Periodical Cicadas – Chapter 3

"So… How was school today?" Dad looks at me over his peas and tries for a weak smile that dies an early death when confronted with my thoroughly unamused face.

Great. Now I am the second killer cape of this town.

"Oh, you know, same old, same old. A bit of an improvement, I guess. I mean, at least this time the victimized girl wasn't covered in used tampons." And now he flinches. Great. Behold your newest protector, Lakewood, the man intimidated by his teenage daughter's sarcasm.

"Taylor…" he hesitates. Again. "If you want to talk about what happened—"

"No. I don't. You already read my journals; what else is there to talk about?" I don't know why he insists on talking about the issue. I mean, it's not like I keep bringing it up to punish him or anything…

And he flinches. Again.

Really, Dad? Is this how you're going to act if you ever met this serial killer that is now your job to help catch?

'It will just be an administrative position, Taylor; there's nothing to worry about. The town is basically a retirement destination for people who are no longer able to do front-line work,' he said.

'Even if something happens, it won't be anything dangerous. Really, at most, some villain passing by before going away to someplace with more interesting opportunities,' he said.

'You'll see. It'll be much safer in there… I should never have let you go to that infernal place. You will be able to relax, to stop watching your back,' you said.

Well, [Dad], how are all those things you said working out now? We haven't even finished unpacking, and I already have to deal with a fucking serial killer going after my classmates!

"Taylor… You were in a coma. I couldn't just let things go, waiting for you to—"

"Oh, that's all it took for you to realize something was wrong? Silly me, I could've solved all this sooner if I had known!"

"Taylor! Enough!"

"Enough? Enough?! No, it isn't! Systematic torture at the hands of a psycho who suddenly wasn't going to our home, her family suspiciously cutting ties with ours, my grades steadily lowering, and—"

"And you always said you were fine! Don't you think I didn't stay up at night, wondering what was wrong with my daughter? Wondering what was going on? Nothing! Nothing was, apparently, and you swore each and every day—" I slap the table hard enough to make the glasses shake.

"Each and every day [that you bothered to ask!"]

And that's it, isn't it, Dad? This is when your shoulders slump, and you look down, and we finish eating in silence—

"Go to your room," you say instead in a low voice I haven't heard in years.

"What?"

"Go to your room. I don't want you to see me like this."

"Dad, what—" And you raise your head, and your eyes are [burning]. I can see each muscle in your face tense and—

"Your room. [Now."]

And I take my peas and go to my room.

But this is Florida, and I have more than enough bugs to see you punch the sofa for ten minutes straight.

So it runs in the family. Great.

***

So.

Dad is furious, either at me for poking non-stop at the open sore or at himself for failing me. One of those scenarios is slightly more palatable than the other.

What isn't palatable is staying here, seeing him brood by himself for even one more minute.

I take my empty dish and glass of water and drop them by the kitchen, then I…

I hesitate.

Finally, I go to the living room and poke my head in.

"I'm going to a party some classmates are throwing. They invited me so I could get to know everybody." My tone is carefully neutral. No inflection at all.

He raises his head slightly, some bafflement showing through the inexpressive mask of someone who only stopped punching the newly-bought furniture after dropping down in sheer exhaustion. The heat also isn't doing him any favors, going by the way his button-up is see-through in places.

"After what happened today? They aren't canceling that?"

"I guess the girl wasn't that popular?" I try to fake an uninterested shrug.

"Oh, I don't think that was the issue…" he mutters darkly. And, well, I have seen the pictures, so, no, it obviously wasn't.

And they used to call [me] a slut. Wonder what they would've called this Nina. They would probably have had to recruit Skidmark to help with the description.

"Anything come up regarding that?" I ask, as nonchalantly as I can.

And I can see him struggle. Because he wants to answer me, to have at least one topic of conversation that isn't a minefield, but…

"I can't talk about this, kiddo. I'm sorry."

I bet you are.

"Oh, well, that's your job, I guess. Anyway, I'm leaving now."

"Right, call me if—"

And the doorbell rings.

Dad and I look at each other in confusion. There are two bodies outside our door, about my age, going by their size, one boy and one girl.

Not seeing any reason not to, I go to the door and open it.

Audrey and Noah are there, looking at me, one with barely held enthusiasm, the other with a raised eyebrow.

Two guesses for which is which.

"Broody! Glad we guessed right."

…

"You what?"

"The dork here pulled up the local real estate webpage and looked up what houses have been sold in the past month at a certain distance from the school. He's ecstatic because his amateur sleuthing paid off."

"… Isn't that stalking?"

"Not at all. See? I'm a girl. So, obviously, if he shows up with me, it isn't stalking."

