Evil Jester Digest, Volume 2

by Holly Newstein

  She was just about to give up when she moved aside a fuzzy sweater her grandmother had given her last Christmas, and which she’d never worn, and there was the CD player, small and round and hot pink. The headphones were still attached.

  “Yes,” she said, but quietly so her mother wouldn’t hear. There was a Gwen Stefani CD already inside, so she put on the earphones and hit PLAY, ready for a musical distraction from her predicament.

  Nothing happened. She punched the PLAY button again, then again, but still nothing. Flipping the CD player over, she opened the compartment for the batteries. Empty.

  “Damn it!” she said under her breath. She didn’t think she had a single battery in her room. She did a quick search of her drawers but came up empty handed. The remote for her television had batteries but they were the wrong size. Her mother kept batteries in a bureau in her bedroom, but Julie certainly couldn’t ask for them and she was afraid she’d get caught if she tried to sneak in there and get them. A weekend grounded was bad enough; she didn’t want to make it worse.

  Disgusted, Julie kicked the CD player back into the closet.

  HOUR FOUR

  Out of desperation, Julie had pulled some books off her shelf. A Separate Peace she gave up on after one chapter; The Great Gatsby after only a couple of pages. The Scarlet Letter did not hold her interest, even though the premise of a tramp who did it with a hot preacher sounded promising enough. She had some old Sweet Valley High novels left over from when she was younger, but they now seemed silly and childish. She had the complete set of the Harry Potter series, but she’d already watched all the movies. Why read the books?

  One by one, Julie tried a book then tossed it to the floor. Soon, she had a small pile at the foot of her bed. She reached down, snagged the third Potter, and started ripping the pages out, then methodically shredding each page into long thin strips. No particular reason, just to give herself something to do. The strips she let fall into her lap, creating a drift of mangled words.

  Her mind went blank, a total void of thought, and her hands moved as if mechanically. Finished with one book, she reached for another. She stared not at the growing pile in her lap but straight ahead, her gaze unfocused, as if trying to force consciousness out of her mind, hoping that might grant her some kind of freedom.

  HOUR FIVE

  When Julie came out of her trance-like state, she discovered she’d gone through several books. The bed was covered in the little black and white strips. She shoved them from the duvet, and they fell like joyless confetti to the floor. Her mother would be furious when she saw the mess Julie had made. Julie didn’t care. It was her mother’s fault for being so unreasonable in the first place. How else was Julie supposed to keep herself occupied in this total sensory deprivation?

  Then an idea hit her.

  She ran back to the closet and pulled down outfits, tossing them to the floor until she found what she was looking for. A peach blouse on a wire hanger. It wasn’t the blouse she wanted, but the metal hanger. Virtually all of her hangers were plastic, but no this one. Untwisting and straightening it out, she went to her television. She’d heard of people using hangers for antennae back in the days before digital cable and satellite dishes, so maybe she could at least get something on TV to watch.

  On her television set, the antennae—had there been one—would have screwed into an outlet in the back. Not knowing what else to do, and afraid to stick the hanger directly into the outlet lest she be electrocuted, she just wound one end around the rim of the outlet. Turning the TV on, she flipped through the channels, trying to find something, some ghostly image, some scrap of distant dialogue, but she was rewarded with only more of that static. The sound was no longer soothing. It drilled into her brain like needles.

  She turned off the TV, leaving the hanger stuck to the back. She decided to just try to get some sleep. She normally had no bedtime on the weekends, but what was the point of staying up late if you had nothing to do?

  HOUR SIX

  She couldn’t even escape into dreamland. She tossed and turned, continually trying to find a comfortable position but only winding up more uncomfortable with every passing minute. The darkness was oppressive, like a living force that was enveloping her and trying to squeeze the life out of her.

  Unable to stand it any longer, Julie sat up and turned on her bedside lamp. She felt shaky and vaguely nauseated. If only she could talk to Suzie or Denise; if only she could share with them what she was going through, even if just through email or instant message.

