
     You listen to Nathan snore and check the time on the alarm clock.

     “11:09 PM”

     The second bed is empty. You would have slept in it, but Nathan had been crying last night, so now you're laying beside him with a pillow between you. 

     He left your cash beside his wallet on the TV stand. You slip out of bed, gently as not to wake him. You grab your new coat off the hook and let the fur swallow you, then you count the money. He gave you an extra ten, so you sneak fifty back into his wallet.

     The cold night air licks your face as you open the door. You give him one last look and whisper,

     “Goodnight, Nate.”

     The last bus home leaves at 11:45 so you brace the cold and step out into the night.

______________________

     You call yourselves the Animal Posse. 

     Snow tumbles down from the sky in rolling currents, tapping against the windshield and melting from the warmth of the heater. Foghorn drives the van, watching the road through the eye-holes of his rubber chicken mask.

     The Posse is structured like a film crew. Foghorn is your casting director. Pony is in charge of marketing. Mean Girl is the host and you're the choreographer.

     They call you The President. You wear a Ronald Reagan mask.

     In the back, shrouded by shadows, sits the director, camera man, and executive producer of this entire operation, wearing the face of a rubber German Shepherd and fiddling with his old VHS camera. 

     You call him Scoob.

     The van pulls down the street and up ahead you see the Amtrak viaduct. There's a beat-down, empty lot to the right of the road and Foghorn pulls in, parking in the back corner by a dumpster.
 
     He flips off the truck and you wait.
 
     Mean Girl zips open the duffel bag in the back and starts handing out tools. Pony takes a boxcutter. Scoob takes a large wrench. Mean Girl gives you a hammer and keeps a crowbar for herself. 

     Your palms are sweating now and your foot is tapping like a jackrabbit. There's this excited, nauseous feeling in your gut that you can't decide whether you like or not. It's like the feeling you got when you smoked a cigarette for the first time, or how you imagine it would feel to lose your virginity.

     You watch the rearview mirror with Foghorn for the next twenty minutes or so. You see some girls, a few druggies, a couple drunks, and you wait for Foghorn's signal but it doesn't come. Not yet.

     Then you see her.

     She's wearing a black, fur coat that's way too big and walking in this strange way, like she's lost or high on something. Foghorn says nothing. He just points at her reflection and you nod in return.

     Scoob starts the recording and the four of you hop out and leave Foghorn in the driver's seat. The woman is looking away so you shut the door as quietly as possible and try your best not to scuff your feet against the asphalt. 

     She doesn't see you until it's too late. Her eyes widen and she tries to fight back but there's four of you and ninety pounds of her. She nearly tears off Pony's horse mask in the struggle, but Pony bends her finger back and twists her arm behind her. Mean Girl swings her crowbar into the woman's stomach, sending her keeling over.

     She breaks free of Pony's grip and makes it three bounds before you catch up with her and clumsily swing your hammer into the back of her skull. She doubles over and falls flat against the asphalt with a thud. 

     Pony and Mean Girl help you drag her to the van and load her in the back while Scoob films it. Pony grabs a rope and climbs on the woman's back, tying her hands together as Foghorn flips the car back on and peels out.

     “Where are you taking me?” The woman mumbles, her words slurred.

     Foghorn drives ten minutes out of town and parks beneath the bridge by the river. You ask Pony for her boxcutter and with her and Foghorn's help, you drag the woman out behind the van and put her on her knees. She's sniffling and you can tell the hammer gave her some kind of brain damage as rather than begging for her life, she's mumbling something about a train she missed.

     You surround her.

     Scoob points the camera at her as you press the blade beneath her left ear. Just as she starts to say, “That feels cold,” you dig the blade into her neck and yank her head back by her hair.

     It doesn't go deep enough the first time, so you saw into her throat until the gash reaches ear to ear. Blood leaks out by the litre with a cloud of steam and her body spasms with the last few beats of her heart.

     And then she's still.


"Mister Americana" Part 18