"They say you can survive high school. Well, perhaps not.
A homage to slashers, everything Lynchian, high schools, crime and punishment, sex and conservatism, popular culture and romance, this loosely written and casually spun novella takes you into the repressed and the debauched, the murders and the laughs, the families and the friends of a good ole American town where nothing is as it seems, and no one is going to be a hero. All of it began with the murder of a young girl."
*****
"Mr Beaumont, you're under arrest."
What?
"You have the right to remain silent."
This is so not happening. Am I dreaming?
"If you do say anything, what you say can be used against you in a court of law."
Quick! Wake up! Wake up dammit! This is not how this day was supposed to end. And this is sure as hell not the way this evening was supposed to have come down to. I couldn't breathe anymore. Fuck! I needed to breathe. I needed to get out. The burly policeman moved forward with a purposeful and demanding pace, bringing out the cuffs with a metallic clang. The other policemen were cordoning off the stage which was now bustling- not with the actors as was the case a half an hour ago or a confused and screaming horde of the cast, the crew and the audience fifteen minutes ago- but with officers, detectives, forensics and all kinds of people who you would call when such a thing had happened.
Such a thing... a terrible thing that is sure as hell going to get this university town a lot of press way beyond its annual gardening competitions or garage sales. No sir, no! This was going to go down in the town's memory as the evening when its modest and moral population finally got to meet its underbelly, its repressed secrets, bound in flesh and strung with blood. This was going to be the evening when a series of unfortunate events would be kick started that would irrevocably change the memories of this town.
I felt my throat constrict. Fuck! I was hyperventilating. I could not breathe. What the actual fuck! When did I become this snivelling anxious measly boy? I was cool, I was Mean Girls' level of indifferent and snappy. But here I was facing down a huge policeman walking towards me as everyone in the crowd stood watching. Many had let out a whelp, a collective hiss of shock that quickly ebbed into murmurs, the hisses and the whispers of small townsfolk that would make you want to take a meat knife and carve out these gonad gossipers.
Wrong thought! Wrong thought! Do NOT think of murders and knives and carving out people! Damn you Troy! Not now! This is exactly why you're in this trouble right now! You're stupid, so darn stupid. First, you ended up here, surrounded by policemen and these annoying pests, and now you're thinking of murder as Patricia Roy lies fine as hell, and fine as dead, pretty much dead centre of the stage. Good going, bud!
"Troy! TROY!"
Oh No! They were here. They were finally here. Okay! Now I'm officially booked. This is worse than an episode of Game of Thrones. At least there you don't get a heads up and people just get killed and everyone moves on till the next murder; and no one has a problem with being gay or being retarded, or breeding and hatching dragons or fucking their sisters. (God! I hate that show!) Here? Well, here you've got judgemental pricks of the good ole American township, post-segregation and post-immigration but still frowning multi-racial-don't-talk-about-it-diversity, and my Catholic parents who crossed themselves at the mention of them homosexuals aka devil's spawns and went to Sunday mass to pray for these demented possessed sheep-in-wolf's clothing; and who were now running up to the gallery where I stood surrounded by policemen and townsmen, with my date for the evening right by my side, who was now going to get charged and arrested with first degree murder.
Brilliant!
Oh! Did I forget to mention? So, I'm not facing these idiots alone, and technically I'm not the primary in this trouble. The primary is my evening's date, something of a took-me-by-the-heels of a relationship of 5 days, a pretty jock with blue eyes and the lean body of a bloody footballer with the head cheerleader as his girlfriend while I was the 'chic on the side'... the new kid in town and the town's high school who had been smitten by blue eyes, chiselled pecs and abs, post-practice musky scent from a gorgeous cock. Guilty as charged. So much for my high IQ and aced classes, and my arrogance and my ego, here I was just like one of those pansy gay dudes smitten by a "straight-acting-jock". ending up in the gallery for a play that I was not going to watch but blowjob my way through, only to be somehow end up with a date charged with murder and about to be arrested.
Karma really has a bitchy sense of humour, no? Except I didn't think karma counted when you were screwing the bitchy cheerleader's jock boyfriend. I thought that would balance the karma. Oh well, so much for sex and high school, boyfriends and dead girls.
