Authors: Sezin Koehler
6:45 PM Spruce-Musa Hospital
“S
o, Connie,” Detective Red Feather says settling into the last survivor interview, “tell me what you remember about the rave last night.” Red Feather can feel his exhaustion to the tips of his hair and eyelashes.
Connie Jones runs her hand through her blonde afro, closes her silver eyes, takes a deep breath and relates the now-familiar tale of superladies, haphazard parking, drugged water, Lily the cyclops’s kidnap by Charles Wallace Crane’s goons, the pink ooze emitted from between a Powerpuff Girl’s legs, the evil DJ, and finally ravers convulsing with blood pouring from their ears. Kaboom. The rest is silence.
Red Feather hands her the Polaroids of all the survivors. “You recognize anyone here?”
Connie ID’s her friends Lisa Wolverton, the werewolf, and Teresa Chalmers, the middle-aged screamer still in an induced coma. The rest of the women she cannot identify by name.
“Is there anything else you can think of, anything at all?” Red Feather looks at her expectantly.
“Well…” Connie isn’t sure if she should.
Red Feather raises an eyebrow.
“I guess since you’re not against dreams, I do remember dreaming about the party and the explosion about a week before.”
“How do you know it was the same event?”
“Because some of these women were in my dream. Like this one,” she holds up Lily’s picture, “and these three,” she holds up the photos of the alien girls NRG, Secrete, and Chamelia. “And this is DJ Fetish, but him I recognize from all the posters.”
Connie’s eyes fill with tears. “It was so vivid. I woke up and had no idea where I was. I mean, really. I’ve lived in that apartment for four years and it was like I’d never been there before. I have strange dreams all the time but this was one of the worst.”
She takes a deep breath. “In the dream I was at the party, but at the same time not. Floating above everything. There was so much weird stuff going on. Like those crazy flashing sort of scenes in
Fight Club
? Just bambambam, weird image after weird image. But then, all the kids were bleeding from the ears, screaming. Then I saw a car driving away from the mansion, a Volkswagen Rabbit. The driver got outside the hill’s gates and then pushed a button. Other cars also drove away at the same time, they all pushed buttons. Boom! And I was inside again, and I was dead.” She shudders. “Freaked me out. They say if you die in your dreams you die in real life. I was fucking scared. And then I guess I did die, huh?”
“All we found was your head, so yeah, you were dead for about six hours.”
“Mental.” Connie turns the news over in her mind, hand at her throat, imagining she can feel the scar that should be there.
Red Feather makes note of the Volkswagen Rabbit.
“I freaking know that my dreams come true. I’ve no idea what the hell I was thinking going there.” Connie shakes her head. “I never much believed in God, it was a huge thing in my house. Southern Baptists. But it never made sense to me. Even after the visions started.” She looks at Red Feather, her silver eyes flashing and intense. “But something had to have brought us all back, right? I mean, how else can you explain it? Spontaneous regeneration? Science will never be able to explain it alone.”
Günn feels sick, sicker than she’s felt all day. The thought of the cyclops girl Lily with that evil crone makes her want to go postal. And Connie’s words clang inside her head:
Science will never be able to explain it alone
. Everything is spinning.
Shit, I’m gonna faint.
“Fuck that,” Günn says, not realizing she’s spoken aloud. And yelled.
Red Feather and Connie turn to her, puzzled. “What is going on with you?” Red Feather grabs her arm. “You’re acting totally nutso. And the camera is still rolling.”
“I’ve had it with all this supernatural bullshit. I’m going to get Lily before that monster does something we’ll all be held responsible for.”
Red Feather breaks with protocol and pauses the tape, seeing the desperate urgency in his partner’s eyes.
“Syn, think about this. You know how well-connected she is, she’ll ruin your career, everything you’ve worked for.”
“I don’t fucking care. Don’t you feel it? She’s up to something, and I won’t let her get away with it. I need to do something real today, and this is it.” Günn’s breathing is labored, and Red Feather notices her hands over her belly again in a protective gesture.
“Stay here if you want. I won’t let something happen to her.” Günn’s breath comes out ragged.
“Let’s go outside for a sec, catch a moment, talk—”
“No more talking. I’ve had it with fucking talking. You coming with me or not?”
Red Feather thinks about the Roswell Institute, the alien girls and the supersoldiers they said are coming. “I can’t, Günn. You know we have to stay. Just calm down and we’ll get through it together.”
