The only real dignity is that of exclusion—EM Cioran
On the morning of Kimmie's death, we didn't talk much. I unlocked her from the chair, told her to lift her arms, sprayed her off, she got dressed, and Anna and I escorted her to the truck, my Glock on her every step of the way.
Anna sat in the middle, as protection of me as the driver in case Kimmie tried to crash the car or something. I held the gun between my left leg and the door. Anna held Kimmie by the arm.
I drove Anna for the first time to the place she'd seen in my videos—my rock field—and when we got there she gasped.
Miles and miles of small boulders, most of them draped with the corpse of a dead girl. Some were bones. Some you could still see their faces.
We all got out of the truck.
Anna let go of Kimmie's arm.
The three of us stood there in a line, Anna's mouth open.
"How does no one know about this place?" she says.
We all take in the endlessness of the field.
"How is this possible?"
"That I kept it a secret?"
Anna nods.
"I didn't have to."
"But how come no one has just happened across it?"
"Because. They teach you in school that space is linear."
"Right."
"But it's not."
"You haven't convinced me."
"If you're walking next to a swamp, do you know what's in the swamp? No, you don't. It's right there but you can't go in it because space isn't like they present it on a map. Just 'cause you can draw a line there doesn't mean you can go there..or that anybody will ever see it."
"No. I'm sorry. This is. Just. Not. Possible."
"It's big land out here, honey. People just don't go this way."
"What about Google Earth?"
"Oh, there are lots of things Google Earth doesn't show, Anna."
"What, do you put your location on a list and say I have a hundred corpses here can you please clean it up?"
"Well, no. But there are hidden email addresses, where if you send some coordinates, certain things can happen. And there's only about fifty corpses out there."
Anna shakes her head.
I take a few steps forward.
Anna says, "I just don't see how it can be that easy to erase geographic data from satellites."
"Have you looked at Google Earth lately?—The north pole isn't even there!!"
"What do you mean it isn't there?"
"I mean they covered it up. There's no ice anymore—it's just a bunch of water. Unless you look at NASA's maps..in which case..it's just a bunch of ice."
"That's impossible to believe. People would have noticed the difference."
"No. Because they're all watching TV, being lied to by entertainment news. That shit is deadly. I'm serious. It'll leave you worse off than what we're about to do to Kimmie here."
"So what happens if you look this place up on satellite?"
"It shows up as a limestone desert with a bunch of empty rocks on it."
"And all you need to do that is a hidden email address?"
"Like everything in this world, Anna, what you need is the right relationships."
Anna looks at me in shock.
"Kimmie, you wanna pick your boulder?"
She looks at me like: Now? For real?
And I look at her like: Yeah. For real.
She walks around a little and picks a small boulder.
"You can sit on that."
She does.
She looks back and forth between me and Anna, then her expression changes to that of a sad dog.
She stamps her feet.
"Are you serious?"
" 'Fraid so."
Kimmie starts tapping her sandals in the dirt, playing with her sunglasses, lifting them, lowering them, seeing which way she likes better.
"You could have picked a better person to do this to," she says. "I'm not a bad gal."
"I know you're not."
"Well can we wait another month? I'll let you do anything you want to me."
"I know you would."
"Why today?! Why is today my day?? You don't know what this feels like. I feel like I can't breathe. I think I'm gonna have a panic attack. My mind is rushing like crazy. You know? I mean, does this mean my life isn't worth anything..if it ever was?"
"Kimmie, would you be quiet for a second."
I'm fiddling with a vial and a piece of paper.
Kimmie reduces her sound to a series of sobs and sniffles.
"You watch TV?" I ask her.
"Yeah."
"You know America's Got Talent?"
"Yeah."
"Ok. We are going to kill you today. But this doesn't mean your life isn't worth anything. It just means you didn't make it to the live shows."
Kimmie goes back to bawling.
I go up to her and put my hand on her shoulder.
"Don't worry, baby. In three minutes you're not going to be scared of anything."
I go back to Anna and hand her the piece of paper.
"Blow it in her face. Don't inhale."
Anna holds the folded piece of printer paper like she's holding a grenade, making sure her fingers don't touch the powder.
She goes up to Kimmie and blows it in her face.
Kimmie rubs her nose.
Anna takes a few steps back.
"Was that scopolamine?"
"Yes. Is it all gone?"
Anna nods, looking at the paper in fascination.
"Fold it, top side in. Fold it once more. Now drop it. Don't touch it again."
"How much did we give her?"
"Eight milligrams."
"Isn't that a bit much?"
"For what we're about to do to her, she deserves a full dose."
"What if it kills her?"
"Then she dies a few minutes early."
Anna looks at me, lost.
"It's not gonna kill her. It's one-third the LD50, remember? It's not gonna kill her. It's just gonna make her forget, and that's the greatest gift we can give to her right now."
"How did you know she was gonna be a small girl?"
"What are you talking about?"
