demythologize

A wounded, resentful version of my face—but blue-white and open-eyed and dead—started glancing back at me in mirrors and watching me when I was failing to sleep. In time, the image began to resemble a dead-prom-queen costume, sometimes dripping black blood from a heavily lipsticked mouth, or wearing a ripped ruffled dress. Eventually, it became more cinematic, bearing little resemblance to me, easier to shut off, like a bad movie on TV. Almost comical on occasion. Almost. Dead prom queen on intimate terms. Dead prom queen demythologized. Not frightening so much as unsettling, constant, and familiar. An unwanted pet you feed out of obligation. Weeks later, the dead prom queen lingered only out of habit.

Dolores Beekmim
The Broken Teaglass
Robinson Press
14 October 1985
36

“We have a winner,” I said, and handed it to Mona. A curtain of her brown hair fell between us as she bent over it eagerly.

“Now, what exactly do you think we have here?” she asked, pulling her hair back.

“A bad dream?” I said. “‘Dead prom queen on intimate terms’?” Mona grimaced as she tried unsuccessfully to knot her hair on top of her head. “Am I supposed to laugh or throw myself out a window?”

I read it again, and then said, “I think it’s somebody struggling.”

“Struggling with what?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe with their, uh, personal demons?”

“Whatever that ever means,” said Mona darkly.

“You know something I’ve noticed? All the citations have low page numbers. Like, this one is supposedly from page 36 of the book The Broken Teaglass. We’ve found seven citations and I don’t think there’s been any page number over 100.”

“Must be a short book,” Mona remarked.

She bent over her citations again. I turned on the TV so we wouldn’t have to work in silence.

“It’ll make the cits fly by,” I said, ignoring Mona’s disapproving look.

She scoffed and snorted through a cop show and accused me of letting it distract me. But when a news magazine show came on next, she set her citations down and gazed at the screen. They were doing a story on abusive prison wardens.

“Awesome,” she said. “Finally something I can sink my teeth into.”

“You serious?” I asked.

Mona shrugged and nodded at the same time.

In the middle of the show, when they were talking about some superfluously performed strip searches in a Midwestern women’s penitentiary, I heard her gasp.

“That actually shocks you, Mona? You need to get out more.”

She shook her head. She reached for the remote and shut off the TV.

“Hey,” I said. “They’re just about to show some sweet hidden camera footage. You don’t want to watch?”

“I found another one,” she said, her voice tight. “Number 49.”

“Let me see.”

Mona pulled away from me, hogging the slip in her hand, reading it twice, three times.

“Well, shit,” she said, handing it to me.