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From Tracy’s cabin, the sunset over LA is a dream. The sky is the color of a slice of over-ripe cantaloupe, just the way Heather likes, especially with fresh lime juice squeezed over it. She wishes she had a bowl of that now, but Tracy doesn’t have perishables laid in. There are pizzas in the freezer, ice cream, frozen pot stickers, bad foods for an actress trying to get ready for a part, but it doesn’t matter now, does it? There’s lentils, beans, rice, Cinnamon Toast Crunch in the cabinets.
Heather’s been alone in the cabin for not quite twenty-four hours yet and still hasn’t eaten. No appetite. She keeps thinking about that cantaloupe, about that lime, but there’s no limes in the house, just silence dense enough it’s thickened like Jell-o, which Tracy also has stashed, in powder form. Tracy has vodka, Tracy has gin, Tracy has tequila, Tracy has two different kinds of rum, Tracy has brandy. Tracy has all this but there’s not a fucking mixer in sight. What is it with Tracy and Jill? Why don’t they keep mixers in the house? Heather swigs tequila straight from the bottle instead; she deserves it after the day she’s had. She wants Chinese food. She keeps thinking about K barbecue with Jill and Tracy, platters of raw steak shared out between them. She keeps thinking about that fan in her house, bam, out of nowhere! And then the other bam, better yet the bang, that fan laid out on her tile floors and not getting up again.
Heather Anderson has seen her own death report and turned off the TV after watching it. I wanted to disappear. And now she has, if not from herself. She’s gone off grid. If an actress isn’t in front of the camera, does she make a sound?
I’m free.
“I made it,” Heather says to the house.
The silence swallows the words right up.
-
8:17 PM, a cheap clock glows at her. Maybe half an hour since sunset and it’s pretty dark. Funny to see a cheap thing in Tracy’s gorgeous, coiffed house. Tracy probably picked it up while filming. Needs must.
Heather Anderson roams the house. It’s like borrowing a girlfriend’s comfortable shirt. The house doesn’t smell like Tracy, but she’s here; Tracy did the decorating instead of outsourcing it to some interior designer. Artsy photograph of three strangers standing together, model plane on office desk. Tracy got her pilot’s license for some action film and hasn’t kept it up, too busy these days, she’ll take Heather flying eventually, teach her maybe, get even more away from it all. Tracy’s retro camper with its cool pod shape, visible out the window. That’s where Heather’s bloody clothes are stashed; she’d rather not go there right now. The bedroom with its faux fur rug and cozy bed with plain but high quality linens, no pattern on the comforter, weirdly generic after the rest of the place, like something that belongs in a display house and not Tracy’s private getaway.
Heather doesn’t have her toothbrush or toiletries. She crawls under Tracy’s boring comforter. She’s in bed, she’s safe, the fact that she has next to nothing is okay for now. All she has is an outfit bloody enough she can never wear it again, her purse stashed near the door with the gun Jill loaned her still stuck in it. Shit, she should have that closer, shouldn’t she? In case something happens.
She thinks about that, but her limbs don’t want to move. She’s so tired. Maybe she’s sick.
She’s trying not to think about that dead fan but the woman’s face swims together in her mind’s eye anyhow. The fan’s expression is calm, relaxed, and then bursts into a sunny smile. She’s seeing Heather Anderson, her idol, in the flesh!
Heather’s so tired. She should feel more about being a murderer, and instead it’s like, thank God I’m out of the public eye at last. Maybe she’s sick.
Tequila still on her tongue, she falls asleep.
-
Dreamless sleep. Thank you, alcohol. But she’s woken up, in the same position she dropped off in, sun pouring into the bedroom, although there’s something wrong with it. I can’t believe I slept for so long. Heather’s feeling like she could eat, although the idea also makes her stomach pulse uncomfortably. Is she hungover? It wasn’t that much booze! But she rolls out of bed, goes downstairs, pokes through the cabinets, digs a handful of Cinnamon Toast Crunch out of the box. There’s a serious clock shortage around the place and Heather eventually finds the same cheap one as before. Over the city that gorgeous electric orange color still hangs and the clock claims it’s 7:52, except it’s 7:52 pm.
“What the fuck?” She finds herself wanting to say things even though there’s no one around to listen. Sleeping for nearly twenty-four hours isn’t a surprise, she guesses, with everything happening.