  Climbing out of bed, she retrieved her backpack from the vanity under the window, then pulled out a notebook and pen. She sat down and started writing a letter to Suzie, telling her everything she’d tell her if she were able to communicate directly. How her mother was a heartless monster for doing this to her; how she felt like she was losing her mind in this tiny cell of a room; how she’d been counting on Jeff Vassey seeing her in her bathing suit at the pool party Sunday; how she hoped that would finally get him to ask her out; how she was missing all her favorite shows that her mother wasn’t even TiVoing; how missing the dance on Saturday was going to put the nail in the coffin of her social life; how she hated her little brother for needing a ride home from Little League in the first place; how she hated not knowing who might have emailed her and was awaiting a reply she couldn’t send; how her mother was absolutely ruining her life.

  When she was done, Julie looked down at the four pages of notebook paper she’d filled, front and back, and just felt empty. Sure, she’d gotten it all down. But with no way to actually send it, the information served no purpose. A one-way communication. She ripped the pages from the book, crumpled them up, and tossed them over her shoulder.

  Feeling totally at a loss, Julie got up and paced some more, wringing her hands, her nails scratching shallow cuts into the palms, but she didn’t notice.

  HOUR SEVEN

  She sat cross-legged on the floor, a sock pulled down over each hand, using them as puppets. She was pretending they were characters from Gossip Girls, and she acted out scenes as if watching a new episode, keeping her voice low so as not to wake her mother or Kip. She knew what she was doing seemed a little crazy, but it was just a game, just something to pass the time, like when she’d played with her Barbie dolls as a girl.

  In fact, she wished she still had her dolls. Acting out the show would be a lot more realistic with them than these stupid sock puppets. Maybe then she wouldn’t feel so crazy doing it.

  HOUR EIGHT

  Julie had arranged her unicorn figurines about the floor. With a pair of scissors, she cut up the strips from her books into even smaller pieces and began to sprinkle them down on the unicorns, making it snow in their magical kingdom. She giggled softly to herself as she danced about the congregation of porcelain horned creatures, dusting them with the shredded pages.

  When she was done, she stretched out face down on the carpet, her head close to her favorite figurine. “Wasn’t that fun?” she said to the object. “I bet you’ve never seen snow before. At least those dull old books were good for something.”

  HOUR NINE

  She’d found some old Dixie cups on the shelf in her closet and a packet of paper plates with dancing bears on them, tucked away in the very back corner. They were left over from her eleventh birthday party five years ago. She hadn’t even realized she’d saved them all these years. Luckily she had, for now they would come in handy.

  She didn’t have any string, so she took the scissors and started unraveling one of her shirts until she had a long thread she could use to tie two of the cups together. When she was done, she eased the window up just a bit and tossed one of the cups over the ledge, holding on to the other one so that the crude homemade device hung half in and half out of her room.

  “Suzie, can you hear me?” she whispered into the cup, then giggled. “It’s me, Julie. Are you out there?” She waited. When she received no response, she said, “What about you, Denise? You reading me?” Still
nothing. “Jeff? Anybody?”

  She waited a good ten minutes, but no one answered. Reeling in the other cup, she sat fuming. Obviously her mother had anticipated this and had somehow jammed the signal so that she couldn’t get through to anyone.

  Still, Julie wouldn’t give up. She’d find a way.

  HOUR TEN

  Julie took the poster of Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow off her wall and laid it across her bed. Lying next to it, she placed her three-dimensional hand over his one-dimensional chest and told him how grateful she was that he was here for her during this trying time. He was the only one who truly understood her. She whispered to him her secret pains, her most shameful secrets, and her deepest dreams, and he offered her nothing but support.

  She looked up at Taylor, the Situation, and Justin, all staring down at her from their places on the walls. Children, that’s what they were. But Johnny…he had maturity and sophistication. He was a real man, one who could whisk her away from all this.

