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So many pictures, so many images of the grotesque; pictures no one else would think of taking.
Andy loved using her camera to capture these morbid things.
From pictures of dead animals to covert shots of burials and the filling of the grave after, taken inconspicuously from behind neighboring gravestones and trees, along with candid S&M sessions thanks to the help of her dominatrix friends and their consenting clients.
She hated herself for telling her truths to Aaron. He seemed not to care or to value what she had given him. He had thrown her to the sidelines; he had pushed her into the back of the room in order to make way for these new people—people who were all tangled up in the mess that was Aaron’s life.
He had been an outcast—one of the tormented—Aaron had been like her, and she had counted on him and relied on him, especially since she couldn’t stand any of the other women in the house. Especially Tammy and Sandra, who always looked on her with great suspicion.
They were jealous of her relationship with Aaron. They never understood why he was friends with her, and it was unspoken—their connection—they had never acknowledged it out loud, but Aaron had never needed to. It had been in every look and every smile.
She had felt that she and Aaron were going to become something more. She had felt it every time he looked at her, and she had waited for the night that he would come knocking on her bedroom door, confessing his desire for her and she would show him that no one could love him like she could.
What they had, had transcended everything, and then Chase Sheppard had to come along and pull Aaron away from her.
Betrayal was something that Andy Stone had come to well enough on her own. She had watched her mother die at the hands of her father, and it had been vicious and unrelenting. He had been the dark prince of all things, coming to her in the form of a dad who lavished presents on her and gave her sweet kisses, a father with a taste for spilt blood.
It had been a week since her blow-up with Aaron, a week since discovering his secret in the frame of his bedroom door and listening to his dark confessions. It had been a week and they hadn’t spoken a single word, or shared a single smile.
He hadn’t even been around. He, Tammy, Chase, and the rest going out of town the previous Saturday and then not returning until late in the night that Sunday. Andy had listened and waited, expecting him to come knock on her door and apologize for how he had treated her, and to tell her that he loved her, and plead for her forgiveness.
Instead, Amanda, Tammy, and Tammy’s hookup Carolyn Carter had followed Chase and Aaron up to his fourth floor room and spoken with the door closed. Ten minutes later they had all come downstairs, passing her room and saying nothing. Andy had cracked the door and spotted Aaron walking down the steps in blue jeans and a black hoodie clinging to his lean frame, his black travel bag hanging off of one shoulder.
They had all gone out, and three hours later, the girls returned—along with Sandra—all of them intoxicated and without Aaron and Chase.
It had been a week and Aaron hadn’t returned home once, and now they were supposed to act all chummy for the art show?
Fuck that shit.
My Hero was blasting from her speakers, trying to drown out the sound of happy roommates and anticipated joy for the opening of the exhibit.
She stood in her closet turned darkroom—developing images of S&M. Her friends clad in leather and spikes, inflicting playful pain.
It made her think of her mother. It made Andy think of her pain and how it had looked on her face. It made her think of her father and his capacity to cause pain to his own wife, the mother of his only child, and that the sound of her screams—her cries of agony that must have been so numbing—so excruciating and overt—must have transcended into some sort of grotesque beauty and elation for him.
“Jesus, Andy, get a hold of yourself...”
Her mother had been beautiful. Extremely beautiful. With wonderful brown skin and walnut eyes that were always so sweet and so full of love, even in those final moments when they had been filled with tears—when her silent presence had reached out for her scared daughter, who had been hiding in the night and finding a way to tell her without words to be still and to breathe.
She had gone quiet and she had accepted death. She had accepted it because she had had to. Linda Murphy had faced death with unwavering strength so that her daughter might be spared.
She stepped out and looked at her black clock on the wall. She had an hour and a half to get to the gallery and finish hanging her pictures. As far as Andy was aware, Aaron had already taken care of his stuff, both ignoring one another and not knowing what to say.
Aaron was in obvious torment, but that was not her fault. She deserved no blame. He had refused to share his truths; he had listened to her and had acted well-adjusted when he wasn’t. He was just as fucked up as she was; just another witness to a murder and forever paying penance for the part he played.
“Fuck him!”
Andy shook her head and blinked, as if this act could erase the thought of him. She was never going to know his love, not in the way that Chase knew it. Aaron was gay, a full Kinsey six, and though it was okay while he was alone, it now seemed to be a terrible grievance.
