The sound of the door closing behind me (cloom), reverberated throughout the large “LAVATORY,” bouncing against every tiny red-or-white linoleum tile. When the echo died, all was quiet, save for the muffled hum of the party on the other side of the door like flotsam sloshing against the stomach wall of Pinocchio’s whale. Subverting my expectation, this single destination for any wannabe pissers was completely empty, making me wonder if everyone else knew something I didn’t. To my left lay a long row of stalls that were reflected by a line of sinks on my right, each with its own mirror and overhead light. Hugging the wall opposite me were two above-ground jacuzzis decorated in the same pattern as the floor, but roped off to the public. Just for show. Above the tubs were three narrow, opaque stained-glass windows, mottled with different colors. It would’ve been aesthetically fitting for steam to be in the air, but there wasn’t, so I took the opportunity to blow some off:
“Dumbasses. Dumb pisshead know-nothings. Fuck you.”
The words fell uselessly to my feet, pointless and lame.
“Whatever.” I occupied a stall to relieve myself. Standing thinking nothing, I was surprised to spot a single smidge of graffiti on the stall wall, right above the toilet paper. Written in fat black Sharpie was:
THE CLOCK IS STUCK AT MIDNIHGT[sic]
Underneath was a crude drawing of a clock with the two hands pointed up, overlapped to look like one. The image matched the one on my shirt’s breast pocket. Well, hell. Green Greens had told me that The Clock’s style guide aimed for ‘socially radical aesthetics’ (???), so it was funny for the brand’s lame mission to be thwarted in even the most superficial way, their logo etched in the bathroom of billionaires. Yes, it was funny, but the bleak serendipity didn’t make me happy. I hated everything.
Finished peeing, it was time to do more cocaine, which would show everybody, and as I tapped the stuff out on the back of my hand, spilling a lot with my jitters, I contemplated the coincidental graffiti and all its possible implications, brain crackling with conspiracy, making it smell like ozone, smelling like ozone until it smelled like cocaine, more than I meant but oh well. Slackjawed, tapping my foot and staring into toilet water, I began drafting my reconciliation with Gloria, first off resigning to the fact that I should lead with an apology, even if I wished the terms of her distress had been laid out with more clarity on her end. The way I saw it, Gloria held all the cards. I would say or do whatever it took for her to feel better, but she had to do some legwork in communicating what those things could be. I hoped she was up for it. I didn’t want the night to end with this feeling.
Preoccupied as I was with my drugs, paranoia, and consternations, I missed the sound of the bathroom door opening and closing. I also missed the footsteps approaching my stall, but I definitely did not miss the booming rattle of someone kicking the stall door, scaring me so bad that I dropped the baggie with the rest of the cocaine into the toilet. “Shit!” I shouted. “This stall is occupied!” But the kicking continued until the latch was broken and the door burst inward, almost flying off its hinges, revealing my assailant to be none other than Oliver, who yanked me out by my lapels to throw me against the nearest sink, the lip of which was in the perfect position to bash into my tailbone. In agony I sprawled to the floor, right at the feet of Chloe, who stood in my earlier shit-talk.
“Oooaaaooohhh,” I moaned into her pristine white Adidas. “Whyyy?”
They weren’t going to answer before beating me. I cowered in fetal as Oliver kicked my ribs and Chloe stomped the back of my head. The cocaine made it hurt less bad, but it still wasn’t awesome. Punishment felt like a logical conclusion to something. After what felt like forever, my shirt’s lapels were gripped again and my carcass was lifted to its feet and pinned against one of the sinks. Hot, alcoholic breath assaulted my hot, swollen face. At least my nose wasn’t bleeding again. Or I was pretty sure it wasn’t.
“You must have thought you were pretty clever; right, Seth? A clever little boy.”
Oliver’s earlier detached poise had been exchanged for the unwieldy rage of an experienced drunk, a mode I preferred for its honesty. My head lolled from side to side, the absurd violence making me loopy.