"That's not how stalking works."

"I know, but it's far too tiresome to argue with him."

I look at Noah's wide, bright smile that hasn't diminished in Wattage since I accused him of being a stalker.

I sigh.

"Yeah, I can kinda see that."

"Taylor? Who are your… friends?" Again with the cursed word. Do I need to make a list, Dad?

"Oh! I'm Noah, Taylor's classmate. We were just dropping by to take her to the party. Wouldn't want her to get turned around in an unfamiliar place."

Dad crosses his arms and examines both of them. Noah, with his maroon shirt under an open, black button-up with jeans and sneakers, Audrey, with her biologically extruded leather jacket (I [swear] it's part of her metabolism), slashed black shirt, and torn up black jeans. The girl does know how to pull off a theme.

"And I'm Audrey, his court-mandated minder."

I suppress a snort, Noah looks sheepish, and…

Dad smiles.

And I feel something clench in my chest.

"Good to know. Is there any number I should call if I see him wandering alone?"

"Just the sheriff's office; they will know what to do."

"[Or] you could call the PRT office, seeing as you work there. I mean, it could always be cape business, couldn't it?" Noah asks, and I facepalm.

"Let me grab my jacket, Mister Suave and Smooth. You can try and interrogate my father another time."

"There's no time like the present!" he bursts out. And Audrey smacks him.

And Dad keeps smiling. Far more relaxed than I have seen him in more than a year.

… This city is weird. Everyone here is weird. Even the murderers seem to study classical paintings.

…

Still an improvement.

***

"So, what's the actual reason you showed up like that?" I ask after a while of walking through the empty streets at night. Well, empty save for the legions of greenery about to take over and erase any trace of human civilization, of course.

Have I yet mentioned that seeing so many trees in a single place that isn't a forest is still creeping me out?

Oh, and my army of bugs. Really, this place should count as an automatic upgrade to my threat rating.

"Actual reason?" Audrey asks, throwing a side-eye in Noah's direction.

"You know, for showing up out of the blue to a place that you didn't know for sure I would be at?"

"Uh… To pick you up and take you to the party?" Noah uncertainly asks.

"My father isn't here; you can drop the pretense."

"Broody, I understand you are paranoid and mistrustful, but I'm really struggling to come up with some sinister motive for Audrey and me to drop by your house."

"That's because you are a guy, Virgin. She obviously can come up with far more creative scenarios."

"What do you—[oh.] Ugh, no, how would you even—"

"Nice. Now I feel stalkered [and] unattractive." I interrupt before he keeps digging.

And a strong hand grabs my arm and forces me to stop.

It takes me a second not to send a battalion of mosquitoes after her, and then I stop and look into Audrey's intense blue eyes.

Uh… That… Isn't quite a glare.

"Okay, Broody," hey, I thought that was Noah's nickname! I don't want it to spread! "it's pretty obvious that you have some kinda weird body image issues, so I'm gonna be as blunt as possible."

"Which is such a departure from the norm—"

"Shut up, Noah. Taylor? You are hot. This isn't something disingenuous, some stupid thing to make you feel better: I like girls, and if I thought you also did, I wouldn't mind shoving my tongue down your throat as you wrapped those long legs of yours around my waist. We clear?"

I… I think I may have underestimated the heat in this place. Seriously.

Like, I should be wearing short sleeves right now.

Something about me staring at her like a deer caught in a UFO tractor beam seems to satisfy Audrey's search for acknowledgment, and she nods.

"Glad that's out of the way. Come on, we have a party to get to."

She lets go of my arm and turns around, walking purposefully as if nothing happened just now, as if a girl hasn't told me for the first time in my life that I'm hot, that she would like to make out with me, that—

"Audrey, [what the fuck?"]

"You are the last person I want to hear that from, Noah," she says.

But, for once, I find myself in complete agreement with Greg the Second.

***

The feeling of camaraderie promptly fades after a few minutes in Brooke's house.

Where there's alcohol.

Is this normal? Are teenagers supposed to get drunk in a mansion with a pool big enough to make Leviathan miss his home? Because it doesn't [feel] normal.

I mean, it's not like I have plenty of experience to draw from. For all I know, Emma Prime used to go to millionaires' yachts to sip on champagne as she plotted my destruction while petting a Persian cat.

And now Audrey has me thinking about Emma petting pussy… Great.

They used to insult me by calling me a lesbian, too. I mean, it looks like this town isn't much more tolerant in that regard, seeing how Audrey's… ex? Audrey's fellow make-out maker was shamed out of her social circle after a video of them kissing went viral.

If Emma had ever gotten her hands on a video of me…

Damn it!

