps of his personality like handfuls of grass that I shove in my pockets when he isn't looking. I will plant them later. His rhetoric gets under my fingernails. The wedding begins and I peek in at the ceremony through a veil made of white gauze. It separates the serving area from the rest of the wedding and I wonder if the bride purposely placed the gauze there so that someone else would understand how she was feeling that day. I scratch at my elbow and think about her almost new life. The man tells me his name is Jasper and to me it sounds like the name of an old library sunroom stacked with books about the physics of snare drums. Knowing his name bothers me like I am standing alone in an empty attic-- waiting to be fragmented shattered busted and reassembled. Oh but you ARE obvious, aren't you? he goads and I fidget nervously and giggle like a retarded clown fish flopping in a puddle of lemon butter. He holds me still by the shoulders and I look straight into blue eyes and my tongue lolls out onto the ground like miles of a carpet road. He is lit up from the inside-- not artificially from the outside like most people. When he was eight, he once swallowed an entire string of Christmas lights and they are the cause of the hot lava pouring over his sternum that he politely dabs with a cloth handkerchief bearing his initials because he was raised in the South and they prefer cloth handkerchiefs down there instead of tissue because it is difficult to sew initials into tissue. And they embroider the initials- just because. He asks me if I would like to rob a bank with him later, just the two of us, and his asking breath tickles my neck and I want to say yes but my tongue is dragging on the ground so badly I trip and fall and then when the night is over, he gives me a slip of paper with nothing on it and a kiss on the cheek and when he pulls his lips away only a rough gray stone remains. It tumbles down my cheek. I catch it with the tip of my tongue, a metallic lemon drop and hide it in the cabinetry of my mouth rescuing it from a dangerous fall. He leaves and I say nothing, I just suck on the budding stone, round and jagged tasting like a copper penny – and even though it isn't as good as Christmas tree lights, I swallow it and I grab onto it with my throat. My secret charm. My inside necklace. My starting place. I decide to move South because it is my understanding that South is where people go when they leave the place where they were at before. It is summer, and because I am unaware of local customs I become completely entangled in miles of Kudzu just like a real southern belle. Green leaves big and flat as placemats twining up and down my body imprinting entire books of the bible in pig Latin on my calves. The Kudzu ties me absentmindedly to a sofa bed. There is only TV and no math books so I agree to marry a Veterinarian who accepts me as I am- Kudzu and all and does not mind that I am all tied up and also knows how to make a lot of really interesting recipes out of nothing but couch cushions and the cat hair shed by his sixteen cats. I cannot swallow his cooking due to the rock still lodged in my throat but still he likes me to try. One of the cats, who is my main source of information these days, tells me that Jasper is in town for a ballroom dancing convention- only for a few days. The cat recognized him from the blank slip of paper Jasper had given me. I had shown it to her months ago and she picked up a scent. She leads him over to our house and I tell him right away that I love the yellow tuxedo he is wearing and I have never seen one like it before and that's the truth. He tells me he has just had it made along with some new handkerchiefs. He performs some of his best steps and watching him dance makes me ache to be a sinner, a real old fashioned sinner! I tell him this and I want to clap really loud but my hands are tied up so Jasper finds an old rusty electric can opener in the kitchen and uses it to grind away some of the Kudzu, enough to peel my flaccid useless body away from the sofa bed. He puts me in the wheel chair my husband keeps around for his Great Danes (who often need hip surgery) (because they are such big dogs) and we go to an old hotel called the Claremont that used to house tuberculosis patients and now is used as a cheap strip club. Many people in town believe that it's haunted but we go anyway because they have whiskey and we think that whiskey will start the circulation going in my legs again. We enter the club dapper and loud. I give a crisp solid dollar to a little mushroom of a woman who is swaying like a fat ghost on a mirrored platform. Ha! You don't scare me mushroom ghost! I scream! And Jasper lifts me out of the wheelchair and we roll around on the floor until someone tells us to stop. We drink whiskey with tin cups from a little fountain glowing red in the center of the velvet parlor. The stone in my throat becomes