  She leaned over and kissed him as her hand strayed under her nightgown.

  HOUR ELEVEN

  The unicorns were in on it. They had joined forces with her mother to keep her isolated; why else would they be refusing to speak to her?

  She took her favorite and dangled it out the window, threatening to drop it if it didn’t confess. When it remained stubbornly silent, she made good on her threat and let it plummet to the ground below.

  One by one, its brothers and sisters followed, all resolutely refusing to speak to her. She got a small satisfaction from watching them all plunge to their deaths, but it was fleeting. She turned to Johnny for comfort, but he too had turned taciturn. She took the scissors to him.

  HOUR TWELVE

  Julie sifted through the debris of the books she had turned into confetti, suddenly convinced that some important message was hidden in them, a message that held the key to her freedom. Here was a scrap with the word “ant” on it, another with “never,” a few with only partial words, one with “total” in italics.

  She kept rearranging them, trying to form coherent sentences, desperate to find out what the universe had to tell her. When she could make no sense of the random words and letters, she shoveled up a handful of shreds and crammed them in her mouth. Swallowing it all down, she hoped the message would come to her.

  Instead, she threw up in the corner.

  HOUR THIRTEEN

  It was stifling in her prison. Perhaps her mother had turned up the heat as a further form of torture. She ripped at her nightgown, tearing it off her body. Sweat covered her skin with a glossy sheen, but she felt no cooler. Perhaps the heat was coming from inside, burning at her core and slowly cooking her organs and incinerating her from the inside out.

  She yanked the rest of the posters from the walls, unable to stand the feel of the eyes on her, and cut them up. She took parts of the different boys and used her own sweat to paste them to her body. Taylor’s left eye over her right nipple, the Situation’s right eye over her left nipple, and the mouth of Justin tangled in her pubic hair.

  HOUR FOURTEEN

  She sat by the window and cried. She knew now that she had been tricked. The unicorns had never been against her; they had indeed been her friends. Their tongues had been removed, probably by her mother, and that was why they wouldn’t speak. They couldn’t.

  And she had killed them all. Those precious, innocent animals. How afraid they must have been as she’d dangled them out the window; how desperately they must have wanted to communicate with her, frustrated at not being able to.

  She had been so quick to judgment, had not even given them the benefit of the doubt. What a cruel bitch she was, no better than her mother. But there was one difference. A big one. Her mother didn’t feel the remorse Julie did. Her mother would have to pay for what she’d done.

  She took the scissors and began carving symbols of penance into her thighs.

  HOUR FIFTEEN

  Julie’s mother made her way down the hall to her daughter’s bedroom. After a night to sleep on it, she started to think perhaps she’d been a bit too harsh with her daughter. Yes, Julie needed to learn responsibility, but it may have been going overboard to take away everything. She planned to offer her daughter some conciliatory pancakes and make this deal: no going out today, no cell phone or computer, but she could have her iPod and cable back, then tomorrow she could go to the pool party.

  She knocked on Julie’s door as she opened it. Instantly, she was assaulted by a hideous stench. It smelled like excrement, and in fact something brown covered the walls, forming obscene words and pictures. Shredded paper was all over the floor and bed covers, and what looked like most of Julie’s wardrobe had been cut to ribbons. The carpet was stained in places with what appeared to be blood.

  As Julie’s mother stared slack-jawed at the destruction, trying to make sense of what she was seeing, a low growling caught her attention and made her turn toward the far side of the bed.

  Julie crouched on her haunches, completely naked, covered in blood, her own waste smeared onto her face to create a grotesque mask. Her teeth were bared, and she growled at her mother like a wild animal.

  Julie’s mother started to say her daughter’s name, but then Julie pounced.

  I’m willing to bet that everyone has a movie star crush. I have a few, and I know for a fact that Scott Bradley, the author of our next tale, has many.

