1

“They make me look like Chung Lei,” Ren wound buns into her hair.

“Your thighs aren’t big enough to be Chung Lei,” you watched the ceiling fan rotate, “and you’re tan.”

“Yeah, you used to be like, coke white.” Jane

“Goddamn it, do not talk about coke right now, please.”

“Why not? There is a full moon out. This girl keeps texting me, wanting to go half on eight balls.” Jane

“Get off of your phone Kaite!” Ren

You were one of four young women lying on the floor of the drawing room of your family home. Your parents and sisters were gone on a trip to visit your adopted grandmother, it was an excuse for your sisters to play socialite at a performance of Titus Andronicus, your brother was AWOL. The television flickered in the background mute. Images of a massive celebrity salvage effort of a collapsed office building on an island nation where your family used to vacation came across the screen. Your house sat back from the garden line of the property at the end of a long driveway snaking through the thick canopy to the perfect lawn. You remember visiting your father on business for an awards ceremony, the middle school years, and your pageboy haircut. At dinners you consumed only butter, skipping the bread, appetizers, and entrees. You snuck out of the hotel on the evenings while your parents drank with the backers of MAG ZERO. Lightening bugs swarmed in the courtyard, you trained your binoculars on the crest of a distant volcano and watched tiny shadows move about its summit. Did the office building’s janitorial staff on the top floor jump out of the windows in panic or was it just the salary men?

“Boo pirated a copy of the song they’re going to play in the credits like a week ago,” you clicked on the stereo. Kaite and Jane pawed at your youngest sister’s puppy, Wafer, a fat little sausage of a sharpei. Its lily white girth squirmed between the pair, rolls of skin stretched wide, fissures in his fuzzy topography. Their hands ran over the waves as Wafer played pussycat. Your dog, Oreo, lay sleeping across the room.

“This is f*****g terrible, Stempy,” Ren’s body splayed across the floor, she cracked your toes, roast beef, a high snap going off next to her ear.

“It’s pretty much the same with every natural disaster.” Jane

“I was talking about, you know.” Ren

“Wanna see a dead body?” Kaite let the elephant in the room slip out.

“Stempy has a graveyard on her doorstep.” Ren

***

“Where are we going, Barty?” Ren

“He said he buried the guns around here.”

“Why are we doing this?” Kaite, “S**t is sooo fucked up you know that, Jane.”

“It’s not our---” Jane

“You don’t pay attention do you?” Ren

You were buzzing, the air around your body felt hotter. You wanted those guns, your heart was in the package. Kaite and Jane puffed frantically at their cigarettes, obviously nervous, but there was a palpable excitement in their inhales and exhales. The four of you traded him like currency without really asking the extent of what he would do when you were out of his presence. You heard whispers almost immediately after, you were the only one there though. You listened to hands digging into loose soil.

“Found it,” Ren pulled a black duffle from the earth. “There is a letter in here.” She read it off, lyrics you’d heard before. Looking up at the moon floating full in the sky, you heard footsteps through the bushes.

“Jane get one,” Kaite slapped the clip into the bottom of the of a chrome pistol she snuck out of the bag. Male voices came closer through the brush.

“We can see you, Barty,” the chorus of voices made itself heard. You had been followed. Your eyes darted between the shaded faces of your friends. You stepped forward into the light a few paces. Cigarette lit, you waited. “Where is your p***y cat, B?” Five of them, KRE, you recognized the speaker from a party where you were dressed as a witch and your p***y cat stole a broom from the party for you to ride home on while the speaker shouted after the gang. The girls moved into the shadows around you.

“You’re the one spreading that rumor around about Snoopy and Robert?” Snoopy was your body double, younger, blonde sister, if she had been f*****g the gym teacher you would have known.

