by Raziel Reid
Bridge jumping, pill consuming, hair-dryer-in-bath electrocuting. New models coming to a store near you!
The videos, photos and obituaries of the #KenSuicides are featured on SoFamous. Anyone can grab a little glory. It’s the biggest trend the Kens have ever started, even bigger than the Chanel ball-gag fad of ’16.
It’s, like, a phenomenon.
Jimmy Kimmel Live! airs a YouTube challenge video montage called “I Told My Kid Their Gay Sibling Committed Suicide,” which sees devastated kids breaking down in even more epic fits of tears than in the videos where their parents tell them they ate all their Halloween candy. The studio audience laughs and laughs out of their seats.
The Kens’ followers compete to see who can kill themselves in the most creative way. A photo of your slit wrists hanging over the edge of a bath filled with bloody water only gets half the notes of a time-lapsed video of you chugging a bottle of paraquat, for example.
Your death is only as successful as the number of clicks it gets. No one counts how many actual people come to your funeral. They just view your Views and judge the value of your life accordingly. Obituaries consist of nothing but social media statistics.
The Willows High Stoner Conspiracy Theorists claim Ken Carson’s campaign for teen suicide is eugenics. That he’s been programmed by the Illuminaughty to help with population control. Ken Carson is preying on the superficial and mindless to get them to think that suicide is the most exclusive club to join. The theory picks up steam online. Ken Carson is reinvented as Ken: Cult Leader Edition. Scientology threatens to sue when it’s reported one of the accessories that comes with him is an E-meter.
Along with the actual suicides, there are several fakes. Some followers are desperate to see the online reaction to their death but don’t want to actually die, so they create content that makes them look like they’ve done the deed, submit the footage to SoFamous and bask in the mourning.
When Ken Carson gets tipped off that he’s being duped, he has one of his minions check with the coroners in the city where the suicide allegedly took place. If you’re found to be alive, everyone immediately unfollows you, and you’re blocked from SoFamous. It’s like you really did kill yourself, but without the glory—the most painful death of all.
ALL STAR
A week after Ken Roberts’s funeral, Ken Carson hosts a #KenSuicides-themed party at Dreamhouse. Suicide videos from SoFamous are projected on the walls of the club and everyone is dressed to kill. Dreamhouse gives an open bar tab to the most dead-on dead look. It goes to Diana Wails, who’s wearing a totaled Mercedes.
The next day, Ken Carson is booked for a sit-down interview with Stacie Skipper at the Willows News studio to discuss the Ken Suicides.
Ken Carson wakes up in the morning and realizes he passed out with his contacts in. Whenever he sleeps in them they make his eyes especially sore. He rolls out of bed, taking the contacts out before showering and getting ready for his close-up. His eyes are still irritated, so he decides not to put the contacts back in until right before the interview.
When he arrives at the studio, Ken Carson is more nervous than he’s ever been. He’s usually chill—some of the other Barks players get kind of anxious before a big game, but not Ken Carson. What does he have to be anxious about? It’s not just the ball but the world in his hands.
He ducks into the studio bathroom to collect himself and put in his contacts. As he’s standing in front of the mirror, a notification comes into his iPhone. Someone has submitted a post to SoFamous. Another Ken Suicide. Will it never end?
Ken Carson drops the phone in the sink. He doesn’t even care when a pink rhinestone breaks off and falls down the drain. He takes his contacts out of their case.
All of these kids killing themselves in the name of Ken is really starting to get to him. Ken Carson doesn’t want to encourage them anymore. That’s it. He’s going to stop—
The contacts slide into his eyes.
“Dude, you’re so hot.” Ken Carson winks at his own reflection.
What was he just on about?
Oh, yeah! Another suicide.
He picks up his phone from the sink and presses Play on the latest video. It’s a Romeo and Romeo double suicide. One Ken wannabe drinks a vial of poison; the other shoots himself.
“Tubular!” Ken Carson exclaims. He posts the video to SoFamous.
His public demands it. They can’t get enough. The Ken Suicides have made Ken Carson a legend. You can’t buy this kind of publicity!
