It’s a late, orange evening – everywhere grills cool, frisbees rest, freakishly pliant, contented faces stare off into the middle distance. Meanwhile us wasteheads slip gates and move down driveways, quiet as a released parking brake. Shadows present themselves for cover in the amber haze.
Sun drops off the horizon ten minutes later. Then the Neighbourhood Watch moves in – a face in the window, every window, eyes searching for all us “menacing” figures.
Not all of us make it. Sarah Schuessler, seventeen and shoo-in for valedictorian, winks out of existence between the trees somewhere. At the same time, the whole street rattles as windows slide shut, curtains closing behind them. Televisions and sound systems turn up high. All at once, we’re alone out here.
Vaz Nicholson – sixteen – is last to turn up at the gazebo. Inside, glowing orange embers bob near the lips of several familiar shades.
“Christ Vaz, took you long e—”
“—didn’t Sarah say she was—”
“—you got any that trippy strain from—”
“—on over here, Vaz, we were wai—”
Stars struggle into some kind of life overhead, bleat feebly between clouds, blasted mostly out of existence by ambient streetlight – none of the really faint stars make it through at all. Still, most of us take the opportunity to look out and up. Some try to utter the complex thoughts rolling down our mental conveyor belts.
“Have you ever thought…?”
On the street, one of the Leonards’ smoke alarms blasts to life. We all look back, shake our heads. Jimmy Leonard, fourteen and had to take third grade twice in a row, said he was going to try lighting up inside. He didn’t open his window wide enough, or he didn’t hold the joint far enough out, but the Watch’ll be there in thirty seconds.
From here, we watch the third-floor attic window slide open. Jimmy pulls himself onto the edge, then steps out into nothing. Gravity suctions him down to the ground. Watch agents slide into the window-frame, look down at the spaghetti-and-meat-sauce on the concrete by the pool.
That can’t be right.
In our gazebo, Roger Dentry, seventeen and has his own car, slides a tape into the dejected cassette player that’s been in here since almost before there was a “here.” One of his mix tapes. Click and we jolt into an old Bowie tune, something ominous. A few of us dance. Roger turns up the music. More of us dance.
We all know it’s loud enough that They’ll hear. We all “know” it’s quiet enough They won’t hear.
Scott Alsterman breaks first – fifteen. One of those types that’ll fold all on their own if you give them enough time to themselves. He mutters something about having to get home and runs into the woods. It’s pitch-black in there, the kind of dark where you can’t see your hand held out in front of your own face. You hear a branch swaying heavy behind you somewhere. The wind. But there wasn’t any wind. You pull out your phone to use the screen light as a flashlight. Swing it around and you see perfect, white teeth hanging there. Then they’re all over you.
Back in the gazebo, Max Spiegelmann, sixteen and hiding severe depression, raises her joint in a toast to Rankin’s memory. Rankin, who painted Mr. Johnson’s car like a zebra that one time. Rankin, who sent in an article to Philosophy Today, and got it fucking published. Rankin Moore, eighteen, who dealt our weed. Max holds her joint skyward – a three-paper monster she’s sharing with Vaz and Roger – and everyone honors the Man Who Would Not Be Stopped, who last night disappeared into the summer night air.
Watch agent in the bushes slips up somehow – a twig snaps too loud for all of us to miss. Heads turn, duck down belatedly. Vaz, snagged out of whirling dervish thoughts regarding the pierced, tattooed, rave-girl Max, whispers, “Think They saw us?”
Roger holds himself meerkat-vertical for a few seconds, then says, “Nah, they’d be inbound if they did.” Pause. “Right?”
“Maybe we should send a runner,” suggests Paul Oakland, sixteen, hundred-meter-dash bronze medalist, two years in a row.
“I nominate Paul,” Vaz declares.
“I nominate Vaz,” Paul declares.
“I elect Paul!” Roger beams, circumventing democracy just like that. Paul shrugs, pulls a bit more smoke into his lungs, then hands his joint to Roger and makes for the tree line. Just as he slips out of view, a rather large inhale from five minutes earlier hits him like a sack of plums. Wood springs up like cobwebs on all sides.
A couple minutes later, Max sends a text: still alive?
Whether he feels his phone vibrate and reads it or not, none of us can say, but he doesn’t respond.
Texts sent out to the missing Scott and Sarah are met with identical, uniform silence. Perhaps fortunately, since Max’s ringtone is still set to screech Daft Punk, dinner-bell loud.
Meanwhile, Roger’s mix-tape squeals as it scrambles itself to death inside the cassette player, then clicks off. No one offers to play music from their phone. If a night’s soundtrack turns out to be silence, then that’s the way it is. Just have a listen in every direction and find something worth tapping your foot to.
None of us explain this to Marie Donalds, fifteen and our newest member – but none of us have to explain it. She understands without having to be told. A good kid. Picture the quiet daughter of a hardcore preacher. Now picture her taking a hit out of Roger’s bong, coughing out machine-gun smoke. If we had a little more time, we’d have her reciting Pink Floyd lyrics and blowing smoke rings.
