</a> ~ Episode Thirty-Three ~


    Mackenzie’s True Feelings


    Nothing. Especially not today’s revelation in the lavatory. The knife that sent shards of heart-glass everywhere like shrapnel, the further the blade was pushed forward.


    The way she gazed in the opposite direction in the hall after the fight with Grandar that day – longing for a different girl, when the only girl who should have made sense stood right beside her the whole time. Had always stood right beside her, when no one else would.


    “How could I be so stupid?”


    The question passed over the decimation of a once spotless bedroom. A sacred escape from a reality she fought so hard to suppress. Now, just a scene to a slaughter of all things that used to make sense.


    Revolutionary Girl Utena. Lum the Invader Girl – Posters that meant something deeper than Mackenzie could ever fathom. Women of counter culture – guardians – to a girl who didn’t want to face or admit what they truly guarded over, now torn clean from their walls across a floor of obliterated shoujo mahou fantasies. Shattered-open Kodak tapes – dislodged streams of VHS ribbon. Ripped-up manga volumes – shredded images of Magical Girls in love and on adventures.


    Ruins of a sacred escape that had once carried Mackenzie through bottomless despair – loss and familial chaos. Tangible things that now spoke of feelings she was too afraid to embrace. Bootlegged desires. Uncensored romances. All lies to a puritanical society. Impossible realities – Cartoons, edited down for a younger Western audience.


    A decapitated Sailor Moon doll lay face down amidst the carnage, its dumpling-pigtailed head lobbed into the shadows beside a ransacked bookcase. Atop it, the hiss of a TV/VCR combo served as a static-ridden spotlight against the foot of Mackenzie’s bunk bed. Where she lay curled up, humiliated and in hiding.


    How could I be so stupid?


    Amidst the flow of tear-stained cheeks and the ragged breaths for a release that would not come – there was still the smell of Strawberry Dreams. A hopeless urge for a forbidden carrot dangling on the strings of a confused and broken heart. A heart that was too ashamed to want the carrot in the first place, yet yearned for it more than anything else in the world.


    Mackenzie closed her eyes against the shudder of fresh tears.


    The phone continued to ring. She lay in a mess of tousled bed sheets strewn across the bottom bunk. The sheets she never lay on. Hugging tight around a pillow her hair never pressed against. A bottom bunk that once belonged to her sister – but now served as a shrine for who Mackenzie loved most.


    “…Eddi-chan…”


    Her body curled tight around the pillow. She nestled into the tear-stained casing and took in great heart-melting whiffs of Eri’s scent. With the strawberry fragrance came a butterfly warmth between her lungs too painful to bear. Mackenzie started to sob harder.


    Long-held guilt and shame for secret feelings consumed her. Secret feelings she tried so hard to divert. An obsession with pairing Eri with someone else – anybody else. A former best friend. An attempt to make these secret feelings go away, no matter the cost.


    But, Eri had a crush after all. On someone else.


    Another girl.


    Mackenzie’s muscles tightened around the pillow.


    But, isn’t this what she wanted the whole time? A free pass? Liberation?


    …So why do I feel even worse?


    The phone continued to ring.


    Mackenzie groaned at the sound of it over the hiss of white noise. A slow and shaky hand dared across the framed photo of her sister smiling over-the-shoulder at the camera on a summery day. A shadow of shoes to fill. Weak fingers struggled to snag the receiver off its cradle on the other side of the frame.


    “…H-hello?” The greeting was quiet, hoarse, on a throat that burned from screams that echoed on the darkness around her.


    “Thompson? Oh, thank God – You’re okay. We have a huge problem.”


    Another Monster. Her body sank into the depths of the mattress. “I – I don’t feel well.”


    “Go pick up Seruma and meet Evan and me at Grover’s Mill. I’ll explain everything once we’re all there—”


    “You’re the ones with flying dogs! Why don’t you get her, Casanova?”


    “…What?”


    Mackenzie pushed up onto an arm, letting the pillow she held slip out of her embrace. She roared into the mouthpiece, “I know you guys had sex yesterday—”


    “W-what?!”


    “—Don’t even lie to me. If you’re so willing to put it in her, then be a real man and go get her, yourself! Do like you did before! Climb through her window, you gross little pervert!”


    “Wh-what are you – Thompson, this is serious. We’re on our way to Grover’s Mill right now. Evan lives right around the corner from the park. The town’s empty – everyone’s vanished. Seruma’s alone right now, which puts her in a lot of danger, and you live the closest—”


    “Eri’s not my responsibility!”


    If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    “Yes! She is! Thompson, Seruma’s literally the—”


    “I’m not your shitty middle-man! Go get her, yourself!” She slammed the handset down on a hollow ri-i-i-n-n-ng.


    Not a moment passed before the phone rang to life again.


    “Screw off!!” Mackenzie tore the line from the wall jack, killing the connection in an instant. She launched off the bottom bunk with seething thoughts that craved for a cigarette.


    She stormed downstairs into a kitchen lit only by moonbeams through the eating area window. She hooked a hand around the banister and swung towards the fridge with the hoopla of Wheel of Fortune a distant world away in the living room.


    No reply. No surprise. She sank to the linoleum, tugging open the fridge door. Her mother was probably asleep or lost in an OxyContin haze. Like usual.


    Mackenzie scanned over almost-empty shelves that housed barely even the essentials: nail polish and undeveloped film that’d lived there for years, untouched. Less than a half-loaf of bread and a quarter-block of salted butter. A saran-wrapped bowl of half-eaten baked beans her mother must’ve made for lunch that day. Whatever take-out leftovers they would struggle to ration for the remainder of the week. A mostly-full box of canned Coca Cola used for both drinking and whatever housecleaning was manageable.