There’s a knock on the bathroom door and a producer sticks his head in.
“We’re ready for you on set, Ken,” he says.
“Tight.” Ken Carson bobbles. “I’ll be right out.”
Ken Carson turns to his reflection one last time, making sure his hair is perfect.
“You got this, bruh,” he tells himself.
“Ken, you lost both of your best frenemies to teen suicide,” Stacie Skipper says once the cameras have started rolling. “I can only imagine your pain.”
Stacie passes Ken Carson a tissue for his nonexistent tears. He blots his lip gloss with it.
“The deaths of Ken Hilton and Ken Roberts have rocked Willows and incited a media whirlwind,” Stacie continues. “There have been a string of copycat suicides across the U.S., being referred to as #KenSuicides. Is this an epidemic?”
Ken Carson flashes his diamond grills. “No one starts a trend like Ken.”
“What do you say to your critics, who argue that you’re promoting teen suicide by posting about the victims on your blog, SoFamous.tumblr.com, and, as a result, creating a contagion?”
“Hold up, bruh. I don’t post every victim. No fats, femmes or Asians.”
“What is the purpose of the Ken Suicides?” Stacie asks. “Is it political?”
“Um.” Ken Carson scratches his head. “Yeah. Hella. You heard Ken Roberts. It’s about, like, equality and shit.”
“Isn’t killing yourself for the right to live counterintuitive?”
“Socks with sandals is counterintuitive, Stacie. The Ken Suicides is the most influential gay protest since the Stonewall riots in the 1800s.”
NETFLIX AND KILL
All week as the Ken Suicides are taking America by storm, Tommy can’t bring himself to get out of bed. He tells his parents he’s sick, and they let him miss school and even share their medicinal marijuana.
The truth is, he really is sick. With shame. The Ken Suicides movement started not with Ken Roberts, or even with Ken Hilton, but with…Blaine. And Tommy had been by his side every step of the way. He helped start the suicides, and he has no idea how to stop them.
Tommy keeps going over every detail in his head, trying to understand why he didn’t see Blaine for who he really is. It’s like Tommy transferred his desire to be a Ken into his desire for Blaine. He went from one illusion to another.
He periodically pulls his head out from under his pillow to scroll through the graveyard that has become SoFamous. Tommy keeps hoping that the site will load and he’ll see that it’s over. Ken Carson will have posted a video of his latest microblading appointment, and not another dead kid. But the suicides show no sign of slowing down.
Tutti is released from the hospital and returns to school. She and Allan get worried about Tommy missing so many classes and stop by his house to check on him.
Tommy wants so badly to tell them everything, but he can’t bring himself to do it. What if he loses them? He just got himself back. He can’t lose his friends now. He keeps up his sick-act and gets the feeling they don’t buy it, but they’re generous enough to play along. There isn’t a single inconvenient truth in Willows. Tutti paints his nails, and Allan curls up in bed with him as they watch Netflix.
“What exactly is wrong with you?” Allan asks.
“Don’t worry,” Tommy says. “It’s not fatal.” But then he can’t control himself and breaks down crying.
“Let’s get these blinds open,” Allan says quickly, getting out of
bed and going over to Tommy’s window. “Some sunlight might do you good.”
“No.” Tommy stops him. “Leave it.”
Tommy knows he’s acting weird. But if it’s dark enough in his room, he can’t see his reflection in the mirror.
“Blaine’s been asking about you,” Tutti says, like that might cheer him up.
Tommy has been ignoring Blaine’s texts. Another reason why he doesn’t want to go to school is to avoid seeing him. Right after Ken Roberts’s live funeral was over, Tommy said he had to get home for dinner. “Don’t want the kale to wilt.” He tried to cover his shaking voice with a joke. Blaine offered to drive him home but Tommy said he’d rather walk. As soon as his feet hit the pavement, he started running.
“Did you see the latest Ken Suicide?” Allan asks, climbing back into bed with Tommy. “The kid was only ten years old.”
Tommy closes his eyes. He’s scared that on the night of his séance in Willows Forever Cemetery he really did invoke the devil. And now it’s up to Tommy to banish him.