“Uhhh...yes I do, but I don’t think I mean it in the same way as you.”
My cheekiness was rewarded with a swift punch to the nose from Chloe, and then it was definitely bleeding again. Oliver brought his face back close to mine, but I couldn’t smell his boozy aroma anymore. I feared the past twelve hours had done irreparable harm to my poor nose.
“You thought you could just waltz right in? Under a guise as flimsy as a plus-one? You’re the only one of those at the party, you fool! You’re either dumb as a rock or too confident for your own good.” Oliver prodded my chest with his finger, pointing at the breast pocket of my shirt. I didn’t know what he was getting at. “You sold yourself out!” he crowed, tapping one more time on the little white clock embroidered on my shirt, both its hands stuck at midnight.
“Oh,” was all I could say at first. “Are you guys mad about the graffiti? Because I didn’t do that, it was already there. You can’t assault people for that.”
Chloe sneered. “Even if you didn’t do that, which you did, it’s still nothing compared to what we’ve got you for. You were in trouble the second you were invited to this party, and in even more trouble the second we saw your shirt. We know you’re a member of The Clock Is Stuck At Midnight, and, by association, ANTIFA.”
My incredulity was so immense it made speech impossible, and it must have shown in my expression because Chloe quickly followed up her accusation with evidence: “We know that you were at one of their gatherings today.”
I blinked. “What, the MAZ? The MAZ where they were selling merch?”
“Yes,” Oliver interjected excitedly, “the MAZ we shut down.”
I gasped. Evil!
“You see, Seth,” Oliver continued, “We know that The Clock Is Stuck At Midnight brand is a front for terrorism, a mask for one of the many terrorist factions operating under the ANTIFA umbrella. Our father made it a point, as the sitting president of Mockingbird Support, to monitor your terrorist activities, knowing you thugs would love nothing more than to dismantle our therapeutic institution for the sake of your so-called ‘ideals’ that are nothing more than an excuse to destroy! It feels all too appropriate to catch you committing this vandalism.” He cocked his head toward the graffiti. “Repulsive!”
My loss for words closed in on a terminal state with each sentence Oliver spat, but for all the insanities he’d shared, it was a single three-letter possessive that I was stuck on.
“You said…’our father.’ As in both of you? So you guys…?”
As an answer, Chloe took Oliver’s head in her hands and kissed him passionately, Oliver still holding me down. They pulled apart and lingered in each other’s eyes to share a look that, I could not deny, suggested True Love. Their bravado left me awestruck and begrudgingly impressed. The cocaine made it hard to be critical.
“Wow.”
I left it at that, not wanting to incite further violence. Oliver sensed my reservation and smirked.
“No quips this time?”
“No. Love is Love.”
And I meant it. The offense of incest was the least offensive part of Chloe and Oliver, who already were the most despicable people I’d ever known. I just hoped they weren’t planning to have children because that would be a whole other ethical quandary. But I was derailing myself. To the point: “I’m not a terrorist, I swear. I got this shirt at the MAZ, yes, but I’m not part of The Clock Is Stuck At Midnight; they just happened to be there, and I really really don’t think they’re part of ANTIFA, and I really really don’t think ANTIFA is trying to infiltrate your Mockingbird Support party. As for the graffiti, I don’t know, that was there when I got here. You may think I’m lying, but I think you guys have made a big mistake.”
Arms crossed, the twain considered me, stern-yet-bemused, like they were my nannies and I was fibbing about my bedtime. I hoped the Fantastic Incestual Duo were not going to murder me yet. Instead, with only a nod in exchange, Chloe and Oliver seemed to decide on something. Oliver let go of my shirt and stepped back. Chloe spoke: “No, we do believe you.”
Imagine my surprise. With aching slowness I straightened my posture and took a sidelong glance at the exit. The cocaine made it exceedingly difficult to latch on to any one of my flitting thoughts, but the one that remained stapled at the top of the to-do list was Flee Immediately Once I Am Not So Curious, so I replied, “Oh?”