  Exhibit A: Pages 153-157 of The Book of Lists Horror (Harper Collins, 2008), a tome co-edited by none other than Mr. Bradley himself, for which he received a nomination for the prestigious Bram Stoker Award. Within those pages you will find the list “Scott Bradley’s Ten Ultimate Horror Film Crushes.” Trust me, it’s a terrific companion piece to Exhibit B: “The Girl with the Thirsty Eyes,” the story I’m proud to present here.

  But Scott has other hobbies. To wit, he has racked up a staggering number of frequent flier miles in his extensive international travels.

  Now put his movie star crushes together with his hands-on knowledge of locations beyond U.S. borders, then throw in his brilliant storytelling abilities, and you get “The Girl with the Thirsty Eyes,” a disturbing tale of a stranger in a strange land and a girl in a window who is dangerously familiar.

  The Girl with the Thirsty Eyes

  Scott Bradley

  Paul shivered in the severe breeze coming in off Amsterdam’s Ruysdaelkade. January in Holland was a damn cold proposition, which only added to the warmth promised by the windows and their occupants.

  He had chosen January for the trip due to low airfares and lack of post-holiday tourists. As a doctoral candidate in Art Theory, Paul didn’t want to deal with crowds as he gathered material for this dissertation, tentatively titled “Spatial Representation in Rembrandt’s The Night Watch.”

  He wasn’t disappointed: the past two days at the Rijksmuseum had been the very model of quiet, unhurried focus.

  It had been last night that he noticed the street, de Pijp, just behind the museum. Returning to his small hotel room, he looked it up in the guidebook and discovered “The Pipe” was one of Amsterdam’s smaller red-light districts.

  Paul hadn’t come all the way from to the United States to sample those particular pleasures. Although his friends had teased him about going on the “pot and pussy” tour, Paul deflected the jokes good-naturedly. He was here for academic reasons, not to be distracted. He had planned to hit at least one hash bar—or “coffee shop,” as Dutch law demanded they be called—once his research wrapped, but the famous red-light districts, with the girls offering themselves in brightly lit windows, hadn’t been on his agenda.

  Since the break-up with Natalie last summer, Paul had been celibate as a monk. No rebound relationships, even those measured by the hour, for him. No. His mantra was “time to focus on the dissertation,” as various loans were piling up; as well, he wasn’t getting any younger at twenty-eight.

  Tonight, however, things seemed simple. The day’s work was done. A little “windo
w shopping” wouldn’t hurt.

  Unlike the museum, the street was crowded, though not as densely packed as he imagined it would be at the height of tourist season. Bright neon lights everywhere, and—of course—the windows.

  Shy by nature, Paul took several minutes to actually make eye contact with the women.

  In one window, a fortyish redhead knitted; in another, a girl with purple hair read Der Spiegel and seemed on the verge of dozing.

  On down the block, Paul watched two peroxide blondes wearing half-face, black leather Carnevale di Venezia masks, playing chess. They noticed him and abandoned the game. Began kissing and stroking each other, no doubt an invitation to a ménage à trois.

  Paul shook his head, smiling, and gestured for them to return to their game.

  One of them pouted, snatching the Black King from the board and licking it in an absurd parody of fellatio. When he shook his head again, the other girl grabbed the White Queen, lifted her negligee, and inserted the chess piece between her legs, teasing her clitoris.

  He moved on, seeing more women in more windows, engaged in activities that ranged from the banal to the salacious. The further Paul went, the more the street started to look like a courtroom and the window women like jurors.

  What the hell am I doing here? I’m cold, it’s getting late, and—

  That was when Paul saw the Girl with the Thirsty Eyes.

  The woman in the window couldn’t be her, of course.

  “The Girl with the Thirsty Eyes”: that was the sobriquet film critic C.X. Reilly had given Shaundra Kane, Paul’s favorite actress and all-time movie star crush, who was the subject and object of Reilly’s Vanity Fair essay, a study of the actress’s career after she won her first Oscar in 1993.