The next morning, Tommy shows up for school. He still isn’t quite sure how to stop Blaine or the Ken Suicides, but he knows he can’t keep hiding from them.
Principal Elliot has hung a selfie of Ken Roberts in the hallway outside of his office. Thanks to all of the publicity surrounding Ken Roberts’s death, the school board has doubled Willows High’s annual budget. School field trips are first-class to Ibiza!
Poor Ken Hilton. He’s but a bad dream.
Students bring flowers to school and place them under the photo. There is such a huge pile that it spills into the hall and makes it practically impossible to get to class. Everyone has petals stuck under their sneakers.
Tommy kicks a bouquet of pink carnations. They scatter across the floor. He almost slips on a flower when he sees Blaine coming from the other end of the hallway.
“There he is,” Blaine says as he approaches. “Why haven’t you been answering my texts?”
Tommy finds himself backing against the lockers. Blaine smirks at him, placing a hand on the locker next to Tommy’s head and leaning in.
“There was another suicide this morning,” he says. “All the way in Baltimore. Everyone’s dying to be viral.”
Tommy searches Blaine’s eyes, hoping to see something that will tell him he’s got it all wrong. Blaine stares right back at him, a small flicker of something in his eyes. But not remorse. Conceit, maybe.
“We were supposed to end the Kens’ ridiculous trendsetting,” Tommy says, “not reinforce it. Innocent people are dying!”
“Innocent?” Blaine forces a laugh. “The Kens’ followers are not innocent.” He touches the spot on Tommy’s face where he used to have a scar. “What do you say we drive up to the peak tonight? Just you and me, alone, on a cliff…”
Tommy swallows. He doesn’t let himself break eye contact.
“I thought you’d never ask,” he says.
SHOWROOM DUMMIES
A big “Grand Opening” sign hangs across the front of Plastic Place. Hundreds of pink balloons are strung along the roof. The finished building looks as flawless as a hologram.
Shiny glass windows, shiny glass tile, shiny glass displays shining.
The boulevard surrounding the mall is paved with diamond-shaped mirror glass lit up with pink lights that reflect off the facade.
Plastic Place is opening tomorrow. All of Willows will be walking through its massive double-lacquered high-gloss doors.
For tonight, they’re locked. But the side door is open. Pink light spills into the pitch-black basement.
There’s shuffling, and a light switch is turned on inside the storage room.
Mannequins stop moving when observed.
Headlights brighten the back of the WILLOWSLAND sign. Blaine steps off his bike and looks around. The peak is dark and deserted.
“Come on,” he says. “Where are you, Tommy?”
Blaine pulls out his phone and shoots Tommy a text. He had stopped by Tommy’s house to pick him up for their date, but Tommy’s mom told him he wasn’t home. Blaine figured Tommy had already left. He hasn’t lost the thirstiness that’s made him the perfect play toy.
It’s been a long time coming. For a while, Blaine thought he might be able to spare Tommy. He’d seen the error of his perfect ways and was even a good partner in crime. He’d rejected the Ken life—but that meant he was no longer clueless. Blaine can tell Tommy is starting to question his instruction manual.
The flapping page of a magazine on the ground catches Blaine’s attention. He walks over to it, looking down at a copy of the National Enquirer open to the article about Ken Roberts’s suicide. Blaine bends over and picks it up. There’s handwriting on the top of the page.
The sun always shines on the internet.
Blaine smiles.
“You didn’t,” he says eagerly, looking around the peak.
Tommy isn’t hanging from a branch on one of the trees…Maybe he did it on Kens’ Trail? That would be poetic. Blaine moves to go and see, but stops when he notices a leg sticking out on the ledge beneath the peak.
He cranes his neck to get a better view, holding onto the trunk of a tree to stop himself from falling over.
Perfectly smooth skin, sculpted muscles, blond hair shining brighter than the stars in the sky…That’s him, all right. The corpse is face-planted in the dirt, surrounded by a pool of blood.
