Destroy All Monsters

by Jeff Jackson

  —What? Eddie stammers. Of course not. I mean, that’s not me. I mean, I’ve never done something like that before.

  Xenie’s creased lips form an oblique curve. She says: I see you, Edward. I see you clearly.

  It’s like looking in a mirror.

  The evening keeps losing texture. The trail has widened, and it won’t be long before the path deposits them back in town, but Xenie isn’t eager for this to end. She finds she’s enlivened by the darkness that erases their expressions and absorbs their gestures. There’s only the tenor of their voices to navigate, and this makes it easier to talk. Her secret hovers on the edges of their conversation, the impulse she’s barely admitted to herself. She feels compelled to speak to Eddie about the epidemic, though she isn’t sure how to start.

  * * *

  Xenie says: Most of the people I know are in bands. All these so-called creative people are always telling me to join their group or start my own. They’re always trying to get me to see their shows, listen to their songs, buy their stuff. It’s like everything has to be public, everything has to be validated by a crowd, or it doesn’t exist.

  —Everybody craves the spotlight, she says, but then they’re so mediocre. It’s pathetic. These days, it takes more guts not to be in a band. We’re probably the last two people who aren’t.

  —We’re probably the only two people, she says, who really get it.

  Do you get it? Please tell me you get it.

  —You’re right, Eddie says. I try to be supportive and it’s nice the musicians are trying, but you’re right. The local bands aren’t that good anymore. Florian is better than most of them. I’ve seen him pull off amazing things in rehearsal, but his sound still hasn’t come together. The bands here don’t seem to realize how far they have to go. In fact, most of them are a joke.

  —Exactly, Xenie says. The entire scene has devolved. It’s totally delusional. Everyone is convinced they’re doing something special. If somebody truly great came along now, nobody would even recognize it.

  —What about Shaun?

  Xenie halts. She stares in Eddie’s direction, attempting to discern his attitude in the dimming light.

  —Are you really asking me that? Did you know Shaun?

  —Not that well, Eddie says. Not personally.

  —But you saw him play?

  —Sure, Eddie says. A bunch of times.

  —Then you know, she says.

  Xenie plucks out one of her eyelashes. It makes her wince, but she keeps plucking lash after lash after lash.

  —You know, she says, that he wasn’t that good.

  * * *

  Eyelashes collect on her fingertips. Shaun used to scold her about this nervous habit held over from childhood and sometimes he’d clasp her hands between his own, trying to calm her until the compulsion passed. But now there’s something reassuring about accumulating the stray black squiggles. She craves each painful twinge.

  * * *

  —It’s not just the local bands, she says. There’s so much lifeless music everywhere and it keeps multiplying. It’s polluting everything.

  —These bands are poisoning something that used to be meaningful, she says. Their music is actually toxic.

  —Nobody wants to talk about any connection between the bands that have been targeted, she says, but most of them have been terrible. I’m not so sure that’s a coincidence.

  The shitty noise duo in the Pacific Northwest.

  The smarmy bluegrass revivalists in the Deep South.

  The listless jam band in the Midwest.

  They stumble through the brush. Thorny vines pull through their hair, and leaves lash against their faces, but neither pulls out a phone to illuminate the path. There’s an unspoken understanding that any amount of light would rupture the fragile mood. They prefer to remain together in the same darkness.

  * * *

  —I used to have a huge music collection, Xenie says. I was obsessed and even saved my concert stubs in a red cardboard box. Sometimes I’d open the box, and just touching the tickets was enough to give me a rush.

  —Over the years, I kept accumulating huge amounts of music, she says. I had access to almost everything, but I listened less and less. I finally had to admit that music no longer excited me. So I’ve given away most of my albums. Even the great ones have been tainted. They feel worthless like all the others. They’re just more noise.

  —These days I crave silence, she says.

  There’s a wordless pause, filled by the rhythmic exhalations of their breath.

  —I’m sorry, Eddie says. I know you’ve been through a lot.

  —Everyone always thinks everything is about Shaun, Xenie says.

