by Adam Cesare
Alice pierces a tomato with her fork and lifts it without speaking. The others cut into theirs as well, movement that trails hers by a matter of seconds. A visual echo.
“But why am I here instead of a hospital,” she says once she’s had enough food to temporarily quell the rebellion in her belly.
“Do you remember the accident?”
“Sort of,” she says, but the vacancy on her face prompts him to immediately elaborate.
“Okay, well, you’re here because the roads were impassible in the storm. Mud slides, fallen trees. No way back into the city. And with an influx of emergencies happening all over Los Angeles, a life flight was a long shot. You were brought here instead.”
“Again, where is here?” She says while her plate is collected and another replaces it.
“Dr. Pepper-glazed ham with prunes,” Sandoval says with beaming pride.
His refusal to answer makes her feel worse. She asks again, but Sandoval continues to gloss over the question, favoring the topic of WireLight. Some garbage erotic thriller she’d done in the 90s, only remembered because of one particularly gynecological shot of her during one of its many love scenes. The director had claimed it was captured by accident, but he had left in the final cut very deliberately.
“I’m surprised you don’t recognize your dress,” Sandoval says.
She looks down at the black sleeveless number and it kind of rings a bell now that she’s been directed to that conclusion. Her character wore one just like it during WireLight’s climax as she was chased through a string of train cars by a knife-wielding stalker.
Sandoval licks glaze off his tongue while waiting for an answer.
“I never would have remembered that I wore one just like this.”
“You wore that one. And it still fits.” He cocks his head and grins. “We’re just happy you’re back, Alice. The accident was horrible. Your car was little more than a knotted mess of metal and you...well, nobody can believe that you weren't torn up inside of it.”
She remembers tarmac. Center lines zipping past in a blur of headlight yellow. The guardrail comes out of nowhere. Her stomach lurches with the rollercoaster ride into the ravine.
Sandoval nods along with her recollection.
“I don’t remember any rain,” she mumbles.
“Excuse me?”
“You said the storm knocked out the roads. I don’t remember it raining.”
“You must’ve been unconscious before it started. And you've been under my care since...”
“How long has that been?”
Sandoval attempts to stomp over the question again. This time the topic is one of her most tawdry efforts, Dropout, but Alice fires back with her original question, only louder and more clearly stated.
“No need for hostility, Alice,” Sandoval says.
“Then answer me.”
“Yes, I will, but…”
“Answer me!”
“This is… not how I wanted this to go. I always thought you seemed so gracious in your interviews.”
Alice shoots from her seat with so much force that her chair tumbles over and echoes like a gunshot. The guests sit stunned, tsking the violent display with I never glances—as if she could not possibly belong to their hoity toity world.
Rebecca stands leaning against the entry door, arms folded and wearing a smug grin. Alice runs straight for her as Sandoval and the guests rise in unison.
Food has given rise to strength, or maybe it’s all adrenaline. Either way, she isn’t waiting to hear what Rebecca has to say. She takes the doctor’s shoulders in her hands and launches her against the door, pinning her with her body. Alice’s hands rummage through her pockets until her fingers close around the card and she plucks it free.
She slips it back and forth along the wall until it beeps and the door opens.
Sandoval and the others speak about her in trembling voices as she escapes.
“There is still much she doesn’t understand.”
Alice doesn’t care. The front door is only a few steps away. Three stairs up to the landing. She swipes the card there with her frantic hand but it doesn't open. There’s no click, no swoosh. Just thick, impassible oak.
She turns back toward the hall. Sandoval stands there in a skittish pose, arms out by his sides in a calming motion. The others are behind him. Nervous eyes holding on her in edgy silence.
“Just let me go,” Alice says.
“There’s nowhere for you to go,” Sandoval says.
“Give me a phone, my daughter will...”
“Isabella’s gone.”
But she refuses to listen, and instead runs forward and breaks to the right. A slap of the card beside that door opens it into darkness. She stumbles through as it whooshes closed. The black void doesn’t stop her from running and she moves forward with outstretched arms, a cautious defense to ward off any unwelcome surprises.
“I was planning to show you this after dinner,” Sandoval says, back on the intercom. “But you’ve gone ahead and ruined the surprise. When you’re feeling better you can apologize to me and my guests. Your biggest fans.”
Alice spins around to catch the entire wall aglow in mounting white light. It builds to a blinding flash and then turns transparent to reveal the hall she just escaped. Sandoval and the others are there. His palms rub the glass in front of her and he closes his eyes with unmistakable satisfaction. Hot breath spills past his lips and spreads across the pane until his face is buried beneath the fog.
Her fist smashes the glass in rebellion.
“No,” he says. “Do not harm yourself!” He glances sideways to Rebecca. Her attention is buried in the handheld electronic device in her hands, and doesn’t appear to notice him. “This was always going to be the biggest challenge.”
“I have a boyfriend,” Alice says. “A daughter. They're going to be looking for me.”
“Your ‘boyfriend’ married someone twenty years younger… just a few months after you died. And I already told you about Isabella…gone.”
“Bullshit. How?”
