When Kendra closed her eyes, she saw the dead girl’s face on the back of her eyelids. She saw that dainty nose, no longer pulling in air, and those youthful lips, now purple, and she saw the flies on the girl’s forehead, eyelids, and smooth, perfect little cheeks. Kendra wanted to scream. But then she thought, Fake, it must be fake.
“Dinner time!” her dad shouted from downstairs.
She looked down at her phone, but she didn’t scroll up; she stared through a picture of a sunbathing cat, seeing it but also not seeing anything but those perfect cheeks, still somehow youthful despite there being no life in her body, and now with large black flies on them. It was a prop, dum dum. Don’t be stupid.
Slowly, she scrolled up the feed until she got to the bottom of the photo.
“Kendra, did you hear me?”
“Be right there!”
It was the girl’s chin. She was so young—six, maybe. Younger? On her white shirt, near the collar, was a tiny pink bow.
Kendra read the post, “The US supports genocide!”
“Kendra, now!”
Kendra put her phone into her hoodie pocket and ran downstairs.
Kendra cut her pork, the knife sliding through the pink flesh effortlessly.
Her mom gulped water, and at the end of the table came the sounds of her dad’s knife and fork scraping against the porcelain plate and his jaw working the meat; it was as if he were projecting the sounds of his chewing through a megaphone.
To block out the sounds, Kendra started humming lightly to herself. She didn’t close her eyes because she knew that if she did, the girl would be there waiting for her.
“So, Kendra, what did you decide?” asked her mom.
“Decide about what?” She didn’t know why her mom had to swallow that way, as if she’d found an oasis in the middle of the desert, pushing down the water with her esophagus with more force than seemed necessary. With every swallow, Kendra clenched her jaw. The chewing and the gulping were too much to handle—she hummed louder.
“What did you decide to go as?” Her mom was smiling at her, but Kendra couldn’t focus. She winced as her mom took another gulp of water before continuing, “The costume contest—what are you going as? You seem distracted. Everything okay?”
Kendra nodded. “Sorry, just thinking about homework. A witch, maybe?”
“Well, you better figure it out soon,” said her dad, chewing his meat. “It’s a week away. Personally, I can’t wait for Halloween to be over—I’ve already eaten way too much candy.”
Kendra hummed and ate her food.
That night, her dreams were a vortex of dread and sorrow. She gasped for air and cried out in desperation, but her shouts were silenced by the void and drowned out by an unnerving buzzing that seemed to echo from nowhere and everywhere all at once. Then, a flash: the child’s face.
Kendra woke up clawing at her own cheeks to remove flies that weren’t there. Outside was a symphony of leaf blowers and weed-eaters. She sat up in bed, waiting for her heart to stop racing, then went to the bathroom and splashed water on her face.
Her eyes were red, and she felt more tired than if she had stayed up all night. Still, she had school, and maybe the distraction would be a good thing, so she got dressed, grabbed a breakfast bar from the cupboard, and left the house.
During class, she tried not to close her eyes—not even for a moment. With every blink, she saw the dead girl’s face. She saw the flies feasting, defecating—laying eggs—
She stood up from her desk and waved her hands around.
“Kendra, are you okay?” asked the teacher.
Kendra looked around the class; everyone was staring at her. No, she wasn’t okay. “Yes, I’m fine.” She was just waving away flies that weren’t there, that’s all. “My arm was falling asleep.” She was just trying to keep the flies off of a dead girl. “All better now.”—trying to keep them from laying eggs on that child’s six-year-old face.
The entire week leading up to the costume contest, Kendra slept like shit. She walked around the house and school like a zombie. Her parents were worried; they’d told her as much, but she assured them it was just schoolwork anxiety. Normal stuff. But it wasn’t normal; the buzzing from her dream seemed to permeate every room she entered, and the dead girl’s soft lips, always there, painted on the backs of Kendra’s eyelids, were no longer closed; they were open just enough to let the flies enter and exit freely, to shit and eat and lay their eggs, their dirty little legs dancing across her spongey, dried out tongue.
“Big night!” said her mom. “Costume all set?”
“Yeah.”
“What did you decide on?”
“Death.”
“Classic.”
“Mom, can I ask you a question?” Kendra brushed her hair in the living room mirror while her mom folded laundry on the couch.
“Of course, honey. What’s up?”
“Is it ever okay to kill a child?”
Her mom stopped folding a shirt and looked at her daughter. “What?”
“It’s just that…I saw a picture of a kid who’d been killed by a bomb. It just seems like that should be a bigger deal…but nobody is talking about it.”
“I see,” said her mom, walking over to her daughter and embracing her.
“You see, it’s complicated.”
“Oh…”
Kendra wore a bathrobe to hide her costume; she wanted it to be a fun reveal. She stood in front of the mirror with four other girls, applying their makeup, talking about friends, costumes, and a party the following weekend.
“You going, Kendra?” asked her friend Gina, who was adjusting a black wig and crooked green nose.
“Doubt it.” Kendra was staring at her own face in the mirror. She was alive, and that girl was dead. She was going to be in a costume contest, and that girl was being eaten by flies. She wondered why the girl had to die—there had to be a reason for it, but even if there was a reason, what justification would wipe away this image from the back of her eyelids? What excuse could shoo away the flies and silence the persistent buzzing?
“Kendra, you’re on stage in ten minutes,” said Gina. “You better get your costume on.”
Kendra nodded and pulled out her makeup bag. “I’ll be ready.”
“And now, ghouls and ghosts,” shouted the emcee into his microphone. “Listen up! Yo, chill for a second. You gotta chill! Next up, we have Kendra—I hope you’ve said your prayers because you’re all about to die! Please give a big hand for Death!”
Kendra stepped onto the stage, the auditorium went silent. She wore blue jeans and a simple white shirt with a tiny pink bow near the collar. On her cheek, she’d glued a resin fly. The other kids and contestants began to giggle. Someone in the crowd yelled, “Where’s your costume?” Another shouted, “We want Death!”
Kendra opened her mouth to speak and felt a fly crawl out.
Then, she opened her mouth as wide as she could to let them all out, to be rid of the buzzing in her head once and for all. They poured out between her teeth, tickling her tongue and making her gag.
The crowd ducked and screamed as the insects moved together like a murmuration of starlings above their heads.
Buzzing—
Screaming—
Gulping—
Chewing—
All of the complications of the world feasting on their young bodies—shitting on their youthful cheeks—and laying eggs in the pores of their dead skin.
Kendra hummed.
❤️ - Seany.
The Good Egg
There is a taste to this memory, and a texture, so vivid that to call it false would be to put at risk every memory I’ve ever had. To call it untrue would be to call my life nothing more than fiction, and I will not be a lie—I will not swallow lies. So, when the detective asks me why I’m acting defensive, insinuating deceit, I nearly throw him out, but …
Or pick up my book, Beneath the Valley Oak. EBOOK | PRINT
Beneath the Valley Oak (ebook / second print.)
Heya, partners! Some of you have asked for the ebook version of Beneath the Valley Oak, my dark westerns collection, and I’m here to deliver the goods! It’s now available through Amazon.
wow very intense and also such good political commentary...not sure if it was intended as such but it packs a punch
there is nothing more horrifying than real life