He had someone and she had no one. It wasn’t fair. Was she undeserving of such love and attention?
Affection was out of reach for Andy Stone, completely apart from her world. It was separated by torture and brutality. There was no great love of the past coming for Andy. She had only had dorm room experiments with curious girls, and drunken fucks with goth dudes and inexperienced boys with fumbling hands, who had fucked her like jack rabbits.
She grabbed her clothes for the night, a beautiful black skirt with iridescent purple Chinese dragons, and a matching corset with hooks that clasped in the front. It had been a custom design made for her by a personal friend and former fuck named Thistle, a third-generation resident of Seattle’s Chinatown neighborhood and whose real name had been too much to pronounce—or at least, that’s what Thistle had always said.
She grabbed her fishnet tights and her stilettos, turning off her stereo and making her way out into the hall. She locked herself in the bathroom and listened to her roommates below the window in the shaded garden. The sun was setting at the front of the house and her housemates were soaking up the evening sun with vodka lemonades and charcuterie in the back.
She sighed and turned on the water, watching it spray from the shower head. Once it was warm enough, Andy stepped in and drew the shower curtain closed around her.
The water ran over Andy, coming down on her like rain and summoning memories like one would summon spirits.
She had run in the rain trying to find them. She had gone up and down the street, desperate to find her father’s car. She had been so close to giving up. Only eleven years old and out way past her bedtime. Running in the cold rain barefoot and dressed in a floral night gown, clinging to her adolescent body and making her shiver, and doing whatever she could to ignore it.
She had found his car parked along Lakeway Drive. One of the windows had been busted out and glass had littered the seats. Nervously, she had stepped into the cemetery, lost and alone. Her mocha cheeks had been red with cold and wet with rain and tears as she had whimpered quietly for her mother.
She had found the black form in the night. The shape that had her father’s face. It had seemed so bright even in the darkness, that crimson fluid looking black and poisonous as it caked his face and hands. There were chunks of flesh and organ littering the earth and her mother was struggling to make some sort of sound, some last ditch effort to get away from what was already happening and that was irreversible.
They had told her later that her mother’s tongue had been removed and that she had choked on blood and bile. She hadn’t felt much; large amounts of GHB had been found in her system, along with large amounts of Lidocaine. They had assured her that Linda Murphy probably had very little awareness or feeling of what was happening to her.
She had never believed it.
That night her mother had looked at her, had found her through the darkness and gravestones and had told her different things. Her eyes had told her that she knew; her tears had told her that her mother had felt it, and the blood had told her that her mother was never coming back.
Butchered by The Nighttime Man and loved by him at the same time, Linda Murphy, wife of John Murphy, had died being picked apart by the man who had proposed to her. The man who had promised to protect her, and provide for her and keep her safe.
Her father had taken everything away from Andy, and at times she was still certain that he was out there, ready to come back for her and finish what he had started.
Too many memories, too many for one’s own good.
Andy shook the water from her hair and dried her body off, trying to forget all the blood. She covered herself and looked in the large mirror, pulling her makeup out from the drawer, digging through her paints and powders while deciding what colors she wanted to use.
As she stood there cleaning up, she caught sight of someone in the yard from the corner of her eye. For a moment she thought that it had been some phantom of her father, but when she turned she saw that it was a young Asian man with neck-length black hair and broad shoulders staring at her, his face covered by his bangs so that only one of his eyes and part of his mouth was clearly seen, along with the scruff of his five o’clock shadow.
“What?” she asked, shrugging her shoulders and giving her head the slightest shake.
The man continued to stand and stare.
“You want some of this?” Andy asked, removing her towel and shaking her tits.
The man did nothing. He continued to look at her from behind the fence in the alley, as if he had planned to stand there all day.
Suddenly, as if he had been called by some voice that only he could hear, the man pivoted on his heel and walked down the alley, keeping his eyes on the bathroom window as he disappeared behind the neighboring garages and trees.
“Pervert...” Andy said with a sigh and an eye roll, as she wrapped her burgundy tresses in another towel and continued with her routine.
––––––––
The show was a success; Allied Arts was packed with friends, strangers, and art critics, admiring the works of two budding artists.
Sandra was there in a tight camel dress, the front split to her thighs. Her dark skin was covered in gold shimmer and her lips painted with lipstick the color of wine.
