Chthonic

Olive Lambert

Two events occurred in the same week that threw Laffy’s Playland into disarray: waitress Amy Rivera was murdered and the soda machine stopped working. The stickyfingered kids ran underfoot, and their prescription-addled parents were more concerned about the latter. The soda machine spurted out nothing but murky, tasteless water, and no amount of wailing from the brats would fix it. Megaera was grateful this was the only liquid she had to mop off the floor now.

Thanks to Amy kicking the bucket, the restaurant was now more understaffed than ever. Megaera’s boss, Lowe Mitchell, held a meeting about the murder in the days following, which doubled as a reminder to the remaining staff that he was not looking to hire a replacement for Amy any time soon, and that the soda machine would remain broken for the foreseeable future.

“At least she had the decency to die just off the property, so I didn’t have to clean all those guts up,” Lowe said, chuckling to himself. When none of the staff reciprocated his jovialness, he spat on the floor. “You all need to lighten the hell up.”

When he wasn’t giving the world’s worst pep talks, Lowe spent his days hiding in the closet-sized office at the back of Laffy’s Playland. The door remained shut, lights on, as a crude Keep Out sign hung precariously by an ancient piece of tape. The only thing the staff knew for sure was that Lowe did everything except his job inside that hole. If it weren’t for the red 90’s muscle car leaking oil in the parking lot, one might suspect most days that Lowe had met the same fate as Amy.

In between wiping ketchup off booth seats and sweeping sand across the floor, Megaera scoured the newspapers for information about Amy’s murder. This was more out of morbid curiosity than affection for her slain coworker. Nowadays, butchered bodies inevitably led to the town’s favorite gossip pastime: The Desert Stalker. The townsfolk treated it as a psychotic choose-your-own adventure monster: crazed madman, cannibal, or cryptid?

Amy’s face was front page news for an entire two days, alongside descriptions of how her mutilated body had been found along the highway outside Laffy’s Playland, bright blue apron covering her face. All the while, that title, The Desert Stalker, sat in bold font next to her face. Then, nothing. The news and town moved on. No developments, no leads. Megaera threw the papers away with increasing anger.

Despite the Desert Stalker apparently raising its body count, the town was not highly concerned about safety. Other than a shabbily constructed memorial for Amy along the highway, life went on as normal. Megaera went to work, wore the bright blue apron that cinched under her breasts the way Lowe liked it, and told snot-nosed children that unfortunately Laffy’s Playland could not serve soda at the moment.

The setting sun blazed through the sand-coated windows as the last few customers of the day meandered out. Red and orange sky bled into the Arizona desert at the horizon, cacti turning black under the heavy shadows. The highway carved through the landscape like a wound. Megaera began mopping the checkerboard floors. A pointless task; they would remain sticky until the nuclear apocalypse.

“Looks like someone didn’t have a Laffy-good day,” said Miguel, poking at Megaera from under the moth-eaten mascot of Laffy the Duck.

“Fuck off.” Megaera swung her mop at him, a water spot darkening the side of the costume. Not that a wash of any kind could fix Laffy the Duck. Some of the costume’s better attributes were the threadbare wings, the deformed and browning beak, and the soulless eyes that were red for an unknown reason. The staff often referred to it as Laffy the Piss Monster due to the sickly yellow color. Miguel was the only one stupid enough to wear the costume. Megaera was convinced he came to work high out of his mind.

Miguel removed the head, brown hair already slicked down from his own sweat. “How much more do you have to do?”

“Finish mopping this shit hole and then wipe down tables.”

“I’ll drive you home then,” Miguel said, already stepping out of Laffy the Piss Monster.

Megaera waved him off and concentrated on scrubbing a pertinacious black mark under the table. She hoped it was mold.

“Meg, that wasn’t a yes or no question.”

Of course, he was incapable of letting her be. “It’s not a far walk to the ranch,” Megaera said, trying not to snarl. “Don’t be so paranoid.”

“Amy died literally right over there.” Miguel pointed to the memorial, which had fallen over from the backdraft of a passing tractor trailer. “It’s not paranoia at this point.”

Megaera abandoned the black mark and dragged her mop and bucket to the other side of the restaurant. “Overkill of that nature and the covering of her face suggest Amy knew who was killing her. I did not know Amy; therefore, I likely do not know her killer, and they, if they are still hanging around here, have no reason to kill me. I will walk home.”

Miguel stared out the front windows, squinting at the final blaze of glory as the sun dipped below the horizon. The black velvet sky bloomed to life with pinprick stars and wispy clouds.