rattled and loose by the hot liquid as it rushes past. More whiskey and then I feel the stone dislodge and fall tracing a delicate line all the way down my spine cutting me and nestling right into an empty pocket inside my cunt. I hold the stone, still rough, tight between my thighs. Jasper moves in to kiss me and, finding the whiskey has given me my legs again, I run out of the bar before his lips can find me because I am afraid I will swallow another stone. I continue running running running and I make my way, alone, deep into the desert. All of the Kudzu that had been clinging to my body like green alien barnacle children becomes weak, atrophied and drape away like used toilet paper. This desert is the land of forgetfulness. No one here has to remember to water plants each day. They don't have to remember to mow their lawns each weekend; they don't need to remember to shovel snow out of the driveway. The people of this desert can drift without having to remember any daily business that might not appeal to them on that eternal lazy afternoon. I forget about my life in the south and the cats and the kudzu and my marriage. I deal black jack at the local Casino and talk philosophy with a grisly old Indian named Steve. Steve uses a wheelchair and wears glasses and a big black trash bag instead of normal clothes. I tell him that I too have used a wheelchair and based on that commonality we become a team, a duo, and he brings me over to his reservation for Thanksgiving dinner and we eat cranberry sauce from a can. I meet his grandmother and she asks me about the rock I am carrying around in my cunt which she can sense because she is a geologist and she asks if she can take a look at it. We clear a space on the dining room table and I lay down and spread my legs mirroring the roast turkey sitting next to me. She closes her eyes and presses the tips of her fingers deeply into my bready lower abdomen. After she finishes I sit up and she informs me that the rock is a kind of microchip that transmits signals to an undisclosed recipient. She says that who ever is receiving the signals from the rock, permitting that they can decipher them, would be privy to all of my deepest darkest secrets. I ask her how I can get the rock out. She smiles at me but says nothing and I don't push it and then we all go out for a ride in a hot air balloon that is shaped like a giant can of Bud Light. I try to think about the microchip/rock but the sun is so blinding and gorgeous that i feel like someone is pouring a clear pitcher filled with pink lemonade right into my open eyes. Just the right shade of watermelon pink. Splash, float, sting! The hot air balloon drops me off on a train running high above a new white city, and I straddle it like a racehorse. I decide it would be beneficial for me to stand on my head for a long time. I am really good at standing on my head. I can do it forever. I want to get that stone out of my cunt. I want my secrets back. I am standing on my head when the The train jolts and I can feel it shiver free. I feel nauseous as it glides upwards making looped s's through my guts. The rock has become bleached white and it is glowing with radio activity and fever and time. It is sending signals in overdrive. Emergency messages: Mission in danger mission in Danger!! It snags. When passing the heart valve- my left ventricle sucked it in mistaking it for a giant white blood cell: The captain over all other white blood cell soldiers. Unfortunately, my heart is not always good at discerning white blood cells from radioactive microchip/rocks and I fall over. My blood is in a traffic jam. My eyeballs are horns honking- AWWOOOGUH!! My ears are blowing steam- PFSHHHHHHT! PSHFFFFSSSSSST! The microchip/rock short circuits and explodes- THUMP THUMP THUMP...MUBMUBMUBUHHHH-WHAM!!! My heart bursts like a dead star and the pain feels astonishing and glorious and at the height of my thrill... the world fades. A stain glass window with no sun. ** Epilogue: In my last gray moments I see running down the length of the moving train a distinct blur of yellow. I recognize Jasper instantly. He is wearing his yellow tux and easy to distinguish. He runs at me followed by the sixteen southern cats and my veterinarian husband behind him and someone carrying flowers in the distance. A puddle of black oil is spilling across my vision and pooling in my mouth. It prevents speech, it prevents singing, it prevents breathing. Soon the soft comfort of animal fur comes so close to my face and a wet whiskery nose floats into my ear- my ear, a satellite dish transmitting countless inquiries to the universe and receiving the signals back into my dying circuitry. I am full of questions and indecipherable communications- but at the last moment...I hear, feel, become the only fading answer that the cosmic 8 ball can deliver: purrrrrrrr...purrrrrrrr...purrrrrrr...purrrrrrr...purrrrrrrrrrrrr...purrrrrrrr....
