Destroy All Monsters

by Jeff Jackson

  It takes Shaun a full second to recognize the name.

  Xenie. Her name was Xenie.

  * * *

  Shaun can’t decide whether to sink to his knees and beg like an animal or grab their shoulders and shout demands. He doesn’t believe Aunt Mary’s excuses for an instant. He wonders how Xenie would’ve handled this situation. He keeps having conversations with her in his head. He keeps sifting through his memories like they’re questions. And he keeps expecting an answer.

  Would you even stick around for this ridiculous scene?

  Shaun remembers the totem tucked inside his suit jacket. He spent hours combing through Xenie’s music collection, hunting far-flung favorites, attempting to distill her complicated personality into a single potent playlist. He’s mostly spent the days since the shooting entombed in his apartment, existing in a semiconscious fugue state, hours evaporating without a trace. This is the only thing he’s managed to accomplish. He hoped it would prove cathartic, but each new selection wrung him inside out.

  —Here are her songs, he says, producing a compact disc.

  As soon as the funeral director sees the shiny object, he shakes his head so vigorously the wattle under his neck flaps back and forth.

  —I’ve got them on my phone if that’s easier, Shaun says.

  —The service won’t include anything like that, the director says.

  Shaun is stunned into silence for several seconds.

  —You’re not playing her songs? he says. At all? You’ve got to play at least one. At the beginning or the end.

  The funeral director starts to stammer an excuse, but Aunt Mary intervenes.

  —I don’t care about some fad that’s taken off at these funerals, she says.

  —Xenie would’ve wanted this, Shaun says.

  —I won’t allow it, Aunt Mary says, clutching her purse with both hands, her grip so tight that he can see the bones of her knuckles. That music is the reason she’s not here now.

  * * *

  Shaun steps to the aunt and glares down at her. Her puffy face is adorned with more makeup than usual, rouge and eyeliner applied with violent disregard. He prides himself on his genial ability to let things slide, but this is too much.

  —This is fucked up, he says. The cremation, the closed coffin, now this.

  Aunt Mary returns his stare, undaunted.

  —I don’t expect you to understand, she says, but her spirit can’t go on without a righteous ceremony. She’ll be trapped here. It’s our duty to give her a proper send-off.

  Shaun thinks she’s putting him on, but then remembers Xenie talking about her aunt’s unusual spiritual beliefs.

  —Is the cremation part of the send-off?

  Aunt Mary nods.

  —It was also Jennifer’s wish, she says. It came up several times, and she was very clear.

  She reaches out and pats Shaun’s shoulder. He’s unprepared for the glints of genuine kindness in her gray eyes.

  —I’m sorry she never told you.

  * * *

  The funeral director is flanked by several imposing men in black suits. The service is about to start, he says. An usher takes Aunt Mary’s arm and escorts her through the side door to the chapel. She proceeds with halting steps, compulsively tightening her black head scarf, her bottom lip quivering.

  Shaun finds himself standing beside the casket, his body flush against its form, his fingers running along the grain of the wood and toward the seal.

  —We have to move that into the chapel, the funeral director says.

  Ushers grasp the polished brass handles on both sides of the box.

  —Her, Shaun says. You have to move her.

  * * *

  He keeps thinking about their first meeting at the celebratory homecoming concert for the Carmelite Rifles and their mutual obsession with music. Their drunken dates at the laundromat. The shallow indentation of her navel. The bottle of hair dye they’d pick out every month and rub 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. Those twin incisions were their bond. Xenie is the only girl he’s ever loved. The only person he let witness the clinical depression he stubbornly hid from everyone else. The waxing and waning despair. She understood him without explanation.

  * * *

  The wooden pews of the chapel are sparsely filled. As Shaun takes a seat, he scans the crowd and finds he doesn’t recognize a soul. Everyone at this private service is old. It looks like an assembly of old school secretaries, old town administrators, old payroll clerks, old church deacons. It dawns on him Aunt Mary has only invited members of her spiritual sect, maybe a scattering of friends and distant relatives. Sitting among the wrinkled flesh and unfamiliar faces, surrounded by their stoic demeanor and formal attire, Shaun feels like he’s slipped inside somebody else’s dream of his girlfriend’s funeral.