“Overkill can also mean extreme hatred,” he said, “and covering her face could mean remorse. By those standards, the killer would have less of a reason to ignore another easy target, and if the killer is the Desert Stalker, then it has no reason whatsoever to let you live.” Megaera looked at him. Miguel shrugged and offered a tentative smile. “You’re not the only one who watches crime shows, nerd.”

Megaera abandoned the mop and picked up a rag. The floor was hopeless; the tables could be improved marginally. “But it’s not the Desert Stalker, which doesn’t exist at all.”

Miguel huffed. “Then who do you think killed Amy?”

Megaera thought for a minute, letting soapy water drizzle over a table splattered with ranch. “Perhaps it was God.”

“You think God mauled her?” Miguel clearly did not follow her logic.

“He probably didn’t like her face. She wasn’t his best work.”

The deep and aggravated sigh Miguel let out was Megaera’s sign she had won. “Fine, walk if you choose,” he said. “I tried my best.”

“If I die then you can say ‘I told you so’ at my funeral.”

Miguel said nothing in response. A few minutes later, his truck rattled to life sounding like a smoker on a fresh pack. Megaera watched the rust-colored vehicle pull onto the road and head towards town, dull headlights struggling to pierce the night. Miguel barely had enough gas to get him to and from work until the next paycheck. It was smart not to waste any taking her to her family’s ranch. Megaera had done this walk every day since being hired at Laffy’s Playland last year, and she knew she was the most dangerous thing in the night. The Desert Stalker had not killed Amy, she was almost positive of that, so Miguel’s fears were unfounded and she had a safe walk ahead.

Megaera finished wiping off the tables—they were as good as could get—and collected the trash bags of discarded food for the dumpster. The back door blew open once unlocked, the desert breeze strong as always, and Megaera hauled the bags across the desolate parking lot. Lowe’s muscle car was the only thing around, light still shining from his frosted office window. Megaera tossed the trash along the side of the overflowing dumpster. Families of flies scattered at the impact.

“Are you coming out tonight?” she called into the darkness. “You haven’t touched anything for a while, I see.”

The wind cooed back, a coyote baying in the distance. She stood still, hands rubbing her chilled arms, and watched the darkness surrounding the lot. The two lamp posts nearby struggled to penetrate more than a few inches into the night with their glow. Lights further down the highway illuminated a billboard advertising braces. It was solely meant for the eyes of highway travelers; almost no one in this town could afford braces.

Dry grass crinkled behind the dumpster. The hair on Megaera’s neck stood up. “Is that you?” she called to the shadows.

Around the corner lumbered the Desert Stalker. It crawled on all four legs, unusual behavior, and swiveled its small head around as if doubting she was alone. The thin body blended with the desert landscape—tan, blemished with blacks and browns—and the black spikes running from head to rear resembled thicker cacti needles. The creature’s deeply set eyes glowed white, and she could see the quiver of its snout-like mouth. The back legs bent like knees but were the same length as the front legs which bent like arms, slender knife-sharp appendages sprouting from where the hands would be.

“Hey buddy,” Megaera cooed. The creature mewled at her before tearing into one of the fresh trash bags. It always went for the sauce packets first, or any french fry containers with salt at the bottom. Megaera sat on the ground, the warmth of the asphalt leaching into her ass. “You haven’t been stopping by. Is it because of what happened to the girl along the road?”

The creature stopped licking a leftover french fry. The tongue was the most jarring thing about it—long, black, forked like a snake’s. The creature blinked at her slowly then nodded. A car rattled down the highway and both of them flinched.

“It’s okay,” Megaera soothed. Her instinct was to reach out and console it, but the Desert Stalker tended not to like when she initiated contact. “Did you do it? Kill that girl?”

The creature didn’t react to her question. It ruffled through the second bag and discovered a napkin full of ketchup. Out came the tongue again. After it had slathered the red sauce across its mouth and teeth, the creature motioned to its blank eyes.

“Amy saw you?” Megaera asked. Playing charades was her least favorite activity, Desert Stalker or human. “Did you kill her because she saw you?” Her voice rose and the creature tensed as if to run away, shaking its head quickly. “No, don’t worry! I figured you hadn’t killed her,” Megaera said, smiling at it. Close-mouthed smile; the creature hated to see her teeth. “Does that mean you saw who killed Amy?” The creature nodded. Its mouth was quivering again.

“Who? Can you, uh—” Megaera stopped. What was she supposed to ask? A mute creature to describe the assailant? A creature incapable of holding a pencil to sketch it out? The Desert Stalker pointed one of its appendages across the parking lot to the red 90’s muscle car parked under the lamp post. The creature did not do anything else for a few seconds, just pointed long and hard at the car until it was sure Megaera understood.