  Eddie doesn’t reply, though she can feel his thoughts churning, calculating her half confessions, recharting the conversation.

  —Oh, he says. You felt this way before the epidemic even began.

  —Months, she says, before anyone fired a shot.

  * * *

  Her body feels hollowed out, thrumming, the same as the time she wandered through that gigantic chain store in a half trance, compulsively circling the same unfamiliar aisle.

  * * *

  Eddie tells her a story, speaking in such a soft and halting voice that it’s as if he’s talking to himself. So I had a record player when I was younger, he says. I’d get fixated on an album and play it over and over. There was this death metal record I listened to for weeks. My dad kept complaining it was too negative. One night, he got drunk and smashed the record player with a baseball bat. He beat the shit out of it until everything was broken into pieces, then he smashed the pieces into smaller pieces. My mom watched the entire thing and laughed her ass off. After that, I went over to Florian’s and listened to his copy of the album. Eventually I memorized every note, but I was disappointed the songs didn’t live up to what was happening in my life. The music never felt negative enough.

  In the darkness, Xenie nods her head, furiously.

  —If it doesn’t give you what you need, she says, it’s useless.

  * * *

  They move closer to each other as they walk. Xenie can’t see Eddie’s body, but she can feel his heat.

  * * *

  She’s seized by a vision that they’re surrounded by piles of discarded tapes, compact discs, computer hard drives. The refuse is purposefully stacked into primitive cairns, towers that dot the landscape, arranged in obscure ritual patterns. These mysterious totems hover in the shadows, but she can almost feel their presence. Evidence of some ancient civilization that ransacked its temples and cast out the gods.

  * * *

  She imagines the trail paved with excess vinyl, countless unheard records from bands soon to be forgotten. The discs crack underfoot, leaving fragments in their wake, each unwanted record another stepping-stone, a shattered black path that leads them out of the forest.

  * * *

  It must have rained while they were in the woods. The asphalt street, the cars in driveways, the tidy bungalows are all freshly slicked with droplets of water. Even the tangled network of telephone wires shimmers overhead. There’s a fresh tang in the breeze. The sweetness of mown grass, the sourness of gasoline, the headiness of dirt. She can taste the sharpness in the air. The birdsong has been staunched for the night. Everything is silent except for the breeze absently mumbling through the trees. The drowsy glow of distant porch lights makes it seem like hours have vanished and the entire town has fallen asleep, sinking deeper into its unsettling dreams. It feels like they’re the only waking souls.

  —My place is close by, Xenie says.

  She tries to sound nonchalant, but a quiver clings to her voice.

  —Want to walk me home?

  She curls her hands inside the purple sweater, and her shoulder blades shudder. She’s surprised by her own pantomime, these gestures of flirtatious vulnerability that she never imagined could belong to her.

  * * *

  Xenie leads them up the hill. The headlights of pass
ing cars refract in the puddles, lending the blacktop a phosphorescent sheen. A city bus drives by, empty of passengers, lit up like an operating room.

  —I knew something was going to happen, Xenie says. I knew sooner or later the epidemic would come to Arcadia.

  —I’ve never told anybody this, she says, but I’m the one who brought it here. I didn’t want to, but somehow I willed it to happen.

  —Deep down, she says, I know it’s my fault.

  Eddie reprises his low hum as they walk.

  —You probably don’t want to hear this, he says, but it’s not your fault.

  Xenie listens to the rainwater trickle through the gutter grates and drain into the sewer pipes. Gushing sounds resound beneath her feet, feeding a network of unseen torrents.

  If you knew what I really thought.

  If you knew how bad I feel.

  If you knew how close I came.

  The streets narrow as they crest the hill. Xenie pauses under a streetlamp, bathing her body in a harsh white light that scours away all shadow. Her bleached blonde hair appears more electric than ever. She stares up at the searing corona and wishes she could become one of those pure bright particles, her corporeal form consumed, atomized and liberated.

