by Kit Zimmerman
This story contains death and drug abuse.
“Why’re you putting on makeup?” Julian asked. “Are you going somewhere?”
“Yeah, maybe,” Kallie responded, leaning closer to the bathroom mirror. Her steady hand—adorned with chipped red nail polish, cheap rings, and tan lines in place of the frayed friendship bracelet she typically wore—expertly guided the tip of a black pencil along her eyelid.
“We can’t go anywhere. My mom said we aren’t allowed,” Julian said, hoping to dissuade Kallie from her usual nocturnal jaunts. He wanted someone to stay, if even for a night. Everyone had a habit of leaving.
“So? Concerts last a long time,” Kallie replied. “They might not come home tonight.”
“Oh . . .” Julian said. A lump of disappointment rose in his throat along with his next question. “Where’re you going this time?”
“Nowhere ’til you’re asleep, so don’t worry about it.”
“Is it your boyfriend’s house?”
“Definitely not.”
“Rollerblading?” Julian asked.
“No,” Kallie replied.
Kallie was acting weird—she usually told Julian where she was going and when she’d be back. Though she wasn’t his sister, she was nearly just as close for all the time their families spent together. It hurt Julian to know Kallie was hiding something from him. “Can I come with you?” Julian pressed.
“No.”
“Does your mom know you’re leaving?”
“Sort of—she doesn’t care though.”
There’d been a few times when Kallie had fallen asleep and missed her chance to sneak out. With that in mind, Julian changed tact. “You said we could stay up and watch movies.”
“We will.”
“Can we watch Batman?”
“No,” Kallie replied with a huff. “You always watch it when I babysit. Go find a different one, then I get to pick.”
Julian bolted into the living room. After some tortured deliberation in front of the movie rack, he returned with a beat-up copy of Hook. The VHS case’s bent and cracked plastic exterior was almost larger than the width of Julian’s hands.
An expectant gaze met Kallie’s in the reflection of the mirror as she began applying mascara. “Not that one,” she said.
“You said I could pick!”
“It’s too long. You can watch it some other time.”
Sulking dominated Julian’s exit, and his mood hardly improved in the short time it took for him to come back with another cassette. His demeanor, however, wasn’t in danger of worsening after Kallie nodded in approval of his second choice—Matilda. “Get it started. I’ll be there in a sec.”
Julian bounded into Kallie’s room and put everything he had into twisting the power knob on the television. Blue-gray light rejuvenated the dark room along with the sound of a guitar and a woman’s voice.
“Don’t change it yet!” Kallie called from the bathroom.
“But you said I could start the movie!”
Kallie ignored him and sang along to what was left of Jewel’s “You Were Meant For Me”. Despite his ability to quote the movie by heart, Julian tilted the case to read the synopsis twice over by the light of the television in the time it took for the music video to finish.
The promise of a working VCR revealed itself in the image of a solid blue screen when Julian turned the channel. Once he had its case open, Julian popped the tape into the VCR, and the end credits flashed. He released an exasperated groan, stopped the playback to rewind the cassette, and spent the interim tracking the rotations of the ceiling fan above the bed. For her part, Kallie finished her makeup and lit a cigarette in the kitchen. The phone rang, and Kallie’s voice carried easily above the whir of the VCR as the conversation came to a boil.
“I don’t fucking care what you thought you were doing—he was my fucking boyfriend!”
There was silence for a time before Kallie’s voice cut through it.
“I don’t give a shit how drunk you were!”
Invested, Julian listened.
A loud bang punctuated Kallie’s shout. “Buzzkill? I’m the buzzkill? Fuck! You!”
Another pause.
“You know what? Fuck this!” Plastic violently collided with plastic as Kallie hung up, followed closely by a grief-stricken scream.
Julian sat alone with the uncomfortable silence as he listened to Kallie cry in the kitchen. Just when he’d worked up enough courage to check on her, she returned to the bedroom.
“Alright, loser,” Kallie said. “Scooch over.” She pressed play and plopped next to Julian as if nothing had happened, reminding him of the movie he’d forgotten about.
The smell of Kallie’s favorite rose-scented lotion pervaded the room as she rubbed it over her arms and legs, which did little to mask the stink of rapidly souring smoke. The conjoined aromas lingered, and helped carry Julian to the borders of sleep when the film reached its familiar conclusion, though sleep soon proved elusive.