The Investigation and Conviction of Greg Dockson for the Murder of Queenie Franklin and Countless Others
The disappearance of Queenie Franklin thrilled the students at Sage College, but not outwardly. In public, we masked our excitement with the expected horror and hysterical tears and campus church meetings and pretended to be decent human beings with real feelings; innocent pre-adults who’d been traumatized by the loss of our friend. Beneath the façade, we were near sociopaths with potato salad instead of brains - spoiled since birth by too much positive reinforcement from well-meaning parents.
After the meetings, huddled in tight circles behind closed dorm room doors, and drinking the awful, sweet alcohol we’d buy year after year because it tasted the best coming back up, the Sage student body mercilessly hypothesized about the possible fates that might have befallen poor Queenie, all of them grotesque and scandalous. The most popular options were that she voluntarily joined a sex cult offering her naked body as a virgin sacrifice, or had committed suicide in a more interesting way than James Stein who had died by swallowing his whole Ativan prescription.
Breathlessly we pictured receiving the note she must have dropped in the mail before hanging herself in the forest just outside of town. Anne Irving, who had already graduated with a in BFA Creative Writing had returned to the campus dorms to composed fictional versions of Queenie’s suicide note, the most salacious alluding to the shame Queenie felt about having an illicit relationship with her brother, though no one knew for sure if she had a brother, and if she did, he hadn’t accompanied her parents to the church meetings and vigils.
Something you should know about Queenie. Not only was she physically lovely, tan and blonde in the annoying golden girl, future veterinarian and wife to a not-for-profit lawyer way, but she was also the kindest person at Sage. She was a member of the University Church of Christ, as most of us were, but she was really, actually a Christian who did things like organize and run a soup kitchen out of the empty sorority house on G street. By comparison, Katy Harcourt for example, used a homeless woman to buy her Adderal so she didn’t have to risk getting arrested.
You would think that Queenie’s sweet disposition might exempt her from our cruelty, but it only ignited our creativity. Had Nottie Barhia gone missing no one would have blinked. We would have assumed she’d died of dehydration doing ecstasy in the desert with the hippie losers she was known to associate with. Stupid. Boring. The end. But with Queenie, there was so much possibility, so many fascinating ways in which her purity might have been sullied. It was the price she'd pay for her earnestness. Was she abducted at the Route 107 truck stop bathroom while attempting prostitution for the first time (in order to pay the rent of someone less fortunate, of course) leaving behind nothing more than a lacy ankle sock splattered with blood? Did she secretly practice witchcraft and did she upset the devil by using a cross as a dildo? Did the president of Sage, Reverend Richard Jackson, sex traffic her to a wealthy alumnus as a thank you for a large donation?
Our speculations turned quickly to pure narcissism, and escalated to a fever pitch as the days turned into weeks. There were nightly Ouija Board sessions, one revealing that the school campus had been built over what was once a giant clay oven that had been used by a cult leader named Lockheart to burn his entire community alive in the 1682. There was a séance/tarot reading during which Mark Lowe sacrificed his goldfish by letting it flop around on the carpet until it died as a way to appease evil spirits. More than half the sophomore class decided to use the disappearance as an excuse to skip the rest of first semester claiming they were suffering from a group anxiety disorder called ‘Peribitia’ and at least eight but no more than ten drama club members cut gashes in their scalp near the crown of the head as part of an exorcism ceremony and had to go to the emergency room, though this could have been unrelated to the disappearance.
While most of my peers were distracted by visions of paranormal intervention and alien abduction, I decided that Queenie was most likely murdered by a local serial killer and that an investigation must be conducted.
