Gorgeous Gruesome Faces, page 7
I heave an overwrought sigh. “I know our relationship has progressed beyond the cringey parasocial era, but I still feel like I know nothing about you.”
Candie stares at me like she doesn’t understand what the issue is. “What do you want to know?”
“Um, anything? What do you do when you’re not working? What about your family?”
She shrugs. “I read. Play music. Make videos. I live with my aunt and little cousins, but I’ve been in boarding school the last few years.”
“Oh…” It doesn’t escape me how she very pointedly says nothing about her parents.
Just then, Mina pokes her head into the studio through the doorway. “You guys ready to go? My dad’s here.”
Mina’s parents didn’t hesitate to embrace Candie and me as additional daughters. Mrs. Park fawns over us and brings us Tupperwares full of japchae whenever she visits the set, and Mr. Park makes sure we never work a minute over the allotted hours dictated by child-labor laws and always offers to drive Candie and me home at night. Mina was raised with such an abundance of unconditional love that she can’t help but radiate with it.
I point an accusatory finger at Candie, not wanting to let her wiggle off the hook. “She said no to movie night. Again.”
Mina turns to Candie and puts her hands on her hips in the eonni power stance. “That’s, like, the fifth time you’ve blown us off. Come on, Candie. We’re about to be stuck in this building all summer working on our album; you can’t take one night off to hang out with us?”
Candie’s eyes shift with guilt at getting called out on the spot. I love it when Mina pulls seniority. Finally, Candie sighs and concedes. “Okay, okay, I’ll come.”
“At last, we’re granted an audience with her excellency!” Mina pronounces dramatically.
“Oh, what a glorious day!” I throw a hand over my eyes like I’m about to faint. “Behold, her highness hath smiled upon us!”
Candie shakes her head. “Never mind, I don’t want to go anymore.”
Mina laughs and links an arm around Candie’s left elbow while I slide my arm through Candie’s right elbow on the other side, ignoring her fake protest. We parade her like a captive out of the studio and up to the front of the building, where Mr. Park is waiting to pick us up.
“Candie?”
An unfamiliar voice calls out, and I glance up. A young man I don’t recognize is loitering at the other end of the corridor. I rack my brain, trying to recall if he was one of the sound engineers we met today.
Candie’s arm goes stiff against mine. I turn to her, and the look on her face sends an uneasy anxiety curling down my spine.
The man is approaching us slowly, almost cautiously, but the closer he gets, the more tense I feel. There’s a hostility in his gait, an unnerving intensity in his stare. “You wouldn’t talk to me, so I had to come to you.”
“Who are you?” Mina demands from the other side.
“You did a shout-out to me in your last video; we had a connection!” The man is only a few feet away from us now.
Candie hasn’t updated her channel in a while due to our schedule, but I do remember the last one she did. The shout-out was to her “followers who have been with her from the beginning.”
“I’m sorry, but y-you can’t be in here.” I try to keep my voice steady, forceful, but the demand comes out trembling. “If you don’t leave, we’re going to call security.”
The man pulls a black object out from his jacket.
My eyes register the shape of the object he’s holding—barrel, handle, trigger, gun, it’s a gun—but my brain stutters, lags, can’t process what’s happening. My mind is stuck on how unreal this is, that we’re being held at gunpoint inside the halls of a recording studio, and how strangely normal this man looks. Like a college student who works the cash register at Target. Clean-shaven face, sandy hair beneath a baseball cap, gray hoodie jacket and jeans. He doesn’t look like a maniac.
Mama went to work before I woke up this morning. I didn’t say goodbye to her before she left the house …
“Please, don’t hurt us,” Mina begs him. She sounds like she’s crying.
“She’s the one who hurt me!” He raises the gun and points it at Candie’s face.
One thought rises above the suffocating fear: He’s going to shoot her.
My body moves on instinct. I turn and throw my arms over Candie’s shoulders, tackling her to the ground, shielding her body with my own. Mina screams. The gun goes off, and it’s so shockingly loud that in the aftermath of the bang I can’t hear anything at all, just a muffled ringing and my own wild breaths.