It was difficult for him to determine the length of Kallie’s movie compared to Matilda, but by Julian’s estimate, The Crow had been much longer—especially since Kallie had delayed its end to make popcorn and pause it during a scene when a woman’s excised eyeball was burned in a bowl like incense.
When the movie was over, and MTV once again filled the room with lights and sounds— this time with “Lithium” by Nirvana—Julian asked, “Can we play a game?”
Kallie slowly rolled a popcorn kernel between her molars as she considered the proposal before smacking her lips and saying, “You should go to sleep.”
“I can’t,” Julian replied. Kallie was still home, and he wanted to make the most of it. “If we play something I promise it’ll make me tired.”
Kallie clicked the kernel against her tongue piercing. “Fine.”
Undaunted by her tone, Julian sat up. “Really?” He hadn’t expected to win her over so easily. “Can we play light as a feather?”
“No,” Kallie replied, eyes narrowing. “You cried last time.”
“Please! I promise I won’t get scared!”
“No, we don’t have enough people anyway. Let’s do something else.”
“Like what?” Julian asked. “We could play slaps,” Kallie offered with a sigh.
“You hit too hard!”
“Okay . . .” Kallie said. She mulled over their options in her head as she toyed with the black hair tie on her wrist. “Ever play Bloody Mary?”
Julian shook his head.
“Do you want to?” asked Kallie.
Julian knew what bloody meant, but he had no idea who Mary was. It wasn’t much to go on. “It sounds scary,” he concluded aloud.
“It’s not—I promise.”
“Your games are always scary!”
“Fine,” Kallie said, standing. “I’ll just play by myself. Chickenshit.”
“Am not!”
Kallie entered the hall outside the bedroom and turned on the bathroom light. “Comon’ then,” she said, waving Julian over. “Prove it.”
In a grand demonstration of bravado, Julian closed the small gap between the two rooms. He didn’t want her to think he was a chickenshit, and he wasn’t sure when he’d get to spend this much time with Kallie again—especially if she decided to never come back the next time she snuck out. She’d already threatened her mom with running away a few times, and he hadn’t wanted to ask Kallie if that was her plan on the chance it gave her the idea.
“M’kay,” said Kallie. She guided Julian as he entered the bathroom. “Stand here and face the mirror.” Julian allowed her to position him. When she was satisfied, Kallie stood to his left and pulled a Zippo from her bra. Julian recognized the lighter as the one his stepdad and Kallie’s mom had used to heat their spoons the day before.
“That’s not yours, Kallie!”
“Do you want to play the game or not?”
“Yeah . . .”
“Then be quiet so I can tell you how it works.”
“You better put it back,” Julian mumbled. “You’re going to get yelled at.”
“It’s fine,” she said. “I won’t.”
Julian approximated his own version of a suspicious glare. Kallie’s head tilted as she raised a neatly plucked eyebrow. “Seriously?”
Mollified, Julian redirected his ire to the mirror as Kallie straightened and met his reflected gaze.
“Alright,” Kallie began. “When I turn out the lights, I’m going to light this, and we’re gonna say ‘Bloody Mary’ over and over again until we see her standing behind us.”
“See who?” Julian asked.
“Bloody Mary.”
“Oh . . . I knew that,” he said, even though he hadn’t.
“You can’t be afraid if you see her though,” Kallie continued. “She’s going to be all cut up and bloody. If you’re brave and wait long enough, she’ll tell you your future. But if you turn the lights on before she finishes, she’ll either haunt you forever or kill you and trap your soul in a mirror.”
“What!”
Kallie shrugged. “That’s how the game works.”
“I don’t wanna play.”
“Then go to bed!”
“No!” Julian shouted. Going to sleep was just another kind of leaving.
“Then let’s play the game,” Kallie said. “You can watch something after.”
“Batman?”
“Yes, whatever,” Kallie shrugged. “Sure.”
Julian grinned, victorious at last. He liked watching Batman with Kallie. She always giggled when Catwoman talked.
“Alright,” Kallie said, reaching for the toggle on the wall. “Ready?”