  Xenie, did you really want to be cremated?

  Two women in long black dresses march along the perimeter of the chapel, carrying metal bowls of burning incense. Smoke trails behind them, accompanied by the stinging scent of sage. This must be preparation for the ceremony. He’s handed a program with a photo of a grinning young girl, hair in pigtails, holding an empty birdcage. She bears practically no resemblance to the girl Shaun loved. Somehow he manages not to rip it in half.

  He wishes his friends hadn’t been shut out and were sitting here with him, though maybe they’re suffering funeral fatigue. Every day there are a few more. The public services for Xenie’s bandmates were yesterday. The city’s official memorial is scheduled for later in the week.

  The shooting in Arcadia was one of the worst of the entire epidemic. The sickening body count put the small industrial city on the national map. A photograph of the plastic body bags lined up along the sidewalk outside the theater has already taken on iconic status. The casualties were so high the paramedics kept losing count. It was a record release party for Xenie’s band.

  The killer was a part-time employee who avoided the usual security protocols. He stood in the wings with an automatic assault rifle, waited for the band to reach the bridge of their first song, and mercilessly unloaded round after round until—

  * * *

  He can’t think about that anymore. It’s not the shots and screams and splattering blood that haunt him, but the moments right before. The anticipation in the sold-out theater as the lights dimmed. The heat of the bodies massed around him. The stickiness of spilled beer underfoot. The beads of sweat stinging his eyes. The surge of brightness from the back of the stage as the musicians’ silhouettes strut toward their places. Xenie positioning herself at the front of the platform. Adjusting her microphone stand. Tilting it to her mouth. Counting to three.

  * * *

  The sound of her voice booming out of the speakers, reverberating through the room as she chants the first lines of the song.

  * * *

  The sound of her voice.

  * * *

  Her voice.

  * * *

  Shaun never caught a solid glimpse of the killer that night, but he can’t stop picturing the police mug shot snapped after the boy was in custody. The round chubby face, hair shorn almost to the skull, pallid blue eyes, empty expression. Down his left cheek, a zigzagging puffy pink scar that looks like it might be self-inflicted. This face flashes so often before him that he wouldn’t be surprised if it materialized here at the funeral.

  He should be the one in the casket, not you.

  The funeral is about to start when she enters. Heads swivel as she parades down the center aisle. A tall redhead in a green strapless gown, her glamour slightly undercut by her lanky frame and storklike gait. Shaun recognizes her immediately: Florence, Xenie’s best friend since grade school. She always struck Shaun as aloof and bookish with an air of superiority, the sort of person who avoids shitting in public toilets. Maybe because they were the two people who knew Xenie best, they mostly avoide
d each other’s orbit. But in these circumstances, he’s relieved to see her. Florence takes a seat a few pews ahead. He leans forward and stage-whispers her name, but she doesn’t stir. He can’t tell whether she’s purposefully ignoring him. The back of her bobbed red hair and the pattern of acne across her bare shoulders offer no clues.

  * * *

  Shaun scowls at the minister who stands at the lectern, adjusting a black fur hat on his head. He removes the compact disc from his jacket and snaps it into several pieces. The mirrored shards gleam in his palm. This is when Xenie’s music should be playing. As the killings gained momentum, families began to play the victims’ favorite songs at the start of their funerals, a small gesture that swiftly took root as ritual. Now the music is often blasted at deafening decibels, leaving mourners with a cathartic buzz in their eardrums. It’s an act of defiance in the face of the epidemic. It makes the silence of the chapel feel obscene. The slightest noise seems amplified: rustling programs, murmured gossip, blown noses. Each insignificant sound is another death.

  How can you have a proper send-off without music?