  * * *

  It’s the only house on the block that’s completely dark. A modest two-story bungalow whose front yard is framed by overgrown boxwoods. They follow the concrete pathway to the front door. Xenie kicks over the corner of the welcome mat and stares at the silver key.

  —Come inside, she says. I need to show you something.

  She can feel her nerves crackling, but there’s also an unfamiliar sensation of hopefulness, a raw spark of excitement that causes her legs to wobble. She reaches out and grabs Eddie’s belt buckle. Half steadying herself and half pulling him closer. His face has been scratched from the thorns and branches. Marks of quiet determination borne without a word. She runs her finger along one of his cuts, tracing the ragged contours of the incision. She finds the abrasions unexpectedly attractive.

  Nobody visits since he died.

  The living room is steeped in weeks’ worth of trash. Balled clothes, battered sofa cushions. Dishes furred with mold. Glasses rimmed with gelatinous residue. An exercise bicycle with sprained handlebars. Xenie is too embarrassed to turn on the lights, but even the shadows are in shambles. The depth of the mess is profound, uncomfortably reminiscent of the campsite in the woods.

  Eddie turns away from Xenie. She can sense him processing the full ramifications of this room. Sadness permeates the air. Takeout boxes from the diner are piled everywhere, signs of meals eaten alone, upright and hunched over, food barely tasted, the depression too heavy to do more than choke down a few swallows and abandon the containers where they lay.

  —I keep telling myself that I can be sad for one more week, she says. And then I’ll get my shit together. But it never happens.

  —I know I’m impossible, she says. In old times they forced grieving people to live on the outskirts of the villages. Nobody could stand to be around them. I get that custom. I really do.

  —I just want to feel normal again, she says.

  * * *

  She’s impressed that Eddie hasn’t fled. He stands in the thick of her disaster and doesn’t deliver scolding words, reproving looks, coping advice. Somehow he seems accepting, maybe even interested in her. As they navigate the chaos of the living room, pushing a path through the capsized lamps and the pots of wilted ferns, she extends her hand to Eddie. Her grasp is surprisingly tender.

  * * *

  Xenie leads him up the staircase. Her fingertips linger along the wooden banister, touching the knots and indentations as if they’re notations in a score she once knew. My Aunt Mary left me this house, she tells him. It’s my one bit of good luck. When they reach the second floor, she flips a switch. A bare light bulb illuminates the worn shag carpet, the faded rose wallpaper, the framed photograph of a middle-aged woman with her hair in a polka-dot scarf. Aunt Mary, who camouflaged her kind soul behind muttered curses and cigarette smoke, the one person who always believed Xenie, who understood what she was trying to say even when her explanations faltered. Mary’s image is obscured behind a patina of dust thick as glaucoma. It’s an old snapshot, not a shrine. Xenie gave up pretending long ago that somebody could be watching over her.

  * * *

  They pass the bathroom where several days after Shaun’s death she found one of his brown hairs clinging tightly to the bristles of her toothbrush. A single strand live as electric current. It’s still there, untouchable.

  * * *

  The elongated hallway leads to her bedroom. She’s nervous but focuses on the intoxicating warmth of Eddie’s palm. There’s a look in his eyes as if he’s shuffling through every possible scenario and each one ends with them under her sheets. For a moment, she wonders if she misjudged him and what might happen if he decided to attack her. In her fantasy, Xenie doesn’t fight back, and almost invites the assault, until he realizes too late this is not a violation but a trap.

  * * *

  She sits on the edge of the mattress. The bedroom is saturated with the smell of her sleep, an oily musk of perspiration and perfume. Her hands gather up the tarot cards from the bedside table. She shuffles the deck, listening to its oracular whisper about those moments where her destiny forked and led down a different path. A version of her life where she doesn’t know anybody touched by the epidemic, where she’s unafraid of consequences and feels the pull of a higher calling, where one night she’s walking to an anonymous club, her strut a bit lopsided, thrown off by the extra weight in her purse.