Grinning, Julian nodded. Kallie closed the door and flicked the switch. A small flame sputtered to life, dimly illuminating both Julian and Kallie’s features in kindred contrast with the accompanying scent of butane.
“Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary . . .” Kallie chanted slowly as Julian joined her on the third iteration—both staring intently into the gloom behind them. “Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary . . .”
Julian lost count of their repetition, and just when his palms began to sweat and the hairs on his neck and arms stood at attention, the flame died.
“Fuck!” Kallie shouted.
Something clattered to the floor, and Julian screamed.
The lights came on, and only after Julian’s eyes adjusted did he see Kallie again, sucking her right thumb in front of the mirror.
“What happened?” Julian asked, his courage summarily obliterated. “Did you see her?”
Kallie shook her head, thumb between her teeth as she picked up her lighter. “No,” she replied. “Lighter burned me.”
“Oh . . .” Julian exhaled. “I don’t wanna play anymore.”
“Me neither—sorry, kiddo. C’mon, it’s time to go to bed.”
It took some coaxing from Kallie and a complete rewind of Batman Returns for Julian to finally settle in, though it wasn’t long before his excitement faded entirely. By the time alley cats began nibbling on Selina Kyle’s flesh, Julian was fast asleep.
***
Glass shattered, jolting Julian awake.
Kallie wasn’t in bed. And apart from blaring static from the television, all was quiet. As far as Julian could tell, he was alone.
The bathroom light was on—white emptiness framed by the black of the hallway.
“Kallie?” Julian called out.
No answer came—only a strange, muffled voice Julian couldn’t understand. It sounded like someone whimpering, and nothing like Kallie—whom, Julian reasoned, would have answered.
Julian called out again, his voice smaller. “Hello?”
An odd thumping sound came from the bathroom, along with what seemed like groans and laughter. It was unlike any laugh Julian had heard—high-pitched, inhuman, and dripping with rapturous delirium.
Julian waited for it to end, but it didn’t.
Disembodied murmurs rose above the static, and a thought came to Julian’s mind. If it wasn’t Kallie, and no one else was home, only one possibility remained—glass breaking in the bathroom—a mirror—a stranger’s voice and even stranger noises . . .
A chill slithered up Julian’s spine as he brought the rose-scented blanket to his face. Julian knew he hadn’t seen Blood Mary, but had Kallie?
Static and dread ruled the dark, populating Julian’s mind with possibilities. He was alone in a house not his own with a ghost that was going to kill him and trap his soul in a mirror. Wasn’t that how the game worked? Was she going to cut or stab him? Strangle him? Rip out his eye and burn it in a bowl?
After a time, there came a new sound, like a puppy pouting or repeatedly hiccupping. It went on and on until it ended with a gasp. Julian waited, not once daring to lift his gaze from the doorway on the chance Bloody Mary came to get him when he least expected it— hoping throughout the prolonged quiet she’d finally decided to leave along with everyone else.
When the blue hour came and dawn’s first light at last bled through the blanket covering the window, Julian released an emboldened, shuddering breath. A shiver worked its way through his bones as he slid slowly out of bed and tiptoed, regretfully barefoot, to the television and turned it off, wincing at the loud click of the knob. Disquiet settled over Julian as he debated turning it back on. He’d become so used to the white noise he hadn’t realized how well it’d masked the sound of his breathing—breathing, he was sure, Bloody Mary could hear.
A dozen second-guessed steps and halting breaths later, Julian was in the bathroom doorway.
The mirror was broken, its silver shards littering the ground. Opposite Julian sat Kallie, facing him, slumped against the wall on the floor next to the bathtub. A black hair tie was around her upper left arm with a small red hole on the inside of her elbow just beneath it. Next to Kallie’s shredded right hand lay an empty syringe and bloodied mirror piece. Pools of blood covered the floor in stark contrast to the white tiles and surrounding walls beneath the harsh fluorescent light, fed by crimson rivers in the grout from the gaping ribbons in Kallie’s wrists and forearms.
“Kallie?”
Julian was met with dead silence. It told him to move—to look away—but he couldn’t.
Kallie was still—eyes wide open, lifeless—once-honeyed skin comparable to the pearlescent sheen of her horrid, memorable grin.
Category: Featured, Short Story