David Nickle - Monstrous Affections

“What do you mean?”

“Could she—” Trudy gestured in the air with her hands and looked at the ceiling. “You know .”

Mitchell blinked. “What do you mean?”

Now Trudy’s eyes widened and she looked down at him with a tight little slit of a mouth. When she spoke, she whispered like she was shouting.

“ You know what I mean! ”

Mitchell looked over at the computer screen. The wallpaper was new — a scan of Delilah Franken, the one from the police website. Her hair was darker than it should be. She was wearing her graduation gown and she didn’t look comfortable in it. He moused over to the START menu and fired up Photoshop.

Trudy seemed to calm down. She put her hand on Mitchell’s shoulder and leaned close to his ear. “What are you up to there, Mitchy?”

“Make her happy.”

“Oh.” Trudy chuckled. “Well go to it, sport.”

Mitchell found the JPEG and opened it up. It was a big file and when he zoomed into 100 per cent all he could see was her mouth, a bit of her chin and the bottom of her nose. That was good. It looked like there was a blemish on her chin, maybe some acne because she was so stressed out about graduating, so he cloned some skin from her cheek onto it, then he opened up the Liquifyfilter and went to work on her mouth. Delilah was one of those girls who smiled like she was sad, with the mouth turned down at the edges. Mitchell fixed that, edging the pixels at the corners up and up and up. Once he was satisfied Delilah was happy enough, he applied the changes and went to work on her hair, which in the picture was a dingy brown. He magnetic-lassoed it with a one-pixel feather then went into Image>Adjustments>Curves, and he lightened it up and improved the contrast so it looked like she had blonde streaks which is how she wore it these days. He liked the idea, but not so much the effect: the feather made the background glow too much around her hair, like a halo. But he didn’t know how to fix it either. So Mitchell left it the way it was and saved it under another file name. He closed it, then he went into File>Open recentand opened it again. He did it again, four times.

“Wow. She sure is happy.”

Mitchell took a sharp breath.

“Really happy.”

He took his hand away from the mouse.

“Fucking overjoyed.” Laughter followed. Mitchell turned around.

The whole party, all seven of them, were there. Shelly was dangling a mostly empty wine glass beside her as she pressed against a skinny grey-haired man, who was leaning against the doorframe beside Stefan, who was bent forward over the back of an office chair, his hands on the arm-rests straddling the bare arms of another woman with short dark hair and light-coloured jeans who was sitting there legs crossed, one bare foot with manicured toenails brushing the shoulder of the bald man, who sat on the floor almost cross-legged. Behind them, a blond-haired fellow wearing a black T-shirt stood on his toes to look at the computer screen. Trudy was crouched down beside Mitchell, her hands on the desktop and her chin resting on her knuckles. She looked up at Mitchell.

“Happy now?” she said. Stefan laughed, Shelly giggled, and that set everyone else off.

Mitchell looked back at the picture. Delilah smiled back out at him, and he thought he could see why they were laughing. She was smiling wide: too wide, as wide as the Joker did in Batman . As he looked at it now, he saw the problem with that. It was unnatural. Delilah had never smiled that way. Not even in grade school. If she did, why she’d rip her cheeks right off her cheekbones and then there’d be nothing but blood and tears. Mitchell guessed it was pretty funny, seeing Delilah Franken smiling like that.

He let his breath out.

“I’m done on the computer,” he said. “Can I have something to eat?”

Trudy’s knees made a cracking noise as she got up. “Sure thing. Let’s go to the kitchen.”

The others spread to make a pathway for Trudy and Mitchell out of the sunroom. Looking over his shoulder, he saw that they all gathered around the computer, to get a closer look at the picture he made. Mitchell felt an unfamiliar sense of pride. They were looking at his picture — his work. Even if he hadn’t gotten the hair right, that was something.

Trudy opened the refrigerator and pulled out a tray covered in Saran wrap. She stood quickly, balancing the tray on the fingertips of one hand while she cocked her hip and planted the other hand there. “Canapes?” she said.

“Canapés,” said Mitchell. Trudy had pronounced it like Can Apes.

“You got it,” said Trudy. She set the tray down on the countertop and peeled back the plastic. Mitchell took a little roll of prosciutto and melon and bit into it. It was salty and sweet, watery and oily. A nice-enough mix that he took two others.

“So how was school?” Trudy leaned against the stove and crossed one ankle over the other. “You said it was a bad day.”

Mitchell took a breath. He didn’t think they wanted to hear about anything like that because they weren’t his parents. But maybe that was just when Stefan was in the room. Mitchell chewed and swallowed another canapé.

“It was a bad day. They made us go to an assembly. This… this guy from the school board talked to us for about an hour. Some girls were crying. Even though she’d already graduated. They were crying. Can you believe that? Right there in the assembly with everybody looking.”

“What did he talk to you about?”

“After that was History of Europe. I hate History of Europe and it sucked. And phys-ed. I don’t see why I have to take that when what I want to do is—”

Trudy cut in: “You don’t want to talk about that assembly, do you?”

Mitchell put the third canapé in his mouth and sucked on it, pulling the cool sweet melon out from the prosciutto sheaf. More laughter came from the sunroom. Trudy pushed herself off from the stove and came closer to Mitchell. She leaned over and whispered into his ear: “So what do you think of Shelly? Think she’s pretty?”

“I think you’re pretty.”

Trudy seemed to freeze for an instant. Then she pulled back a bit, turned to her side and leaned on the island beside Mitchell. “She’s pretty, all right,” said Trudy. “Stef sure thinks so.”

Mitchell took another couple of canapés but he didn’t eat them yet.

“She’s a year or two older,” said Trudy. “Than me. And Stef. That should make a difference.”

Mitchell thought about that. “O-older girls can be pretty,” he said and Trudy smirked. She put her hand on Mitchell’s shoulder, and sidled her hip closer to his. “Yeah,” she said, as her hand slid from the shoulder nearest her to the one farthest. “You would think that.”

Mitchell swallowed. Trudy leaned her head to one side so it rested on Mitchell’s shoulder. He felt stray hairs tickling his face, like little electric sparks. Trudy’s hip was touching his own. “Oh, Mitch,” she said. “You are so fucked up.”

“And that’s what she likes about you,” said Stefan.

Trudy lifted her head to look around, but she didn’t move her hand or shift away. “Mitch and I were just talking about you.”

Stefan came around the island. He was holding a glass of red wine and smiling maybe. “Me?” He set the wine glass on the counter beside Mitchell, and looked hard into Trudy’s eyes. “I’m flattered.”

“You’re an asshole,” she said.

“ Why, I oughta ,” he said, making a limp fist that opened like a flower when he let it drop to his side. Then he laughed. “How you doing, Mitch?”

“Good.”

“Really? Good.” He reached over and took Trudy’s hand off Mitchell’s shoulder. “You should save your energy, man.” Trudy raised her eyebrows at Stefan. “She on her way?” she said and Stefan nodded. “Just coming off the highway,” he said. “Like, two minutes ago.”