Mark Henry_Amanda Feral 01 (6 page)

I became a loner. I carried this into my adult years. Don’t get me wrong; I was social, when it suited me. I accumulated very few friends, but plenty of glommers. So cutting people out of my life would be a quick process.

Martin
.

He would be the only real loss. My family was better left in the dark about my present condition. I hadn’t spoken to Ethel since high school graduation, anyway. That exchange had gone like this (I’m paraphrasing):

“Why couldn’t you wear the pearls I left out for you?” Ethel’s lips pursed in perpetual disappointment.

“Why couldn’t you use your big-girl words and ask?”

“Look.” Mother pointed across the courtyard to Stickgirl, the only anorexic in our class that had managed to avoid inpatient treatment. “Your friend Andrea looks so nice in that silk dress.”

“Yeah. Like a praying mantis. What are you trying to say?”

“Oh, nothing.” Ethel turned to snatch a glass of champagne off a passing tray.

“C’mon. Spill it,” I demanded.

“Just that you could look nice, if you tried.”

I clenched my jaw, and fists.

Right about then she grabbed me, spun me around and embraced me for a photo op. Rocky Kornblatt, her latest bunk-buddy had a thing for 35mm cameras—collected them, or something. The result: an expression on my face somewhere between startled from sleep and saying “alfalfa” rather than “cheese”. My mother looked adorable, straight from a Disney movie—only this Mary Poppins came with shark teeth, standard.

This was totally representative of our interaction. Her: flippant and denigrating. Me: angry and defensive. I couldn’t take it anymore; I was packed and gone before Ethel made it home from one of my own friend’s graduation parties.

As you can see, severing ties with Mother wasn’t going to be a problem. We didn’t have a relationship, anyway. Certainly, nothing any normal person would call loving. Dad was outtie, who knew where he’d settled. Ash was long gone, which was too bad, really. I’d like to think I could sort him out, in my present condition.

Which brings me back to Martin.

What to do with Martin?

I walked alone through the city streets, taking notice of the dark places and individuals and creatures that were never visible before the change. A romantic couple in the sloppy throes of passion became a vampire sucking his struggling victim dry. A stray dog reared up on its hind legs, stretched to the height of a burly lumberjack, and howled at a moon hidden by heavy clouds. A zombie roamed the streets, with sluggish tired feet, but sexy-ass heels.

I needed to get home.

A half an hour later, I was in the shower, exfoliating like a rape victim. The steaming water hit from three angles, a sunflower blossom in the ceiling of the marble stall provided a typhoon of warm rain, while two sheets of water emerged from thin slits on either side of the wall. I leached comfort from the undulating warmth.

I twisted the faucets closed.

What’s the difference really?
I thought.
Warm, cold, comfortable, miserable, I’d never be clean again, anyway
.

The face, in the mirror, was unacceptable; blue veins netted across it, liberally, like the shaft of an engorged penis. Even with the most high-octane concealer and foundation, the spider webs pierced through, mocked me. Then, there was the issue of the bags under my eyes—sweet Jesus, don’t let me get started on the bags—thick and dark, like my tear ducts had turned to inkwells.

And, my eyes—Oh my God—they’d turned on me.

My eyes used to be my best facial feature, stormy ocean blue and cat-like. Now, I could hardly look into them. They had turned a light grey, only one or two shades darker than the whites, and despite the welcome sympathy I might glean from a Helen Keller shtick, I had no intention of faking blindness. Besides, a white cane with a red tip is not “
in
” this year, or any year.

What hadn’t been affected by death? I tried to make an inventory. My hair, for one; it fell from my head to just below my shoulders, in deep brown waves. Who would have thought? Death is all about great hair. And, under the web of veiny white skin, my body rocked; muscles tighter than ever, they felt powerful, energized, like after an electroshock treatment.

But, you’ve had enough of the self-love, back to the trauma.

I turned the vanity into a graveyard of empty makeup containers; yet, I still looked like my dead Aunt Margene. This was clearly going to be an issue. Where could I go looking like this? To work? Unlikely. Although, the partners were self-absorbed enough not to notice, there were plenty of judgers who’d notice right away. The gossip would be flying through the office like horseflies, and the biggest buzz would come from Prissy Koch in Accounting. I imagined her sneaking up and snapping a pic with her cell, and then posting it on the agency intranet, with some heading like:
The New Face of Alcoholism
, or
Those French and Their Veils
. I wasn’t about to let that happen. I’d sooner die.

Oh, wait…heh, heh, too late.

When I was eight, I dragged my mother kicking and screaming to Aunt Margene’s funeral. Ethel hated Margene. Ever since she named her second daughter Cassandra, after Mother told her that was to be my name—I ended up with a complex anyway.

“I love my name,” I’d said to Mom.

Her response, “Ech, it’s so pedestrian, so…last minute.” Then, under her breath, “Fuck that bitch.” A model parent.