Tammy was there, huddled with Aaron and Chase as predicted, wearing a black strapless dress, her arms wrapped up in Carolyn, who stood there in a Fifties-style black-and-pink checkered dress, a pair of black satin heels on her feet and a pearl necklace resting between her breasts.
Christy and Trish had yet to arrive, and Andy silently hoped that she would be gone before they did.
Aaron’s work seemed the same. It was the same face—the same images—done in different ways. The ones that took her most by surprise were the paintings that were done in black and russet which she knew was not paint at all but blood—dried blood—creating the same face of a boy with sad and perceptive eyes.
People seemed intrigued by her work, loving the photo spread on the walls, commenting on how even the images of dead things seemed strangely beautiful, and that she had a great eye and a great understanding of how to use light.
No one had yet purchased one of her photographs, but she was confident that she would sell.
Two hours went by, people indulging in good wine, craft beer, and finger foods, and discussing the work around them while Portishead played in the background.
Aaron stood across from her, looking at her occasionally. His eyes were pained, and it seemed to Andy that he was trying to drum up the courage to go to her. She wanted to talk to him. She wanted to go to him. The want was so desperate that it hurt. But she couldn’t do it.
Aaron looked good in his tight black chinos and the black V-neck tee that clung to his toned frame under a black cardigan, and the black beads of his rosary danced in the gallery lights. His boyish face was cleanly shaven and his soft chocolate hair was swept to the left and looked like silk in the light.
Next to him, as if a guard dog, was Chase. He too wore fitted charcoal chinos and a black Lacoste polo tucked into his pants and clinging to his muscular frame. His tattoos were getting almost as much attention as their show, and she could see that everyone was fawning over him, old queens and young women, all of them trying to hold his attention.
His black hair was swept roughly to the right and obviously held in place with as much hairspray as she had used to keep her burgundy curls in place with her well-crafted updo that had required a copious amount of bobby pins.
To his credit, his jewel-like turquoise eyes stayed focused on Aaron. He acknowledged others when they spoke to him, but his gaze always returned to his boyfriend.
He surveyed the room every once in a while, as if he were looking for something, Andy figured it was because he was keeping his eye on her.
It was obvious to Andy that Chase saw her as a threat.
“I gotta get out of here...” She convinced herself that it was very rock star to leave your own event without a single word. It had gotten too heavy to stay in that space—too many people, she told herself.
The truth was that it had hurt too much to be that close to Aaron.
In the two hours since the show had started, she had yet to sell a single piece, and she had just seen three green dots placed on three different pieces of Aaron’s. She just couldn’t win. Aaron was attractive; he was warm and witty when he needed to be, and he was selling at a show she had put together and invited him to be a part of, and he was upstaging her.
He had been like her, and then the popular kids from his damaged youth—including the guy that he had creamed his sheets over in his teen years—had come back into his life and chosen him and now he was just like them.
Well, he can have it! She thought to herself as she quietly slipped out onto Cornwall Avenue, walking down the tree-lined sidewalk and finally letting herself cry, her tears shrouded by the late-night shadows.
––––––––
Aaron watched Andy go, slipping out through the crowd and into the night. He wondered if she had simply stepped out for some air or if she was gone for good. He guessed it was the latter.
The show was going better than he had thought it would, and he had been surprised by the flood of people who had come in and even more so that he had sold three paintings and there was still another hour to go. He hadn’t seen Andy since that Friday night the week before, when she had overheard the conversation in his room after he had received the phone call and seen the shape standing there across the street, pointing at him from beneath the street light.
He had spent the week at Chase’s and it had been a relief. He didn’t have to spend his time being secretive or monitoring what he did or didn’t say, with the exception of the times that they met up with Sandra, or Christy and Trish. The three girls referred to Aaron’s sleepover as a staycation, and never bothered to inquire as to why he was staying over there. Tammy, Amanda, and Carolyn backed this up of course, and they had had nothing occur.
There had been no phone calls, no threatening figure in the shadows. Aaron figured that perhaps Chase had been right, and being away from the house was keeping everyone else out of danger.
In the mornings Aaron would go with Chase to the gym, where he would run on the treadmill and do crunches and sit ups, while Chase lifted weights. After the gym they would shower together back at his place, often having sex and then spending the day reading, or listening to Chase play the piano, or strum his guitar.
At night they would meet up with the girls or cook dinner at the apartment, and it had felt nice to relax and have a moment to breathe, to have a reprieve from middle school phantoms seeking revenge.