  The gray-bearded minister speaks in a gravelly monotone. He opens a tattered leather book and recites from his notes, describing the tangible presence of the deceased among them, like a color tinting the air, awaiting release. In the front pew Aunt Mary sobs, her body rippling in soft spasms, her ragged voice repeatedly addressing a person she calls Jennifer. Shaun keeps himself together by focusing on the oil painting hanging at the front of the chapel, an otherworldly forest scene at sunset, trees burnished by orange sky. He can’t figure out the smudges of black paint murmuring around the edges, violent black swirls that vaguely resemble birds in desperate flight.

  * * *

  Shaun slowly takes in the sight of the casket, surrounded by urns of lilies. He imagines her laid out inside, slipped between the satin lining, dyed blonde hair sheared on the sides and pomaded on top, skin even paler than usual, small hands crossed atop her chest. He wonders whether they put her in one of her typical eclectic thrift-store ensembles: calico dress, black tights, combat boots. He hopes they didn’t use makeup to obscure her scar. He wishes he could see that mark one last time. Before it’s all consumed by flames.

  * * *

  He’s struck by a sickening realization. It’s so simple and obvious, he can’t believe it didn’t occur to him sooner. He wasn’t allowed to look in the casket because she’s not inside. The cremation is a ruse and they’ve already done away with Xenie’s corpse. There’s no body there.

  * * *

  The woman seated next to Shaun taps him on the shoulder. She stares at him with the candid concern of a schoolteacher for a badly bruised student. You okay? she whispers. Shaun feels clammy and discovers his white dress shirt is soaked through with sweat. I’m fine, he says, though the words are little more than a rattle in his throat.

  * * *

  He runs his index finger along the scar on his wrist, tracing the livid line of raised flesh.

  * * *

  Everyone in the chapel suddenly stands and starts to speak. Their voices meld into a single sound, chanting in unison, locked into a lugubrious cadence. It’s startling until Shaun realizes that they’re reciting the text of the archaic liturgy printed in the program. Though he has no interest in this ritual, he rises to his feet.

  * * *

  The organist plays dolorous chords to accompany the call-and-response between minister and congregation, somber tones that mask the sound of Shaun’s footsteps. As he walks down the aisle, he tries to appear calm, a natural part of the proceedings, planning to peek inside Xenie’s casket and return to his pew before anyone can register what’s happened.

  * * *

  The casket lid won’t budge. He grips it with both hands. While his fingernails search for a purchase in the seam, the organist falters and the reciting voices trail off. He grunts as he tries to wedge the rubber apart, but the seal remains stubbornly intact.

  * * *

  Shaun is aware of the growing commotion, but he just needs a little better leverage. He climbs atop the flower urns and leans over the casket. He strains at the lid with all his strength. The minister attempts to say something but instead convulses into an uncontrollable coughing fit, the microphone amplifying his percussive bark. Aunt Mary waves her hands in a frenzied semaphore. From the back, the funeral director whistles through his fingers.

  Xenie, open up.

  Two enormous ushers exert a firm grip on Shaun’s arms and elbows, though he’s too humiliated to offer any resistance. The mourners on both sides of the aisle goggle in stunned silence as he’s marched from the chapel. His head hangs low. His face is wet. The casket remains unopened.

  * * *

  Shaun sits on the curb outside the entrance to the funeral home. He unknots his tie, undoes his ponytail, shakes loose his long hair. He takes a deep breath. The evening feels unfinished. His mind keeps returning to the words about Xenie’s trapped spirit. During the past few days, he’s been visited by the uncanny feeling she is still nearby, somewhere slightly beyond his vision, on the flip side of this reality. The sun slides below the horizon and tints the fading light a vivid violet. He finds himself immersed in the color, telling himself it isn’t real, its presence a trick of perception.

  * * *

  Florence takes a seat on the curb beside him. The green fabric of her dress shimmers in the diffuse light. Reflexively, Shaun straightens his green tie. Xenie’s favorite color.

  —That was some show, she says.

