Club Flamingo
A horrible wave of sickness washes over me, causing my entire body to reflexively heave as though I’m about to spill my own guts out of my throat.
I choke a bit, opening and closing my mouth as my arms jerk from side to side, tugging against the handcuffs.
A strange heat floods my nervous system, the feeling made infinitely more terrible by the fact there’s nowhere I can run and nothing I can do to quell it.
Before us in the headlights, one of the skateboarder’s arms flaps grotesquely against the concrete as blood slowly pools around him.
He’s relatively still other than this, save for the aimless rolling of his eyes and the slight twitch of his gurgling tongue—a tongue that seems much too long now that his whole face has been split in half.
“Oh my fucking God, oh my fucking God,” I repeat to myself, the anxious flame burning hotter and hotter until it sets me ablaze.
I’ve completely lost myself to the panic, no longer in control, and the feeling is just as terrible as I remember it. It takes me back to when I was a young girl, hopeless and helpless in a way I swore I’d never feel again.
Yet here I am.
The phrase grows louder, individual syllables devolving into a frantic, squealing mess as they rip through my vocal cords. Soon enough, I’m just screaming, letting all this emotion blast out of my esophagus because that’s the only way to release me from its terrible strangulation.
“Alright, alright,” Eddie finally interjects. “Calm down.”
The efficiency of his words is both impressive and terrifying, surging across me as though it’s a heartstopping dose of morphine pumped directly through an IV drip. My muscles release in a mighty wave, starting at my brain stem and then pulsing outward.
“You don’t care about him,” Eddie informs me, and now he’s right: I don’t.
I wipe the tears from my eyes, watching as the body finally stops moving.
“That better, sport?” Eddie asks.
“I don’t know.”
On one hand, eliminating the weight of that excruciating emotional torment is nothing short of a miracle, but now that my care for the young skater has dissolved into nothing, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that I’ve felt this kind of indifference before: drifting through the halls of a dozen different funeral homes and simmering just under the surface of every morbid back-alley transaction.
He’s just a body now, not a person.
I’ve never actually witnessed a brutal death like this, never been up close to see the light leave someone’s eyes.
Folks say you can catch the very instant this transition occurs—the moment when someone changes from a living, breathing thing with thoughts and hopes and dreams to a mound of stiff flesh—but now I’m not so sure.
In this case, it’s a lot sloppier than I imagined.
“Don’t try to escape. Don’t attack me. Just … be cool,” Eddie says, reaching over and undoing my handcuffs. There’s a faint metallic pop as they spring open, relieving the immense pressure on my wrists.
I massage my chafed skin.
“You see that kid out there choking on his own front teeth?” Eddie continues. “That’s your fault. I can’t trust you now, which means for the rest of the night you’re gonna have to come inside with me.”
My mind starts racing, hunting for any clues that hide between the lines of what he’s saying. I quickly bump up against a variety of mental roadblocks, forbidden to contemplate any path that directly leads to my escape.
Eddie told me to refrain from any getaway plans, and within the depths of my mind I can now sense a host of strange, quarantined partitions.
It feels like walking through my home and suddenly finding that a once-familiar bedroom has transformed into a blank, empty space.
Some uncanny, impenetrable wall of darkness has sprung up to block my path, and when I try remembering what’s behind it I’m at a loss.
I know a room is in there somewhere—a well-known room—but I have no recollection of what it looked like.
There are still other rooms to explore, though. I can still rap my knuckles on the walls and ponder the overall mystery of what’s actually going on here.
Eddie has confirmed my earlier suspicion, that his control over others has a finite limit in terms of time and distance.
Yes, he’s incredibly powerful, but after fifteen or twenty minutes of separation that power seems to wane.
The second Eddie left me in the truck he was on a timer, and unfortunately for him that timer expired.
The failsafe was a veil of trust, buttering me up and making me think he’s nothing more than a cool guy in a bad situation.
That’s enough when the guy in question is your hero, but my trust has shattered like a jawbone on the lip of an upturned skateboard.
Eddie carefully unfolds his mysterious sheet of paper. He looks it over for a moment, then folds it back up and returns it to his pocket.
“You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?” I blurt.
I’ll admit, being this direct might not be the best strategy, but for the briefest moment my racing mind gets too far ahead of my lips and the question comes tumbling out with a resounding thud.
Eddie hesitates. “That depends on what you mean by kill, and what you mean by me.”