“Natural causes, I think. Doesn’t matter. Listen Alice… you’ve been gone for fifty years.”
And this is the truth. Despite the confusion, she just knows it. Another piece of that jagged jigsaw falls back into place and she remembers bleeding out at the bottom of Mulholland in a twisted metal tomb. Lapsing into a sleep from which she never awoke.
Until tonight.
“I brought you back.” Sandoval makes a forward gesture with his chin as the room’s surrounding darkness lifts.
Alice turns around and the shock of what’s there has tears streaming down her face immediately.
She’s standing in her living room.
“It’s all original,” he says. “It looks like your things because they are your things.”
Alice can only wipe tears from her eyes.
“How? It’s incidental, except to say you have a lot of fans, and when you passed, there was a scavenger hunt to collect as much of you as possible. I spent years, and millions, procuring your belongings from private collectors the world over. And then, as the ultimate thank you, I invited them to be here tonight. For the unveiling.”
Some of the people behind Sandoval take this as their cue to wave. One even tries introducing himself, but Alice erupts into a scream of bloody murder as soon as he speaks. Sandoval promptly hushes him.
“Anyway,” he says after silence has returned. “A sad thing happened when I realized there was no more Alice Benton to collect. My collection felt unfinished and I remained...unsatisfied. That is not something I’m used to.”
Alice has stopped listening, stunned by the resurrected memories jogged by being home. Everything’s here: The leather sofa where she used to cuddle with Isabella while watching SpongeBob, the photo wall that documented her life from eighth grade all the way to high school graduation. The rose vases her mom had collected, and the wedding portrait of she and Rex. Moments of her life, parsed out and sol
d piecemeal to the wealthiest collectors.
“Alice, no. Don’t feel this way. Don’t reject this. You get your life back and I... I get a centerpiece for my Alice Benton collection. I get you. All to myself.”
Alice retreats further into her house, away from the prying wall of spectator eyes. Every inch of her home has been restored, while Sandoval continues speaking to her from the intercom that broadcasts no matter where she goes.
“Want to know how you’re here? It’s mostly a trade secret. Cybernetic implants, cellular regeneration, and more blood transfusions than you can imagine. We sent fluids through your veins to get the blood flowing again. That’s the gist, right doctor?”
“Right,” Kathleen says.
“But technical details bore me. Point is, you’re back. I spent billions to bring you here. I’ll let you thank me later.”
Alice runs to the kitchen thinking she’ll escape through the back door. It doesn’t open, and exterior windows are locked up even tighter. When she comes back to the living room, shoulders slouched, eyes red and streaming, Sandoval fills the now open doorway, his hand extended. “Come,” he says as the guests saunter back toward the dining room. “I would like to speak with you privately.”
Alice goes, but refuses to touch him.
“I hope that will change in time,” he says.
Sandoval provides a tour of the rest of his place. They move from one room to the next while Kathleen follows several steps behind. Her nose remains buried in the handheld device.
The rooms are united by one common theme: Alice Benton.
There’s an entire museum wing decorated with original one sheets from each of her films. They’re hung in sequential order above rows and rows of mannequins. Each one is dressed in clothes that had once been in her closet: every dress worn to the Academy Awards, costumes from all her films, and in some cases, just everyday clothes she’d wear while running errands. A few are even decorated in skimpy lingerie raided from her most personal drawer.
Before she can retch, Sandoval leads her into a screening room. He presses a button on a remote and a large screen descends from the ceiling. The image on it is dark green. A night vision camera. Her personal trainer on the bed naked, stroking himself hard while looking at someone off camera with great interest.
“I want to lick you all over.”
Soon a younger Alice crawls into frame and climbs atop him.
This betrayal is news to her. She had never known this was recorded, but it explained why her co-star in this tape up and quit the business to retire to the Bahamas at 22. Rex must’ve paid a pretty penny to get his hands on this.
“Beautiful,” Sandoval says with a tone of casual admiration more accurately reserved for bird watching. Her moans float through the speakers, filling Alice with queasiness.
She falls to her knees and vomits.
“Kathleen, clean this up,” Sandoval says.
Alice reaches up and his face bristles with joy as her fingers clasp around his belt. She uses his weight to stand and then attacks his face, scratching and clawing with every bit of energy she has left. Pieces of his flesh peel away beneath her fingernails and he screams for help.
Kathleen steps between them with a sadistic laugh. She grabs Alice by her dress collar and throws her to the floor. “I told you that you were trotting her out too soon. You didn’t listen.”
“Whatever”, Sandoval says, wiping the blood onto his fingers and then licking them. “It was expected. She has been through a lot. Have you finished with the appraisal yet?”
Kathleen puts the device in his hands and points to something on its screen.
“Very good,” he says. “Such great news. You are in mint condition, Alice Benton.”
“I’ll kill you,” Alice says.
“You won’t. Know why?” Sandoval turns the video off, brushes Kathleen aside, and puts an arm around Alice’s shoulder. His fingers are sweaty on her bare skin, and blood dribbles off his face and lands on the remote as he fiddles with the buttons.