Candie and I are sprawled on the ground. I don’t feel any pain, don’t see any blood. Candie pushes up onto her elbows and wraps an arm around my shoulders, holding me tight against her.
“Put the gun down,” Candie’s voice says next to my ear, clear as a bell, unyielding as steel. I blink up in confusion at her, but she’s not looking at me, she’s staring straight ahead at the man, her eyes hard and unflinching. Beside us, Mina’s whole body is trembling, her face soaked with tears.
I want to scream at Candie—What are you doing, why are you trying to talk this psycho down, we need to get up, we need to RUN—but my lips are quivering too much to form words.
Suddenly, like a flipped power switch, the man lowers his arm, fingers uncurling one by one. The gun clatters onto the ground.
“Get down on the floor, on your face,” Candie says. “And don’t move.”
The man drops down onto his knees, then lays his body forward until he’s facedown on the floor, fully prone. He goes as still as a slab of wood, completely silent, and he stays like that until the security guards come racing around the corner.
Everything after that is a blur.
The guards surround us, talking at us, some of them kneeling down to detain the unmoving man on the floor. Someone drapes their jacket over my shoulders. Police sirens blare outside, red and blue lights flashing through the windows. Mr. Park is there, holding Mina as she sobs into his shoulder. Officers are in my face asking questions: What happened? Are you hurt? Did you know this man? We’ve contacted your mother; she’ll be here soon.
I stand there mutely, dazed through it all. I don’t answer any of the questions I’m asked. I can’t explain what I saw. Candie told the man to drop the gun, and he did. She told him to get on the floor, and he did. I don’t know how, but she stopped that man.
She saved us.
Candie is sitting next to me in the conference room, giving a statement to the police. Her breathing is shallow, and her face is stark. As composed and brave as she had been earlier, she looks like she’s in shock now, too.
Her gaze shifts to me when she notices me staring at her. Under the table, her fingers brush against mine, and she takes my hand in hers.
She doesn’t let go for the rest of the night.
Chapter 10
NOW
I’m pushing through layers of velvet.
Inky drapery falls on me from all sides, collapsing onto my head, shoulders, arms, swallowing me into its black folds.
My body feels weightless. I don’t know where I am.
Am I dreaming?
There’s somewhere I need to be. I think.
Off in the distance, there’s rhythmic clapping and faint cheering.
“Sunny! Sunny!”
The crowd is calling for me.
Hands out, fingers spread, I force a path forward through the heavy fabric. Finally, I break free. I’m backstage, standing beneath massive rigs, surrounded by stacks of equipment boxes and instrument cases. Disorienting stage lights strobe overhead.
“Sunny! Sunny! Sunny!”
The chanting is feverish. The front of the house sounds packed. For a venue this size the backstage should be bustling. But there’s no one. Where’s the crew? Where are the stagehands and techs? I step over the webs of thick electrical cables spread across the floor, wandering through a towering forest of amps and speakers.
Finally, I see people.
It’s our crew of backup dancers. They’re holding hands, heads bowed low in the middle of the preshow ritual.
“Where the hell were you?”
Candie’s voice booms in my ears, and I turn. She’s right behind me, arms crossed, her costume glimmering like she just emerged from a bath of jewels. Her expression is shrouded by the darkness, but I know she’s angry with me.
Please don’t be angry with me.
I’m in costume, too, the layered skirt-petals blooming out from the stem of my waist.
“Let’s go,” Candie says. “It’s time.”
“But—” I look up, lost. “What’s the set list? And where’s Mina? We can’t go on without her.”
“She’s up there already.” Candie turns and struts, her sleek ponytail swinging behind her, stiletto heels sharper than knives.
The backup dancers break open from their huddle and flatten into a line, a troop of dutiful soldiers ready to be deployed, a procession of shadowed faces watching me as I chase after Candie.