Max puts a hand on her shoulder. “I’m going to tell you something, but I don’t like to, like, convert people or tell them that they’re wrong for what they believe. So I want you to listen, but know that you don’t have to decide whether it’s bullshit or not right now. Think about it later, figure out if it’s got a kernel of truth, or a blanket of truth, or is just flat-out incorrect.”
Marie smiles politely. “I can’t wait…?”
“You’re the Nice, Quiet, Subservient Girl. You probably feel nervous about how the world sees you, but lemme tell you, society loves you. You’re exactly the type of girl it wants to make—someone who’ll make a good wife and mother down the line. The wonder and pleasure and whole swathes of life you have to give up in service of that – they don’t care. You living an every-way-satisfying life doesn’t matter to them. Congealing healthy fetuses together with a mate of high reproductive value is what’s on the program—”
Roger’s the one who notices the red dot just above Marie’s breast – not that he was looking there for any particular reason – and tackles her to the floor a scant half-second before a silenced bullet whistles past, the only evidence of its travel being the twin holes through screen windows on opposite ends of the gazebo.
Everyone drops down. Marie looks at herself, where Roger says the laser sight was all set on taking her out of the equation. “…and you know what that means: they’ve got snipers on us.”
“Who does?”
Roger and Max hold and ignite lighters beneath their faces. “The Neighbourhood Watch.”
Marie gives them a look. “I didn’t think they used guns…”
“‘Course you didn’t, ‘s why they use silencers. Keep it all quiet…wouldn’t want to wake the neighbours…” Roger digs something out of his backpack. A pair of sunglasses. He hands them to Marie. “Put these on, so they don’t recognize you again.”
“What’s the plan for, uh, exit strategy?” Vaz asks, with only a little anxiety in his voice. He keeps one eye on the screen windows, watches for any red dots making their way across the fabric, like angry wasps trying to get inside. He exhales a mouthful of smoke which catches the neon ghost of a bullet. Then the smoke flits away and the air’s clear again, any neon path or paths invisible.
Why don’t they just start shooting?
Marie puts the shades on. “You guys are messing with me…” if there’s fear in her eyes, the black lenses hide it well, “…right?”
Max pulls smoke from her three-paper joint. “’Course we’re screwing with you.” Hands the joint over. “You’re doing better than I did, my first time.”
Roger laughs, leans back against the plywood siding. “What, housesitting for the Hendersons that one summer?”
“Shit yeah…” Vaz stands up and gazes at the house in question down the block. “Up in the attic, us three and—”
“—Reese,” Max finishes. “Or: the decline and fall of the brave warrior.”
Reese Winters was fifteen, an imaginative, curious, terrified kid in a teenager’s body. Flinched at casual questions, hurled lit joints as far away from himself as possible when people came up behind him.
Was.
Marie feels the sudden grey from the rest of them. “What?”
“We had the house to ourselves for two weeks,” Roger says. Voice neutral. “As long as we kept most of the lights off and the volume medium-low, none of the neighbours clued in.
“So one night we’re lighting up in the attic, blowing smoke out that one Amityville window so it’ll look like the house is breathing, and the kid goes missing. The attic stairs were pulled up. He couldn’t have gone down, and yet…” he points at both of his own eyeballs, then rolls them back to just whites, “gone.”
“Then the lights and speakers went out. Breaker was down in the basement. Figured Reese had snuck past us…man, moving through that house in pitch-black…”
Max’s facial piercing glints above her lighter. “In the shadows I could see people hanging in nooses or bled out on the floor. Kept my shit together long as I could, but when we got down to the basement…” She shakes her head.
“He was down at the bottom of the stairs,” Roger says, eyes downcast. “Broken neck.”
“Still breathing when we found him,” Max says.
“Choked out those last words…” Roger whispers.
Vaz’s low voice, behind Marie’s ear, “‘Bring me Marie’s spine.’”
Her head inflates with blood like a thermometer. Lets out a shriek while diving across the gazebo. Laughter chases her.
Picking herself up off the floor, her eyes flash white-hot before calming. “That was screwed up.”
Hard, sobered silence. Which is interrupted by a gunshot on a different block. All of us examine each other – Did I actually hear that…? Did they hear it, too?
Another shot.
On the sidewalk of Elm Drive, two electrochemical tapestries approach each other.
Leroy Parker’s got a joint hanging idly out of his mouth and both thumbs tucked in his belt. His favourite pastime is watching leaves dance in the breeze.
John Johnson (no shit – parents can be such idiots) has a Smith & Wesson in his jacket. He’s been hit by his father’s belt more times this week than his mother did in her whole short, miserable life.
As the two approach each other, both try and fail to avoid looking at the other’s face. Leroy gives in just as John’s expression clicks over to rage.
He smells the weed.
Fucking druggie bastard, John thinks. For some reason, today’s the day he explodes against his barren world in general, and a randomized human being in particular. Fucking flowing into our clean streets that took effort to tidy up, you little shit, yes it did, lawns and bricks and paint-jobs and you can’t buy atmosphere, and you want to come in with your drugs and trash—
Leroy’s eyes widen as John’s eyes widen, pupils enlarging like sharks near blood. John pulls out the Smith & Wesson and puts a bullet into Leroy’s gut. A bit too shaky to aim very well.