That’s what was wrong with the light in the bedroom. The bedroom is oriented so it gets evening light and is dim in the morning. Good for sleeping late.
Heather stands in front of the double doors next to the fridge and looks outside while she eats more cereal.
It gets dimmer by the minute. Actually on this side of the cabin it gets dark faster. Turning on the light will make it obvious someone’s here, but Tracy is here enough that it’s not weird, right? Why doesn’t Tracy buy those things where lights turn on at random? Heather will bug her about it when they’re together again.
It feels too much like being a ghost, to stand in the dark watching darkness clot up outside. Once the light is on the outdoors looks that much darker but at least she’s acting like a living person in here. Heather’s reflection wobbles in the glass, round of nose, high of cheekbone, dark circles under her eyes. Fuck. It doesn’t matter if she’s ugly now, no paparazzi out this way, but. Fuck anyway.
She could go back to bed. She closes her eyes thinking of it. Could go back to bed and let Tracy find her there when she finally made it out of the city. Take off her clothes and never bother putting them on again, live on Cinnamon Toast Crunch and tap water, fill the bedsheets with cinnamon sugar crumbs. Tracy would scold her about eating in bed, well, they’d just have to find somewhere besides the bed to have sex, wouldn’t they? At least until the sheets were washed and dried.
When Heather opens her eyes another face has swum into the reflection’s view.
Heather blinks, jerks back a step. The other face, smiling, doesn’t. It could be her twin, but doesn’t move with her like a reflection should.
“Fuck!” Heather drops the cereal, which goes flying all over the floor. The faintest heat like hands at the small of her back catches her. Heather, a stranger’s voice whispers into her brain, I found you! Finally. I thought I lost you.
Heather bolts to her purse to retrieve that stupid gun, and has it in her hand by the time she realizes no one is chasing her.
“Who’s there?” she shouts. No voice calls back, no answer. She’s alone.
-
Heather digs up her cell phone and tries to call Tracy. She gets a busy signal and then the call gets dropped. She sends a text. Maybe it goes through. How long will she be alone before Tracy gets up here? She’s already talking to herself and seeing things. Total madness might be next.
There’s no one else in the cabin and that’s the problem. Heather locked the door behind her, she knows that for a fact. All the doors are locked. The ground level windows are locked. “Hello?” she calls. The cabin air feels so still, like the air just after snow, and it swallows up her voice so completely in just the same way.
“Hello?” She just wanted to vanish. She’s killed someone, but that does not mean she wants to get movie-style murdered. “Hello? Are you there?” The sunset has gone kaput. The sky is matte indigo. It’s only going to get darker.
She can’t leave. Can’t call for help. She’s in hiding.
“Hello?”
I can’t believe I’m getting one on one time with the Heather Anderson!
Heather spins around and shoots. A wild shot, just like Jill blowing her window out, except her bullet goes through a wall - sorry, Tracy.
“Who the fuck is there?!”
Hey! Remember me? From the restaurant?
The voice comes from nowhere, from everywhere, from a stent opening directly into Heather’s brainstem where the words translate into fear before they parse as meaning. The voice is warm, cheerful. In fact, it’s fucking bubbly.
No one is there.
But the sense of presence is unmistakable: like in a dream, Heather knows for sure she’s not alone.
She does know who it is. She remembers the stupid-looking hat - the woman was a fashion disaster - and the long hair divided into hundreds of skinny braids, just like Heather’s. She never got a name.
“But,” Heather says, desperate, Cinnamon Toast Crunch and tequila curdling in her stomach, “you’re dead.”
Yeahhhh, and the fan honestly, somehow, sounds embarrassed about it. I know, this is absolutely crazy! But I’m here now, and, like, we can hang out? I wanted to talk more in the restaurant, sorry you were offended by my questions.
Heather Anderson lowers the gun. She doesn’t need a weapon that fires bullets, she needs a fucking exorcist.
-
It’s past eight now. 8:05, is what her cell phone tells her. The battery is at 68%, hasn’t dropped since last she looked. Heather sits on the couch in the bedroom with the gun on her thigh. Trigger safety: the muzzle is pointed towards the corner.
“Sorry,” said to the empty room. “I never got your name?”
Sierra! I’m so excited to be here, you know? Now no one is around to interrupt us. You were uncomfortable because we were in public before, right? Eavesdroppers. But now it’s just us! This is like a dream come true!
