She Lies Twisted

by C. M. Stunich

  “Did you have a good first day?” Anita asked me as she popped up behind a hedge of roses like a zombie. I jumped, my hand reflexively reaching for my back pocket. There was nothing there, but I was training myself in the event of a zombie apocalypse. It was where I'd keep my Glock. Anita flinched. I was pretty sure she was scared of me, so I tried to respond nicely. She'd been working here for nearly three years and had always at least tried to pretend to like me.

  “It was great,” I said sweetly as I batted my eyelashes and wondered if she could tell against the sludge cake of eyeliner I'd spread over my pale skin. She smiled and nodded, satisfied. I had passed some sort of normal test. I wondered what she'd do if she ever saw my room. Or knew I carried dead animals around in my backpack. My smile became more real. Anita smiled back. I went inside.

  Grandma Willa was in the parlor, yes dear, the parlor, rocking back and forth and reading a worn copy of – you guessed it – Pride and Prejudice. At least there was some proof that we were related. I didn't bother to say hi to her. She wouldn't have responded. Grandma Willa wasn't rude or anything. She was just old. Super old. Colossal old. Like old enough to remember the Civil War. Okay, not that old but when my parents had died and left me and my sister to their next of kin, Grandma Willa had already been in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s. It wasn't her fault. I tried to tell myself that. I tried to remember that a trust fund was still a trust fund and that I couldn't get at it until I was twenty-one, whether she was here or not. Really.

  I still hated her for all of the attention I never got as a child.

  I scowled and climbed the first set of stairs two at a time. I took the next set more slowly, savoring the textured feel of the glossy wallpaper beneath my fingers until I reached the attic that I had claimed as my bedroom.

  When I'd first moved in, I'd played nice in a pink and blue floral bedroom on the first floor next to my twin's. I'd folded my clothes and put them away and brushed my pretty blonde hair until it fell straight as straw to my slender shoulders. When I realized that no matter what I did, Grandma Willa would never be the surrogate parent I so desperately wanted, needed, I stopped. I climbed those stairs and never went back.

  My first order of business had been to take the dusty trunks, portraits, mirrors, dress forms, armories, and antique tricycles and push them into the corner. I'd unrolled an old white rug, splattered with red wax, that I'd found behind one of the support posts for the roof, across the wooden floor and made up an old white daybed with musty linens and pillows I'd swiped from the pretty bedroom. Over the last two years, I'd plastered the walls with posters of theater shows and punk bands and the covers of my favorite books who spent most of their time either in my hands or in a pile underneath the single window overlooking the backyard. My finds, my animals, like the raven that was even now decaying in my backpack, stared back at me from glassy eyes on shelves, the windowsill, the rickety yellow dresser with the peeling sunflowers. They weren't decaying anymore though. I had stopped it. I had beaten death. At least a little bit. Taxidermy. Not a normal hobby for a high school student. I could give a shit less.

  Just as I was sitting my pack down on the floor, my phone rang.

  “Boyd,” I said to one of the three crows on the windowsill. They didn't respond. Forever silent. I frowned and yanked my phone out of my pocket. “Hey,” I said, throwing off my hood and tucking my hair behind my ears. “Long time, no hear.” I could almost hear him smiling.

  “Yeah, sorry. I went home and got fucked up, but I feel better now.”

  “You know what they say,” I told him as I paced around the room in a slow circle. “Beer is better with friends and Doritos.” He laughed.

  “You made that up,” he teased, his voice more maudlin than jovial.

  “Yeah, so? That doesn't mean it isn't true.”

  “Neil?” Boyd asked suddenly, not sounding at all like he had downed anything more than the chocolate milk I'd given him at lunch.

  “You want me to come over with snacks?” I asked him, ignoring his tone. I didn't like it. It scared the crap out of me. I slept in a room with dead animals. You do the math.

  “Neil, Tatum, Tate,” he said, jumbling my mixture of names together in a rush. “I just wanted to say now that I'm … I'm sorry … and I love you, girl, you know that.” I opened my mouth to make an ill timed joke when the phone went dead. I stared at the blank plastic in terror before finally collecting enough of my scattered marbles to realize I should plug it in.