“We’ve had a change of heart; the charade is unnecessary. We’re going to let you in on a secret. Are you ready?”
I nodded yes. Even for the sake of spite I couldn’t feign disinterest. Chloe’s cat eyes glinted with a hunter’s triumph and her pompous British accent became even more unhurried and unconcerned, enjoying all the time in the world to bat her prey around. Oliver seemed less pleased. The change of plans had deprived him of his utility, as there was no longer much need for a violent bully. Neutered, he paced around impatiently, crossing and re-crossing his arms, checking his phone glumly, peeing intermittently and pulling out a flask every now and then to keep the buzz going.
I ran my nose along my forearm, leaving a trail of mucus and blood in the hairs. We all looked at it.
“Can I clean up as you explain?”
“Will you be able to pay attention?”
“Of course.”
Chloe clapped. “Brilliant. The truth is we know you’re not involved with The Clock Is Stuck At Midnight. As we should: We own them. Brands need investors, Seth. They’re no more a threat to us than any one sheep is to their shepherd. They believe they are what they say they are, but they would be nothing without our money, and our money makes sure they never do anything.”
“Does The Clock Is…” It was too long to keep saying. “Does The Clock know its own investors called the cops to shoot up their MAZ?”
“No, but we think they’d understand. Conflict is currency. There’s no ANTIFA without the FA, right?”
“That’s technically true.”
“And it goes all the way up, my dear,” Chloe continued, delighted. “We organized the MAZ, planted the shirt for you to pick up, and graffitied the stall wall. You’re our patsy. It’s not untrue that we did our research on you–as the only plus-one, Daddy said we were somewhat inclined.” ‘Daddy’ made me cringe hard. “We quickly saw you were harmless, clearly no terrorist, not a person of interest at all. But that’s when we saw an opportunity, a way to turn your molehill into a profitable mountain. You see–”
“Wait.” I shook my head. “How were you so sure I’d do all the stuff you needed me to?”
Two pairs of eyes rolled at me. “Influence, you dolt! We’re influencers. We influence our followers and they give us the power of influence. Gain enough influence and you can direct it to specific ends, not just through social media but through the real world, as well. We manifested you passing through the MAZ and buying the shirt. Don’t worry about it. What’s important is that all the fine people here tonight, the children of Mockingbird Support, will be told that we caught an ANTIFA agent attempting to infiltrate. And who smuggled the invalid in?”
She was obviously being rhetorical but I blurted, “Gloria?”
“Exactly!” Chloe trilled with pride. “And then she’s done. We don’t like her.”
“Not in the slightest,” Oliver chimed in.
I glanced again at the exit. The plot was thickening before me, and while I was dying to know what their beef was with Gloria, I had no plans to turn the figurative phrase literal. I told myself to make a break for it now–to hell with their influence. No more playing it their way. Cocaine helped me do it as soon as I conceived it, way too fast, and it was news to me when I looked down and saw I’d used the leverage of the sink to launch myself towards the door with the ruby handle, right past Chloe and Oliver. Wow, this is so easy, I thought just as the glittering knob turned and the door opened to introduce the bouncer from out front, Leftside, looking sinister indeed, grinning and widening his stance to block my way. “Hello, Mister Plus One,” he hissed, then turned his attention over to Chloe and Oliver. “Is this one giving you any trouble? I’ve been keeping an eye on him like you asked.”
“Oh, it’s just as we feared,” Chloe said in a lying, worried voice. “We confronted him here to see if it was true, and it is: Seth is ANTIFA. We hoped the shirt was just a coincidence, but we found him scrawling his ghastly propaganda in the stall.”
“He’s as bad as they come,” Oliver added, barely not laughing.
