Alexandra Kleeman: Intimations: Stories

The other room was a dining room, smaller and more intimate than the large hall we had been in before, but similarly windowless and dim. Objects were overturned on the table and floor in a way that suggested a struggle, but one that had been carefully choreographed. The candelabras and vases lay on their sides, gently, and long-stemmed roses were strewn evenly across the room with an executioner’s precision. On the ground under some of the roses was a man sprawled flat on his front, his face buried in the carpet and a large ax sticking up from the middle — the exact middle — of his back. A dark red substance pooled beneath his body.

Impressed sounds came from all around me.

“It’s very realistic, don’t you think?” “Looks very much like a murder.” “John really went all out this year, that’s for sure!” Who was John, and why was he letting this happen? And then: Who was this man, and was he in on the joke or was he, like me, waiting it out, hoping that everyone would find something else to stare at?

In the lower center of my body, two feelings were swirling together. On the one hand, the scene was too grisly to be real, and I sensed my fists relaxing, going loose. On the other, I had never seen this much blood before, real or fake, and what did I know? It might be exactly grisly enough to be real.

“Are we very sure he’s not really dead?” I asked.

A tall man in a gray suit strode over and stuck a finger in the red puddle. He rubbed the substance between his finger and thumb, sniffed it briefly, and declared, “Corn syrup. Definitely corn syrup, you can tell from the texture: slippery, thick, and sticky as hell. Smells sweet, too. I think our hosts are probably having a good laugh at our expense! The looks on our faces!”

I was still uneasy, but the unease was lifting slowly. The man looked competent, like a doctor. Or like someone who could have gotten into medical school. And then I wanted so badly to let it all be normal: for the first time that night, nobody seemed bothered by me. They hardly seemed to notice, they were so busy marveling at the accuracy of the carnage, dipping their fingers in the spreading liquid and playfully terrorizing their dates. I looked over at Andrew, and when he smiled at me I smiled back.

Just then there was a scream, followed by another scream, followed by nervous laughter.

The man who had identified the blood as corn syrup was facedown on the floor, surrounded by women who alternated between laughing tightly and murmuring quietly to each other. In the middle of his back was an ax much like the ax stuck in the first man, though with a different manufacturer’s name on its handle.

“Um,” I said. “What just happened?”

Nobody knew. One moment he had been upright; the next he was prostrate, and axed. Everyone agreed it was great showmanship. Some began to talk about how difficult it would be to remove the stains from the plush beige carpet, how much it would cost.

“So, um,” Andrew said, turning back toward me. “What sort of work do you do?”

I was a secretary, but also there on the rug the same dark substance was blossoming out from under the second axed man, and something about this bothered me immensely. I would never have considered myself an expert on real blood or murder mysteries or staged deaths or party etiquette, but I had a good deal of experience with fake blood; and this just did not look like genuine fake blood. There was a liveness to its flow, and it filled the room with a dark and indefinable scent.

“Andrew,” I said. “I just don’t feel comfortable with this.”

He looked sad.

“I don’t mean you. You’ve been very nice. But I’m worried about the guy with the ax. In him, I mean. The second one. It all happened so quickly. Don’t you think we should check it again? Even if the first murder was staged, the second one could be real.”

“Oh. That’s a good idea,” he said. He walked over and pulled the second ax out of the second man’s back.

It looked pretty real.

“It looks pretty real,” he said.

“But what does real look like?” I asked.

“Is anyone here a doctor?” Andrew asked, looking around the room. Nobody was a doctor, or if they were, they were not admitting to it. If I wanted to know whether this situation was normal or abnormal, I would have to be the one to do something; and of all possible situations, this was perhaps the only one that I was actually qualified to deal with. I took the ax from Andrew’s grasp and touched the wet blade with a fingertip. I drew my hand away and touched the fingertip to my tongue, tasting metal.

“Oh, my god,” I said. “This is not fake. We are all in terrible danger.” I tried to say this in a way that was both urgent and calm, but when I saw all the people staring at me, I realized that I had made them only more suspicious of me, the one living person there who was also covered in blood. I looked over at Andrew, and he looked away.

Another scream came from behind me, and when I turned around the woman I had glared at just a few minutes earlier was on the floor, an ax in her back.

“We need to move to another room,” I said.

The other guests reluctantly followed me back to the banquet hall. What to do now? From the dining room, another scream: I already knew what I’d find if I went back there, and I thought to myself that if we followed the rules, perhaps we’d all make it out fine. If we figured out the rules and then followed them. All around me people were beginning to panic, searching for exits.

As it turned out, there were no exits.

We pounded the walls and screamed, to no effect. Some guests went into hysterics, sobbing on the floor, until they realized that nothing at all was going to change. Then they stood, oddly calm. One man grabbed the hand of a woman. “I love you,” he said, pulling her hand to his chest and pushing it up against his heart. “What’s your name again?” she asked. “Jonathan,” he said, “and I love you.” A pause. “Okay,” she said. They clung to each other, balled up in a corner, and as they did, others started to confess things, as well. “I need you.” “I always hated you, but right now I don’t mind you.” “Would you please hold my head in your hands? Just hold it, really grab it, and tell me everything’s going to be okay? Please?” Soon everyone was huddled in corners, except Andrew and me. I tried not to look at him too directly. If these were in fact the last moments of my life, I did not want to spend them in embarrassment.

It seemed like so much had happened, but still nothing had changed. I was back in the banquet hall, covered in fake blood, feeling left out, and looking for something to hold. Andrew was in the middle of the room, watching me, and I closed my eyes and thought about the meadow. This time, I would keep the sheep clean and snowy white. I added a stream and a large oak tree, birds coming to rest in its boughs. It was afternoon there, late afternoon, growing later.

I heard a noise, and I opened my eyes. Andrew was down. Another ax.

The rules had changed: the banquet hall was no longer safe. And with Andrew gone, there was no longer any reason to stay.

“We have to move,” I said loudly to the room. “We have to move on.” The hall had only two doors: one led to the dining room, which was certainly unsafe, and one to the basement, which really seemed like a bad idea, but at least uncertainly so.

“I’m going to the basement,” I said. “We can barricade ourselves in there.” Nobody else said anything. I looked at them all one last time, balled up in their respective corners, and walked down the stairs.

The basement was both larger and cozier than I had expected. The ceilings went high, and the fluorescent lights far above buzzed in a way that reminded me of the outdoors, the outdoors during warmer months, when the air and the ground seemed bright all over with the lives of insects and plants. The space was cavernous, but it was full: there were piles of objects all around me, large piles reaching ten, twelve, fifteen feet into the air. They looked like they had been collected and sorted by someone very patient, someone with a lot of time on his hands. Or her hands. There was a large heap of flannel shirts, mostly plaid. A pile of Time magazines. A pile of athletic equipment, mostly football helmets. Wedding dresses. Gerbil cages.