  I called him back immediately.

  He didn't answer.

  “Hey Neil, leave a message, love Boyd.”

  “Don't do anything weird, okay?” I said, nervous laughter wetting my suddenly dry lips. The last time he'd been sad like this, he'd shaved his entire head and gotten a tattoo in the back of his cousin's best friend's van. “I'm coming over.”

  I rushed to the market down the street and stocked up on overpriced chips, soda, dip, chocolate. The whole time my breath shuddered in and forced itself out. Why am I so freaking nervous? I asked as I chewed on the drawstrings of my sweatshirt and prayed that the new girl behind the counter would figure out the register sometime in the near future.

  Boyd.

  I knew I had to get over there. Something wasn't right with him. Why am I even here?

  I threw some cash down on the counter and grabbed the bag.

  “You know where to find me if I'm short,” I yelled back as a bag of Oreos tumbled over the edge of the paper sack and slammed into the polished white linoleum.

  I ran like hell to Boyd's trailer park.

  It was a long way, past the colonials, past the school, past the old cemetery, behind the hospital, under the bridge. I dropped the bag in the lap of a homeless guy who cursed me out and then started laughing and saying, “Merry fucking Christmas,” over and over again. There wasn't time. I suddenly felt my heart catch in my throat. Something was wrong. I knew it the way a grizzly knows when a hunter is near her cubs. It was pure, freaking instinct. Something was wrong with my Boyd.

  My best friend, a grand master at chess, and the best dungeon master a girl could ever ask for.

  Nothing seemed amiss when my feet finally hit the spotty lawn in front of the yellow and white single wide. The wind rushed by like a touchy-feely relative, caressing my bare skin through the holes in my jeans and pinching my cheeks with cold. I smoothed my hands down the front of my sweatshirt and forced myself to walk to his front door. I didn't knock, just walked right in like I'd done a thousand and one times before. Only this time, it was different.

  I don't know what hit me first, the smell of wet pennies or the sense of hopelessness, the idea that if my phone hadn't died, if I hadn't gone to the store, if ...

  “Boyd?” My voice shook, trembled and faded into the wet, red-brown carpet. “Boyd?”

  In movies, when bad things happen, people always collapse to their knees all dramatic like. That's true. My knees went so weak that the idea of holding my body up just seemed ridiculous. I collapsed, hands splashing in red. It was still lukewarm. Like if I'd been here, I might've made a difference. I reached a trembling hand out and brushed my fingers across Boyd's parted lips.

  Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath, Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty.

  “Boyd!” This time I was screaming, I think. Or maybe I was silent. Time slowed to a crawl, ceased to matter. He had struck again, Death, and he had caught me unawares. A sob escaped my lips along with a wretch. I can't describe how badly death smells. To see your friend, your last family member, laid out like a broken doll and smelling like copper and emptied bowels … Even though I'd seen it before, I still wasn't prepared for it.

  “What the fuck?” I screeched, not caring that when I slammed my fists into the floor that blood splattered my face and neck. “You fucking idiot!”

  A fly buzzed in the cracked front door, swam lazily in the air in front of my face and landed on Boyd's bloodied wrists. It takes them about a half an hour to fi
nd a body. A half a fucking hour.

  “Don't you dare touch him!” I screamed, scrambling forward, knees wet with him, with Boyd, and swiped at it angrily. “Don't you dare go near him.” I petted his orange beard back from his neck and gasped at the line across his throat. It didn't make sense. It wasn't real.

  Boyd cannot be dead.

  I slumped down against his side and crumpled over his belly, pressing my ear against his black T-shirt. No steady up and down, just stillness.

  My eyes closed and I found myself, not asleep, but unaware. I was somewhere else, anywhere else. I was at the park with Boyd and the old men with the woolen fedoras that were so good at chess, they could almost, almost beat him. I was at the amusement park with the colored lights and the cotton candy stuck in Boyd's scruffy beard. I was in my bedroom reciting terrible poetry while Boyd nibbled his lips and nodded, eyes dark and way too serious.