Leftside didn’t even bother to check the stall. He nodded curtly, never taking his eyes off me. “It was brave of you two to take matters into your own hands, but your father gave me explicit orders to handle this situation and protect you. You’re obvious targets, you know; you should have stayed with the crowd.”
I shouldn’t have bothered, but I did. “Hey, man, this is a big–”
Not caring and not listening, Leftside grabbed my shoulders, spun me around, and proceeded to frisk me. Almost immediately he located the baggie of ketamine in my back pocket, dipping a pinky in to have a taste. He bore his straight, yellow teeth at me in a poor facsimile of a smile and theatrically pronounced “Uh oh!” as if on-stage. “Smuggling ketamine into the party. We can’t have that, can we?” Without breaking eye contact with me, Leftside tossed the drugs behind him for Chloe to catch one-handed. She walked to the door, opened it partway, then paused to address me, cocking her head like an intriguing idea had just presented itself.
“Huh. Gloria’s probably wondering where you are,” Chloe purred, examining the ketamine. “I should go find her; she seemed down when we left. Maybe a pick-me-up is all she needs. Or maybe,” she whispered maliciously, “she needs to go down further. I think the whole baggie will suffice.”
My eyes bulged and I tried to step to her, but Leftside easily held me back. “That’ll kill her!” I cried over his rock-hard shoulder. “Jesus, what the fuck’s your guys’ problem?”
Chloe considered the question with mild curiosity, like she hadn’t thought about it until I asked. “Gloria,” she started, “is special, isn’t she? There’s something about her. Pretty mysterious, an alluring aesthetic. Remarkable, unexplainable incidents follow her around, makes her think she’s better than everyone. Well, we’re jealous; I can admit it. God, it makes me a wreck to see people with an it-factor who don’t deserve it. But petty grievances aside, it’s just too extra having Gloria around. Within the last year, she’s become a mess, and between the secrets she’s privy to, her general refusal to communicate with transparency at sessions, and especially her erratic private behavior...” Chloe ticked off the liabilities on her fingers. “You already know best of all, don’t you, Seth? We’ve suffered her long enough, and Oliver and I figured tonight was a choice opportunity for some house cleaning. And just think how much more everyone will adore us after we put down a double-crossing slag and her ANTIFA boyfriend! Talk about social currency.”
That was Leftside’s cue to deck me, I guess. Faster than I thought a person could move, he put me in a chokehold and dropped us both to the floor, extracting every bit of air from my lungs. Over the screeching sound made by my heels kicking against the checkered tile, I heard, “Ta ta.” The door closed. I flailed against Leftside's embrace with all my strength, wheezed out cries for help, but there was no marked difference in his strangling bind. All my senses steadily seeped away, and I could no longer deny that I might be dying.
Then Oliver, rendered a blonde blob by my receding vision, approached and I heard him say something, his voice a series of vibrations that reached my ears like they’d traveled through water, muffled and unintelligible. He gestured in my direction and there was some kind of response from the man killing me, and they went back and forth like this for a while as I waved the long goodbye to life. Suddenly, the pressure around my neck released and I flopped over, my burning face pressed against the cool linoleum and hacking violently as my lungs frantically ushered oxygen back under their roof. Long, deep, shuddering breaths rattled my body as I feebly rose and saw what had interrupted my murder: more murder. Leftside lay at my feet with his chest to the floor and dead face pointed skyward, a confusing physicality that took me a second to diagnose. The assessment was dreadful; his neck had been snapped, twisted a full 180 degrees. Oliver stood off to the side, hair all askew, flexing his fingers and grimacing like he’d just sprained them, an athlete starting his season.
“Haven’t done that one in a while. All he had to do was listen, uppity bastard.”
Oliver and I looked between the corpse and each other, his eyes glassy and unfocused. He was drunk as hell, breathing heavily and swaying. Then he burped and pointed at me.
“We need you alive for a little longer, bruv.”
I turned and ran.