I have no idea how to interpret this batshit existential response, but before I get the chance, my undead companion nods through our windshield.
“Drive,” Eddie commands. “Head downtown.”
I involuntarily press the gas pedal, rumbling onward.
As we turn onto the main street, Eddie lets out a long sigh, air rattling through the shattered bones of his neck.
“I’m sorry, sport, I’m a bit of a mess tonight,” he admits, shaking his head.
“I usually have more time to plan, but drunk driving is a real bitch. Someone has one too many mi-mos for brunch and the next thing you know, you’re in crisis mode. ”
Eddie sits with this for a moment, mulling it over.
“Maybe I should do a PSA,” he ponders aloud, then nods in confirmation. “I’ll do a PSA. This is bullshit.”
* * *
It’s a short jaunt to our next destination, and soon enough I’m pulling over on a quiet side street just off the main downtown drag.
“Here we are,” Eddie announces. “Didn’t think we’d end up clubbing tonight, did you?”
The second I open my door I hear thundering music from all the way down the block, a meaty electronic kick drum rumbling through the surrounding businesses and finally arriving at my ears as a muffled pulse.
All the gift shops and cafés are closed, but on the distant corner a single source of movement and energy draws my attention.
This is Club Flamingo, a Palm Springs staple and one of the most popular gay bars on this side of town.
I’ve spent more than my share of late nights within those glorious walls. The building exudes a specific kind of youthful, celebratory queerness, dripping with rainbow flags and vibrating to the tune of every season’s fresh pop hits.
More than anything, I recognize this is a great place to generate content. Ladies’ night at Club Flamingo is legendary, especially when it comes to stoking FOMO in your audience.
“Follow close and don’t draw extra attention to yourself,” Eddie says, strolling confidently ahead as I trail behind.
“That’s not gonna be easy,” I reply. “I make content here. People recognize me.”
Eddie glances back over his shoulder, an amused smirk radiating across his face.
“What?” I press.
Eddie chuckles. “Are you some kind of … influencer?” He rolls out the last word with a hearty portion of disdain.
“So what if I am? I’ve got two hundred and sixteen thousand followers.”
Eddie just shakes his head. “Your generation is doomed.”
“My generation? You were in the closet for longer than I’ve been alive, old man.”
Eddie halts and turns to face me on the darkened sidewalk. “Now is not the time to get into this, but since we’re talking about it, we might as well talk about it.”
“Talk about what?” I snap.
Eddie places two fingers against each temple, as though he’s bracing for the world’s most ferocious migraine. “All this,” he announces, removing his fingers and waving them before me in a loose, wandering circle. “It’s all nothing. You say you’re an influencer, but what do you actually do?”
“Fashion,” I retort.
“Fashion?!” he shrieks. “Is that what you call it?”
He motions toward my inconspicuous hoodie and jeans, a perfectly bland outfit meant to avoid unwanted attention on this very important evening.
“I’m dressed for work,” I counter. “The other work.”
“Right,” Eddie scoffs. “Well, let’s try that again. I know you answered truthfully the first time, because I made you, but I don’t think you really thought about it. Dig deep here, sport. I know everyone in your generation wants to be an influencer, but what is it that you actually do?”
I can feel the truth bubbling out of me whether I want it to or not, the words searing my throat as they crawl from my lips. “I’m a grave robber.”
Eddie nods, oddly satisfied by this announcement.
“Exactly,” he says. “Well, guess what? I’m gonna help you with that.
I’m gonna give you everything you ever dreamed of and then some.
You’ll be famous, not just for some bullshit social media page, but really, truly famous.
All you have to do is stick with me and get through the evening. I’ll take care of the rest.”
“Like … a deal with the devil?” I ask.
Eddie cocks his head to the side, momentarily confused, then straightens himself out. “Oh,” he blurts. “No. Not that.”
“So … what is it then?” I press.
“I’m gonna make you a star—an actress, maybe? A singer? The world is your oyster,” Eddie replies, blunt and direct. “No matter what happens tonight, I promise you this: we’re gonna get there together. You wanna know why?”
“Why?”
Eddie hesitates.
“Because I see something in you that I see in myself,” he finally says.
He holds my gaze for a long time, my own face reflecting back at me in the lenses of his dark sunglasses. Despite all the chaos and violence of the evening, this moment is oddly, darkly sweet.