Forks #2
Eddie eyes me for a long time, sizing me up.
He’s thinking deep on something, but it’s tough to get a read on exactly what that something is when his expressions are partially hidden behind those big, heart-shaped sunglasses.
He steps a little closer, savoring the methodical invasion of my personal space.
My body is rigid, a coil ready to spring. I keep thinking that Eddie’s about to explain my whole plan back to me with a knowing smirk, to reveal he can sense when someone’s faking their commands. I’m ready for Eddie to call me a liar.
He clears his throat with a loud, rattling gurgle of mucus and shattered bone. “Your eyes are red,” he observes, then leans in close and gives me a sniff. “Hot sauce? Damn, that’s gotta sting. Hand it over.”
I follow his orders without hesitation, reaching in and extracting the bottle.
Eddie takes the tiny container, looking it over for a moment, then tosses it into the bushes. “One little bump won’t keep me out for long. If that were the case then the eighties would’ve been rough,” he continues. “Don’t feel bad, though. I’ve got a lot more experience doing this than you do.”
I hold, waiting for something else, but Eddie’s next instructions are simple and unrelated. “You can move now. Follow me,” he says.
The tension settles as Eddie turns away.
I trail behind, not because I’m compelled to, but because—for the first time tonight—I’m actually one step ahead.
* * *
“I’m torn,” Eddie says. He’s leaning back in his chair with a mai tai in his hand, the beverage sloshing in a large tiki mug and sporting a little green umbrella that pokes out of the top. “On one hand, you really fucked things up for us. On the other, that was very entertaining.”
We’re sitting at the restaurant’s patio bar, chairs facing the motel pool but angled toward each other.
There are four bodies laid out in various places across the cement deck, cold and stiff in their own sticky crimson puddles.
An additional corpse is slumped over in the hot tub, barely visible from here, and yet another floats face down in the pool surrounded by a red haze.
Eddie is in a hurry tonight, but it seems this moment is important enough for him to slow down a bit. His casual, let-the-cards-fall-where-they-may demeanor remains, but I can tell he’s thinking much harder than before. He’s planning now, adjusting the flow of this evening’s festivities.
“It’s like, do I get everyone in their rooms to come out and help clean this up?
Then send the whole place on a permanent vacation?
” he muses. “That’s a lot of shit to keep track of.
We don’t have time for that. We’ve probably got five more minutes before they dispatch another squad of officers to see what the hell happened. ”
Eddie takes a long sip from his drink, sucking deep from a neon green straw. He finishes, then nods in my direction. “Tonight’s a mess, but it’s a fun mess. Right, sport?”
“No,” I reply. “It’s not fun.”
Eddie ignores this, playing with his straw for a moment. “You’ve gotta consider—is a whole motel disappearing overnight stranger than six cops shooting themselves in the head? Plus, we’ve got these swimmers cutting their throats. I mean, that’s a bananas crime scene.”
“You don’t seem too worried about it,” I observe.
Eddie shrugs. “You’d be amazed what a man with my talent can get away with.”
This could mean a few different things, but something tells me Eddie’s not merely referencing his skill as a musician.
It’s hard to imagine the evidence it would take to trump his powers of influence in the court of law. Witnesses would change their story. Tapes would get erased. Mysterious accidents would plague every step of the process. Lawyers would start arguing for the other side.
Given the hedonistic decades he came up in, Eddie Michaels has a remarkably clean public image.
As a superfan, I should know. At the same time, there were always whispers, rumors of strange encounters with fans that never got much traction.
A few social media posts popped up, but they were swept away in the digital tides.
The front desk clerk strolls up from behind us, greeting Eddie and me as an impromptu server. “Are you enjoying your drink? Is there anything else I can get you?”
“This is actually … very, very good,” Eddie says, pulling back his tiki mug a bit so he can fully admire the tropical beverage. “I can’t believe you’re not a real bartender.”
“Thank you,” the clerk replies.
“Is all the security footage deleted?” Eddie asks.
The man nods. “Yes, sir.”
“You cleaned up everything else you might need to take care of? Fingerprints scrubbed and all that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“No witnesses?”
“Not anymore.”
“You’re a good man!” Eddie says, hoisting his drink. “Now, how about you shove a fork in each eye and go drown yourself in the pool.”