"When we met Kimmie you only had three milligrams of Devil's Breath and when I asked how you knew it was gonna be enough you said Good guess. How did you know? Did you have somebody on the bus? Are you psychic or something because right now I would believe it if you said you were."
"I'm not psychic. I didn't know anything. I would have packed three milligrams for anybody. I just didn't want to have that much up my nose. Three milligrams would have worked on Jesse Ventura. I didn't know she was gonna be a small girl. I just said Good guess to be funny. It didn't mean anything."
Anna gives me a side hug.
"Let's get this over with."
"You wanna make her finger herself or something?"
"What's the point? We already had her do everything imaginable."
"True," I say. "How you feeling, Kimmie?"
"Ok."
"You remember how we got here?"
"We drove."
"You remember why we're here."
"To kill me."
"You're ok with that, aren't you?"
"Yeah," she says.
I hand the Glock to Anna.
"Give it to her."
Anna goes up and gives the Glock to the dead girl.
"Now don't shoot us or anything!" Anna says.
"Don't say that! Don't say that! She's open to suggestion! Only suggest things you want her to do!"
"I said don't shoot us!"
"Stop saying that! It suggests the opposite! Kimmie, we're all friends here. You're just holding the gun because Anna's going a bit crazy and I need someone to keep an eye on her."
"Fuck. You," Anna says.
"You're welcome. Anyway, Kimmie, that gun isn't designed to kill people."
"It isn't?"
"No, it just injures them. It's completely non-lethal. But it does sting so please don't point it at anyone or pull the trigger or anything."
Anna looks like she's going to be sick.
"Now tell her to point the gun at her forehead."
Anna says, "Kimmie, point the gun at your forehead."
Kimmie does.
"You know I love you, right?"
"I know."
"Pull the trigger," Anna says.
Kimmie smiles.
Her last words are, "This is gonna sting."
Then she shoots herself through the head with my Glock.
Klack!!
She drops like a doll.
She falls over backward on the rock.
The gun hits the dirt.
I go over and pick it up.
"Good job Anna."
Anna doesn't move.
"Good job, Anna. Now let's go!"
But Anna stops me with her eyes. They're oceans. But oceans where you never want to go, like the oceans below South America.
She grabs the gun.
She points it at her head.
"Why?" I say.
"I can't live another minute with what I just did."
"Yes you can. Yes you can!"
She shakes her head.
"I'm not like you."
We lock eyes.
"I didn't mean that as a judgment."
"I didn't take it as one. Just hand me the Glock."
"Am I on Devil's Breath?" Anna asks.
"No."
"How long have you been planting messages in my subconscious?"
"It's what I do, babe."
"Did you mind control me to kill her?"
I shake my head.
"So I told her to do that of my own free will?"
"Yes."
Anna squints her eyes and pulls the trigger and I lunge for her arm.
But the gun goes off.
I got a hand on her but all I managed to do was pull her arm down.
And now, instead of a hole in her temple, there's a hole in her neck, and blood is coming out all over her.
I try to plug the hole with my hands but it's impossible.
I keep my hands there until she dies anyway.
"I realized I couldn't live with myself," she says.
"When did you realize this?"
"Just now."
"Fuck," I say.
And she says, "Look, I'm going be here among your dead girls."
I know I only have a few seconds with her.
I try to think of the most important thing to say.
"I never had as much fun as I did with you and I don't think I'm going to be going on."
Anna laughs.
"I don't think I'm going to be going on either," she says.
Then she grabs my neck.
"But I will go on with you, as the final living dead girl that you never knew."
"That's a funny thing to say."
"Guess why you think that?"
"Why?"
" 'Cause I just did a confusion induction on you."
"Did you really?"
"Yes."
She coughs blood.
"All your subconscious thoughts are open to me now."
"What are you going to plant there?"
"I am going to plant..that you leave all this behind..and become a happy person. That there are no more dead girls, only living ones..ones you like better than me."
"No," I say.
"Yes," she says. "Ones you like 10 times better than me."
"I don't know if I could ever find a girl like that."
"You will."
"What else are you going to plant?"
"One final thing."
She coughs—a huge amount of blood.
"Peonies," she says.
She's gripping me so tight.
"Do I really smell like peonies?"
"Yes, you really do."
She laughs.
"I've never even smelled a peony."
"They smell like..your grandmother's garden. They smell..like roses and citrus in the morning. Their oils are volatile, but they dissipate throughout the day..and at night they just smell clean."
"And that smells like me?" she says, losing consciousness.
And I say yes.
And she goes limp in my arms.
And I hold her.
And I can feel the beating of my heart against Anna's body.
And I'm left in my field, alive, with all the dead around me.
Four years worth of killing.
Without guilt or regret.
But I did feel very very empty.
Kneeling there.
In the boulder field.
That went on forever.
In the plains of South Dakota.
All alone.
Among the corpses.
Of my dead girls.