I wanted to go so bad; I expected the chapel to be draped in black tulle and cobwebs like a Billy Idol video. Instead, we were greeted with thin blue-grey carpet and dusty pews from the bargain bin. The last time I saw Margene, she was shoved inside a white-satin-lined mahogany casket; my mother and I took turns flinching at her whore-like visage; her face was uniform beige with pinched red cheeks and lids heavy with blue powder. We made bets on the depth of the pancake make-up smeared on her face. I won—eighth of an inch—by going in with my pinky nail. I barely left a mark, a little half moon. No one else would notice; the rest of the family was too busy faking tears and rolling in drama like a puppy on birdshit.

Then it came to me. The answer to my skin care dilemma: the morgue. Their makeup is heavy-duty shit, thick and seemed to cover everything. Despite Aunt Margene looking like a used-up hooker, I couldn’t recall a single blue vein.

“Field Trip!” I shouted and giggled to myself, before I realized that doing so meant I was completely insane.

I scampered to the phone book, and flipped through the yellows until I found the listings for funeral homes. A quick scan led to one, on Capitol Hill, that I was fairly certain I could find. I called the number, a message responded. I was in luck: closed for another four hours.

I drove like Gina Lollobrigida, through a blue screen Italian cityscape, looking over my shoulder, repetitively, hair trapped behind a floral scarf, and eyes guarded by oversized Gucci shades. Of course, Gina would have been driving a sporty convertible around the “s” curves of the Amalfi coast, while I coaxed a dirty SUV up slick Seattle hills.

The Prader-Willy Funeral Home was a black hole on an otherwise lively avenue of shops, restaurants and dance clubs. The two-story building was dark, except for its sign and a few tall thujas in the landscape beds, lit from below. I drove around back and parked in the alley.

While the front of the building was classic Georgian, with a low-slung roof and four unlit dormers, the backside of the building was designed strictly for utility. To the left, a truck bay dug deep, flanked by a Dumpster on one side and a ramp on the other. At the top of the ramp, a paneled door with a small window was shut and presumably locked. Dark windows pocked the right side of the building; a few were at ground level, but those were covered with bars.

I waited for a thinning of traffic and then darted from the Volvo into the truck bay. Halfway across the alley, my foot slid ankle deep into a flooded pothole. This could only happen to me. I limped in beside the Dumpster; from there, I was out of the sight of passing motorists. I poured the water from my shoe and cursed the heavens, with a closed fist.
What could it hurt, right?
I figured I didn’t have a shot at meeting the old man anytime soon, since I just ate some people and all.

The truck bay ended in a bumper-high wall, padded with a row of three tires. On the right, metal rungs were embedded in the concrete. I climbed them like an epilepsy patient, slipping and trying to find balance with each step. I promised myself, the next time I burgled, I would wear flats
36
. I should have remembered the first time, I’d risked an arrest for beauty.

My obsession with skin care began before college, but oddly enough, after the melodrama of high school; that single hurdle of a summer transformed meek honor student, Amanda, into a chaotic raving lunatic. Pimples weren’t the issue for me, and if one did rear its ugly white head, it was in fierce competition with a trifecta of mental afflictions. My skin care routine developed out of my obsessive-compulsive nature, itself growing out of some perfectly age-appropriate generalized anxiety, which of course blossomed from the standard low self-esteem and distorted body image-induced bulimia
37
.

During that summer, I had the misfortune of seeing a vampire film,
The Hunger,
on cable. While not particularly scary, and seemingly erotic to some, David Bowie’s character went through a rapid aging. It seriously freaked me out. I couldn’t sleep; I got out of bed every hour to stare at the skin around my eyes and mouth. The next morning, I arrived at the mall early and stood at the entrance nearest to the only department store with cosmetics kiosks, waiting for them to open.

I didn’t have a penny on me, so this was a full-on scam mission. As everyone knows, those skanks at the cosmetics counters are required to offer free makeovers to sell their shit. With my mother’s Louis Vuitton purse slung over my forearm, as a distraction, I was intent on taking full advantage. I barreled through that door as soon as the haughty saleswoman turned the key, speed-walked through the racks of clothes and then changed to a leisurely pace as I approached the Chanel counter. I perused the rows of lipstick samples and plucked a fuck-me red from the rack. The clerk watched from within reach.

“Can I help you with something?” she asked, all puffy cheeks and squinty eyes.

“I don’t know,” I said, my hand lingering above the eye shadows.

“Some eye shadow, perhaps?”

“I’m not sure I’d know what to do with it. I’ve never really worn make-up.”

“Well, I’d be happy to teach you some tricks. If you’ve got some time.”

“Uh, I guess so.” I was giving her a thoughtful Kansas farmgirl, complete with wide-eyed blank stares and heaving exaggerated shrugs.

