Austin Bunn - The Brink - Stories

“I made you some coffee,” I said. I pointed to the cup, right there on the light table. Extra strong, to mask the dose.

“No thanks,” she said.

“Soda? No soda?” I offered. “Or something harder?”

I’d already had two shots myself before her arrival, to quiet my nerves. But she shook her head. At some point, girls learn they don’t have to answer every question. And like that, my plan, the careful order of things, guttered out.

Jess spun on the stool while I adjusted the lights. Kramer specializes in large format, big prints, everything adjustable. Through the viewfinder, her face was a dish of cream. Her two front teeth had a slot between them for the perfect dime. No blemishes — somehow she’d made it that far without scars. I would barely need to retouch.

“I feel like I’m in a diorama with this forest thing behind me,” she said. “I should have a papoose and a spear.”

“Didn’t your form say Forest Glade?” I said.

“I had nothing to do with the form,” she said. “My mother was all about the form.”

I felt a strange possessive surge. I didn’t want her known or noticed, possessed by a family. When you come this far, this close, the aperture closes around what you see, and you want to be the only one looking. I tested the flash. The recharging whine rose to the top of the sound register. She asked if we lost other yearbook photos along with hers.

“I bet a lot of kids want to take theirs again,” she said.

“Sure, but you don’t want to peak when you’re seventeen,” I said. “You don’t want to be fifty and look at the Rutland High School yearbook like those were the good days.”

“If I’m looking at my yearbook when I’m fifty,” she said, “claw my eyes out.” Then she thought for a moment and took J.C. off her neck and laid him on the light table.

“Got plans for Halloween?” I asked.

She told me about Eddie’s invitation, duly noted. My plan floated back from oblivion. I’d find her then.

“So what is his deal? Is he gay?” she asked. “Because he asked me to be a vampire and supposedly he’s amazing with makeup.”

“He’s not gay, he’s just really into base,” I said. She laughed then and it was like she released herself to me.

“Ready?” I said.

The smile is always the hard part, because it has nothing to do with the mouth. It’s all in the eyes. A grin lifted into her face, but it was only in the bottom half, what happens when you live with something.

“Thanks,” she said on the way out, taking the stairs two at a time. “Make me look beautiful, okay?”

Inside the Halloween firehouse, the light drops. I make out a long hallway of black-lit paintings and one cheap, low-hanging bat that won’t last the night. Then the hallway opens out onto the kitchen where a kid lies under a sheet on a table. On cue, a chainsaw cranks and Dewey Church — the guy who trims everybody’s trees — steps out from behind the door. The sound is deafening, and Solvang covers Callie’s ears. Dewey plows through the belly of the screaming kid, sending an outrageous spray and guts into the air. Solvang casually picks a piece off his flack jacket. Baked ziti. The chainsaw quiets and the disemboweled kid dips his hands into the gash to eat some. Dewey knocks the side of his head.

“Don’t play with your guts, you idiot.”

“But it’s freaky,” the kid says.

“It’s confusing,” Dewey says. “Your dying moments, and you’re going to taste yourself?”

The next room is a nonstarter. A pack of twelve-year-olds dolled up like zombies — Eddie really went for the coolie labor here — wander around and bump into each other. A preteen ghoul clings to us, almost like he’s angling for change. Callie shoves him away, but I corral the kid before he can slink off.

“Why did she push me?” The kid repaves his bald cap.

“Because you were poking her.”

“I’m supposed to poke,” he says. “Eddie told me to poke.”

He tells me Eddie is on the roof, and we zip through the rest of the building: more kids leaping out from behind chairs, mattresses. The longhair manager from Video King, way too old for the room, proudly wears a diarrhea-ass costume from Spencer Gifts, leaking all over the place. In a shower, a chick dressed in a white sheet plays a harp. Solvang fixes on her and the girl waves back. Callie pulls him on.

“Who was that?” she demands.

“I don’t know,” Solvang says.

Callie knocks him on the head with her wand. “You know her.”

“Jesus,” he says. “Your fucking wand fucking hurts.”

Out the back, past the exit, I catch the murmuring up on the roof. A training staircase runs up the back of the building, to the promising noise. Jess has to be up there. When I ask Solvang and Callie if they want to crash the party, they do that couple-deciding thing, where she’s looking to see what he wants and he’s looking to see what she wants and it takes five minutes for them to decide that they’re too tired to go out. But for once, Callie is game. “What’s at home?” she says. “Let the babysitter deal.”

The roof is the size of the community pool. A cloud of dope hangs over the proceedings. At the other end, groupies circle Eddie while he boasts that he “made over a thousand dollars in the first hour.” His jaw chomps and chomps, with some chemistry of his own.

I see Jess, propped up on the edge of the roof, imprinting the lip of a Styrofoam cup with her fangs. Her pupils are big as volume knobs — Eddie must have fit her with black contacts.

“Mr. Randy DiSilva!” Eddie calls out to me. “Buddy, been way too long.” He waves me over and claps me on the back. Then he tilts his head and examines my face as if I’m auditioning.

“What’d you use?” he says. “Latex glue?”

“For what?”

“For this,” he says, running his finger down the left side of his face, eye to his chin. He has no idea.

I shake my head. “No, latex.”

“Gelatin?” He asks.

“Glass,” I go. “Some fire.”

I let that sink, but Eddie’s too juiced to follow. “Huh?”

Solvang shows up, changing the subject. “So, Randy, is Amanda Jane here?”

“The girl from the stupid movie?” Eddie says. “Oh, yeah, right, she’s doing Ouija by the keg.”

Solvang scans for her and Callie watches him look for this girl, the girl who’s not her, and it pains me. She’s loyal to him the way people get when they start feeding a feral animal, leaving a plate out, expecting the animal to care. Solvang was raised in the woods. He’ll go back there eventually. I know they’re having trouble — Solvang told me that he can’t get it up since he saw her making way for the baby. “I just keep expecting other stuff to keep coming out,” he told me. “It’s your playing cards,” I told him. “They’re rotting you.”

I peel off from Eddie and head to the drinks. I pump two beers into red plastic cups and mash one of my pills on the edge of the table. It doesn’t quite powder and it gets in the foam, but I stir it in with a finger. She doesn’t need much. Jess looks up, blank and unfocused, when I approach. The itch starts up, with the sweat.

“Jess,” I go. “It’s me, the guy who took your portrait the other day.”

“Randy, right?” she says. Maybe the friendliness takes a little too long to shape into her face, but we’ll get there. Her lips don’t know what to do with the fangs, so they rest on the outside, like a rabbit. “I’m sorry. I can’t see anything. These contacts are driving me crazy.”

“I brought you a beer,” I say. She takes it, but it goes nowhere near her lips. “So what’s your costume?”

“I came as normal,” I say. “The boy next door.”