“It’s totally like a dream.” It is like that. “Nice to meet you, Sierra. I, uh… what did you want to know?”
Weeelll… it’s a little embarrassing to ask! Sorry if I overstepped before. But, you know, that rumor about you and Jill…
“We’re not together. Uh, I actually have - I’m with someone different.”
Oh my gosh! This is huge news for Heather Anderstans. Who is it? Please, I have to know!
“She owns the cabin. You know. Tracy Chan.”
Ohhhmigosh! The same Tracy who starred in Blinded by the Fires?
“That’s the one.” Somehow Heather stutters out a laugh.
Wow! That’s amazing! She was great in that. And she’s so hot. And you are so beautiful. And you’re together. You’re into women too. Wow.
“Wow.”
Can I confess something to you?
It’s almost full dark outside now. Heather glances at her cell phone: 8:10, and maybe she can see the faintest trace of sunset still tinting the sky, one lighter shade of indigo laid against one darker.
Oh - sorry, am I, you know, boring you? You have places to be, I get it! It’s just, it means such a lot to me to get to talk to you. After everything that happened, you know.
“I was just curious. How fast, uh, it took for the sunset to go away.”
Oh! Well, never mind, then. It’s a nice view out here. Anyway, uh, it’s like… I can’t believe you like girls! I know I’m no Tracy Chan, but she is such a lucky person to have you.
“She’s great. Really talented, really on top of her shit, easy to hang out with. Anything’s fun if you’re doing it with Tracy.” Heather’s throat feels tight as she forces the words out. She’s missing Tracy, longing for her. Tracy would tell her if this was really happening or if Heather were rolling.
Dealing with the ghost of your stalker fan who you shot dead in your foyer would probably not be that much more fun with Tracy.
Do you think… like, if things were different, do you think you could be into me?
Heather felt a lump clot up her throat. She had to swallow before answering.
Sierra couldn’t be like this, right? No one could be this cheerful with her killer. Something had happened to her between dying and now - of course, of course something had, she was back, she was an actual ghost, something had happened. She wanted to talk to Heather and be BFFs and probably wouldn’t say no if Heather was into her.
What if Sierra got mad? What could she do? Could she do anything at all? What if she just started screaming? Screaming into Heather’s head, for hours and hours. Heather had shot her once. It hadn’t taken. What if Sierra just screamed into her brain until Heather lost it?
Heather licked her lips. Made herself swallow. “Well, I don’t know you very well. So it’s hard to say. Maybe.”
What she knew about ghosts wasn’t anything more than could be summed up by watching Caspar ages ago. That probably wasn’t the most reliable reference for ghost powers or exorcism tips.
Sierra was here. Sierra could do what she wanted. Heather did not know how to get rid of her.
-
Black night swept overhead. It should have lasted for a long time. But here they were: sitting on the bedroom couch again, like they had been a couple of hours ago, but the light was different. Had she gotten up in the first place? Had she eaten or drunk anything or, God, taken a pill?
Heather didn’t know.
The sunset, again, warm light again. The sky was cantaloupe orange, sunset orange, madness orange.
Heather shivered on the couch.
Are you okay?
“I’m okay.”
I can tell you’re not okay! You don’t have to pretend with me. The same brush of warmth that had caught her as she fled from the reflection that was her-not-her: one hand on her shoulder, one on her thigh. More warmth poured off of Sierra than was physical: delight at being in Heather’s presence, a steady glow of attraction like heat pouring off a stone that had been in sunlight and now was in shadow. Heather slid her legs closer together. Her stomach felt hot, unsettled.
“Do you remember what happened, Sierra?”
Oh, yeah! I came into your house and, um…
“I shot you.”
Yeah! But I’m not mad. I guess it was pretty forward, so it’s okay. I forgive you. I’m here now. That’s what matters, right?
“How are you here? Did you see anything? You know, notice anything, between you dying, and you getting here?”
I don’t know. I don’t remember. It was like I was asleep, and you know like when your mom is making waffles and pancakes for breakfast and you smell it and it wakes you up? I smelled you! I mean, I didn’t smell you, but it was like that. And I woke up here.
“I think I’ve been through this sunset at least three times. Did you know that?”
Haha, it feels like I just got here!
It had to do with Sierra, didn’t it? It must. Not only trapped in this bubble of space but in a bubble of time, with her dead fan whose feelings didn’t change. She and Tracy had looked at some trippy art while stoned once: some staircase optical illusion where the stairs went down, but actually went up, around and around, feeding into themselves in a square track. There was no way to get on the staircase, and if you somehow got on anyway, no way to escape.