The black drapery behind them billows. I squint. Something is moving behind the curtains. Something large, bulging. The shape of it pushes up against the fabric, like a sea creature lurking just beneath the surface of still water.
“Candie—” I don’t know why, but my voice comes out as a whisper. “Candie, do you see that?”
A horrible, pungent stench wafts toward me, like burning plastic and charred hair. Rotting meat and open wounds. Sulfurous. My eyes water and my stomach curdles. Candie doesn’t seem to notice at all, not the smell, not the thing under the curtains crawling closer and closer. She just keeps walking forward until we reach the base of the staircase leading up to the stage. The crowd on the other side is ceaseless in their shouting.
“You ready?” Candie turns to me.
I have no idea where we are or what I’m doing, but I nod. Unpreparedness is anathema in Candie’s world. She reaches out and takes my hand. We ascend the stairs, one at a time, up up up.
I follow.
I always—
follow.
The spotlights flash like flares and we’re there, onstage, encased within the velvety innards of a gilded theater, the focal point at the center of an enormous opera house. Private viewing boxes line the chamber walls like rows of glittering teeth. Cherubs with rosy faces peer down at us from the clouds painted across the trompe l’oeil ceiling. The crowd below is ecstatic, alive, a writhing mass of raised arms and red, open mouths, hungry and pleading. For a second, the rush of pleasure from receiving all this unfiltered attention overwhelms me—Yes, that’s it, that’s the feeling, more, more—
“Look.” Candie points. “She’s about to perform.”
A spotlight drifts over the crowd, the beam climbing until it lands on—Mina. Up on the mezzanine.
The audience turns away from the stage to look back at her. Her costume matches ours, sparkling pink and creamy white, skirt puffed up with layers of tulle. She blows a kiss below, and it elicits more whistles and cheers and pledges of eternal devotion. She places a shushing finger to her lips, and the crowd instantly quiets like she pressed a mute button.
Mina bends at the waist into a deep bow. Then she starts climbing up onto the railing.
“Wait, Mina…” I take a few steps forward as icy dread begins to drip steadily down my neck.
When I reach the edge of the stage I stumble back in shock. Where the orchestra pit should be is a deep, gaping trench, separating the stage from the crowd. I peer down into the gorge and see no bottom. The stairs on either side of the stage leading down have vanished. There’s no way across.
On the other side, the masses are mesmerized, all eyes fixed on Mina. That awful smell is starting to permeate the stage. I don’t dare turn to look; I know the thing lurking behind the curtains is right there. In front of me, the yawning black canyon stretches on.
Up on the second floor, Mina balances delicately on the railing, wobbling slightly before righting herself. She raises her arms out to the sides, elegant as a swan spreading its wings in preparation for flight. She tips forward—and for a brief moment looks gently suspended in midair—before she dives off the balcony headfirst.
“Mina!”
Inside the silent theater, the loud crack of a body breaking open against a hard surface echoes endlessly. The audience rises to its feet as one, the applause drowning out my cries.
I jolt upward, gasping and choking like I’ve been held underwater.
I’m—in a dark room. In bed. For a few confused seconds, I wonder where all the posters on my bedroom wall went, until I remember where I am.
The workshop.
My hair lays in a tangled mess across my face, and I reach to push it out of my eyes. My palm comes away sticky with sweat. My whole forehead is wet, and so is the pillow. My nostrils sting from the memory of that awful stench and I gag again, doubling over as I cough.
On the other side of the room, Candie exhales softly and shifts onto her back. The silhouette of her hands resting on her chest looks like some fairy-tale princess waiting to be roused by a lover’s kiss.
A bitter impulse strikes me and I want to go over there and shove her awake, turn on all the lights and shine them directly onto all the unsightly things wiggling and festering in our past. How can she sleep so soundly when I’m forced to endure these vivid night terrors, constantly torturing myself with what-ifs about things I can’t change?
I stopped taking meds a while ago when it seemed like I wasn’t having panic attacks as often, but I’m pretty sure I stuffed some emergency sleep aids in my bag.
