Suicide Blondes

by T. Blake Braddy

  “How do you know?”

  “I know,” I reply.

  Because my stalker was literate, I guess.

  “But what do you think?”

  “It looks like a freak, but I can’t say anything beyond that. Are you taking precautions?”

  “What, like checking under my bed, shit like that?”

  “I’m serious,” I say, thinking of the perpetual sense of doom I felt about my own situation. “Something bad can happen, and I—”

  “Oh, I know,” she replies. “I live in a good neighborhood—”

  —As if that matters—

  “—And besides, if he decides to track me down, then I can have my own #MeToo moment, am I right? Not that we didn’t all have to, you know, endure back in the day. Do you remember Flynn Sutter?”

  I can feel the bile rise to the back of my throat, and not just because of Audrey’s ambivalence toward sexual assault. Flynn Sutter was the very definition of a difficult man. We all had run-ins with him at parties in high school, and some of us didn’t make it to the other side. He was a wolf in the path on the way to grandma’s house, and you didn’t dare take a drink from him or wander off to pass out in someone’s bed at a house party. He preyed willingly on the girls who ran in our circles, and even three serious and credible accusations against him in college did not prevent him from marrying into an absolutely, deliciously wealthy family and getting a job shorting bonds or some other financial nonsense.

  “Of course I do,” I manage to choke, my own memories of him intruding on the moment.

  His hand sliding up my shirt. The drink he kept pushing on me. The soreness the next day, causing me to walk bowlegged back to Madeline’s car.

  Her smirk as she picked me up.

  “Anyway, maybe the stalker is someone we tormented back in high school,” she says.

  “Maybe.”

  I don’t want to consider such an idea.

  “Still,” I say, “you should call the cops. This isn’t something to play around with.”

  Although, of course, I can clearly see her eyes, and so I know she won’t call the cops. There is another way she is like the old Audrey.

  She likes this.

  “I’m serious,” I tell her when she doesn’t really respond. She’s got that look.

  “I know, I know.”

  But she doesn’t. So I roll my eyes and turn to go.

  The heat from the sun bakes the back of my head as I walk without really feeling it toward my rental. There’s a scratch just above the door handle, where someone—

  “Oh, and Mary Ellen?”

  I spin to see a shadow of the person who has become “Audrey.”

  “Don’t tell her about the things I said today. I don’t think she’d understand.”

  I give her a jubilant thumbs up and then shrink away to my car, where I feel somewhat dirtier than when I’d arrived, and not just because of the decadent local chicken.

  8

  My stalker had a name.

  Still does, so far as I know, but to my knowledge, he is locked away in a deep, dark cell somewhere in the wilds of Washington.

  Timothy Allred.

  There was nothing sexy or mysterious about the whole experience, no matter what Audrey chooses to believe about the cheap thrillers they air on LifeTime. The whole episode was terrifying and violating.

  I still wake up some nights, covered in sweat.

  It began innocently enough, with him pretending to be a blogger in need of a good yarn for a series he was doing on modern miscarriages of justice.

  My case, he said, happened to fit the bill, and I suppose he caught me in a vulnerable state, because I dove right in, sending him reams and reams of information about the case.

  It progressed—email by email—to the point that he and I shared some personal things about ourselves. He, too, was going through a hard time, or so he said. His girlfriend had recently dumped him for a drummer in some heavy metal band, and besides, he was interested in me outside of our current...circumstances.

  It should have been a red flag—actually, it was a red flag—but then again my entire concept of what was a normal, healthy relationship was so warped I expected a little weirdness.

  But it went beyond even my concept of the bizarre very quickly.

  He’d send these midnight emails with questions ranging from the mundane—what is a bigger regret, befriending Madeline St. Clair or not calling the police that night—to the downright sinister—have you ever fantasized about being on top of Everett Coughlin’s corpse?

  By the time I realized I was in something very bad and very dangerous, it had escalated beyond my control, and so I thought I would just try to land the plane before it crashed.

  I was unsuccessful at that.

  At a certain point, Timothy...changed. He’d always been a little strange, but he went from idiosyncratic to scary within a few weeks’ time. He knew where I was, what I’d had for dinner, and what time I got home.

  It should have been easy to file a report, but this was before #MeToo, and besides, I was basically persona non grata with anyone in an official position. I always felt more pressure to stay quiet, in part because of who I was, but I also knew the moment I made a claim, my texts and emails would be seized, and the resulting narrative would turn me into a different kind of monster.

  The irony, for most people, would be too delicious to ignore.

  Suicide Blonde claims man is harassing her online. Tough shit, world replies.

  So I just tried to let it go. I ignored his texts, the pictures taken from outside my place. I left at odd hours and kept a different schedule to avoid being easily tracked.

  That only exacerbated the problem.

  He became convinced I had murdered Everett Coughlin. For many, it was an issue of semantics, but Timothy Allred believed—legitimately believed—I’d held him down and choked the life from him.

  It wasn’t much of a jump—for him—to conclude that, because Madeline St. Clair’s family was involved, the autopsy report did not get completed. They tossed a few hundred thousand dollars the coroner’s way to ensure he came to the conclusion that Everett Coughlin died by self-inflicted asphyxiation, or whatever kills people who fill their cars with exhaust fumes.

