First Pages - Cicada Eyes: A Lover to Kill (Psychological Horror)

[SE Reynolds]

Opening scene: introduces the protagonist and antagonist, establishes the setting, tone, and foreshadows primary conflict. 

Aren’t we a pair, Amber Ray? Mom and Dad must be so proud of their long-lost daughters. You, moldering in the grave, and, as for me, a murderous whore. Yes, I might as well be buried right next to you unless they come for me. Please come for me, I think, clasping my hands tightly as if I’m praying to Jesus Christ himself.             

Until then, I’ll wait, but not patiently, not in this nut house. So, I spin around in the swivel chair, clinging to my book of Edgar Allan Poe’s best works. Creeping in my head since I sat down is that over-played song by one of those hair bands, Poison, no Rat Poison, no Rat, just Rat, but with two t’s. The band is way too glam for me, but I can no longer control what drifts in and out of my brain since I caught the infection.

Still spinning, the song travels at lightning speed from my cerebrum to my mouth, forcing me to sing out loud, “Round and round. What comes around goes around. I'll tell you why, why!”   

“Misty. Please stop.” 

A voice like my dad’s, but more sterile, disrupts the next verse of the song. I’m getting dizzy anyway, so I plant my feet on the ground when an angel face with Cupid blond curls metastasizes my view. Yes, metastasizes. My new favorite word I intended to use in the most inappropriate ways before they locked me up. 

Squinting through goopy eyes brought on by a plastic cup full of little white pills, the heavenly being transforms into a mechanical shrink doctor. His precise moves remind me of the robot dance I caught Amber doing before her demise. I watch him pull a Panasonic tape recorder from his brown leather satchel and place it on the metal table before me. I grit my teeth at his chair scraping across the concrete floor as he scoots closer to the table.

“I will be recording our sessions, but I need your permission to do so,” the doctor explains, pulling out his little brown notebook that matches his satchel perfectly.

“And if I don’t give you permission, Doctor-um… damn these drugs. I can’t remember your name.”

“Doctor Samuel.”

“Right. Can I call you Doctor Sam?”

“Okay.”

“What if I don’t give you permission, Doctor Sam?”

“Then I’ll tell the court you didn’t give me permission. I’m going to start recording now, okay?”

“Sure, have at it.”

“It’s October 17th, 1987, time 9:30 a.m. I’m interviewing Misty McCafferty at Perkins Psychiatric Hospital Center. Misty, do I have your consent to record?”

“Yes, but my name is Misty Dawn.”

“I thought I said Misty Dawn.”

“No. You said, Misty McCafferty. You left out my middle name,” I say, leaning into the recorder. “And for the record, my mother named me Misty Dawn because I was born when the sun was just touching the sky and the misty rain turned into fog.” 

I lean back in the chair, delighted with myself, but I’m not sure why.

“Pretty,” Doctor Sam says, forcing an odd expression. It could be a smile or a grimace. Whatever he’s trying to convey doesn’t belong on his face.

“Yes, well, I used to love my name until I became infected, and now it sounds like a stripper whore.”

Awkwardly, the doctor tilts his head to the side, in a poor attempt to care.

“I don’t think you’re a whore.” 

“I didn’t say I was a whore. I said my name sounds like a whore.”

“You said you used to love it, and now you don’t because it sounds like a stripper whore, so is that how you think of yourself?”

I don’t know how to answer him, so I toss my book on the metal desk, hoping he will flinch, but he’s unaffected. So, I get up from my swivel chair and walk a few feet to the concrete wall with one sealed-shut window, the single source of airflow in this desolate visitation room. Even the radiator has a Needs Repair sign taped to it. 

I lean my face against the window, hoping fresh air will seep through the worn-out weather stripping and clean the drool-piss smell from my nostrils. I take a deep breath and get a waft of an early autumn breeze, but not enough to make me forget where I am and where I’m not.

“If I didn’t walk through the woods that day, I’d still think my name is pretty,” I say, turning to face him, but he doesn’t look up. His eyes remain buried in his notebook scribbles. So, I tiptoe towards him. He has no choice but to look at me now as I stand right over him, so close that his knees almost touch mine.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“I’m trying to get your attention.”

“Why don’t you think you have it?”

“Doesn’t matter. I have it now.”

I sit back down in my swivel chair, which is really his, but I asked him to switch with me because it’s soft, and I can spin around and mess with the tension in the room. 

Then, with uncrossed legs, I hike up my hospital gown just enough so he can see all of my thighs but not what they are attached to. No, not yet. I glide my hands in circular motions over my skin, hoping his eyes follow my lead like a cobra follows a snake charmer. He raises his brow. Oh good, he’s coming around. I look down at my thighs and gasp when I see black spider legs crawling out of my pores. I forgot I haven’t shaved in weeks, so I pull my gown over my knees.

With my knuckles, I remove the last bit of slimy gunk from my eyes.  

“Why is this room so dismal?” I ask. “It’s supposed to be a visitation room, but I wouldn’t want to visit here.” 

I scan the room and stop when a splash of primary colors from the corner of the room catches my attention. A stack of puzzle boxes stands three-feet high, begging to be knocked over.

“Aren’t we supposed to visit instead of playing with old-people-nursing-home puzzles? It makes this place less desolate; I suppose.”

Doctor Sam scribbles something in his notebook. I lean over and try to sneak a peek, but he quickly closes it.

“There’s no place for people to sit in here. Let’s see, one, two, two chairs, and this cold metal table; I wouldn’t even fuck on this,” I say, gliding my hand across the top while studying his white-bread face. Finally, our eyes meet, but he can’t handle my stare, so he opens his little notebook again and scratches his pencil on the paper like a kindergartner.