“Tommy boy!” Blaine laughs. “I didn’t think you had it in you. I came here to push you over the cliff, of course, but you went and took yourself off the market. You rocked the box and toppled off the shelf. Such a good little fame whore!”
Blaine leans against the tree, sighing as he stares out at luminescent Willows.
“Shame you won’t be around for the grand opening of Plastic Place,” he says into the sky. “There will be no returns for tomorrow’s shoppers…” He pauses for a moment, and then goes on. “It’s like Willows is the epicenter of the world’s superficiality. And it’s spreading…Just look at the Ken Suicides. The conveyor belt never stops; it keeps churning out product. It’s up to me to put a wrench in the machine. Know how I’m going to do it? Won’t Pops be proud…I only regret I won’t be able to see his melting face. See, Tommy, tomorrow at the mall I’m going to contaminate the water system with acid and set off the fire alarm. The sprinklers will go off, and Willows won’t be so pretty anymore.”
“Hey, I just thought of something.” Blaine kicks a rose-quartz rock off the side of the cliff with the tip of his boot. He doesn’t hear it crack the porcelain below. “I’m kind of like a twisted older brother experimenting on his sister’s dolls. This place is about to become a landfill.”
MALIBU AVE
Across town, a camera crew is setting up on the front yard of Ken Carson’s house. Tutti walks up the driveway carrying her makeup kit. Ken Carson told her to bring it. She was wary when the text came in, but he swore it was no joke and begged her to come over.
“I promise I’ll explain everything, bruh,” he wrote.
Tutti can’t help but be curious. She’s also cautious. Ken Carson has burned her in the past. Even if what Tommy told her about Ken Carson defending her honor after she attempted suicide is true, she still doesn’t know if she can trust him.
When Tutti walks up the front steps of Ken Carson’s house, the door opens before she even has a chance to ring the bell. Ken Carson pulls her inside.
He’s shirtless, wearing nothing but a pair of Dsquared2 shorts. Tutti doesn’t know where to look.
“Dude, thanks for getting here so quickly.” Ken Carson closes the door behind them. “You’re into makeup, right? Ken Hilton would never admit it, but I know he followed your tutorials.”
“He did?”
“Yeah, mang. You taught him how to cuntour.”
Tutti laughs nervously and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear.
“Come up to my room, dude.” Ken Carson leads the way. They step into the bedroom and Tutti feels like she’s
in one of her dreams. Except it’s even better because the smell is more intense than anything she could ever imagine. It smells like Ken Carson bathes in the water that drowned Narcissus and leaves ball-sweat fingerprints everywhere.
The room doesn’t look like in her dreams. Tutti always thought the walls would be painted the same color as Dippity-Do, that there’d be a shag carpet on the floor, a glass ceiling and a revolving bed. But the decor is surprisingly minimal. There’s a modern bed, and a Barcelona chair next to the window. Most surprising of all, there’s a book on the chair, and as far as Tutti can tell, no white powder on the surface. Is that a bookmark?
Ken Carson peers behind the curtain on the window.
“So,” Tutti asks, “do you want me to do your makeup for a shoot? Is that why there’s a crew setting up outside?”
“Did anyone follow you?” Ken Carson faces her.
“I don’t think so. Why?”
“How good are you at special effects?”
“What kind?”
“Puncture wounds, dude. I need it to look like I jumped from my window and landed on the fence spikes outside.”
“What kind of video are you making, exactly?”
“Can I trust you?”
“Sure you can.”
They sit on the edge of Ken Carson’s bed, so close their legs are touching.
“I’m faking my death,” he says. “The heat’s on the Ken Suicides. The FBI is up on this shit. I think my phone is tapped…After my sit down with Willows News the police interviewed me. They think the Ken Suicides is promoting teen suicide and that it’s, like, a cult. And I’m the leader dude because I’ve been glorifying the posts on my Tumblr. I have to get the hell out of Willows before they throw me in prison. I’ll never survive jail. I’m the top Ken!”
“Well, you are kind of glorifying suicide by posting the Ken Suicides. It’s like you’re encouraging your followers to kill themselves.”