  * * *

  She needs insight into how this moment will play out between her and Eddie. Maybe she’s made a mistake bringing him here. She lays out a trio of cards on the comforter. There’s the romantic Two of Cups, the apocalyptic arcana of the Tower, the Ten of Wands signifying a massive conflagration. The combination is inconclusive and disturbing, the divination muddled.

  She reshuffles the deck. Deals another spread. The messages come like hailstones—

  Trust him.

  Tell him.

  Try to explain.

  —When the epidemic started, she says, I followed it obsessively. I couldn’t help myself. It felt like the bubble I’d been living in had been punctured. For the first time in forever, something real was happening.

  —Everyone said the killers were like zombies, she says, but I think they were wrong. These crimes were intentional. They had meaning.

  —The killers wanted music to matter again, she says. They wanted to purify it. It’s like they were thinning the herd, putting wounded animals out of their misery.

  She looks down at her fingernails where the black polish has been fretfully chewed away.

  —It’s an insane idea, Xenie says. I know that it’s wrong. It’s sick.

  Eddie runs his hands through his squirrelly whirl of hair, trying to flatten it as if that might tamp down his thoughts. He squints through his oversize glasses. Everyone has their own way of dealing with these things, he says. It’s totally—. He searches for the right word. Natural, he says.

  It’s not the right word.

  * * *

  Emotions flicker across her face, like a radio frantically surfing between stations. Her eyes remain locked on the window that surveys the front lawn. Her body seems to shrink, disappearing into itself. We had a big fight before his last show, she says. I left Shaun asleep here in my room and stole his guitar. Now the only things I have left of him are a hard drive full of his songs and that glorified slab of wood.

  * * *

  She can’t bring herself to look at the silhouette of the instrument. The contours of the electric guitar are warped by the shadows. It stubbornly refuses to resolve into a familiar shape. The instrument looks uncanny, like some ancient object used in forgotten rituals to coax the rotation of seasons, the harvesting of crops, the cessation of plagues.

  Come closer.

 
Eddie puts his arm around Xenie. She tries to speak, but her voice splinters. The only thing she manages to say is: I really loved Shaun. Her mind shuffles through his habit of writing himself notes that she’d find stuck in the crevices of his car, stuffed in his pockets, stowed in his pillowcase. Odd fragments with appointment reminders, stray lyrics, motivational exhortations. Pickup at 405 Ashburn. Dream what you’ve forgotten. Practice more. Their dates getting drunk at the laundromat. Their long showers together. The bottle of hair dye they picked out every month and rubbed into each other’s scalps over the bathroom sink. The matching scars on their wrists, desperate mementos they rarely discussed but weren’t surprised they shared. The sharp spice of his skin. His sour sweat. She’s terrified she’s going to forget his smell.

  * * *

  Xenie says: This is my worst secret.

  She says: I’ve never shown this to anyone.

  She says: Nobody even knows I’ve had these thoughts.

  She says: I’m so sorry Shaun was shot.

  She says: You have to believe that.

  * * *

  She removes a red cardboard box from her nightstand and cradles it in her lap. She nestles closer to Eddie, wanting to feel the reassuring thrum of his pulse.

  —It was this strange compulsion, she says. I barely remember buying it.

  Her shoulders won’t stop twitching, but she manages to hold back the tears.

  —A couple of weeks before the first shooting, she says, I found myself walking the aisles of a store in a half trance. As I made my purchase, it felt like I was preparing for something, but I didn’t know what. Then the killings started and things crystallized. I stood on the sidelines and watched like everybody else, but some part of me agreed with the killers.

  She can barely bring herself to speak. The words are little more than a rumble in her throat.

  —Even as the violence got worse, she says, I couldn’t shake the thought that the killers were right. Those bands all got what they deserved.

  I hate feeling this way, but this is the way I feel.

  She opens the box and produces an object enfolded in violet felt. With convulsing fingers, she unwraps the cloth to reveal the revolver. Black mascara runs down her cheeks, but her eyes shine like polished steel. She thrusts the weapon toward him, the loaded barrel balanced on her palm, a freshly oiled offering.