    Mackenzie swiped two cans of Coke – then hesitated and put one back. She noticed an open carton of her mother’s Vertigo cigarettes sitting askew and lonely in the broken vegetable crisper, below.


    The need for them coursed through Mackenzie like nothing else.


    The can of Coke went set down beside her knees. A tentative index finger deployed to investigate the carton of cigarettes. She tipped it forward just a bit. About five unwrapped packs tilted forward into the refrigerator light.


    Mackenzie darted a nervous glance towards the living room. There was only glow of the TV that spilled across the kitchen floor. Pat Sajak’s voice over the trademark sound of vowels appearing on Vanna White’s letter board.


    There was a flash of feline yellows within the shadows under the kitchen table – the shrine to trash-gods.


    Luna.


    Mackenzie made sad squinty eyes at the little black cat and pulled the carton of Vertigos forward to dole out a couple packs that went stuffed away inside the armpit of her sweater like prison contraband. She motioned to Luna, still hiding beneath the table.


    “Come here, baby-girl.”


    Usually, Luna was the first to greet anybody who entered her kitchen kingdom. But tonight she stayed put. She watched Mackenzie with ears flattened, scrawny little body fraught with a quiver. Her oily tail stood bristled with fright.


    Mackenzie studied her, confused. “Luna? What’s wrong?”


    Luna suddenly hissed at her. Mackenzie reeled with surprise that quickly turned into further pained rejection.


    “Well, screw you too! Little asshole.”


    She shot to an angry stand and stormed into the living room with the can of Coke in tow. The glow off the TV cast the back of the couch in shadow as she approached what could be considered her mother’s nest. Mackenzie shifted the stolen packs of cigarettes against the wedge of her armpit and prayed they weren’t too noticeable.


    “Here, Momma.”


    She cracked open the tab and poured fizzling cola into a small glass on the end table, diluted by an inch of old tap water that had been at the bottom. All the while, Mackenzie gazed in longing at the TV. It displayed a bald-headed black man in tweed who’d ended the show by taking home the grand prize winnings. She shook whatever was left in the can and downed it in a few quick gulps.


    Mackenzie’s soul ached for the winner’s joy, the dancing-in-place he did, as Pat Sajak stood by on awkward heels saying goodnight to the studio audience.


    Jeopardy would be on, next.


    More winnings for Alice Thompson to dream of.


    “Momma, did you take your medici—”


    It was then that Mackenzie realized her mother wasn’t on the couch where chronic pain usually rendered her. She blinked at the sight of a quickly-burning joint in the ashtray on the coffee table. An always-required quad-footed cane stood nearby.


    But Alice Thompson was nowhere in sight.


    “Momma?”


    Fear sent Mackenzie on a hasty-heeled search throughout the rest of the main floor. The kitchen was empty. Downstairs bathroom was empty. Her mother wasn’t upstairs either, even though that would have been an impossible feat to begin with. Even with her cane.


    “Momma?! Where are you?!”


    Mackenzie barreled through the front door, stumbling out onto the stoop. But her mother wasn’t there, either, having a smoke against the rail.


    And that’s when Mackenzie heard it.


    Silence.


    Complete and utter ear-flexing silence.


    There were no cars on the street, except for a small pile-up up in the center of the Four Corners intersection. But there was no one to rush in aid to the victims. And as Mackenzie leaned out over the stoop to get a better view, it didn’t seem like there were even any victims to be had, either. Literally nobody. It was like a giant child had smashed the cars together like Hot Wheels or Micro Machines.


    A dog wandered past the row of townhouses. Its leash dragged across the sidewalk with no owners in sight.


    “What the hell…?”


    Mackenzie marched back into the house and kicked her coveted step-stool across the kitchen to bang in place beneath the wall-mounted phone by the fridge.


    She didn’t remember Shinji’s phone number. Nor did she have Evan’s.


    But she did know someone’s number. Off by heart. And even though it pained her to do so, Mackenzie obliged to what had to be done. She dialed Eri’s number on automatic jabs, each button expressing a trill of digital praise from the handset in her grasp. The call went out on low-pitched rings.


    A sharp inhale, apprehension, cut past gritted teeth. She put the phone to her ear, digging around inside her sweater, and tossed her mother’s stolen cigarettes to the floor. Mackenzie waited, breath tight on shards of shattered heart-glass.


    Brrrrng…


    …Brrrrng…


    …Brrrrng…


    “Come on-n-n-n! Pick up, pick up, pick up. God damn it, I don’t care that you’re grounded. Pick up!”


    …Brrrrng…


    …Brr—


    The call connected. Mackenzie exhaled on a thin hiss.


    A man’s voice answered: “Hi! You’ve reached the voicemail of—”


    She could have screamed at the top of her lungs. When the tone beeped, Mackenzie roared into the mouthpiece, “Eddi-chan! Eddi-chan!! Pick up your damn phone! It’s me! Where are you?! There’s another Monster – nobody’s around. Pick up, for Chrissakes! Okay, whatever. I’m coming over. With everything that happened with that dumb bird Monster today, you’d better be at home, or else!”


    She hesitated, sighed.


    “I – I hope you’re okay. Please, be okay. Leaving now. Lo—um, bye.”


    Mackenzie gently placed handset back onto the cradle and hopped off the step-stool. She snapped free the Air Pendant from around her throat and marched back out the door.


    “…Shit.”