The first time Megaera met the creature was when she was burying a body. The Arizona desert held many secrets and a myriad of corpses, but she had not intended to add to the count that day. His name had been Marc, and he had been older than Megaera by a few years. She was still in high school at the time and knew of him, only vaguely, as the brute football player that enjoyed trying out the freshmen girls each year.

Megaera had been a freshman the night Marc showed up outside her family’s ranch and invited her to a local party as his arm candy. She had never told Marc where she lived, so she politely declined his offer to go, as well as his offer to cum, and had just gotten ahold of her father’s old handgun when Marc broke the door in and wrapped his hands around her throat. With two pulls of the trigger, Marc was dead, and Megaera found herself dragging his body into the desert beyond the highway.

Everything had happened so fast, blurring together in her mind the longer she thought about it. Megaera wasn’t even sure how she got his body out of her house. She was halfway through digging the hole when she regretted not keeping him alive long enough to dig his own grave.

She should have gone to the police, made them do their job for once. Megaera had made her choice, though. She knew how stories like this went. Why would an ugly, quiet, edge-of-town ranch girl reject someone like Marc? She should have known what would happen. She should have been a good girl like the others.

When the hole was finished and Marc’s body had toppled into it, Megaera heard something in the sand behind her. Wielding her shovel, Megaera turned to confront whoever it was, praying for a rattlesnake over a person, and met the Desert Stalker. Walking on two legs, it stood a good foot over her head. White glowing eyes beamed down at her, headlights in the night, and, rather than fear, Megaera felt calm.

Her pounding heart slowed as the coursing adrenaline settled into a warm pit in her stomach. That gentle face told her this was a creature that could cause no harm, yet knew from the moment it was born that it would always be blamed for what came. The Desert Stalker, although it would not have that name until later, dropped to all fours and crawled into the hole with Marc’s body, gnawing into flesh and muscle before Megaera’s eyes. She watched the creature finish its meal down to the marrow, and then it helped her cover the remaining tendons and loose flesh in sand and dirt.

With a last glance at her, an unspoken language already forming between them, the creature hobbled into the shadows and melted with the landscape. Megaera would not see the creature again until her next kill.

Megaera read the newspaper daily, so she became well versed in whose death made headlines. Whenever a woman went missing or was murdered, the paper cared so long as the act was brutal enough to interest a particularly sadistic editor or two, but in just a day, the headlines would turn to a fantastic new species of cacti grown in a Phoenix lab or another stalling of the state budget. A man’s death, though, that was an entirely new ballpark.

Megaera was still bitter about how many headlines Marc got, how long the police searched for him, and how many memorial ribbons were hung on the windows of the high school in his honor. Up until Megaera’s graduation, she had still been able to find a ribbon or two stuck to the grimy glass. She threw out each one she found.

The football coach said, “He was a promising young man with a bright future in football.”

The English teacher who had been attracted to Marc said, “What a fantastic student with excellent literary critique.”

Marc’s long-term girlfriend, whom he had started fucking when she was thirteen, called him “The love of my life.”

Barely anyone talked about Amy Rivera, and she never got a second slot in the paper. The memorial for her along the highway fell into more ruin each passing week. Not even rumors of the Desert Stalker could keep her memory alive beyond the minds of the overworked Laffy’s Playland staff.

“I certainly miss Amy right now,” Miguel said, trading Laffy the Piss Monster for a blue apron. “Lowe’s making me wait tables because Dominique didn’t come in.”

“You’ll be fine. We’re slow as hell on Mondays.”

Miguel glared at the closed office door. “Of course, that asshole doesn’t want to hire more people. He likes knowing we’re suffering while he gets paid to watch porn in his office.”

Megaera laughed and tossed uneaten hamburgers into the trash. “He’s not deaf; be careful with how loud you talk shit.”

The office door rattled open and the asshole in question stepped out focused on his phone. He scowled and tossed the offending device on the counter before locking eyes with Megaera and Miguel.

“Glad to see you’re still alive back there,” Miguel said.

Lowe scoffed at him before smiling with yellowed teeth. “Someone is just overflowing with work ethic today,” he said, clapping Miguel on the shoulder and laughing heartily.

“Waiting tables, washing all those dishes tonight, and then also taking Laffy home to give that poor fabric a good scrubbing. Damn boy, you’re a real trooper.”

Miguel grimaced at the touch and fought valiantly to not roll his eyes. “Oh, great. Am I getting a nice bonus for doing double jobs?”

