Headlights(17)

“Police!”

It’s cold outside. I didn’t get a jacket before they made me leave.

“Calvin, please—”

A slap, a loud one. Mom screaming now.

I turn the knob, but they’ve locked me out. I pound on the door. Yell for my mom.

The officers knock, pound on the door again.

Footsteps come. The owner, Sherie, runs through the parking lot, asks what’s the matter. Mom yelling inside, Mom screaming, and I can’t get to her, and— Orange, then blue. Two motels, two times. Glitching, flashing.

The young officer abruptly stops knocking. Leans in to the door. Listens.

He signals to the others. Crouches down, cocks his gun. He knocks one more time. No answer. But this time I hear it too.

A whisper. A muffled cry, from inside the room.

The whimper I’d made that night. It sounds just like me.

Sherie unlocks the door.

They kick the door in. The forward two officers step into the room, the other two flanking, turned, holding position.

Already a stench wafts out from the room. One of them says, Jesus Christ. The other stops, frozen.

“Danny!”

“Dan, what the fuck are you doing?” Jack says. He pushes past me to get inside.

Dad, in the dressing area. Holding Mom by her hair.

“That’s not our son’s name, Rose! How dare you do this, how could you—”

Jack turns to me, eyes frantic. “Paramedics. Now.”

Mom whimpers, cries.

Dad’s face contorts with rage. He slams her head into the sink.

I scream.

“Clear out! Get her out, and get forensics in here!”

MOM!

My legs are warm, wet.

“Stansfield! What the fuck is wrong with you!”

I blink. I lift my hand, speak words. Radio the paramedics. Force my legs to move.

Orange. Blue. Orange. Static. Glitch.

He picks her back up, yells into the side of her face. Crying. Howling. “Why?”

Mom’s eyes lock on me. She looks dazed. Blood on her head. Her eyes half-closed, still crying. She opens her mouth and says to me, “I’m sorry.”

Dad reaches up and twists something sharp and shiny against her neck.

I run for her, trip over the TV remote. I fall to the carpet.

The movie starts again, John Denver singing “Annie’s Song.” It’s loud, louder than before.

Mom reaches up, grabs her throat above the turquoise necklace.

She’s bleeding.

Dad pushes her, hard, into the bathroom. She slams against the shower wall and slides down into the tub. She doesn’t fight him. John Denver sings, Mom in the bathtub. Blood, and— I shove off the carpet.

MOM!

Not screaming, not moving, she’s just— MOM!

Dad stands. He’s crying. Crying, so hard. The mirror, splattered with red. He raises his eyes to the mirror. Where they land on me.

Sirens. Dad’s eyes on me. “Annie’s Song.”

Sirens.

Mom!

I—

I’m here. Standing in our room, looking at the mirror.

No blood in this bathroom. White, still clean.

Dad is here, in the mirror, though. Hard jaw, hard brown-green eyes.

Dad’s eyes on me.

Dad in every mirror. In all the years since.

Blood—

I turn, force myself to take in the room. No one’s looking at the bathroom. There’s no blood there, no body. Everyone in the motel room is focused on the bed.

The bed is covered in blood. It has seeped through the sheets and spilled off the sides to the blue floral carpet.

On it is a man with no skin. Missing hands and feet, like all the other skinned victims. His raw exposed body is duct-taped in a side-lying position to the bed, tape looped down under the mattress. It holds him there.

Him, and the woman in the bed, who is taped in beside him. The two of them, facing in toward each other, as if they are lovers.

“Annie’s Song” in my ears. Mom screaming.

The woman in the bed is alive.

SWAT cuts the tape, officers rushing to try to help her up. She has trouble moving. She wears a blood-soaked tank top, hiking pants, socks but no shoes. There’s a tattoo on her arm, obscured by the blood. With the help of the others, she’s off the bed, touches down on the carpet. It takes a minute. Even then, she can’t hold her weight, collapses against one of them. A large double piece of duct tape covers her mouth. She whimpers, but it’s weak. She opens exhausted eyelids as Jack yells to the officers. Garcia is there, talking to the woman, saying she’s going to remove the tape.

The song keeps playing. I still hear it. Everyone must hear it, it’s so loud.

The glitch. An orange room. The past pushing itself up and— Garcia swears. The woman from the bed lifts her eyes.

Jack is telling me to do something. Everyone talking, saying different things. Sirens. Sound and movement, and my father in the mirror.

Pressure. Static. Pulse. That sound.

VOOM.

You fill up my senses, come fill me again.

The woman from the bed stares up at me.

They rip the duct tape from her mouth. She chokes a sob, spits something on the floor.

Dad’s eyes on mine, and the song playing. Dad, through his tears.

Her eyes lift to mine again.

The thing on the floor, what was in her mouth.