“Ah that c**t? It’s like someone chewed gum and hung it from a nail.” There were high fives from the group, a different voice. “So where is your n****r boy? He’s not nipping at your heels anymore? I knew he’d get tired of your a*s after a while.” The voice stepped closer and flash. You didn’t flinch, black liquid and matter flying through the moonlight splashed onto the boy next in line. The other boys turned their backs to flee but met Ren clutching the chrome pistol at eye level. Another gunshot, another shadow collapsed. You kicked the last three standing in the back of the knees, dropping them to the ground. You grabbed living boy two by the hair. Your eyes on Ren looking down on her handy work, oozing dark matter leaking from the entry and exit wounds, you could see all of them clearly now, the clouds parting for the moon to view, you held hair to the scalp and yanked. You dropped a tuft from a boys shaking head, sobs came out of his mouth in a loud panic, urine piddled on the ground around their feet. You wrapped an arm around the shoulder of your victims. Hyenas laughing from the dark, Kaite and Jane’s cigarettes at a constant cherry red glow through the bushes, their inhales and exhales audible.

“What are we going to do, Stempy?” Ren dropped down on the chest of the first boy she shot, his death face visible, mouth agape, not his mouth, his cheek was blown out, the hole in his head gave a clear view of what was on his mind. Ren had the higher ground, the bullet coming down through the side of his head and out of his face. You hushed the whimpering boy you were holding tight to.

“Don’t,” he flinched when your hand moved to the side of his face. You pulled his ear and stood over him.

“Jesus, do you only eat garlic and asparagus?” Ren’s boot to the face of boy three of three so he fell into the slop of skull and brain left over from his friend. “How about you, what’s on your stomach?” You moved to the middleman, Ren trained the gun on the face-down boy, loud sobs and gurgles bubbled up from the earth. “What else is in that bag?” You were a shark in the water, Ren tossing chum from the side of the boat, a frenzy creeping up your back. The last three would never see their families again. It didn’t bother you, cheshire grin growing greater across your face. Had this always been there was uncertain. Your teeth glinting back from a pool forming around the top of hair follicles. The clink of metal on metal as she pulled a blade from the satchel, rope next.

“That’s it,” Ren was ultra serious, no poker face as to how livid she was.

“Scalpel,” you called hand out, making sure to get eye contact and bring your friend back from where her mind was wandering. She smiled back at you lightening up.

“Don’t. Please, Barty. We went to primary together, it’s me Devin.” The boy on the middle pleaded between sobs, the gurgling boy still face down drowning in coughs of vomit pooling, the smell sickly sweet.

“Pick your head up,” you wrapped your fingers on his lower back. You pressed the knife tight between his ear and jaw line in the event he were to come up swinging. “Now, would be about f*****g time.” You pressed harder, drawing blood from the back of his ear. His hands clenched, screams coming in waves. “What are you doing?” You laughed a little as he brought himself up from the muck, face streaked and dripping. “Now doesn’t that feel better?” Your voice reaching high to match the sick smell with a cartoonish bubble and pop. You released your quarry pushing Devin, the middle child, over towards the first in line, focusing your attention on the sick. You squatted on your heels, face to face, his eyes down, you held the blade for him to see.

“I’m sorry,” a sob coming from his mouth, snot bubble popping. You changed positions, everything gathered in your heels, you shifted your weight forward. The knife slipped through the first layers of skin on his neck, deeper, leverage, passing through windpipe cartilage, Adam’s apple split in half, voice box opened, flapping with the escaping air from his lungs, your full force splitting him to the spinal column. You arm painted in black blood, your skin slick and shining. Kaite and Jane came forward arms laced through one another’s, single cigarette between the pair, its small cherry calmed, they were giddy and giggling between themselves.

“God, gossiping hens. Can you light me a cigarette, Ren? My hands are wet.”

“We’re not talking to you, Barty, you’re mean.” Jane scratched your scalp as she passed you by coming up alongside Ren with Kaite in tow. The lighter flame flicking on then off in front of Kaite’s face. Devin stammering in shock, the other boy now chins up, cursing under his breath.

“Excuse me?” Kaite leaned across Ren lazily holding her pistol toward the faces of her prey handing you a cigarette.

“Crazy f*****g s***s, I like that,” his mouth widening into s**t eating mug. “Put it in my mouth.” You puffed tuning out the young man.

“So what brought you over to the dark side? And hey, you’re the sour p*****s sitting over there, don’t call me mean. How many cigarettes did you smoke? Pass me the rope.”

“Just two,” Jane, “check it out.” The lighter sparking again, her rolled sleeves exposing the cigarette burns ringing her wrists.