  He can’t tell whether she’s impressed or disgusted. Her arched eyebrows and pursed lips give away nothing. Maybe she doesn’t know herself.

  He says: It’s not my fault. I wanted to do it before the service, but they wouldn’t let me.

  —After the shooting, he says, they took her away in the ambulance before I could get to her. And you had to be family to get into the morgue.

  —I never got to see her, he says. There was no time to say goodbye.

  Across the parking lot, the funeral home’s plastic sign lights up. It emits a gentle buzz, mimicking the sound of the insects that will soon be swarming around it.

  —Fuck, Shaun says. I really lost it.

  He lowers his head between his knees, too embarrassed to blush. He waits for Florence to ream him out for ruining the ceremony, but she swallows her words and stares at the rows of parked cars. As the night settles around them, she removes a small metal flask from her pocketbook and passes it to him.

  —I guess we’re the only ones Mary invited, he says, taking a drink.

  —Who was invited? she says. I crashed.

  He finishes the final mouthful of vodka and returns the flask.

  —You didn’t get kicked out, he says. Why don’t you go back in?

  She traces her fingernails along the surface of the empty flask. The fading metal is engraved with two cursive letters. Xenie’s initials.

  —Those people don’t know her, she says.

  From the pronounced way Florence slurs her words, Shaun guesses she’s heavily medicated. He recognizes the crumpled expression behind her eyes and the cold despair in her voice. He wonders if she also wakes in the middle of the night gripped by a sort of vertigo, simultaneously nauseated and hollowed out.

  —We need more to drink, he says as he gets to his feet. There’s a bar down the street.

  Still seated on the curb, she hesitates. They’ve never spent any time together without Xenie.

  Shaun extends his hand. Come on, he says. This isn’t the night to be alone.

  * * *

  There are only the briefest stares as they enter the bar. It’s a blue-collar establishment, filled with workers making the most of their time away from the tire warehouses and construction gigs. Her shimmering green dress and his black suit and long hair stand out, but it’s a testament to how thoroughly the killings have sunken into every particle of Arcadia that nobody acts surprised to see them. Shaun suspects the place is seedier than Fl
orence prefers, but she says nothing. They take seats at the bar and discover their first round of drinks is on the house. In the dim light, they listen to the bank of televisions tuned to classic football reruns. Florence produces a small pillbox from her purse. Mama needs some more medicine, she murmurs. But there’s nothing left, and she stares in dismay at the emptiness. Shaun focuses on his whiskey. The bartender selected a high-quality blend, but the superior flavor is wasted on him. He’d happily swallow wiper fluid or witch hazel. All his throat craves is the burn.

  * * *

  Normally Shaun chats up the people around him at a bar, but tonight he’s withdrawn. He has no idea how to act around Florence and realizes how little he knows about her. Their limited rapport was largely based on competing for Xenie’s attention, a rivalry that now seems petty. Sitting here together, her absence is even more pronounced. They resemble strangers who recently discovered a blood tie, only now realizing how intimately they’re bound.

  They find themselves staring at the Wurlitzer jukebox stashed behind the pool table, partly obscured beneath a black tablecloth, the refuse of a distant epoch.

  —I think I could’ve made it through the service, he says, if they’d played the songs. I bet the music would’ve made it more bearable.

  —I put together a really good playlist, he says. All her favorite tunes.

  —I need to do something for her, he says.

  * * *

  Shaun’s reflection stares at him in the murky mirror behind the bar. He wonders how long the black dye will last, how long before the roots begin to show, before the last evidence of her hands running through his hair is expunged.

  * * *

  Florence stirs her White Russian with her pinkie until a little whirlpool appears in the milky liquid. She doesn’t pause to take a sip.

  —I know what you mean about doing something for her, she says.

  —I was in her first band, she says. Not many people know that. We were in junior high, messing around in our bedrooms, barely able to play any chords. We wrote and recorded a few tunes. I was totally hopeless, but you could already hear her talent. The way she loved to get lost inside a song.