Lowe howled in laughter and pushed Miguel’s shoulder hard enough for him to stumble. “You’re a real jokester, boy! Perhaps you’ll get your own show one day.”

Megaera did not bother to hide the contempt in her eyes as she watched the face of the monster himself. Every touch of his hand on Miguel’s shoulder sent hair standing up across her arms. If she stared hard enough, she could see red splotches of Amy’s blood on those hands. Lowe never took particular care of himself—matted beard, copious bald spots, sunburnt skin—but now the unkemptness mutated him into something beyond human.

She could smell Lowe’s cheap cologne; the last thing Amy probably smelled too. Lowe’s eerie blue eyes met her. “Meg, your apron isn’t on right.” She looked down at her uniform: clean, tied, and ironed. “Yes, it is.”

Lowe walked around her, shoving Miguel out of the way as he did, and his greasy hands came up to cinch the apron tighter around Megaera’s chest. He tied the strings into a tight bow one might find on a Christmas present, and the movement of his eyes gave away how desperately he wanted to be the one unwrapping it. Megaera forced a wide smile, teeth bared, and Lowe walked away with a smirk.

“He’s so disgusting,” Miguel said once Lowe had walked into the kitchen. “He messed with Amy’s apron like that all the time. I was waiting for the day she smacked him for it.”

Megaera smoothed back her hair, focused on steady breaths and calming the vibration of her chest. “It wouldn’t have saved her.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Megaera’s second kill was much cleaner. She had not planned this one either. His name had been Raphael, and he had owned a trailer that doubled as a brothel. Rumors circulated, as they always do, that his girls were not as willing to participate as Raphael made it seem. Often, they were barely out of high school.

Megaera never would learn why her friend Rosa chose to attend a party on the same street as that well known metal trailer, and that question would gnaw at her long after the fateful night. Was she dragged there by older girls, promised extra cash for delivering someone younger? Had she been lured in by the basketball player who had been her crush for a year? Or was she reeling so badly from her parents’ looming divorce that she needed something to take away her mind?

Whatever it had been, Rosa went to the party and knocked on the door of Megaera’s family ranch two days later. Megaera’s mother had been home and answered the door, saw the state Rosa was in. Megaera never knew the details—her mother pitifully thought she could spare her daughter the true horrors of the world. When Rosa hung herself a week later, no one was shocked.

The Desert Stalker appeared outside Megaera’s window right after Rosa’s neck snapped. Megaera felt it in the energy between them; a mental bond cemented in tragedy. She marched to the other side of town, towards the metal trailer on the edge of the desert cliffs, with the creature on her heels. Megaera feared nothing while walking through the night for the first time. The fire burning in her chest kept her warm against the chill.

It had been too easy to coax Raphael outside. A young girl pretending to be drunk in front of his home was more than enticing. He was too caught up staring at her chest, a pathetic mistake, and Megaera shoved him down the rocky hill. Blood splattered across the gray rocks, but it was not enough for the anger gripping her heart. Megaera stopped the creature’s feasting with a whistle. It obeyed her unquestioningly. She wrapped her hands around Raphael’s neck, squeezing until his windpipe cracked. It was not enough. She picked up a rock and smashed it over his face, blood pooling in the sand beneath him, until the rock itself shattered. It was still not enough.

Megaera then gave the creature permission to finish the flesh, sitting in the dirt and watching the sun rise over the horizon with blood-red rays. The creature’s black forked tongue licked the blood off her hands first before gnawing into Raphael’s muscles and tendons.

By her third kill, Megaera knew what she was doing. The newspapers had hardly shut up about the hunt for Raphael’s killer when Megaera decided her next target. His name had been Alejandro. He had worked for the newspaper, wrote the headlines that made the deceased look like a victim. When Megaera hunted him down at his favorite restaurant, she asked why he did not focus on the five girls tied up inside Raphael’s trailer, on the services everyone knew Raphael offered, and Alejandro laughed in her face with a simple: “That’s not what interests people. We’re selling headlines here.”

Megaera butchered him with a knife stolen from the restaurant, sitting beside the bloodied corpse along the dark stretch of highway as she waited for the creature to arrive. Her chest heaved, her screams in the night echoing across empty space. She sliced the knife into Alejandro’s chest over and over. He was just one piece, one cog in the machine. She knew this and still plunged the knife deeper. At some point, the fire in her chest would go away; just one more cut had to do the trick.

The creature crawled across the road cautiously, terrified of the mess she had made. She tried to touch the creature, seeking comfort in the only person who knew what she was, but it pulled back.