“Didn’t hurt either,” Kaite pulled up her shirt, she had another gun tucked into her waistband, a ring of burns circled her left n****e. The first boy squirmed forward. Ren tossed the lasso to you, Kaite pulling the gun from her waist, her shirt back down to its normal place. She held her arm out steady and pulled the trigger, blowback almost throwing the gun from her hand. The first boy’s face exploded, his body folding over, a leaking ice cream scoop shaped mass of bone sitting atop shoulders left melting.

“Jesus, Kaite.” Ren

“Kaite’s got a cannon, Kaite’s got a cannon.” Jane

“Owww,” Kaite rubbed her shoulder and tossed the gun at your feet. You tied the rope around the ankles of the nearly decapitated body, over under knots, bound them tight with a long line left trailing between the legs, you took your seat amongst the girls on the body boards, excess rope wrapped around your forearm.

“Devin.” Jane

“I just want to go home.” Devin

“Davin,” Ren. You remembered this boy. Your last year in public school before moving into private education, there was little sentimentality. “You shouldn’t have come out here if you want to go home now.”

“Devin, don’t be sad,” you brushed the tears from his cheek, “I’ve still got the stuffed cat you gave me. You remember super cat?” His head bobbing on his shoulders. Click. Jane’s revolver hammer locking in. The hollow exit wound smoked from the blast. “Okay that was really loud. We’ve got to clean this up, many hands make light work.”

“Kaite, aren’t you part Mexican?” Ren stood up surveying the leftovers, Jane and Kaite lining up their kills side by side. You used your cell phone as flashlight while rummaging through the pockets of the dead. Lots of cash, just like everyone else. Plastic was played out and what better way to get what you wanted right when you wanted it. Four large knots of cash bound in rubber bands on the body, wallet, plus cell phone and house key card.

“The proper term is messokahn,” Kaite chimed in.

“I knew this was Grant,” you read the ID. He dated one of the girls in your freshman house at university and had even tried to wrangle you into a threesome. You weren’t nearly as drunk as you let on at the time and his girlfriend was taking heavy doses of penicillin. Ren mimicked your knots around the ankles of number one and number two.

“Billy tried to rape me, did you know that?” Next body, seven knots, all hundreds, car keys, stun gun, small baggy of crystallized something. Grant’s brother, another five wads of cash, house key card, baby pistol and tin in his jacket pocket.

“When did this happen?” Devin’s body was void of money but held several condoms, a motorcycle key, and house keys; no electronic lock on the house, it was a class thing.

“I caught him putting something in Melissa Robert’s drink, I don’t even like that c**t. He knocked me out in the parking lot of that party last month, you know the one, Black House Party.” Ren

“Um, why didn’t I know about this?” You moved Kaite aside, she was struggling with the loops, ten thousand dollars, a pack of needles, lots of plastic, Devin’s ID and his own. Robert Patterson, you’d heard the name before. He pimped some of the kids from the outlands, young boys, older women, the housewife market was booming. Kaite kissed you on the cheek.

“You’re such a scout.” Kaite

“Anyway, I stabbed him in the stomach.” Ren

“That’s why he missed those races,” Jane, “Could you do me?”

“You should have told---” you paused, never mind, it didn’t matter now. Over, under, over, under, bondage knots.

“I did,” she read your mind. A small cliff, dead tree rooted in the earth hooking out of the ground, its bent screw horn shape hanging over almost horizontal now. “He said Billy would wake up when Cupid stuck him.” The four of you hauled the bodies across the ground to the dead wood.

“From here.”

“Not it.” Jane

“I’ll do it, I’m like a spider monkey.” Kaite

“Those thighs will really help hold on to the tree too.” Ren

“Your boyfriend really liked them.” Kaite

“Har har, you know he wasn’t my boyfriend,” Ren. Kaite shimmied over the bark, you pushed the corpses as she pulled fearlessly, hooking one, then two, the bodies hanging upside down over a hefty limb.

“It looks like a chandelier!” Jane

“You did good kid.” You started the golf claps as she tied the roped down the trunk, perfect dismount to the earth.

“You think we’re going to get caught, Barty?” Kaite slung the previously buried canvas bag over her shoulder, swag filled. You made your way down the hill from the park, the city lights resuming their usual orbits through the night sky at the perimeter.

“We’re in the f*****g wild west now, what do you think?”