The motel employee nods, walking over to a nearby table and snagging a roll of napkin-wrapped cutlery from a large stack.
He unfurls it and extracts a fork, then grips the silver utensil in his tight fist. The clerk doesn’t hesitate, slamming the fork into his own face with as much gusto as he can manage.
“Oh my fucking God,” I gasp, not entirely prepared for the show of extreme violence.
Eddie glances over. “Sorry about that,” he says, genuinely apologetic. “You don’t care about this and you won’t try to escape.”
He’s reupping the command, but this time his words have no effect.
I’m still staring at a poor kid with a fork shoved so deep into his eye socket that I can barely see the handle poking out.
I can only hope the clerk wounded the part of his brain that feels pain and fear, dulling his awareness of what’s actually happening.
Unlike me, Eddie hasn’t given this man any instructions on how he should feel, just what he should do.
While it might look like he’s having the time of his life, I know the brutal truth.
The clerk is a passenger in his own body, unable to cry out or beg or plead, but feeling that terrible desperation just the same.
He’s sensing every moment of this.
I so desperately want to jump up and stop him, to wrestle him to the ground and hold him there until this terrible compulsion wears off, but I can’t do that right now.
I can’t blow my cover, and even if I could, what’s the plan?
Eddie is so much stronger and faster than me, even without his uncanny persuasion.
The front desk worker takes another cutlery set from the pile and unrolls it.
He extracts the fork and then, without a shred of reluctance, slams it deep into his other eye socket.
He staggers a bit before gathering his bearings, then extends his arms out in front of him, awkwardly groping the air as he begins a meandering, zigzag path toward the pool.
“That’s the dichotomy, right?” Eddie opines. “All the world’s a stage, and I want to create something memorable, but there’s a limit. The best way for this show to keep rolling on is for me to keep a low profile, but … it’s just not in my nature. It’s not in our nature.”
The second that Eddie says this I’m struck with a realization, an idea so absurd that I force myself to speak it aloud. I have to get this thought out of me before it festers and infects the rest of my brain.
“We’re not like … the same person, are we?” I ask.
Eddie turns slowly, lowering his glasses and staring at me with one eyeball and one empty socket. “Is that what you think I am?” he asks. “A figment of your imagination?”
“You’re not answering the question,” I reply.
Eddie hesitates, a knowing grin creeping its way across his face. “The ol’ split-personality trope? An unreliable narrator doing battle against the manifestation of her own subconscious?”
“You’re still not answering.”
Eddie pauses. His silence stretches on, the tension building until, finally, he erupts in a fit of laughter, shaking his head.
“No, no,” Eddie assures me. “That’s very creative, though.”
There’s a loud clatter as the front desk worker stumbles into one of the patio chairs.
“Good God!” Eddie yells, frustrated. “The pool’s right fucking there! Walk forward!” He pauses, watching as the man with forks in his eyes stumbles around a bit more. “Forward! Forward!”
Finally, the front desk worker drops into the pool with a splash.
Eddie lets out a long sigh, settling back into his chair. He takes another sip from his drink, this time the straw producing a distinct gurgle as he reaches the bottom.
“We are very similar, though,” Eddie says.
He adjusts in his chair, seemingly uncomfortable with what he just said, and in this moment I notice something wholly unexpected: the corpse of Eddie Michaels might actually be a little drunk.
“I mean … it seems like we’ve got a few things in common,” Eddie says, starting over again. “I wouldn’t compare what I do to being a … you know … influencer, but … yeah. You’ve got something to be proud of.”
Fame is a funny thing. We all have these people we look up to, larger-than-life celebrities who guide us along like lighthouses in the raging storm of life.
Their art is there for us when nobody else is.
Sometimes, it raises us. Then, one day, we learn something terrible.
We learn these people we admire are not at all who they seemed to be, and suddenly we’re left with this strange hollowness.
Their artwork changes, mutating into some brand-new experience whether we want it to or not.
I’ve lost count of how many people I’ve seen Eddie murder tonight, but when he says “You’ve got a lot to be proud of,” it hits me right in the fucking chest. I shouldn’t care that Eddie Michaels gave me a compliment—I’m desperate not to care, in fact—but I do.
It takes everything I can muster to keep my voice steady, to not let any joy or appreciation seep into my tone. “Thank you,” I reply.