He and Chase had planned an after-party at the apartment, and Aaron had wanted to invite Andy, but every time he had tried to approach her, she had been deep in conversation with art patrons, or vice versa.
Two of his sales belonged to the same person, a gallery owner from San Francisco who had asked for Aaron’s contact information and mentioned an interest in showing his work. Aaron was grateful for the offer and hoped that something would actually come of it, but with everything that was going on, Aaron didn’t want to hang too many stars on the future.
Though scary to admit, he couldn’t be sure that he would have a future. It was a morbid thought, and yet, no matter how many times he tried to dismiss it, the fear of this figure—this older Bailey Nguyen—still lingered.
Aaron took a sip of cabernet from the clear plastic cup in his hand, and watched as a green sticker was placed next to one of Andy’s framed black and whites. He smirked and pulled his phone out of his back pocket, texting Andy and letting her know that one of her pieces had sold and that he hoped she would come to Chase’s for a celebratory drink.
––––––––
The house was dark and airy. There were too many rooms in this house. The Victorian was too old, and it felt as if there were ghosts around every corner, hiding in every crevice, and living inside every nook and cranny.
She was tired. She felt so emotionally exhausted that all she could think of doing was resting. She didn’t care about anything else. She had gotten Aaron’s text message just before she had reached the house, and she had scoffed at the invitation to come to Chase’s apartment. She didn’t want anything to do with Chase Sheppard and if Aaron hadn’t felt the need to include her before, what was the point in starting now?
The stairs beneath her creaked and moaned as if releasing foul entities, things terrible and fierce and waiting for someone to be in the Queen Anne alone.
She turned the corner on the second floor and bound the steps for the third, feeling exceptionally vulnerable at the moment. There was something about the way the shadows seemed darker than usual, and there was this ever-growing feeling that the walls and floors were breathing.
She had never felt this before and it made her cringe.
Andy pulled out the key to her door, staring at it in her hand as she cleared the last two steps, and looked up towards her room.
There was a problem.
Her door was wide open. The hinges were splintered and the broken pieces of wood jutted out like vicious teeth.
“What the fuck?”
Hesitantly Andy Stone made her way into her room, moving with cautious steps and fumbling for the light switch to her left.
Nothing happened.
“Oh great, what now?”
Things happened fast. A terrible grip braced her by the back of her neck and threw her from her door to her bed, knocking her against the mattress. There was a black mass on top of her, laughing and hitting her repeatedly.
“Stop!” Andy cried out. Her face and skull throbbed and those strong hands cracked her wrists as the man bent them back with ease. Andy screamed wildly as the bone split and tore from her flesh and the blood poured out and began to soak her sheets.
The pain was unbearable, but she was determined to force it down and regain her wits. She needed to figure out how to get away.
He stopped hitting her and through her tears she could see his face. A comical skeleton with a gleeful smile looked at her from beneath a curtain of long dark hair. Her hands were useless, and her body ignited with a red-hot pain that she had never thought possible. There were several sudden flashes of light and the sounds of a Polaroid camera, along with heavy male grunts deriving some sort of pleasure from what he was doing.
“Help! Someone, please....” The tears and sweat streaked her face and wetted her hair. “Get off me, motherfucker!”
One strong hand landed on her and took hold of her face, forcing her mouth open and keeping it that way. There was a silver glimmer in the darkness, and then the taste of cold steel in her mouth—sharp and agonizing—cutting through her tongue. She could feel the muscle tearing, and the metallic salty blood filled her mouth, and she gave a loud, primal scream in protest. Andy was in too much pain to fight back and he was quick to stuff one of the socks that was on her floor into her mouth.
The bright lights from the Polaroid flashed again and again, coming at her from different angles, distorting and disorienting her.
The flashes stopped and then the man picked up the pictures and walked into her closet—her dark room—and then the night was filled with the sounds of things being moved around, trays and bottles of film developer falling to the floor.
After several moments he came back, taking his fingers and putting them through the mass of hair on her head. He picked her up off the blood-soaked mattress and began carrying her out of her room; her body flung over his shoulders.
She was lightheaded and weak. There had been too much blood spilt, and it was dripping all over the floor and soaking into his black hoodie. Her blood was staining the floorboards, and suddenly the thought came to her:
Christy’s gonna flip.
She would never see them again. She knew this just as she had known that she would never feel her mother’s touch again those many nights ago.