“Fuck.” Günn is torn: a rock and a hard place. Lily’s sweet, one-eyed face, tears streaming, flashes through Günn’s mind. “Nope. I’m getting that girl from that wicked old hag. I’ll come back if I can.”
“Well shit,” Red Feather sighs, and moves to hug her but she flinches away. “Be safe, partner. I’ll cover for you.”
“Thanks. You, too. Don’t get killed.” She refuses to meet his square gaze.
“Do my best.” Red Feather hands her the keys to their squad car.
“And, RF?” Günn says, palming the keys.
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry.”
Red Feather nods. Günn does an about face and forces herself not to run to the elevator.
Hold on, Lily. I’m coming.
6:50 PM LAPD Headquarters Hollywood
A
ssistant Chief Gabriel Ortiz knocks on the door of Special Agent Quatro’s makeshift office. “How’s it going?”
Quatro nods and takes a big breath. “I’m going to start interrogating the ‘Bad Vibe Kids’. They been Mirandized?”
“Sure have,” Ortiz says. “Only the one lawyered up, so we’re good to go with the other two, at least until they do as well.”
Quatro nods, putting the files in order. “I have what I need here. What I came for. I’ll go in alone first. Tap on the glass when you get into observation.” Ortiz nods again, admiring Quatro’s cool composure as she collects a huge stack of documents and leaves the room. His adrenaline makes his heart feel like a symphony of drums on speed. He’s getting too old for this shit.
Frank Cullen, the oldest of the four Bad Vibe Kids, now known as domestic terrorists, sits in Interview Room 1 with his arms crossed, leaning far back in his seat and sporting the most smug of smiles. He’s enjoying this too much.
Special Agent Quatro walks in and introduces herself. She doesn’t ask to shake his hand. She already knows.
“I didn’t think foreigners could be in the FBI,” Frank Cullen smirks.
She ignores his question. “Is this you?” Quatro places a photograph of the Crane mansion crime scene in front of him, pointing to a face behind the gaggle of reporters, one with the same sarcastic visage.
“I don’t know. Is it?” His insolence is palpable.
Quatro raises her hand and smacks the grin off his face.
“What the fuck, bitch! You can’t fucking hit me!” His shock reverberates.
“Then what did I just do? And it’s Special Agent Bitch, you little asshole. Let’s try this again.” She pushes the photo closer to the Bad Vibe Kid. “Is this you in the picture?”
He struggles to regain his arrogant demeanor. “So what if it is?”
Agent Quatro sits down and opens Frank Cullen’s police file. Not as thick as a serial rapist or career thief, but thick enough for a young man of twenty. “Since you were born you have been arrested thirteen times for arson. Minor and major.”
“So? I like to watch things burn. When I’m outta here I’ll find your place and watch it burn, too.” He laughs loud and prolonged, a forced sound.
Quatro looks at Frank Cullen long and hard. Frank doesn’t know why, but he begins to sweat and averts his eyes. Quatro smiles and opens another manila file. “In 1997, you tried to burn down a house with someone inside.”
“That was an accident. It was abandoned. I didn’t know there was anybody in there.”
Not true. Frank hooted and hollered as the homeless man screamed for help and for his life
.
Quatro sits back in her seat, studying the boy.
“Who paid you to blow up the mansion?”
“Nobody paid me, man, it was all my brother’s idea.” The smug smirk returns with yet another fabrication. Quatro doesn’t need Günn to tell her this boy lies through his teeth.
“Your brother, Tommy? Who we also have in custody?”
“The one and the same. Captain Obvious wins 100 points.” He puts his hands together in a series of sarcastic slow claps.
“Really? You’re telling me your seventeen year old brother orchestrated this entire thing.” Quatro’s voice is venom.
“Yup. He’s worse than me.” Frank smacks his gums, but continues sweating, a new shine breaking out over his nose. He waits for her to look down before wiping it away.
“So can you explain why does your police file look like this,” Quatro raises the inch-thick file and compares it to another empty one, “and his looks like this?” She throws the empty folder across the table and Frank jumps in his seat.
“’Cuz he just never gets caught. He kills things, you know. The neighborhood pets. Tortures them, too.” Frank lies, again. “Yeah, a kid went missing in our neighborhood. Can’t prove it, but I know Tommy killed her. Probably tortured her first. He might’ve even raped her if he weren’t such a little bitch himself.”