I blame this on the beer.

It tastes awful, really, but it's the kind of thing you are supposed to do to fit in, isn't it? I mean, just telling them I haven't drunk anything in my whole life doesn't scream "cosmopolitan newcomer from out of town," does it?

Still, at the very least, I have Noah to learn what not to do.

"So, the slasher genre, as formulaic as it used to be, shifted toward a character and relationship focus in the early nineties. To do that, though, new franchises tried to keep the identity of the killer as a mystery so that no one in the cast was safe, either from the killer or suspicion. It was a bit… How would you say it… As if every new slasher film wanted to have an 'I'm your father' moment. Yes, Star Wars. That's a thing regular people know, isn't it?"

"Sure, sure we do," Jake, a tanned pile of muscles that manage to always glisten, no matter how long it's been since he's been out of the pool, claps an apparently affable hand on Noah's bare, and far skinnier, shoulder.

Noah smiles slowly, his beer-addled brain obviously not up to his usual adroitness.

"I'm glad. You know, it's always a bit hard to keep things separate. It's like… like there's two sets of knowledge, one everybody knows, and mine, and they sometimes overlap, but sometimes don't, so I'll feel the need to explain things only for people to get angry because they already know, and then I will talk about other things, and they look at me like I'm speaking in some kind of obscure Cenobite dialect—"

"What's a Cenobite?" Jake asks, frowning like jocks tend to do when they suspect they're being made fun of.

"It's from a horror series, Hellraiser. Let him go, Jake, the guy obviously doesn't know how to hold his alcohol," a shortish, yet also tanned and well muscled, Hispanic guy interrupts as if he had been waiting for an opening.

Does this school recruit from a model agency? This is statistically unnatural.

"Not true!" Noah cheerfully interjects. "See?" He points to the beer bottle in his hand. "I'm holding it!"

And he raises it triumphantly, and I discreetly scoot away from the likely splash zone.

Right. As I was saying, my camaraderie with Noah has steadily declined since we got here.

And Audrey has vanished.

Which means I'm alone in a room with nobody who wants to talk to me. So, at least in that regard, parties are exactly as I imagined they would be.

"You aren't having much fun, are you?" Who—[oh]. Emma the Second.

And she flinches. Why—damn it.

"Sorry, it's not about you, " I try to apologize.

"Uh? What do you mean?" the pretty girl asks as she tugs an errant strand of hair behind her ear.

…

Damn it, [Audrey.]

"I… There was another girl named Emma at my old school. We… didn't get along. "And the award for understatement of the century goes to…

"Oh," she says, in a way that makes me think she perhaps understands. Which makes all sorts of alarms start blaring, because if she understands, this girl hasn't had it easy. "So, every time I… sorry."

"Not your fault," I try to shrug nonchalantly. I likely fail, though; it isn't in my natural repertoire, and that's twice today I've tried. "Plenty of Emma's around, I'll just have to get used to it. At least you aren't a redhead." And now I try for a joking smile.

God, in the unlikely case you exist and don't get off on torturing me, please kill me and spare me this suffering.

Emma giggles.

It's… a pretty sound.

Is this bi panic? I'm surrounded by muscular, half-naked, tanned guys, and since Audrey told me about her natural preference for long legs, I can't stop checking out the girls and thinking how pretty—

Right. Bi panic. Yes, it seems like a likely explanation.

Either that, or I shouldn't drink ever again.

And then there's a scream, and I bolt upright.

***

[Brooke]

The thing about throwing a party at one's own home is that you're always worried about some drunk moron throwing up, or breaking some ostentatious decoration, or—

"For fuck's sake! You are paying to have this sofa [burned], you assholes!"

Seriously? Couldn't he have kept it in his pants? Is it the exhibitionism that does it for him?

Still, remembering a quite pleasant afternoon sucking some hard dick while I forced Seth to choose between rejecting me and risking his job… I can see the appeal.

Anyway, I'd better go get something to clean… [that] up. Because as hot as it could be under other circumstances, I'm definitely not cleaning someone's cum off my furniture with my tongue.

So, heavy-duty gloves it is.

Which means going to the garage? I think?

Ah, well, what's life without a little adventure?

So, avoiding a few errant drunks that could get their first acting job as extras in a Romero movie (I swear, if I have to sit through another Noah lecture in class, I'm going to scream), I make my way to the presumed resting place of cleaning supplies.

It is a journey fraught with peril.

Well, not really, but it sure feels like it when I pass by the line to the bathroom. Ugh.

So, as I start to rummage in search of the things I need to keep my skin free of whatever the Hell that guy (and why did I invite someone whose name I can't even remember?) has in his diet, my phone chimes.