“Have a seat and I’ll just grab some things from back here.” The clerk ducked below the counter and I made my move, pocketing a compact of blush. Within the hour, I garnered a twofer, a face of expensive make-up applied by a chic woman trained in Paris (I was pretty sure), and a lovely black compact with mirror image C’s emblazoned in gold. The next weekend, I hit Dior.

The funeral home heist was considerably more complicated; first off, how would I get in? The exterior windows were either too high to reach or firmly imprisoned by iron bars. Through the wired glass in the locked rear door, I looked in on a dark hallway. Without risking going around to the front, the only thing left to check was the rolling shutter of the truck bay.

The door was about seven feet tall, and at least that wide. Its corrugated metal was cold to the touch, yet surprisingly flimsy, a tinny flick revealed. At the base of the door a strap of thick fabric lay dusty on the concrete. It was locked.

So, I was either going around the street side of the building, or breaking in through a prime example of shoddy American craftsmanship. Neither Prader nor Willy must have been tremendously concerned about break-ins, or they would have upgraded to an actual door. I trotted to the car for a crowbar.

With very little effort, I wrenched the door up a foot, so I dropped back into the bay and grabbed a tire block for a wedge. After another shaky trip up the ladder, I put the block in place, lay on my back, and slid underneath, into linoleum-lined darkness.

The room was full of oblong crates, stacked nearly to the ceiling. On the far wall stood a machine that looked like a crane, with wide bands hanging. The floor was thick with dust; by the time I hauled my ass up, my hands were coated in gray must. A heavy odor permeated the room and likely the entire basement, a thick syrupy smell. Rot. Under that lived the wet stench of mildew, common to all basements, and a slight wisp of bleach. The silence of the space was impenetrable.

The room funneled into the murky black corridor. I approached the square of light projected from the outside door, and squinted down the hall, trying to distinguish shadow creatures from the very real monsters. Small alcoves were unevenly spaced and caught the light like snags, only to distort it into malevolent figures. I caught myself trembling, and, then, realized I had nothing to fear.
I
was the shadow creature.

I was the monster in the dark. People would be afraid. Not that they’d know right away, I was no
mistake
, lumbering around like some idiot, in a damaged body, constantly attacking, clawing, chewing, and killing. No. This creature was sleek and attractive. I might even get some volunteers.

The muscles in my back loosened their grip, with that bit of revelation.

I started down the hall. My heels clacked and echoed like a fucking Clydesdale. From somewhere in the bowels of the charnel house came a noise—
choop-choop-choop
—what could only be described as a mad shuffling and then silence. I froze, listened for more.

Nothing.

Nothing but dark hall and death stink. I was imagining things.

Why was I here? Oh yeah—makeup. Okay, it’s not such a bad smell after all. I can live with it. Sure
.

I slipped into the first door; a white rectangular box sat flat on a metal gurney, dead center of the empty room. It was spotlit by a dim sliver of firelight projected from a hole in the opposite wall; beside the door hung oversized ice scrapers on broomsticks, like pizza paddles.
But is it art, Eddie?
I thought and my mind’s voice hit all the right Patsy Stone quirks. “No. It’s the crematorium,” I muttered, in response. I closed the door as I left.

The next doors were a supply closet, a moldy restroom, a small desked office, and a stairwell leading up out of the darkness and into the mourning. The last door on the left
38
revealed a large space with a wall of metal drawers and cabinets and counters, just like your dad’s workshop, if he were a crazed serial killer.

I switched on the light.

In the middle of the room were three stainless steel tables. I glanced over the first table and saw gutters around the edges that led to a drain hole; a metal pail sat below. The embalming room. There were machines nearby, like pumps with coils of tubing and…

Choop
.

The sound came from the far table, from a lump covered by a slip of fabric. It was body-shaped.
Had it been there all along? How could it not be the first thing I’d notice?
I stood stony like one of those Vegas mimes that does nothing—no walking against wind, no trapped in box—nothing but pretending to be a Venetian statue, solid and unresponsive
39
. The lump followed suit, no movement. My slender hand lingered on the doorframe, petting.

If I hadn’t heard the shuffling from the hall, I might’ve chalked this latest sound up to morgue rats; the presence of a corpse rotting away on a table, instead of tucked away on a cozy refrigerated metal tray in the wall, the result of good old American incompetence, plain and simple. But I had heard, and it was the sound of fabric sliding too quickly against other fabric, or flesh.

My focus turned visual: the lump was a human shape, maybe, another zombie, a
mistake
, obviously, or a ghost, a phantom, some wicked specter readying itself to take me to Hell. My first instinct was to run. Just turn and clack off down the hall, and out the door; just jump in the car and drive away, just like not every single character did in a horror movie. But instead I opened my big mouth.

“Did you just move?” I asked the lump.

The sheet moved at its head. The mistake was sniffing the air for meat. Maybe I wasn’t dead long enough. Maybe I smelled like prey.
Jesus! It’s going to eat me
.