The Dedication
By E. N. Dahl
My town’s suicide rates are astronomical. Literally off the chart. If you plotted every single American city on a single grid, you’d have a relatively flat line, with peaks for high density areas like New York City. Seven million people all going into crushing debt at the same time are obviously going to have higher numbers than, say, Nowhere, Colorado, where property values are low and legal weed abundant.
Then you have my town.
I refuse to write its name, or else you might come visit.
Whatever amount of deaths per year NYC has, my home has triple.
It’s because of Alexia M. Mykov. People don’t think it’s her. She’s everywhere you look, and always around a person right before they die. Doesn’t matter how. They meet, she leaves, the other dies. In the past two months, four people were found with their wrists slit in the bathtub, six jumped off the overpass, two overdosed on pain pills, three hanged, and seventeen shot themselves.
She plays in a band, but sometimes performs solo, doing spoken word shit at coffee houses. Alexia did a number at the local hipster hangout tonight. I had to attend. Had to figure it out. What was I supposed to do, let the deaths roll on?
I took a seat in the back of a room so dark I could barely make out the faces of people fifteen feet from me. The room only held half as many as it could’ve, most buzzed on herbal tea and their own pseudo-philosophical ramblings. Nothing gets people off like stroking their own egos, yet even the most self-adoring jackoff turned when Alexia took the stage.
She’s not like anyone you’ve seen. Not pale, like all the other Goth women who spent the last two decades headlining metal bands. She had tan skin, both genetically and from the sun, her head shocked with a white spiky cut that seemed to stand up on its own. Maybe static discharge from her guitar, which she plugged in to the cheap house amp. Didn’t matter if the equipment was good, so long as we heard her.
Then she started to play, fingers tender against the strings. No hard chords, no shredding, no hammering, no whammy bar. Her rhythm came delicate yet complex, building as she spoke.
“This one goes out to… I dunno. This guy.” She pointed at a gentleman three tables down, but her eyes—her haunting, white iris eyes—lingered on me. Then she sang.
“Oh, there’s no sweetness here,
And no matter where I roam
The streets stay wet from blood and beer.
This urban hell remains my home.”
Her hands moved faster, the notes twanging a little sharper, her fingers no longer flowing but beginning to jerk, as if attempting to slice through her guitar strings.
“Give me a taste of memory,
A way to remember better days,
I don’t want you to remember me,
And all the things I didn’t say.”
It sounded more like a suicide note than a song. Maybe it was. Her hands now hated the instrument, and each progression felt more tormented than the last, even though her timber, volume, posture, they all stayed the same. Every note was just… pain. This was the slow song on every heavy CD: Avenged Sevenfold’s “Dear God” and “Seize the Day,” Slipknot’s “Snuff,” Disturbed’s “The Sound of Silence.” As much as I wanted to focus on what was to come, I felt tears on my cheeks. I hadn’t realized I’d started to cry.
“This journey started off all wrong,
I guess it has to end wrong too.
I really wasn’t all that strong,
And now this ends with me and you.”
The last line threw me. It didn’t have the same tone as the rest. Then I refocused my blurry vision and found her looking right into my eyes. My body tensed, ready to run. My sweat turned cold. All my instincts screamed of danger I couldn’t name.
She unplugged the guitar, thanked the audience, stood, and left without further comment or commotion. My palpitations prevented me from rising, but nearby, I heard people asking how the mystery guy liked having a song dedicated to him. Then asking why he wasn’t responding. I tuned in just in time for him to make a lame excuse about being tired. He and his girlfriend left.
I walked out of the coffee house into the oncoming winter. Late Autumn had arrived with all its biting cold, and my shawl wasn’t suited to keeping me warm like this. Luckily I hadn’t parked far from the shop’s shabby, pothole-filled lot, giving me just a quick five minute walk to my Jetta.
By the time I turned the key and turned on the seat warmer, sirens wailed from the distance. Police raced along in my rearview, so I did a quick K-turn and followed them as inconspicuous as I could. I didn’t have to drive far.
A car that I stood no chance of identifying had floored it into a brick wall at the far end of the road. The whole T-intersection had been blocked off, my sight obscured by flashing lights, but that actually helped. I could just barely make out the back of a man’s head lying in the road, severed by something knocked loose from his engine compartment. The blurry pattern of his hard-to-see hair were a little too familiar.
I turned around again, a U this time, because I needed to get the hell out of there in one swift move. The drive to my house passed in a blur. My parents weren’t home. Thank god. I stumbled into the house, sobbing before I realized what that sound was, sinking to the floor in a mess of tangled fabric and untethered emotions.
She hadn’t threatened him, or poisoned him, or anything. Alexia played him a song. That’s it. She played, he died. How could it be that simple?
Then my phone rang. Blocked caller.
I shouldn’t have answered.
“Hey,” a familiar voice cooed through my speaker.
“A-Alexia?” I prayed I was wrong.
She laughed. “You know, a musician can tell when someone’s not there to listen. Some people come to listen to other bands, some are just there with friends and don’t care who you are, but some… let’s say troublemakers… they like to look a little too closely. The paparazzi waiting for a nip slip. The religious twats who want proof you’re in league with The Devil. And people like you.”
I began to shake so hard I could barely hold the phone, yet I couldn’t let it go. “I won’t tell anyone.”
Another laugh, soft yet looming, a storm cloud coming closer. “Funny thing is, despite my gift, I’ve never met The Devil. Tell him I said hello.”
Then she started to play. She sang, too. I won’t dare repeat the words.
When she finished, she spoke, because I couldn’t, then hung up. I stood, walked to the kitchen, grabbed the first knife I could find, and sliced down the length of my left arm. Gave no thought to it. This is what had to happen next, just like spitting out toothpaste after brushing your teeth. She dedicated a song to me, so I die. That’s how it goes.
So I’m sorry. I’m sorry for investigating her. For being curious.
For how you found my body. Assuming you’re the one that found it, and not just some creep reading this for entertainment on a webzine somewhere.
But mostly, I’m sorry I couldn’t do anything about the white-haired, white-eyed woman.
Getting hard to write. I’m cold and can’t stand so I’m sitting in the blood.
If you see her, don’t listen.
Just… one thing.
Before she hung up, she told me…
Her band’s about to go on tour.
This story was originally published in Issue #3. Get the print issue
See more of E.N. Dahl's writing here: https://endahlwriter.com/
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