My first task was to determine who in our small college town, was most likely to be a serial killer. I gathered that serial killers frequently hid in plain sight, could be charming and possibly handsome, and were meticulously cautious though sometimes they lost control, made a mistake and in the heat of passion left behind clues that could be found by an observant detective.
I was aware of no one at Sage who was charming, so I had to use my intuition. I decided to focus on a man in his forties named Greg Dockson who’d approached my friend Terri one night at The Cannery – the dank, cave-like bar downtown that let everyone use their fake IDs.
Though he wasn’t handsome or charismatic, Greg was prime suspect number one because he was so seemingly ordinary. He wore a tidy orange golf polo with the name of his realty company “Dockson’s Realty” embroidered on the chest (he’d pointed this out to Terri) and neat grey slacks ironed with a crease down the front and he had shaved off all but a few speckles of hair on his balding head. He was also noticeably muscular, beefy almost, but his body didn’t match his meek demeanor, as if his physique was the result of an injection he’d found in the back of a men’s magazine rather than hard work. He was clearly hiding in plain sight and the evidence was damning enough for me to move swiftly to the second phase of my plan without bothering to consider anyone else.
I used my father’s credit card that he’d given me for emergencies only, to buy $3000 dollars of surveillance equipment. I’d driven to a survivalist shop 90 minutes away from campus and bought a pair of binoculars, two hidden-camera’s that looked like smoke detectors, night vision goggles, a microphone the size of a button, a cat burglar suit that promised to contain all hair, skin, sweat and fingerprints during a break-in, a fake search warrant and detectives badge, and a large magnet able to disarm any security system in its vicinity.
I had everything I needed to execute a no-fail investigative strategy. Greg was easy to track down thanks to the company name on his shirt which lead me easily to his office downtown where my stakeout would begin. I’d wait until he left work and then follow him home. Once I assessed his private residence, I would do some light investigating and then return the next day to install the cameras and microphones and see if I could find any hard evidence leading to Queenie's whereabouts.
The night before my plans were to take place, I lay in my bed late into the night, staring at the ceiling wide awake. I had never felt so energized, and full of purpose. I believed that I was the one person on earth who could find out what really happened to Queenie and I dreamed of the many interviews I’d give after I broke the case.
“There will definitely be some hard choices,” I thought. “Which news network will get the exclusive? Who will publish my memoir? Then there will be consultation requests from police departments and probably the FBI asking for my input on the unsolved cases on their dockets, how will I arrange my schedule? Will I bother to finish my Communications degree?”
When I woke up the next afternoon, I was surprised to discover that I was still interested in pursuing Greg Dockson. Ordinarily my motivation had a way of seeping out of me during the night.
I grabbed my duffle bag full of gear and headed out into the courtyard of my dorm. Walking past the pool, I immediately sensed a shift in the energy of my classmates. It seemed the interest in Queenie’s whereabouts was dying down because groups of boys and girls were once again lounging in the afternoon sun, hoola-hooping, playing drums, braiding each other’s hair, whereas before they had put great effort into appearing to be distraught.
“Good,” I thought. “I want to be the only one to find out what happened to Queenie. If they’ve lost interest, that means they haven’t figured out, like I have, that Greg Dockson has either killed her or is planning to kill Queenie soon.”
I parked my Volvo in the parking lot of the shopping center across from Dockson Realty, pulled out my binoculars, and aimed them at the office building where it was located. I couldn’t see anything incriminating, or anything at all and so I waited for Greg to appear. It was 3 o’clock in the afternoon and I felt energized from a good night’s sleep.
I opened my duffle bag and organized my stuff. I hadn’t read the instructions for the cameras or the microphone and so I wasn’t sure how they worked, but I figured that would come to me in the moment. Also, I couldn’t seem to get the night vision goggles to turn on, but maybe they only worked at night? I filled out what I could of the fake search warrant, though I’d have to wait until I knew his home address to complete it.