Quatro pictures the sniveling, skinny little Tommy Cullen in the next interview room, thinking about how patrol told her he’d wet his pants while being fingerprinted. Quatro changes tacks.
“So, how did you hook up with the other Bad Vibe Kids?”
Frank laughs, a sound that is fast getting on Quatro’s nerves. “Tommy took me to a rave and it was so fucking gay, it pissed me off. Then I was talking to some dude I met, don’t remember where, and he told me about them. That they’re about taking the scene down from the inside. You know, waiting in parking lots and jumping those ravey little faggots after parties. Selling bunk drugs. Poisoning candy. Going to parties and fucking with people’s trips, picking fights and shit. Raping raver sluts. Sounded like hella fun so I joined. Tommy was already a member.”
After I beat his ass and forced him,
Frank leaves out.
“And when did you decide to blow up the rave?”
“Tommy started making the plans a few months ago, when Crane announced the rave would be in his mansion. Yup. All Tommy’s idea.” The more he says the lie the more he believes it.
Let them try and poly me now.
“A chance to watch the biggest fire of my life? Hell yeah. So I agreed.” Frank grins.
“And that’s why you went back to the crime scene?”
Frank Cullen nods.
“And why you didn’t leave the state like the rest of your buddies?”
“I was gonna,
we
was gonna leave after I went out there, but y’all were just too clever. Bully for you.” He coughs out a loogie and spits it on the floor. Quatro is tempted to smack him again.
“Oh, and by the way: I want a lawyer.”
The magic words.
“That’s the first smart thing you’ve said today, Mr. Cullen. Do you need a court appointed one or will you be hiring your own?”
At the question of money Cullen’s face drops.
I haven’t been paid yet. Fuck.
Quatro smiles and leaves the room. He’s no longer her problem. And it doesn’t matter that the holes in Frank Cullen’s story are as big as the depleted ozone layer over Antarctica, Special Agent Rosario Quatro has the feeling that his brother Tommy will be more than ready to confess, especially when he hears the recording of his brother’s take on the explosion.
Assistant Chief Gabriel Ortiz
Y
ou have always been a man of faith—it runs in your family and your blood—so you wonder why all today’s miracles and monsters are so hard to wrap your brain around. Isn’t this what Christians, Muslims, Jews have always wanted? Empirical proof of God? Scientific proof that we are not alone in this universe? Someone up there watches over us and intervenes in our lives?
So why are you not comforted?
Why is it the knot in your stomach that began as stress has calcified into fear, and worse, dread?
Maybe it’s because you know that proof of God wasn’t worth this much loss? Thirty-five thousand four-hundred and eighty-six tickets sold, and only sixteen survivors.
You would have rather doses of healthy doubt in your faith and see all those dead kids go home tonight than this heartbreak. Tears prick behind your eyes. You clear your throat to stop them. There will be plenty of time for tears later. An entire lifetime for it, and especially for the families of the lost.
We have the evidence of divine intervention we always wanted, but who will give a shit now amid so much collateral damage?
Who will flock to as cruel a God as this?
Faith is a double-edged sword that today cut hard, fast, and unrelenting. The wounds are deep, the scars will be epic. How will anyone’s faith recover? What will become of religions without believers?
God, if you’re listening: Why?
Why? Why?
6:55 PM Spruce-Musa Hospital
T
eresa Chalmers, slumbering deep, receives a visitor: a woman with long flowing red hair and yellow robes. Teresa is reminded of her daughter, though there’s nothing to compare physically. For the first time since surviving, the screaming in Teresa’s head stops.
“Are you an angel?” Teresa asks.
The woman shakes her head, making the room shimmer.
“Are you here to take me to the other side?”
Another shake of the head. The woman smiles and Teresa understands.
“You want me to stop screaming.”
The woman nods.
“I need to wake up.”
Another nod. The woman speaks. No, not speak, resonates:
The battle is coming, Teresa. Another one you must fight. That is why you are here. Why we brought you back. Remember how to use your scream to protect the innocent. Use your love. Use your rage, your sadness. Help us win.
“Who are you?” Teresa breathes.
I am Maga, goddess of magic and healing. Wake up now. I’ll see you again soon.
The goddess disappears and Teresa Chalmers opens her eyes, her head quiet for the first time since the awakening, filled with a purposeful resolve. She rings for the nurse, asks to be taken off the sedative drip, requests to speak with Detective Red Feather, and wants today’s menu. All that screaming and sleeping really takes it out of a woman.