***
The world spun in revolutions and revelations. I’d passed through the looking glass and now I wanted to pass out, stumbling back down the bloody red hallway with my hand against the wall for support. The portrait imagining Marilyn Monroe atop the sinking Titanic wasn’t funny anymore. Nothing was. I looked over my shoulder as I shambled along to see if Oliver was in pursuit, and the distraction caused me to smash my thigh against the dining table in the main room, pushing it a good foot or two across the hardwood floor. Nerves frayed as they were, I screamed on impact, but all that came out was a grating, watery whisper, thanks to the strangulation. Then I noticed there was no one sitting at the table anymore. No one was in the house at all. For a moment my panic doubled, convinced an even higher level of conspiracy had emerged, but then I remembered the stupid raffle was soon and hoped therein lay the explanation. Like one of those cages that spin bingo balls, my mind turned thought over thought in unhelpful cascades.
Raffle, went one.
Fuck the British, went another.
FIND GLORIA, went the ultimate, and it jarred me out of my momentary paralysis. Between a walk and a run I moved towards the front door, but the vacancy of the place allowed for a clearer look at the works of art lining the walls, and once the theme that connected them all presented itself to me, I couldn’t help but pause.
Turns out the Monroe/Titanic piece was just one in a series. Done in an eclectic array of styles, the paintings imagined famous historical catastrophes with a Hollywood star posed at the center of the action. John Travolta held up a peace sign next to a Japanese woman with her eyes melted out from atomic radiation; Don Cheadle wore a dapper suit and smoked a fat cigar as the Hindenburg erupted behind him; Natalie Portman was on the Trail of Tears, giving an unsuspecting Native American a blanket. This was idol worship, this was fanfiction. I came so close to tearing down the one that depicted Chris Evans praying at the foot of Fred Hampton’s bed, but I heard the door to the bathroom open so I fled instead.
My hunch was correct. All the attendees were gathered in front of the house for the raffle, everyone facing a very young man, maybe a boy, who addressed them from a slightly-raised gazebo with a flute of champagne in-hand. The host, for that’s who I assumed him to be, had black hair greased into a comb-over and cherub cheeks acting as parentheses to an enthused grin, and on hisself he wore a full tux that made his short arms hang stiffly, betraying the newness of the outfit. Despite his boyishness and lack of presence, I could see the host held himself with pride, looking for all the world like a high-functioning mannequin.
Looking around, I saw the whole crowd had their flutes raised; a coordinated toast was happening. String lights, previously unseen and laced throughout the elaborate garden, had been turned on at some point to combat the night, and my view of the spectacle from the front porch was admittedly beautiful, like standing on the shore of a rolling sea of stars.
“I don’t want to take up too much of your time,” the host began, “before we get to the famous Mockingbird Support Raffle [cheery murmurs], so let me quickly speak on behalf of the organization and thank you all for another great year. We have a special community here. Popular knowledge would have you believe that the children of billionaires are invulnerable and selfish. But I think if anyone was allowed to sit in on one of our sessions [laugh], they would see that just the opposite is true.”
I understood, then, the cunning of Chloe’s timing. Gloria might have been suspicious if Chloe had offered her a drink apropos of nothing, but if it’s a formality, if everyone’s doing it, her intentions would be cloaked, and I suspected Gloria would not be turning down any drinks at the moment. I cursed our earlier tiff and used the reverie as cover to scramble down the stairs and into the crowd, working with no plan except to find Gloria before she swallowed a lethal dose of ketamine. Jockeying through the mass of affluent bodies, anxious sweat pouring into the open cuts patterning my face and scalp, I felt no regret for finding myself in a race against psycho billionaire incestual offspring at their exclusive party in L.A. My understanding of the situation, fragmented and confused as it was, made me believe that if I hadn’t come, the plot I was fighting against would have killed Gloria without any resistance. Now there was a chance for me to do all I could do.