Now they’re watching grainy camera footage showing a busted guardrail. The lens peers over the edge to reveal a twisted car wreck below. It zooms closer and shows Alice writhing in the driver’s seat, windshield glass sticking from her throat while male voices speak in excited tones over the grisly scene.
“Holy fuck, man, is that Alice down there?”
“Yup, not for much longer though.”
The camera manages to push in even further, and now Alice is watching herself gasp for breath and pull at the glass that’s piercing her neck. Her hand reaches through the busted out windshield, calling to the men she clearly sees above. What she gets in return is a sadistic laugh.
“This footage is going to sell for a ton.”
She remembers now. The little Hyundai that was always staked out in front of her place. The high-speed pursuit they gave when she attempted to outrun them, hoping she could have some time with Isabella in peace—away from the leering paparazzi eye that loved to speculate on the quality of her relationship with Rex Neill’s daughter.
“See… I would never lie to you, Alice.” Sandoval clicks the remote again.
Now they’re looking at a camera angled down on a room not unlike the one she had awoken in. The center holds a tiny transparent box hooked to a dozen different wires. Inside it, a tiny little shape moves ever so slightly beneath a pink blanket
“Maybe you don’t recognize this, but say hello to Isabella. Kathleen had a heck of a time trying to make her grow, I don’t have to tell you.”
Alice almost laughs. This feels like a cruel joke.
“She’s my insurance policy. Kathleen thought you’d hurt yourself once you discovered the truth. Said you’d stop eating and just wither away in misery. But with your baby girl coming back, you’ve got no choice. You won’t leave her behind again.”
Sandoval slides his arm to the small of her back and leads her from the room. The tips of his fingers stretch out to the top of her buttocks. They walk back through the house in silence, until they reach the entrance of her “home.”
She’s so numb she doesn’t react to his gigantic face lifting up to hers. Doesn’t feel his lips press to her mouth. He tries a few times to jumpstart the passion, but she only stands there, as lifeless as any mannequin in his collection.
“I’m going too fast. I know. I know I am. You will learn to love me, Alice. No one will ever take care of you like I will. This is the first time the subject of a collection has become the centerpiece of one.” He laughs at that.
Sandoval taps the door and it opens, allowing Alice to slink back inside and drop onto her couch. Her chest feels like it’s buried beneath the broken remains of her Audi. The 80” television monitor on the wall shows one of her movies. She stares at herself on screen but cannot remember the title. Barely remembers making it.
People used to ask her how she could be so cavalier about her films when so many people loved them. Her response was always that she was grateful to the people for seeing them. But they stopped being hers the second they were released to the general public.
Then it became theirs.
“I really am your biggest fan,” Sandoval says as the door closes behind him.
Savior Girl in Philly Hell
Philadelphia is a shithole.
The infrastructure is crumbling.
There’s garbage piled on the sidewalk.
Public transit is, like, why bother?
And while I don’t have the exact statistics on this, it’s apparent to me that archdemon-on-archdemon violence has spiked since the end of the world.
That was... last April? What month was it now?
Jesus, why is it so cold?
I walk to my apartment, pulling up the collar of my coat because most women’s winter clothes are—were—designed to be fashionable instead of being fucking warm. And maybe there are warmer coats out there, but damn it I still want to look good.
It’s mid-day, or close to it. The light beh
ind the sky’s perpetual haze—still the sun? or do we have a new astral body? — is red.
It’s always red but this approximate shade means that it’s around noon, I think. Certainly can’t check my watch! Most electronics still work, even portions of telecom networks are still up and running, but not a single clock is able to keep time. Mechanical or digital, cog or battery: none of them work.
One of those things to get used to, little adjustments. Changes must be made.
“Hey, Joy!”
Shit.
“Yo. Slow down. I’m talking to you.”
Rolf’s got half a face, but sadly it’s the top half that’s missing. The bottom is perfectly functional and Rolf compensates for his missing eyes by exercising his jaw at every opportunity.
From the bridge of his nose up to the start of his fontanel is a fist-sized concave void.
He uses the railing of his stoop to swing around towards me. He can’t see for shit but gets by.
“Rolf. You’re looking good, like a very handsome chip-and-dip,” I say, backpedaling towards my own stoop, not wanting to chat with the neighbors, just wanting to crash after a late night chasing down a missing kid stretched into morning.
Chasing down and finding him, pieces of him. It was the mom. It’s always the mom, these days. A tiny little archdemon had taken up in her eardrum, started whispering. She went down without much of a fight.
“Oh, sarcasm. You’re making great strides towards being a kinder, gentler you, I see,” Rolf says, nodding, his head held at that TV-blind-man’s tilt that I’m not really sure helps anyone hear better.
“Sorry, I’m just tired. Going to crash, what’s up?”
“Heard a rumor, thought you’d like to know, but if you’re too tired.”
I rub my legs together, making the denim sing but getting very little heat from it.
“Spit.”
“Well, rumors of war. Things are stabilizing all over. Down on 9th that means that, ya’know, old world problems are coming back. Bumping up against new world issues.”