A welcome respite, as far as I'm concerned.

['Look outside,'] Seth's number says.

So I do. There's a light in the woods outside my house that turns on and off.

['What am I looking at?'] I answer.

['A surprise meeting.'

'Oh? Still want to see me after this afternoon?'

'After what you did to me? More than ever.']

The light turns on and off again.

On the one hand, I could remain in my house babysitting some drunk teenagers and cleaning cumstains off my couch. On the other, I could go have a quick, clandestine meeting in the woods with my secret lover.

Yeah, I'm already walking there.

['How far is it?'] I ask.

['Quite near. If you aren't careful, they're going to hear you.'

'Oh? That a promise?'

'Maybe. But I also think I could manage to keep you quiet…']

And I remember his hands wrapped around my neck, his cock filling my throat, sparks of color shooting through my sight…

Fuck. I'm wet.

['I could learn to like that…'

'I'll be sure to make it last for you…']

Fuck. Fuck. I swear, if he leaves me hanging after this buildup…

The pines behind my house aren't that thick, and there's enough space between them that I can walk easily without having to take any weird detours. There's a straight line from my house to the flashing light that just stopped a few seconds ago, because I don't think Seth wants anyone curious enough to follow it to find us together.

I wonder if somebody would really hear me if he—

What is that?

There's…There's something between the trees, up high, it's…

I don't have enough light, so I take out my phone, turn on the flashlight, and—

I [scream].

***

[Taylor]

I run as fast as I can toward the direction of the screaming girl. It's behind the house, and far enough that it wasn't in range of my bugs, but—

Now it is. Now it is, and there's [blood.]

Suddenly, I discover that I actually could've run faster.

Other people are following behind me, but I can't afford to stop and try to see who they are. Keeping track of people around me should be something to add to the list of things I need to remember at all times.

Like not letting people wander off by themselves with a crazed serial killer on the loose. Yeah, that seems pretty high up in the—

Two bodies. One is up in the trees, the blood is theirs. The other is on the ground, upright yet still. Maybe—

Flashlights come alive from behind me, allowing me to see the ground of the forest right in time to avoid tripping on an exposed root.

"Brooke!" A voice—Jake? Jake screams for the blonde, but she remains still, only her arm raising slowly.

But… The blood is not only on the hanging body. It's spread all around.

My breath is short, my chest burns, my legs feel heavy.

I force myself to accelerate.

Because the blood is spread in a pattern my mosquitoes are clearly perceiving, and—

I try to scream for Brooke to stop, but I can't, my throat far too raw after such a short run that Sophia would—

[Fuck that!]

My [words] won't reach her? I will!

So, just as Brooke is about to take a step forward into the tangled mess of floating blood, I jump on her and throw her to the ground.

Her face is right below mine, shock plain to see, and there are screams coming from behind me, but it doesn't matter, because at least—

And then the lights come alive.

Threads, so thin a fly is cut in half when I send it towards them, spread from the body, each of them carrying a current of blood from the still warm body of Seth Branson (a body, because its heart isn't beating), who lies up high in the middle of this tangled web.

And… That's not all.

Mr. Branson's body is crouched, as if afraid to face something, and the direction of its terrified gaze goes up toward a mask hanging between the trees and turned toward him as if in judgment—the same mask that was buried in the photos covering Nina's body.

And the threads… The blood seems to glow with each artfully positioned light, and from most angles it's just floating red, but from where we are, from where Brooke discovered the body… There's a picture.

No, there are three.

One is behind Branson and the mask, a vivid outline of Branson and Brooke… engaged.

The other is Brooke herself standing beside Branson, naked, a hand on his shoulder.

And the last one, the one on which Brooke almost cut herself, is…

Five young girls, Brooke among them. All of them with Branson, naked, having… sex.

And it is gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous, each taut line of blood entangled with another where curves need to be suggested or inferred, the vibrancy of the flow of red adding a beating cadence to the image that makes it feel more alive than the corpse at the middle of it all.

It is… breathtaking.

And the Hispanic guy, Gustavo, I think he's called, seems to agree with me, because he's been standing behind me, transfixed, since he arrived.

"La Fábula de Aracne," he says, almost reverently.

The Fable of Arachne. Even my Spanish is up to this task.

And… I can see it. I wouldn't have arrived at the conclusion, but if my memory holds, the triple disposition of the image, the way the bodies are positioned… Yes, I can see it.

The first body was a work of art, Ophelia.

The second, another, taken to the next level. Arachne.

And then Noah speaks.

"It is a reivindication of giallo…"

Okay. That? That I don't see.

How weird is it that I'm already used to Noah leaving me confused?

===================

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