“You’ll have to take it up with the management. Now, please tell me about the brain infection.”

“My infection?

“Yes, in the police report it says you killed your husband because of your brain infection.”

“I did?”

Doctor Sam pulls out a manilla folder from his satchel and opens it.

“It says, and I quote, ‘I can’t help it. I can’t help it. It’s this damn brain infection. I feel so alone, I’m aching. I need--’”

I sit up in my chair.

“I need what?”

“You stopped talking. It says you stopped talking.” 

Doctor Sam closes the manilla folder and slides it back in his satchel.

I close my eyes, trying to remember the night I was arrested. I was sitting in a room not much different than this, but I was handcuffed to a hard metal chair and a policewoman, just like the masculine ones you see on Cell Block H, was grilling me. I was still groggy from the enormous amount of Benadryl I had taken the night before but alert enough to catch myself before I said too much.

“Misty, are you asleep?”

He thinks I’m asleep. Good. I keep my eyes closed and slump over.

“Misty. Misty! Wake up. If you don’t cooperate, I will conclude right now that you’re fit for trial, and you are nothing more than a—”

I open my eyes before he can finish. 

“Murderous whore? Is that what you wanted to say Doctor Sam? You don’t think I’m cooperating? You must think I’m a complete idiot. Do you think I want to be confined? They should be metastasizing my time, not you!” 

“Who’s they?”

“None of your damn business!” I snap. 

I stand up, kick my chair across the room, and watch it crash into the stack of puzzles, causing Doctor Sam to react like a frightened little boy, leaping out of his chair and retreating to the corner. Big Jim, the tall black bouncer guard with the enormous afro, like a dandelion full of fluffy seeds, opens the door.

“You okay?” he asks.

“I’m fine, and I’m cooperating,” I pout.

Just seeing Big Jim’s comforting face, which seems to have a permanent grin on it, dissolves the last bit of anger I have left after releasing it on the puzzles. 

“I’m not talking to you, kid.”

He turns to Doctor Sam, who nods and waves him off like a mere servant. Big Jim’s face grows stern, so I try and lighten his mood.

“Hey Big Jim. Will you let me blow on your head and make a wish?”

Big Jim shakes his head, suppressing a laugh and leaves us locked inside.  

Doctor Sam takes a deep breath. He’s either relieved or fed up. 

“Would you like to take a break?” he asks.

I collect the swivel chair and push it to the opposite side of the table from Doctor Sam.

“No, I don’t need a break. It’s these pills they keep feeding me. It makes me want to jump out of my skin sometimes.”

“They’re supposed to calm you down. I can talk to the psychiatrist and see if he can put you on something else,” he says, slowly returning to his chair and taking a seat.

“I thought you were a psychiatrist?”

“I am a forensic psychologist.”

“Forensic?”

“I’m here to evaluate you.”

“I don’t need an evaluation.”

I pick up my book, turn to page 143, ‘The Fall of the House of Usher,’ and read aloud, “I must perish in this deplorable folly. Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of the future, not in themselves, but in their results.”

“I dread a future here,” I say, closing my book.

“It’s better than the alternative,” Doctor Sam interjects.

“That’s not what I’m referring… never mind. Do you like Poe, Doctor Sam?”

“Not my cup of tea. Now--”

“Do you think he’s insane?”

“Misty, let’s focus on--”

 “He’s not crazy,” I interrupt. “Is he misunderstood? Definitely. Ahead of his time? Absolutely.”

Doctor Sam gives up on reeling me in and reaches for his satchel. He digs through it like a lady looking for lipstick in her over-sized purse and pulls out a can of orange juice.

“Do you want some?” he asks as he pulls out a second can.

I shake my head.

“Do you feel misunderstood?” he asks.

Ahh, he’s trying to act like he cares again. Okay, I’ll let him think he’s doing a good job of it.

“You mean like Poe?” I ask.

Doctor Sam massages his forehead.

“Okay, yes, like Poe.”

“Maybe. I think there’s no such thing as crazy people, insane people, or mad people. I believe there are misunderstood people chosen to be a part of something so extraordinary that others who only exist in this world will never comprehend.”

Doctor Sam closes his notebook and leans toward me.

“Can we get back to the infection please? How did you catch it?”

I sit up straight, take a deep breath, and begin my side of the story. One I’m confident he will never believe.

“It happened on the best day of my life, my last day of high school. We were the Class of 1986, home of the Fairview Red Wolves. I always thought that was a stupid name. There were no wolves in sight. There were foxes, deer, squirrels, and an occasional coyote, but not one mighty red wolf around. But we have something else in Northern Virginia, something more extraordinary.”

“We do?”

“Yes, Doctor Sam, we do. We have creatures that invade our trees, but only for a short time and only every seventeen years.”

I pause for a moment, hoping Doctor Sam shows signs of intrigue, but instead, he continues taking notes. Finally, he puts the notebook back on the table and motions me to continue.

“Every seventeen years, these horny red-eyed, bat-winged cicadas emerge from the depths of the earth. They break out of their crispy skeleton shells and fly around the trees like they are on speed. Their sheer purpose in life is to shag as many cicadas as possible before they die. The females die off, too, but not before they lay eggs in the trees. About six weeks later, the eggs hatch and little baby cicadas crawl out, making a beeline to the ground. They burrow themselves two feet under. They suck on tree roots for seventeen years, and then, without fail, they re-emerge, and the invasion and the mass shagging repeat itself.”