The dim digital haze of the workshop-issued alarm clock on the nightstand is the only light source in the dark room. As I shift to get off the bed, I see something in the corner of the room.
A hunched shadow. There’s a person there. Standing a few feet away from my bed, looking at me.
All at once I’m hyperaware of my T-shirt collar against my neck, the quick hiss of my breath as it leaves my nostrils. I want to pinch myself, slap myself, to make sure I’m fully awake, but I can’t move a single muscle.
The person is shrouded in darkness, but I can see the outline of a puffy skirt, the edges of a short bob haircut. The shadow reaches its hands up to its face and starts clawing.
The sound is awful, nails scraping, like frenzied rats trying to tear out of a trap. That horrible scratching reverberates inside the room, inside my skull.
A scream rises and lodges in my throat, forming a painful bubble, cutting off all airflow. I can’t tell anymore, can’t tell if I’m imagining things or if I’m still dreaming.
Finally, my body throws itself into motion. Like a terrified child, I yank the blankets over my head and tuck myself into a fetal ball, squeezing my eyes shut, my hands fisted tightly into the blanket, wrapping it around myself like it can somehow protect me against the horrors outside.
The fabric shifts, despite my hold. The mattress dips. The person is crawling inside my blankets. Ice-cold fingers curl around my ankle and start to pull.
I scream and thrash, yell and kick, my body spasming as I try to throw off the hand that’s gotten ahold of me. Suddenly, there’s a heavy pressure against my arms. Someone is trying to hold me still. It makes me panic more, my whole body twisting wildly.
“Sunny, Sunny! Wake up.”
My eyes open. Candie is sitting on the edge of my bed, gripping my shoulders. Her expression is solemn under the dim glow of the clock, her brow furrowed. I blink again and again. There are no ghostly shadows in the corners. Nothing under my sheets.
“It’s just a nightmare,” Candie repeats. “Just a dream.”
Tears flood my eyes.
I am in a nightmare, one I haven’t been able to escape for two years. I’m still dreaming of Mina, still seeing her staring at me from darkened corners with a face that’s not quite hers. I throw my arms around Candie’s neck and cling on to her as hard as I can, gasping into her hair over and over, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry…”
Chapter 11
NOW
The sound of rapid knocking jolts me awake.
“—Sunday?”
I blink against the morning light. More urgent knocking. It feels like bony knuckles rapping directly on my cranium. When I finally force my eyes open, I find myself in bed, the blanket pulled up to my chin. Images from last night filter through in hazy fragments, then wash over me in one sweeping wave.
The stage. Mina falling. The shadowy figure crawling into my bed. Candie’s calm voice in my ear. Me clinging on to her for dear life.
I glance over to the other side of the room. Candie’s empty bed is made up, the sheets folded and pillows arranged like a furniture-store display.
Did she help calm me down last night? Or was all of it a dream?
“Sunday, are you in there?” Faye’s voice calls from outside.
“Come in; I’m just getting up,” I call out, swinging my legs over the side of the bed and fighting a swoon of vertigo.
The door slides open, and the top of Faye’s pink head pokes inside. “You didn’t come to breakfast, so I thought I’d come check on you…”
She ventures in with polite cautiousness, like she isn’t entirely sure she’s allowed inside my private space even though I’ve already granted her permission. Her outfit today is just as dreamy as yesterday’s, eyes and lips dusted with glitter. Plenty of idol girls try to go for the eternal baby-doll persona; the producers encourage it, and the male fans eat it up. But Faye’s kind personality feels real, nothing forced or artificial, and I recognize it as the same affable charm that made Mina so popular.
There’s a hint of concern and an undercurrent of disappointment in her voice, and I remember then that I promised to meet her for breakfast. I rub the heels of my palms into my eye sockets.
“Sorry, I had a rough night. Didn’t sleep very well. My head is killing me.”
“Oh no.” She reaches out a hand and brushes her fingers gently against my forehead like she’s checking for a fever. “I think I have some Tylenol back in my room; I can run and get it for you?”
