Favorite Dead Girl

“Because I could not stop for Death –

He kindly stopped for me –

The carriage held but just Ourselves –

And Immortality.”

Emily Dickinson “I looked Death in the face last night I saw Him in a mirror And He simply smiled He told me not to worry He told me just to take my time.”

Danny Elfman “I promise not to kill myself tonight, if you let me tell you EVERYTHING.

After all, I am your favorite dead girl.”

Pamela Vasquez-Kuznik They gathered one night on the eastern slope—wandering souls, men of oak, soiled by mud, by gravel and glass, their arms and their clothing splattered in blood—lost souls chained to the stretch of asphalt that stole them out of their suburban dreams.

It was March 19th, the day before the Vernal Equinox—a season foretold to avenge their fate. “Harness the violence of all of the elements—drunkenness, courage, foolishness, lust. Gather them up from the valleys below and like ‘hooks in their jaws’ draw them up into our lair.” Candles danced in the cold night air as spirits chanted a dark invocation. A priestess shrouded in long dark robes—bearing the scars of a fateful decision, her body outlined in flickering light, sockets replacing her once dark eyes—stretched forth her arms in the midst of the masses.

A victim of the canyon herself, witnesses claim that she not only murdered her young husband’s mistress but disposed of her body in one of the creeks. Leaving the scene, her car lost control on the hairpins—her body and spirit avenged in the same rocks and water.

“Lost Eyes” lifted up her head to the hills as spirits sang in an ancient Chaldean tongue, then raised her arms to harness their power. “Reverse the winds that blow in the spring, the breath of the desert, a plague of locusts.” Chanting arose in harmonic convergence—a plainsong from the abode of the damned—the ground quaked in nefarious spasms. “Send for me the soul of a woman; young and beautiful, dressed all in black, Pisces Moon and Scorpio Venus, illusions of her own immortality, a doubter of God, locked outside of His ‘hedge of protection.’ Her soul for mine! Her eyes for my own!” She lifted her head as the warm canyon wind sent torches dancing in a circle of hands—dark empty sockets glowing with fire, her face a bruised and blood-stained pallor—shadows answering down from the hills.

A warm eastern wind awakened the canyon from an early spring slumber. Later that night, two cars entered in through its gates, and the narrow black snake lined down the middle in broken white stripes awoke to receive them. A young engineer—a round of golf, then too many drinks, his prized black Z-28, a final call home to his wife, “Don’t wait up,” his engine revved as the car swung out onto the road throwing gravel from under the tires. A few miles later, he was up in the hills—sharpening turns, popcorn under his left front wheels, the canyon yawning below on his right. “Come on, Ed, keep it together.”

The popcorn soon gave way to a long and steady washboard rattle before disappearing into a thin yellow line that broke in erratic waves through the windshield. He drifted in and out of a swoon as his car swung back and forth between lanes.

A group of teens stopped in Olinda Village, then drove on out to a make out point in Sleepy Hollow—the driver robed in the horns of Pan after shedding his Robin Goodfellow garb. They drank their purloined Bartle’s and James, exchanging soggy half-eaten gummies between familiar clove-stained lips, while Pan and his mistress stole behind an old barren oak. The wind picked up and rustled the branches. Shadows bent into shifting shapes closing in all around them. Startled, they rushed back to their car.

“Where’s Pam? Get Pam!” Pan’s mistress called out, then shut her inside the backseat next to her cousin.

“What’s happening? Where are we going?”

“The fuck out of here!” Pan replied, lifting the pair of phony wax horns from out of his hair.

“What’s the matter? She wouldn’t put out?” Pam snarled at him, her eyes boring holes through his rear-view mirror.

“Shut up! Would you just shut up?”

“Come on, cuz,” Susie spoke up. “That’s no way to talk about your BFF.”

“BFF? More like BFFB, as in best friend fucking my boyfriend!”

“Pam, that’s enough! We’ve got to get out of here. Someone was back there I swear. Look, I’m sorry, we’re sorry. But right now, we all need to just leave.”

The car made one last sweeping turn before rejoining the highway—tires screeching the last few yards. The engine roared then slowed to a hum, pistons and pavement marching in tune, tread marks swaying along each curve, bobbing and weaving in a seamless ballet.

His eyes flickered open then closed for a moment. Distant lights dotted the hills like needle points on a black velvet curtain—plants bending up toward the light guided by some unseen force—his mid-life trope, a guided missile, a blood-red “Z-28” on the hood.

“Why don’t we put on some tunes?” one of the boys said from the back, “Pam, how about that tape?”

“What tape?”

“The one you that you lent to Trey last week. He did give it back to you, right?”

“That’s some creepy ass shit.” Pan’s mistress complained then started to giggle.

“Then you should like it.” Pam said as she handed it forward, “Bitch.”

“You’re the bitch, bitch!”

“Ladies, knock it off!” Pan’s voice now rising in anger as he pushed in the tape until it clicked in the deck. Speakers began to throb all around, the pulsating rhythm driving them forward into the dark, swooping and swaying around every curve, crashing together in a cacophonous march. A sudden hard left, then a valley of oaks—the tight hug of trees reaching out from each side, branches posing like skeletal fingers, dancing and leering over the windows, spiders reaching out for their prey.

“Marty, slow down!” a terrified shriek arose from the back, piercing the Horusian cadence.

“I can’t.” A small, frightened voice croaked out between quivering lips—lungs contracted, chest heaving, filling up with an inaudible scream. The engine breathed in heightened gasps, tires tossed along black asphalt waves, a curtain of darkness concealing the light, a wayward flare hissing on through the night, a silver bullet locked on to its target.

The screeching of brakes and the crashing of metal—shards of glass fractured the light like a shower of mirrors then fell to the ground in a crystalline sea. Bodies scattered on the canyon floor. Spirits rising against the darkness—others still barely clinging to life. One of the bodies slowly stood up then staggered forward through vapor and glass, bones protruding her black leather jacket like spokes on a wheel. Far down the road, she could see her shadow, lying face down dressed all in black, a pool of blood surrounding her head. A figure began to emerge from the trees, a burial shroud stretched out in her hand.

“Pam. Pam!” Susie screamed into the darkness, stumbling toward the phantom in black as she unfurled her robe across the young girl’s body. “Pam! Pam! Please help me find Pam!”

Lifting her hand up to her shoulder, the phantom spoke without raising her head. “Don’t worry about her, child, that one is dead.” Then, rising up to meet her eyes, Susie noticed the scars on her face—her matted hair embedded with gravel, sockets where her eyes used to be. “I told you, she’s dead! She’s dead, and I have her with me!”