Looking through my gear had taken up only fifteen minutes and after passing an hour doing nothing, my enthusiasm for the investigation started to wane.
Another mind numbing half hour passed and I was on the verge of giving up and going to Burrito Monster when a flash of Orange caught my eye. It was Greg’s polo shirt – the very one he was wearing when he tried to capture Terri! Seeing his stalky frame in the light of day filled me with terror but also will. This was real. Greg was real. Maybe Queenie could be saved.
Greg got into his brand new white Ford truck and I started my car and backed out of my parking space recklessly. I think my eyes were shut. I had no idea how to follow someone and I panicked losing sight of the truck.
Then I saw it up the street and nearly caused five accidents as I briefly drove on the wrong side of the road. The honking noises made felt like I was being stabbed. Greg was stabbing me, he knew he was being watched. He was preparing for his next victim. Even though my physical characteristics didn’t meet his preferences, he preferred voluptuous blondes, he’d have to make an exception and dismember me, not for pleasure, but because he couldn’t leave a trail. I knew his secret and I must be disposed of like a bag of garbage.
I took some deep breaths, steadied myself and continued to follow the truck at a safe distance. Eventually, it pulled into the parking lot of 24 Hour Workout and I drove up to the curb and watched as Greg jumped out of the truck, he was on the shorter side and the truck was high off the ground. He grabbed his gym bag from the truck bed and paused to answer a call on his cell phone before going in.
I felt a need rise up in me. A sharp decisive jolt of electricity that communicated, though not in words, that what I must do is confront Greg Dobson, here, now, in front of the gym. I must make my case publically, before he has a chance to burn my corpse in the industrial oven he had installed in his basement.
I was shaking uncontrollably as I opened the car door and stepped out. Greg had finished his call and had pulled open the door to the gym. “Wait!” I yelled. My voice was emotional and I realized that I was crying. The area was quiet and no one else was nearby so Greg turned, though he was unsure if he was the person being summoned. His eyebrows were raised in a “Who me?” formation.
“I know you did it,” I was crying hard now. “I know you killed her,” crying so hard I was nearly choking, the words coming out me like a coughing fit.
Greg’s look of “Who me?” changed to one of genuine concern. “Are you ok?” he asked. He voice was gentle and kind but worried. He started walking toward me carefully, the way you would approach a stray cat.
“Don’t come near me,” I said, though unconvincingly.
“Do you need help? Can I call someone for you?” Greg held out his cell phone in front of him like an offering, like he might lay it down on the pavement, as if he were surrendering a gun.
I softened to him and shook my head and lowered it. I crouched down into a squat and hugged my skinny knees into my chest. I was wearing the cat suit and I felt slippery, like I couldn’t get a good grip on anything.
“Do you need something to eat? I have a powerbar in my truck? Or money? Do you need money?”
He reached for his wallet and I said “No,” horrified and got up. Greg’s niceness had taken me by surprise and I had forgotten that he was a master manipulator. I ran back to the drivers side of my car, cutting and bloodying my hand fumbling with the heavy door handle. “Don’t come after me,” I said and got in. I didn’t look at a Greg as I hurky jerkied away from the curb, but I caught a glimpse of him as pulled away. His body looked capable and his face sweet and open with astonishment.
“I think maybe I was supposed to marry Greg,” was the thought I had as I pulled away, heartsick, sobbing at the loss of our life together. I would have helped him run his real estate business. I’d have gotten my license too and we’d have been one of those couples that put out flyers with a picture of the two of us with our arms around each other. “Success runs in the family,” the flyers would say. Or something like that.
I’ve thought of Greg Dockson often over the years. I wonder about him and his life. I hope he’s happy and I still fantasize about being with such a good person, the type of person who would try to help a smelly, insane girl wearing a cat suit and freaking out on the side of the road. I know I am not a good person, even though I try harder to be one now than I did then.
I think about Greg Dockson more than I do about Queenie who was never found. Her disappearance remains a real mystery. A rare thing - something far more interesting than the students of Sage College deserve.