  Eventually, thankfully, blissfully, I feel asleep. Four thoughts permeated my mind:

  Boyd is dead.

  He killed himself.

  Boyd died alone.

  I'm all alone.

  Screaming neighbors woke me up. Cops with grim faces and questions I couldn't answer grasped my shoulder and pulled me away. They stuffed me into the back of an ambulance before realizing that none of the blood was mine. Then they stuffed me, much less gently, into the back of a squad car. I could hear the coroner or the medical examiner or whatever she was telling the cops that she thought it was suicide.

  “I can't be sure yet of course,” she said to the sheriff as more cops put up shiny yellow tape and scribbled on clipboards and stared quizzically over their shoulders at me. I threw up all over my seat. I was covered in blood. The thinner patches were dry and flaky like scabs. The thicker patches were worse, sticky and runny and thick as molasses. I sobbed and collapsed onto my side.

  The cops felt sorry for me and took me home, parading me up the walkway like a leper, arms stretched out as far from their bodies as they could get, hands gloved. Many of my neighbors had seen the red and blue lights and were now standing on their driveways in their blue and pink terry cloth robes, sipping martinis, and holding little, fluffy dogs.

  The first cop, a dark haired man who I think was Margaret Cedar's older brother, knocked first and stepped back, coughing into his unbloodied left hand. I wanted to say, “Grandma Willa is already asleep. Once she takes her meds, she's out until dawn. Just open the fucking door and let me have some alcohol from the cupboard under the sink. Let me crawl in bed and play my music so loudly that I'll have hearing problems when I'm twenty-two. If I make it that far, that is.” I said nothing.

  The cops exchanged worried glances. I reached out and opened the door. It creaked forward on old hinges and swung in the brisk night air like a heavy flag.

  “Tatum,” began the dark haired man that was definitely Margaret Cedar's older brother. “I can't just let you go in there by yourself.” I spun around quickly, tears streaking through the red spots on my face and put on my best good girl smile.

  “My … my grandma is upstairs. She just … she's old … I just … ” I couldn't help it. I collapsed again and the cops carried me to the pretty bedroom without really knowing what they were doing and left me alone on top of the pink floral covers.

  If they came back, I don't know. My mind mercifully, mercifully lulled me into another state of not-sleep and left me there for hours.

  Boyd.

  I slept for a week solid and thought of nothing else.

  I sat at the little round table in the kitchen and listened to the snap-crackle-pop of my soggy Rice Krispies and the incessant droning of the cicadas outside the screen door. Boyd had been complaining about the brisk weather we'd been having. He'd have loved to see the way the sun reflected off of the pearly white of the vintage stove and cast bright purple shadows when it hit the earrings I was wearing. He'd given me these earrings. Another one of his thrift store finds. Boyd was good at thrifting, genius even. I paused and scooped another soggy mouthful up with my spoon. Boyd and I had opened this box of cereal together less than two weeks ago. Now he was gone and it was still here glaring at me from the porcelain china that was too fine for cereal but that I used because we had nothing else.

  I let the tears wash down my face and drip into the bowl. I didn't notice and I didn't care. All that mattered was finding out what Boyd's dad had done with him. I'd made up my mind to go back to the trailer park and see that he got a proper sending off, one way or another. He would've done the same for me.

  I washed my bowl and dried it in a daze, eyes glazed over, looking at but not seeing the yellow roses swaying in the fall breeze. As much as the thought of going back to the place where I'd found Boyd dead pained me, I didn't feel that I had any other choice. When my sister had died, my life had been put on pause, like I couldn't move forward until she did. When I'd seen her coffin descend into the wet ground, I'd taken a deep breath and everything and everyone around me had begun to move again. I didn't stop hurting, I'd never stop hurting, but I was able to move on, to pretend that maybe one day I'd be okay again. I'd been able to meet and befriend Boyd. Maybe if I did the same with him, I could breathe again.

  “Marilyn?” A voice behind me asked. I dropped the bowl into the porcelain sink and spun around. My eyes were wide and wary; my hands shook. But it was just my Grandmother. “Marilyn, darling,” she said, shuffling into the kitchen in pink house shoes and teal foam curlers. “You know that china's for guests.” I sighed and ignored her, snatching my backpack from the floor. When she was like this, nothing in the world could convince her that I wasn't my mother.