Heather stalled. She couldn’t speak. Instead she tried to focus, to catalogue as many details as she could. Just like being on set, filming for three twenty-hour days and buckling down to get through it. Sierra was invisible, no shine of light on eye or cheekbone, but Heather knew she was present: Sierra’s presence was bubbly, loving, focused intensely on Heather, like a beam of light focused through a lens. Heather could feel that focus like it was sunlight. Sierra’s emotions swelled up strong like a storm surge, and they seeped into Heather, scratched at what she knew was the edge between the world world and her self. It felt like having a sinus headache. Too much pressure in her skull, but the actual problem that there was too much Sierra, or too much of both of them for one brain to hold.
Sierra corrupted Heather’s thought process with adoration for how well she wore her hair, envy for the planes of her face, thirst to hear more of her voice, desire to stroke her hands over the length of Heather’s legs, fingers curved around calves, cupping thighs, up, up, all the way up -
Heather’s thoughts weren’t her own. Sierra was there, an uninvited tenant, sluicing obsession into Heather’s brain, as close as if they were shotgun kissing.
You heard a lot about self-love in LA. Heather wasn’t sure she’d ever managed it. Once she’d felt better than she had for the past while, although how long that “while” had lasted was… was hard to pinpoint.
So this was what it felt like. Love, or at least an obsession strong enough to feel like it, from someone outside herself. Sierra had left her body behind when she died but the ghost that came out was more permeable and could wash through boundaries that stopped other people. She didn’t need words to express how much she liked Heather. Heather could feel it.
For so long Heather had wanted to vanish. Not to die, but to have never existed in the first place.
Disappearance could be the second-best thing.
“Is it scary being dead, Sierra?”
It’s not scary. Is it weird that I’m kinda relieved? I have no problems anymore! I can just hang out with you!
“If you could be alive again, would you?”
Brief silence and then Sierra’s feelings swamped Heather again.
Heather let her eyes close. Lizard on a rock, soaking in life-giving heat.
She was lucky, right? Sierra could want to hurt her. Sierra could just blast her with hatred or resentment. Like she’d thought before, Sierra could just - could just start screaming, could hammer on Heather’s brain like it was a snare drum - could keep it up until Heather dug the gun out of her purse and turned it on herself -
Heather was lucky.
She might have felt some other way about it at the start but Heather was trapped on the looping staircase and Sierra was here, permeating her, all around her like bathwater. Heather was eroding a little under the current, eroding and alright with it.
This could be a lot worse. She could be feeling Sierra’s hatred. Instead she was feeling her love, a heady and sensuous shared feeling of Sierra’s desire to be with her, put hands and lips on her, accompany her, consume her.
-
“I’ve been going through a lot lately,” she told Sierra. Only an orange square of sky visible through the window. A quenching orange, like drinking orange juice straight out of the carton.
You drink orange juice out of the carton? Gross, I can’t believe you! Sierra laughed. You’re Heather Anderson but you walk around your house in your underwear and drink juice right out of the carton. I love it.
The sky seemed to flex and tremble. Rather than look at it Heather leaned her head back on the couch.
“Yeah,” she said, and laughed. She didn’t feel well, but she didn’t feel bad. She was suspended, in Sierra’s time and space and heart. “Movie stars are people just like the rest of you.”
Oh, I didn’t mean to, like, talk over you thought. What kind of stuff are you going through?
“Well, it’s actually not a lot, maybe. Not a lot has happened. Nothing is wrong, but I just haven’t felt good about things lately.”
When Heather closed her eyes, Sierra still wasn’t physically present. But there was no need for that. Sierra was all over the room, all through it. Might have been mixed in with the air.
Carbon dioxide leak. When had Tracy last checked?
It didn’t matter. Heather deserved to be haunted. Was lucky in the long run, that this was the ghost she got.
I can’t even imagine you feeling bad about yourself. Why would you? You’re gorgeous and talented. You have a great girlfriend. You have, like, everything.
“I know. I’m not doing a good job explaining it, right?”
Well, all your fans are here for you. And I’m your fan. But I’m more here than they are, so, you get it?
“I get it.” Heather laughed.
The air felt humid. Balmy. She didn’t sit up or open her eyes.