He brought her outside, and the cool night air and the empty dark blocks and quiet houses made everything she could think to do seem futile. She was thrown in the back seat of a car with tinted windows and leather seats. She didn’t know the car and she couldn’t fathom where they were going, but in the end she knew it didn’t really matter.
Things went dark and then the flurry of streetlights pulled her back for a moment, while the man with the long black hair whistled pleasantly from the driver’s seat, this whistling only serving to terrify her even more. The blood was continuing to pool out of her broken wrists, and it was getting harder and harder for her to stay conscious.
Don’t go out, don’t go out....
––––––––
Andy came to when the car stopped. The man continued to whistle as he got out of the vehicle, retrieving her from the back seat, and once again throwing her over his shoulder as he continued to walk. The only thing she could see was the concrete road beneath her, followed by the smooth pavement of a sidewalk.
She knew this place.
The cool night seeped into her open wounds and irritated them. The wind had grown in strength and mass, and it was an all-encompassing darkness that surrounded them. There was no one around who could see what was happening. There was no one who could intervene or call for help.
She knew this grass.
She knew this city of marble and granite.
She knew it so well that it had become a home away from home, a place to escape. She knew the familiar earth mounds, made by shoveled dirt and piled high above old wood coffins and expertly crafted caskets.
The man laid her down now. He began stroking her hair, petting her like he was trying to calm her, but she knew that it was something else, something far more sinister. He was savoring it. He was enjoying the agony and the beating of her heart and her languid body.
He released the hooks of her corset, allowing her naked belly and full breasts to come into view. The stranger kissed these now, teasing the silver hoops in her dark nipples, sliding a hand up her skirt and ripping away the fishnets and slipping inside of her.
He teased her and played with her, she couldn’t fight against him, and part of her didn’t want to. Her mother had accepted death, and in some way, Andy had always felt like going out the same way had been her destiny. It was as if everything in her life had led her to this moment, and the thought of that thrilled her, even as she railed against it.
Andy’s nostrils flared as she sucked in air, and the pain was searing and nauseating as she let it fill her lungs. He pulled his fingers out of her, and began to trail them down from the cavity of her chest to the fullness of her naked belly. His touch sent a shock of alarm through her body and her organs felt as if they were pulling back from him in anticipation.
It was so cold—that familiar blade—then there was the sharp, searing sting of the knife cutting through the flesh of her breastbone and splitting her cleanly down to her crotch. The pain lit her on fire and there was no way to scream. Andy’s head tilted just enough that she could see the dark scarlet of her blood and the layers of fat and muscle under her brown skin.
The man shoved the hunting knife into the incision once more, deeper this time, and her vision flared with violent white and red as he broke through her with a terrible crack and crunch. The blood filled her throat along with the acidic burn of vomit. She rolled her head to the side and some of it began to find its way out of her mouth, despite the sickly metallic-tasting sock.
The cold air sent shocks of pain that she could feel on the inside, and she was relieved to feel the darkness come again, creeping along the edges of her brain and promising unconsciousness.
She was quickly brought out of it and back to a violent awareness as the man shoved his hands inside of her. The searing heat of his fingers on her intestines, and that pain traveled with him, as he began to pull them out of her.
He cut away at her with that blade, pulling out her intestines, acting with horrifically tender care with no sense of urgency in his task. He dug into her and she could feel his palms on her ribs, his fingers tickling her lungs, the cold air erupting in her body with an agonizing and primal throe.
It had been so visceral, and through her delirium she could make out the figure before her reveling in his assault, desecrating himself in perversion.
This was her destiny.
It had been decided at birth and she had always felt its shadow cast on her.
Andy contorted her head, pulling it back as far as she could, and what she saw of the gravestone behind her, allowed her to find that same strength that she had seen in her mother’s eyes; that same acceptance of death.
Linda Murphy was beneath her, and the blood and membrane was saturating the earth—soaking through the layers of soil and reaching her long ago decayed corpse. She knew that she was no longer Andy Stone. Andy was dead and gone, left in her bedroom in that house now painted in her blood.
She was Catherine Murphy. Daughter of John and Linda Murphy. She and her mother were now joined by blood and loved by death. Catherine Murphy now and forever.
It was grotesquely ephemeral—this pain. The dying. His hands were her father’s hands, and they were inside of her, reminding her that she was his—that she was cut from the same cloth and that it was time for her to come back—to return to the forever source.
At last there was nothing.