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“Positive?”
“Positive.” Beth watched the anxious African features of Erica, her temporary hairdresser, reacting in the mirror. She’d already had all of her uneven brown locks cut short, and the stunted tufts jutted stiffly from her head. She felt emotion piercing the back of her throat but kept her lips tightly clamped.
“Tell me if you want me to stop.” The hairdresser fumbled her long, glued-on fuchsia nails at the attachment head of the electric trimmer for a few moments and then switched it on. It didn’t buzz as loudly as Beth had anticipated. She nodded at Erica to reassure her she still hadn’t had second thoughts.
Its low hum resonated through her jaw as it swept from her fringe to the centre of her scalp. Erica paused, allowing them both to examine the strip of smooth, white skin.
Beth hadn’t wanted to go to her regular hairdresser for this, didn’t want to fence any questions about Luc. She just wanted to sit somewhere unfamiliar and not encounter any disapproval. It hadn’t worked out. Teenage Erica’s own multi-tonal, strawberry-blonde bob was immaculate, and Beth could see shaving everything off was going to be almost as traumatic for her.
“Should I carry on?”
Beth nodded gravely, and Erica could tell there was more to her visit than a radical image change. She widened the strip with another stroke, checking Beth’s set expression again before repeating the process. Beth parted her teeth slightly so they wouldn’t vibrate and closed her eyes while Erica finished.
When she looked up again it was like peering at a displaced version of herself, familiar features stranded on someone else’s head. The scarring about her mouth looked even more obvious now. She didn’t like the person staring intently back, but was glad to feel different, relieved to have shed the remnants of the Beth she no longer was. After a glance down at the curls in her lap, she put her hand to the exposed area and felt the resistance of the short prickles there.
“OK, hon?” It didn’t sound as if Erica was referring to her handiwork.
Beth moved her head, its motion effortless without the encumbrance of hair. She felt the cool atmosphere wafting around her scalp and wondered what Jody would say.
*
At around four in the morning, Cigarillo Man started to bug Beth. All the participants in the first YouTube clip she’d viewed had an explicit role, whether they were a member of the emergency services, or part of the exchange student ghouls recording the aftermath of the accident. Cigarillo Man didn’t seem to fit either category.
She threw back the duvet, slipped on her robe and padded barefoot past Jody’s room. Her brother had raised an incredulous ginger eyebrow when she’d walked in the door earlier that evening, but had mitigated his initial reaction to her haircut by saying he knew their mother would detest the number one look, which made it more than OK with him. He’d been sensitive enough not to question her about it further.
She turned on the light in the lounge. The tablet was still on the coffee table where she’d left it from her previous viewing. Beth quietly closed the door and turned it on. As she settled in the armchair, she questioned why she would subject herself to the ordeal again.
But although witnessing the moments at the roadside a second time had been gruelling enough, she couldn’t deny that filling some of the gaps between the events made her feel she was connected to them and not just a removed victim of the consequences.
She opened YouTube and ran her fingers over the tiny spikes of her scalp. She felt brave enough to watch thatTODdude’s clip full-screen this time. She skipped the commercial and waited for Cigarillo Man to make his appearance. He came into shot six seconds in, just as the camera phone was about to do its pan to the left. It only lingered on him briefly. Beth paused it.
He was in the foreground, waist up and wearing a short-sleeved lemon shirt. The man was around sixty with a deep tan, even deeper crow’s feet and grey tendrils of wet hair in disarray on his bald patch. She couldn’t see below his waist. No glimpse of his trousers or shoes.
Beth paused the action and examined his expression. It didn’t look as if he’d acknowledged that he was being recorded; was taking a toke of the slim cigar and staring at something below the camera. A piece of wreckage?
The person holding the phone had captured him a second time as they’d glided the lens briefly to the left again, sixty-seven seconds later. Cigarillo Man was still in the right-hand corner, hadn’t moved and was still looking pensive. He didn’t seem to be taking the same interest as everyone else. He smoked, squinted down at the ground and occasionally glanced over to where Beth was comforting Luc. This time he looked up and registered he was being recorded. His features began to change, but the person swung the camera back to the wreckage.
Even when she froze the clip, it was difficult to tell if the reaction was one of surprise or annoyance. It appeared the person shooting was eager not to be caught spying on the able-bodied and focused on the main event.
Later, at eighty-three seconds, when Beth was climbing off the trolley, the phone panned to the spot again, but Cigarillo Man had gone. Had he simply moved to a different position to get a better view?
Beth watched the remainder, right up to the helicopter taking off and the ambulance leaving, but didn’t see another sign of him. Who was he, the coach driver? The police had said everyone present in the recordings had been accounted for. Would he appear in any of the other four? She scanned the related uploads down the right-hand side of the screen that, until that moment, she’d had no intention of immediately watching.
But now there were only three dark images of the roadside representing the remaining crash clips. There had been five in total but now the one title she couldn’t forget – “nut job crash bitch goes postal” - was missing.
She typed it into the YouTube search, but found nothing. She opened another window, put it into a Google search and located a link to the old page but when she hit the URL, the viewer was a blank white square. She’d only seen it there yesterday. Perhaps a moderator had taken it down. She doubted that, particularly if the titles of some of the other YouTube clips were anything to go by. Had bloodlegend felt remorse and removed it? After months of it being uploaded, it seemed unlikely.
Bizarrely, Beth felt cheated. It had been withdrawn before she could view it, and it made her realise the clips felt like her property. She’d prompted their recording and one of them had been snatched from her.
The missing clip had been viewed 6,877,201 times. It had been liked 842 times and disliked only 44 times. She took in the comments below the blank square.
OMG! wot a schizo
looks like she woznt the only one injured LMAO
ROTF!
WTF? Best concussed right hook ever
Some guy recording you with their phone more important than your dying husband Who knew?
LMFAO did you need stitches yourself ????????????
bloodlegend replied to the question:
bitch would have looked like she was in another car accident if she had got another step nearer to me
Beth swallowed hard and didn’t bother clicking to the next page of comments. Instead, she watched bloodlegend’s handful of other channel uploads. They were three dark recordings of an amateur death metal band shot in the same sleazy bar venue. From the drumhead Beth could see they were actually called Blood Legend. As she peered at the darkened faces of the bassist, guitarist, drummer and vocalist she wondered if she was looking at the person who had been watching her from behind the police tape.
The sound was distorted and the person shooting the band was obviously too short to see over the heads of the row of people watching them. The clips were mercifully brief and looked to be recorded during the same song, although it was hard to tell for sure.
They’d only been viewed a couple of times, but there was a link to the band’s Facebook page, which she clicked through to. Blood Legend didn’t have many friends other than the band members, and the page hadn’t been updated for a good while. May 2013 was the last post advertising a Blood Legend gig at The Neon Idol, Kalispell.
She found photos of the band posing amongst some piles of rubble somewhere. They all appeared to be in their late teens. The drummer was an emaciated girl with multiple piercings in her eyebrows, brandishing her drumsticks amidst their guitar poses. She lingered the cursor on her and a box told Beth her name was Skylar. The others’ names were Funnelweb, Trip and Mark.
The group was based in Montana, although when she Googled them, it didn’t appear as if they’d had any recent gigs. She opened first a Facebook account under the name ‘jawbone2014’ and requested friendship, then a YouTube account with the same details. She subscribed to bloodlegend’s channel and posted a message in the comments:
What happened to that awesome clip of that crash bitch? Friend me on Facebook (jawbone2014). Need to get a copy. Will part with cash!