“It never stops,” she said aloud, speaking words to the creature for the first time. Headlight eyes stared at her. She knew it understood; it had to. “When does it stop?”

The creature shook its head and commenced feasting. The papers later brandished the name The Desert Stalker. Any death along the highway became another reason to slap that name across the press, sell thousands of copies on the price of another life. Megaera thought it had a nice ring to it, and at least dead girls could get their faces on the front page for once.

Lowe asked Megaera to stay after her shift for a meeting in his office. Miguel offered to wait for her in the parking lot, maybe they could go grab some ice cream to celebrate payday. She declined, reminded him to fill up his gas tank, and waved goodbye as she was

left alone in Laffy’s Playland.

The piss-colored head of Laffy the Duck sat on the counter, dead eyes staring into dead eyes. Megaera walked through the kitchen, making sure all burners and appliances were off, and drained the water from the sink. Bubbles and foam crawled back up over the floor drain, tendrils of grime reaching for her shoes. At the bottom of the sink was a steak knife. Megaera carefully slid it into her pocket.

Megaera left Lowe’s door ajar when she stepped inside the office. Lowe was engrossed by his computer.

“I’m ordering parts for the soda machine,” he said.

“Ah.”

“Shut the door, Meg.”

She glanced back at the dark restaurant, the streetlamps casting vague shadows through the windows. “Why? No one’s here.”

Lowe clicked a few more buttons on his keyboard, humming to himself. Cheap cologne wafted around the room, crawling down her throat. On his desk was a pile of old coffee cups and a newspaper from a few weeks ago headlining Amy’s murder. Her picture was scribbled over with a sharpie. Megaera reached for the knife handle. Adrenaline filled her veins, white-hot the longer she stared at the deformed smile of the beast in front of her.

Lowe stood up from his computer. Megaera gripped the knife. He stayed on the other side of his desk and motioned for her to come closer.

“You were close with Amy?” he asked.

Megaera shook her head. “I wish I had been. Maybe I could have protected her.”

Lowe scrutinized her for a second, eyes roaming around her face before dipping down her body. “Amy was a troubled girl,” Lowe said. “I want to make sure she wasn’t leading any of my better workers down her same path.” He walked around his desk, looming over her. His right hand settled on her shoulder. “You know to be a good girl, right Meg?”

Lowe’s left hand grabbed her arm, and Megaera pulled the knife from her pocket. Faster than she expected, Lowe pinned her to the wall. The knife clattered to the floor, hardly scraping his arm, and Megaera howled like a wounded animal. Lowe kicked the knife away before spinning her around and throwing her into his desk.

“I was hoping you wouldn’t be trouble,” he said.

Phased from the impact, Megaera could only scream as Lowe pinned her to the desk beneath his weight. She coughed under the stench of his cologne and scrambled for anything in reach, clawing at his arms and face with nails too short to do anything. With a desperate stretch, her hand closed on a pair of scissors, and Megaera drove the blades into Lowe’s neck, carotid artery sliced in half. His blood contrasted with the pale blue of his eyes as it sprayed across Megaera’s face and hands. The man choked and spluttered scarlet, sliding off of her and to the floor. His hands grappled to stop the bleeding. Megaera stood up and adjusted her skirt down.

“Go back to hell,” she spat as the vermin below stopped twitching.

She slipped the scissors into her pocket before leaving through the back door, letting it hang open behind her. The Desert Stalker was sitting by the dumpsters already. Megaera inclined her head in approval, and the creature scuttled forwards through the open door.

She sat down next to the trash, rubbing the blood from her face. Her stomach twisted at the sight of the bruise on her wrist where his slimy hands had just been. The creature’s slobbering sounds echoed out of the open door, bones crunching and muscles pulling apart under those delicate fangs.

A tractor trailer blew past and napkins scattered around Megaera like snowfall inside a snow globe. Some of them stuck to the wet blood covering her arms. The heat in her chest bubbled and blossomed, the adrenaline of the kill fading back into the familiar, aching anger. Megaera tried to cry; tried to steady herself. All she felt was the hatred resting in her core. She looked to the velveted night sky. “I can’t do this!” she shouted to the stars watching her. “When is it over? One falls and the world builds ten more!” The sky looked back, blank and unforgiving.

The creature slithered out the door and sat in front of her. Its eyes pierced through her soul, seeing her as always. Megaera unclenched her fists, finding the imprint of her nails in her palms.

“Do you know,” she asked, “when all this violence gets me peace?”

The creature curled up beside her, cold body touching her flesh. The red muscle car shone under the streetlamp, the memorial for Amy out of sight behind it.