  And this one delusion—that I had killed Everett Coughlin with my bare hands—is what finally sent him over the edge. He became (even more) erratic, posting his thoughts in blog entries that read like 4Chan conspiracies.

  And then it happened.

  I came home—to a place I’ve since abandoned for a high rise apartment—to find Timothy naked and bleeding on my living room floor. He’d broken in by getting a key from the security guard—I guess girls like me always have “boyfriends” who’ve lost the spare—and disassembled my laptop, placing each piece on the ground in my living room.

  Meant to be some kind of metaphor, I guess.

  Then, his pièce de résistance. He slit his wrists and disrobed, pulling a .38 revolver from his jacket pocket before taking up residence on my couch.

  I found him lying face-down on my computer parts, a red puddle slowly expanding beneath him. He’d planned this little murder-suicide based on my normal departure time. Only, this night I’d decided to stop for a burrito on my way home.

  Lucky me.

  I called 911, and they managed to save his life. He was charged with a litany of offenses and taken to a mental hospital for testing. His stay was extended after he stabbed two guards and then tried to hang himself with his bed sheet.

  I could go on, but the moral of the story is, he is bound to spend a very, very long time away from society, and there is something to be said for that.

  Some nights, I still check over my shoulder for a bony, bespectacled figure to be following me, but there’s never anyone there.

  And therein lies the truth of life—you’re more alone than you think you are.

  And I guess I am okay with that. Most of my flaws have been dragged through the public square
.

  That’s what separates me from them.

  The other Suicide Blondes believe the same old lie, that no one can have any dirt on them because all of their dirt is public. They rant and gnash their teeth about their very public indiscretions, thinking those are as bad as it gets.

  But it gets worse.

  And I know, because I have access to their social media accounts.

  All of them.

  From Facebook to Twitter to Instagram, I can peek into the lives of Audrey, Gillian, and—oh yes—Madeline St. Clair.

  That is my secret. What began as a simple exercise in ability—I did it because I could—quickly transformed into a quiet, burning obsession. I’m sure I could dig into a personality profile, maybe get psychoanalyzed, and trace it all back to junior year, but I have no interest in that. This thing I do works like a shot of adrenaline straight to the chest, and I could get off on it, were I so inclined.

  There is just something so erotic about the secrecy of knowing the exact keystrokes Madeline St. Clair uses to log in to FaceBook. Or the secret questions Audrey uses to retrieve the password for her Instagram.

  Madeline St. Clair has no idea how many times I check her profile on a daily basis. Has no inkling of how closely I pore over her direct messages, precisely when I should be working. How I try to glean her mental state at the time from the words and phrases she uses. She is clueless as to how many times I have photoshopped my own face over the multitudes of friends in the glamorous pics on her profile.

  Ditto for Audrey and Gillian. The intensity of my admiration for Madeline’s life outshines all other so-called “stalker” activities.

  It’s why hearing Audrey talk about her little text messages—none of which were sent by me—makes me so angry.

  Because I know—for a fact—Audrey doesn’t want a stalker. It’s a horrifying, demeaning, life-altering situation.

  Plus, I’m more of a stalker than that other person will ever be.

  I decide to go for an afternoon walk. It’s a nice distraction from my own self-delusions and paranoia, not to mention the fact that I need to sweat out some alcohol. Besides, I can’t bear to see my mother right now, and I need some alone time.

  I’m not an athlete, and usually my only exercise comes in the form of leaving the office to go get a latte, but my whole body feels juiced with electricity—and anxiety—so I make a pilgrimage to Percy Warner Park, which lies on the outer edge of Belle Meade.

  It provides me with some much-needed time to think. I’ve received a lot of information over the last two days, and I don’t want to burn out and go to my dark place. I’ve experienced a few...setbacks over the years, each one preceded by one of those prying cable documentaries, which inevitably brings the crazies out of their nests.

  The inclusion of the other girls heightens my sensitivity, and I can feel something ungodly brewing deep within my psyche. I can always call my psychiatrist, but I’ve resolved to believe this time it’s different, this time I refuse to be weak.

  Getting out of the car and hiking the gentle, sloped road at the path’s outset, I feel some of that bad karma begin to slip away, get lost in the hum of the background noise. Not long after, I’m full-on in the woods, my feet pumping to the music in my headset, and I no longer have the taut cable of my anxieties cinching my stomach into knots.

  And yet, I experience a distinct and unalterable loneliness out here.

  Although, loneliness isn’t the word.

  Isolation. That’s more like it.

  The trails feel abandoned. Even though it’s early on a weekday afternoon, Percy Warner is never this...abandoned. I’ve somehow managed to find myself alone among the leaves and the trees and rocks adorning the path, and it leaves me on edge.

  I can’t help but think about my conversation with Audrey. I wish I had access to her text threads, because then I could scan them for details, try to make sense of what she’s going through. I’d also place money on the fact that Gillian is probably experiencing the same thing, too. These people, they tend to get fixated on a topic more than a single person.

  I know I do.