The boy on top of the chair kept delivering banal, summative comments about Mockingbird Support’s excellent year, which everyone was treating as decorative white noise, hooting or clapping intermittently but mostly speaking amongst themselves. I couldn’t and wouldn’t follow what he was saying, but was keeping an ear open to catch when he reached the part where we were supposed to drink.
Finally I spotted Gloria’s black cloud of hair at the fringe of the crowd, but my heart turned icy cold when I saw Chloe’s villainous platinum head lean in towards Gloria’s, no doubt planting the poison. I tried to call out to Gloria, to warn her, but all I could manage was a noiseless croak from my damaged windpipe. Waving vape smoke from my eyes, I plowed through one last wall of trust-fund babies just as I heard “A toast!” ring out across the yard. Everyone raised their glasses and I pushed towards Gloria with renewed vigor, accidentally shouldering people here and there, making champagne spill in my hair. I missed what the host called for us to drink to, but heard the audience’s resounding reply: “To living the dream!”
I reached Gloria and Chloe just as they downed their champagne. Chloe ducked away from Gloria’s side and whispered in my ear, “Too late, hotshot,” before patting my shoulder and slipping away. Gloria pulled the empty glass from her lips and almost spit out its contents when she saw my ravaged state. Almost. Just as I reached out to stop her, Gloria went on to swallow the contents of the glass before crying out, “Holy shit! What happened to your face?”
Hand falling silently back to my side, I stiffened with grief even as my brain screamed at me all the necessities of action, how every second passing was death, that I needed to be jamming fingers down the girl’s throat. But I wasn’t doing any of that. Somewhere on the other side of the world, the young host droned on about the raffle and the wonderful prizes that were available. I could only assume that Chloe and Oliver were out amongst the crowd, waiting for the right moment to pull the trigger on their ANTIFA accusations, likely planning to blame Gloria’s pending overdose on myself. Or not. Anything could happen.
“Seth?”
Gloria’s expression transitioned from shock to concern. She put her glass down in the grass and stepped to me, reaching out to feel a part of my forehead that burned with a particular intensity. At her touch, my flesh cooled immediately, and the sudden relief jump-started me back into motion. Perhaps with too much force I swatted Gloria’s hand aside and clutched her shoulder, the soft fabric of her jumpsuit pinched in my shaking fingers. I pointed to my throat to indicate its malfunction as I furiously coughed and cleared my throat.
At last I forced out: “Your drink. Chloe poison. All the ketamine.”
Gloria looked at her glass while I clawed at her jumpsuit with increased agitation, impatient for her to process the dilemma.
“Chloe poured all of your ketamine into my drink that I just drank?”
Gloria spoke with a calmness typically uncharacteristic of the fatally dosed. I nodded emphatically, tears welling up as I mouthed I’m sorry over and over. Her stillness was freaking me out. I wanted for her to scream at me to help her throw up, to ask me why I hadn’t dialed 911 yet (something I felt safe in assuming was hopeless), to make me promise to avenge her untimely demise; anything to direct the unwieldy force of my fear. Instead, Gloria studied my grief like it was an especially evocative cloud in the sky, with equal parts wonder, intrigue, and patience. I could see her upper lip had begun to perspire and her eyelids were fluttering at an erratic rhythm. She shifted from one foot to another, searching for a failing equilibrium.
“It’s alright, Seth,” Gloria murmured drowsily. “I might be fine. Remember what I saw? It hasn’t happened yet. It’s coming to pass.”
I shook my head, fully crying now.
“I don’t know, Gloria,” I sobbed. “I never saw it the same way as you.”
Gloria tipped my chin up so I could meet her gaze that dismantled itself in real time, submerging to the back of her skull and, like the vacuum of a sinking ship, using its gravity to suck me down with her. Something was happening. Nobody was paying attention to our scene. I wasn’t sure if we were there anymore.
Gloria’s nose began to bleed.
“Seth, your nose is bleeding,” she said, and lifted her finger to my upper lip.
“Don’t you remember the day I left for L.A.?”
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