Mannequin

*As posted to the social media page of Kylie Irvine, minutes before her capture at the Oasis Springs Motel, an hour west of Flagstaff, Arizona on October 19th , 2019.

The motel room window is weather-beaten from years of desert sand smashing against it. Dead wasps are trapped between screen and windowpane. A road rolls out forever. They are coming. Blue lights, kicking up dust, visible heat rising. I’m done running. Brian is dead and deserves to be. I’ve done everything I can to try and feel alive.

This is my confession.

My name is Kylie Irvine. I’m 19. You will read about me online. Magazine covers. They will babble about me on TV.

People who knew me will be shocked. Brian must have made her do it. Brainwashed. Taken against her will. Forced to perform atrocities unimaginable. Violated. Dehumanized.

Wrong.

Loved every minute.

Where did it all start? Dad who touched her?

Nope.

Dad was the nicest guy ever. Loved my mom more than anyone should love another person. The cunt.

Problematic childhood? Bullied? Developmental issues? Poor?

Nope.

Great childhood. I still recall it in dreams. I’d love to go back right now and never leave, and I’m not just saying that because of the awful things we did. It has nothing to do with that. Childhood is beautiful. There’s excitement about life.

I grew up in Colorado. A town called Cyprus. Any idea how beautiful this place is? It’s so fake looking it’s insane. You should see my high school. It sits in the center of a hill surrounded by a perfect forest with a snow-capped mountain behind it. I felt like an asshole every time I got dropped off.

I was a great student. Honors across the board. I had the moronic ribbons on my gown. Went to prom with a boy as hot as he was dumb and believe me this meat sack was scorching.

I made him go down on me for an hour before letting him fuck me until I couldn’t see straight. Then demanded he take me out for ice cream at two am. Everything was closed so I told him to start stirring sugar, milk and cream.

When Brian cut him from neck to nuts it was disappointing. The dumb bastard could fuck. He should have at least been put out to pasture to stud.

Here’s the thing, I wasn’t even fucking him when I knew Brian either. That was a year before we met. Long before he asked the question about boys.

How many? Tell me what it was like with each of them, Brian said. The sick fuck. God, I loved him. Little did I know they’d all have to die.

You have to understand, Brian was raised Pentecostal. He doesn’t talk about the church. He’s definitely not like most people. Well, that’s an understatement now. I mean then.

He just didn’t have the experiences others had. It was like he was five when he was thirteen, but smart as thirteen in most ways except social. He got out at thirteen.

Free, he got hooked on action movies. He loved the bad guys. Hated it when they lost. Couldn’t wrap his head around it.

He was a virgin. Guess he wanted me to be, too. I kept asking if I should stop but he sat there asking for more. When I finished, he snapped. Not at me, I could just tell. It was like he thought someone else got something that was his before he had the chance and now there was something he could never have, and he wanted to fight the whole idea of human existence because of it.

Old Brian left. You could take the picture. Before that conversation and after.

He became all the villains.

I didn’t even like him like that before. Up until then, we’d never held hands. Before he went nuts, I wouldn’t let him touch me. After he went loco, he turned me to mush.

Okay, there’s a lot of these, so where do I start?

Everybody wants to know about the drive-thru guy. There are a thousand theories, main one being some version of him getting our order wrong.

Not it. We weren’t hungry.

Brian just got it in his head we’d drive through, threaten whoever came on the microphone and see what they said.

The drive-thru guy asked for our order and Brian said, “here’s your order, stay away from the window because I’m about to drive around and shoot whoever’s standing in it.”

There was silence and then the guy said, “fuck you” and “come the fuck on around.”

Brian cackled. Not sure I ever saw him happier. Then his face fell serious and we drove around. The guy was leaning out the drive-thru window, flipping the bird and yelling. He took a swing as we approached but Brian leaned over towards me. The drive-thru guy fell halfway out and tried to pull himself back. He didn’t make it. Brian grabbed his hair and shot a bullet into his brain.

The employees inside screamed. I never witnessed fear like that in a group before. I could feel the weight of the fear. The still air. The enhanced sounds. It’s like reality became more there and I could slide across it like a frozen lake, right over beside those people in that fast food place and hear their whimpers, touch the sweat on their necks, wipe the tears from their eyes.

Brian slowly drove out of the drive thru and entered traffic. I glanced back and saw the drive thru guy hanging halfway out of the window still. He resembled a mannequin. The pool of blood dripping from his head spread out so wide you could probably see it from both sides of a car if you were parked over it. The blood was black and looked like oil. As we turned the corner, somebody pulled him in.

Wilson Koewing is a writer from South Carolina. He received an MFA in creative from The University of New Orleans. He lives in Denver, Colorado. His work has been featured or is forthcoming in Five on the Fifth, Tiny Molecules, X-R-A-Y, Door is a Jar, The Menacing Hedge, and Pembroke Magazine. He is a fiction reader for The Maine Review and Craft.