  And the shared look between Audrey and Gillian makes more sense now. I didn’t get it at the time, but now it seems so clear. They’ve discussed their shared stalker, and they didn’t want me to find out.

  But why?

  Either they’re worried about me finding out—

  Or they’re just worried about me.

  It feels good to think so, even if there is a sharp edge to the thought.

  That doesn’t solve the problem of who could be stalking them.

  Not Timothy Allred, I have to tell myself. I imagine him in the darkest, most impenetrable cell in all of Washington state, and somehow it calms me, as if thinking it can somehow influence the result of his incarceration.

  His misery is my own personal vision board, I suppose.

  If not Timothy, then who?

  A few names pop out of nowhere, and I consider their motivations. There’s Madeline, of course. She is exactly the type of person to engage in this kind of espionage. Nothing would give her more perverse pleasure.

  It would also explain why she came to see me before. A way of getting her hooks in me before pushing me off the nearest cliff. Or seeing where my loyalties are.

  But that’s not right. Something seems different this time. She seems...fragile in a new and authentic way.

  The other option comes from within the St. Clair-Ambrose household. Judging by Madeline’s personal DMs, Colton Ambrose is no stranger to underhanded tactics to get his way in business and personal matters. If his wife is to be believed, he has rat-fucked every single business person he has ever dealt with. If nothing else, it leads me to believe he is capable of some pretty extreme dealings, if motivated.

  But why? Why would he threaten his wife’s high school frenemy?

  Maybe Madeline is blackmailing him, and this is his means for extricating himself from his wife’s iron-fisted grip. It would make sense, I suppose, but I am not ready to go kicking in their door, guns-a-blazing, to accuse them of something that just occurred to me right now, as I make my way up a low-grade hill in the middle of Percy Warner.

  At last, the fever of solitude breaks. I pass a middle-aged couple in Lululemon workout clothes, and they smile. I turn up one side of my mouth and look away. I’m wearing my Seahawks cap and sunglasses, but I feel vulnerable, so I pull the hat way down on my forehead and avoid eye contact.

  Even with my earbuds in, I think I hear one of the women calling back to me. Maybe I dropped something as I passed them.

  I glance behind me, and that’s when I see someone.

  Percy Warner is well-trod, as parks go, so it shouldn’t freak me out, but it does. I get that feeling, an intuition, and the alarm bells start ringing like crazy.

  I speed up, and though the person is far enough behind that I can’t determine the gender, I feel the need to get the hell out of there before I can.

  As a precaution, I drift off the paved path onto one of the many trails that weave along the park. It’s counterintuitive, because who in the hell would choose to take a more isolated path, but it’s the best way to confirm my paranoia. If the person behind me keeps walking straight, I’m crazy. If he or she turns to follow me—

  I’m dead.

  Once I’ve made some headway, picking up my speed, I feel comfortable glancing behind me. I listen to the thwock-thwock-thwock of my feet on the gravel and sand, but the nagging sensation of being watched fills me with newfound anxiety.

  I tilt my head and glance behind me.

  They’ve closed the gap.

  I am really hitting my stride, and yet this person is gaining on me. It occurs to me I should break into a galloping run, screaming all the while, but my fear has bridled me to this power walk, and I’m afraid to do anything at all, let alone run away.

  The irony of it isn’t lost on me.

  But still I persevere, managing to pick up some speed without maki
ng it too obvious that I notice. My whole body feels like it’s going to go rubbery on me any moment, but I hold it together. The thought of someone reaching for me from behind, grabbing me by the arm, dragging me off into the wilderness, it sends acid through my veins.

  My mind flashes—

  (blood, clattering keyboard letters)

  —and I am taken all the way back to my apartment in Seattle, where I had to literally scrub my stalker’s blood from the hardwood floors.

  And maybe he’s back in my life. As crazy as it seems, maybe Timothy Allred has come to Nashville.

  I try to shake it off, the completely ludicrous idea that my stalker is (1) out of prison and (2) somehow in Tennessee.

  But I am not hallucinating the fact that I am tromping through the woods with someone on my tail.

  As fucked up as my life has been, it’s never felt that...dangerous. Even when I was in the midst of the Timothy Allred situation, I never thought it would end with anyone dying. In retrospect, that was a crazy belief, and yet it turned out to be true.

  But this—this is different.

  I wouldn’t be surprised if someone ended up in the morgue. It would be a fitting epilogue to the story, and the news would absolutely eat our deaths up.

  My heart throbs behind my eyeballs. I pump my feet harder, try to get away, try to get further down the trail, away from this person.

  I want to puke, I’m so nervous.

  There are plenty of places to dump a body, I figure, and one of us might end up in the bushes on the other side of the trail.

  As I top a hill, a miracle occurs. A guy in shorts and a Nashville Rock N Roll Marathon shirt passes me, shuffling along at a measured gait. He’s an older guy, a veteran runner, and he’s coming right for me.

  I’ve never been so happy to see a guy in short shorts in all my life.

  This is my moment. I’m nothing if not momentarily courageous. I turn on one heel and follow the aging marathoner, picking up the speed to keep pace with him.

  Down the hill and turning a sharp corner, I see the follower.

  The stalker.