Leroy feels blood spurt up the back of his throat as a cough blasts out of him, warmth – and then his skin gets cold, numbing cold, but only-a-little-pain cold. He finds himself on his knees, shock from the fall reverberating up his legs, not computing, I have been shot. I am going to die if I don’t phone 911 right now. He can smell the fresh-cut grass of nearby lawns.
Then John corrects his aim and pulls the trigger again. Nickel-cadmium thunder echoes over the street.
“I thought we were past this,” Roger says dismissively. And then, between waves of euphoria, he detects an odd tingling sensation in his shoulder.
It takes him a moment to register the signal as pain. Not much, but definitely there. His hand flies back, pulls the top of his t-shirt down his neck to find a red mark – like he’s been stung by a massive wasp, some huge insectile splay of spines and wings, thorax wider than your eye. Low, bassline buzz. Stinger splits the skin and goes deep… Roger’s mind takes it from there, “the British Columbian Zoer wasp was discovered in the isolated Sydmour region. It found its way out of the mountain range through a highly effective reproductive method and the growing population of environmentalist hikers. Zoer wasps have been found to sting victims with a combination of venom and impregnative fluid, using the host’s own tissues to form embryonic swarms, which release a paralytic enzyme prior to hatching.
“In Sydmour, few hikers survived the birthing process. But one corpse after another piggybacked Zoer down the trail to civilization. See appendix for current migration patterns—”
Roger claps his hand over the red bump. If they start eating through his hand…well, at least it will slow them down long enough to take out his trusty pocketknife and put an end to himself early.
Max gets up and makes for the doorway. “Let’s blow this joint.” All of us follow her. Roger stumbles a lot.
Leaning to Max, Vaz says, “I think something’s up with Roger.”
Max examines the dude in question, whose eyes are large as dinner plates. “Yeah, you’re probably right about that.”
Marie asks Roger what’s wrong. He jumps. Doesn’t make eye contact. “I think, uh…”
“You didn’t get hit, did you?” Vaz asks. “Those shots – another sniper?”
“We really gotta stop smoking this Pynchon weed,” Max suggests, meaning this dry crumbly stuff that gets pumped into the suburban markets in effort to foster general paranoia among the teenaged population. Been happening since 1988. Ask Old Man Sellick, he’ll tell you. “Fucking up our good times.”
“It’s not the weed, it’s the neighbourhood,” Roger breathes. We’re in the plain grass “park” our street borders. He looks forlornly up and down each side of the road. Houses overlooking. Windows watching. “Like one big cult. The whole street.”
“Thou shalt not drop a single butt in the grass,” Max offers. “under penalty of death.”
I literally just drop part of a joint in the grass and can’t find it no matter how hard I look. Eyes can’t resolve anything in the dark grass. What if someone was watching? Could even now be stalking over, ready to deliver a hurricane of rage on us meddling kids dumping drugs all over. Might call the cops. Or worse.
I open my mouth to say something, but Vaz interrupts, “Does anyone else hear that roar…?”
In a second we’re all hearing it, louder and louder. Trees seem to bend away from the sky – and the roar feels like it’s coming down from above. It took Rankin last night; we’re next.
Vaz almost bolts – and then he sees Max look at him, lick her lips. Her eyes are those of a death row inmate the night before execution. Vaz pulls in a field of smoke from his latest joint, then steps to her and all of a sudden they’re necking. Young Love. Late Love. Last Love.
“Holy—” Roger starts.
Light blasts down on everyone, coats all of us in electric white.
[Excerpt from telephone conversation between Ethel Wainsbridge and Gretchen deHavilland on 07/09/15]
WAINSBRIDGE: —so Martin and I were coming back from Rona last night and can you guess who wandered in front of our headlights while driving past the park?
DEHAVILLAND: Maybe, but it’d be faster if you told me.
WAINSBRIDGE: It was that group of kids that gets high out in the gazebo all the time! Our headlights hit them and two of them started kissing. And one kid went down on his knees like he thought we were the second coming. I say, he must have been wrecked.
DEHAVILLAND: Really brings you back. Remember college?
WAINSBRIDGE: All those parties, I’m surprised I can still remember anything.
DEHAVILLAND: I think I remember less from the slow classes than from the fast nights.
WAINSBRIDGE: Your brain knows what’s really worth preserving… [Laughter]
DEHAVILLAND: So did you report them to the Watch?
WAINSBRIDGE: Yeah, I don’t think they’ll be a problem anymore. We can probably repurpose that gazebo for gardening now! Some nice flower baskets…are you free this afternoon?
DEHAVILLAND: I’ll bring my pruning shears.
Andrew Marinus contributes comedy articles to Cracked.com and weird fiction to everywhere – his work has appeared in Pseudopod, Beyond Imagination, and The Horror Zine. He lives somewhere in British Columbia, and can be reached at @AndrewMarinus