  “I'm going out to find Boyd,” I snapped, pausing in the ornate doorway. The heavy trim weighed down on my spirit like a curse. “You remember Boyd, don't you?” I continued, eyes narrowing. He had always tried to talk to her. She had always remembered him though she had thought he was my mother's boyfriend rather than her granddaughter's friend.

  “You should wear dresses more often, Marilyn,” Grandma Willa said, grabbing handfuls of the broken china, blood whispering down her sun wrinkled skin and splattering against the white of the sink. She picked up a sponge and rubbed at the shards, humming some old song under her breath. “You're a woman now, you should try and act like one.” I huffed angrily and left her there to bleed.

  Once I had escaped the yard and Anita's wary glances, I pulled out my music and picked the saddest, most depressing songs I could find. I arranged them into a playlist in alphabetical order and cried my way to the trailer park. I hoped that Boyd's worthless father hadn't done something stupid like leave his body to the county to deal with. He'd done that to Boyd's mother, or so he'd bragged. I twisted the fabric of my sweater in anger. Boyd's dad was the lowest of the low. Whatever he'd done, it couldn't have been good. This wasn't going to be easy. If I'd had my way, I would've bought him a coffin. A big white one with a colorful shot of the Virgin Mary across the top of it. I would've ordered red roses and stuffed them in glass vases and lit a thousand candles and had a funeral for two. He would've been buried next to my grandfather in the old cemetery across the street and down the hill from the school. As things sat, the best I could hope for was that Boyd would spend the rest of his unlife in a place of my choosing, somewhere where his spirit could be free.

  When I reached the trailer park, I found my body seizing with anguish. My knees locked up and I came to a stop just inside the front gate. The toes of my boots refused to cross over the line between the cracked pavement and the trampled grass. Trampled by cops, trampled by neighbors, trampled by the wheels of the stretcher that was covered with Boyd's body bag. I swallowed and closed my eyes, letting the cool breeze cut me like a knife. Cut me, kill me, take me away. I opened my eyes. There were things I had to do first.

  I pushed the last bit of strength that I had left into my legs and took that first painful step towards the front door.

  His shirt is wet.

  I bit my lip and forced myself forward.


  Darker than black.

  I was almost there, just a few more steps.

  Drenched with his blood.

  I hadn't even raised my fist to knock when the door to the trailer next door burst open and The Orangutang stepped out. He hunched on the rickety metal steps that looked as if they might pop their stripped screws at any moment and send him tumbling to the cigarette strewn dirt. We stared at each other for a moment before he spat at the ground and growled at me.

  “What the fuck do you want?” he snapped. My usual retorts died on my tongue, buried with Boyd along with my happiness. I turned towards him and removed my hood like a person might remove their hat out of respect. It wasn't for him, it was for Boyd.

  “I just wanted – ”

  “You just wanted?” he snarled, stepping down from the trailer and stalking towards me, shirtless and covered in red curls from bulbous belly to flabby chest. “This – ” He stabbed a finger at me. “Is all – ” Poked me in the chest. “Your – ” Stepped on my toes. “Fault.” I didn't want to cry in front of this person. This monster. This man who called himself Boyd's father. I couldn't help it. They came pouring out. A monsoon in India couldn't have drowned my spirit any faster than my tears.

  “Please.” I was begging, pleading. My knees began to shake. “I just want to know where he is.”

  “My son is dead because of you and look at this,” he said, gesturing at the trailer behind me. “This shit is fucked. How am I supposed to live here now? The damn carpet is covered in blood!” I blinked wet eyes back at him. “You wanna know where he is? Well, fuck you!” The Orangutan shoved me forward with both hands, knocking me to my back in the grass and stalked back to the trailer, pushing his girlfriend and neighbor, Prissy, out of the way. She waited for him to go inside and slam the door before walking over to me. Her brown eyes flicked back and forth in fear and she nibbled her bottom lip until it bled. She didn't try and help me up.