Weight on her thighs. So little a weight, with a warmth to it that made her know it wasn’t just her imagination. Heather stayed where she was, itching to move, open her eyes, certain that if she did she’d see Sierra leaning over her, staring directly into her face.
Well, it won’t be a problem anymore! I will never leave you.
Heather tried to swallow her laugh. She didn’t succeed, but it sounded more like an abortive sob. “You’re promising me a lot, for somebody who just got shot.”
You shot me.
It was true, but Seirra didn’t have to say it. Heather didn’t open her eyes.
When time shifted over she could tell. She hadn’t opened her eyes but the quality of their darkness changed. Heather continued to not open her eyes.
Sierra was there with her now. Or, her torso was. She floated out of nowhere like a mermaid missing the lower half, hands indeed on Heather’s thighs, dark eyes beaming into Heather’s and she was smiling. No drop of blood, no entrails drooping from where her torso cut off into nothingness.
“Did you talk to anyone about it? Your whole thing. Wanting to just quit, and run away, and, like, abandon us, all your fans, you know?”
“Not really. To Jill, a little bit. I don’t think she really… got it.”
“Well, you’re just a paycheck to her, right? You’re her boss. She’s not your friend, she doesn’t care about you like we do - like I do.”
Those hands seemed as hot as brands. Yes, mark me, I deserve it, Heather thought, I killed you. It’s a pretty cheap trade on my end. No, don’t, it’s gonna be so much harder to do scenes where I have to show my legs if I have nasty scars on my thighs.
“You think I’d hurt you? Jesus! I would never. You’re perfect, I’m not gonna mess it up, alright? But you seem like you’re doing bad.”
Maybe she was doing bad.
“You’re doing pretty bad. That’s not the Heather who gave us her best face.”
Maybe she wasn’t that Heather anymore. Maybe it was really exhausting, having to be that extra, more perfect Heather, having to project her twin.
The Gemini tattoo on her neck seemed to separate off. Two sets of parallel bars: the one Gemini symbol duplicated itself five more times, and then assembled itself into a cube of cage bars, Heather at the center. She rested on folded legs in the cage, her twin, public, perfect self looking in at her not with anything as human as contempt but with the remoteness of a god.
Gunshot-sudden another body, another twin, crouched before Heather’s in the Gemini cage. No, it was Sierra, and she reached to forcefully take Heather’s sweating hands, which twitched and wanted to curl away from her.
“Don’t do that. I’m here for you! I’ll never leave you alone again. Sierra and Heather,” a beguiled sigh released with those words, “forever.”
“I’m tired of it. I can’t even tell you how tired I am of it. Doing appearances, being friendly to strangers who like me but I don’t know anything about, dealing with my exes… fucking Devin.”
“Let me take care of you.”
“How are you gonna take care of me?”
Surrounded by bars, the landscape outside lacked all features except the gradation of sunset orange Heather had last seen over LA.
Open your eyes. But Heather could not. Her body felt heavy, ready to be laid down for a nap.
Sierra smiled. “I’m never going to let you go.”
She pulled. Heather went. Their foreheads bonked, less painful than Heather had expected from the force of the pull. Their foreheads intersected, like the shared set of a Venn Diagram. Heather had thought she was feeling Sierra before but now she was inundated, she could taste Sierra, she could see Sierra, Sierra studying anthropology, watching Heather’s movies, listening to her single, stalking her instagram, getting her hair done, studying anthropology, working retail, babysitting her sister’s kids, going to the beach alone just to look at the jade water and listen to it crashing. Jerking it in her apartment to the idea of Heather. Thinking about her fingers in Heather’s mouth. Thinking about giving Heather everything she wanted.
Sierra wrapped her arms around Heather’s shoulders and pulled her in. Her forehead melted into Heather’s forehead, it went on down from there. Their eyes, like wet icecubes freezing against each other, touched and fused - blinded. The bridges of their nose became one bridge to span all distance. Their lips touched and Heather touched her tongue to Sierra’s mouth before both their mouths were gone entirely.
See? Sierra said. I’ll be with you from now on. I’m gonna make life good for both of us, you’ll see.
Airways gone, no discomfort from it. Two clenching trachea melting into one. Tits swallowing each other, lungs extending alveoli like invasive flora, from Heather’s body into Sierra’s, Sierra’s into Heather’s.
God! I can’t breathe, I can’t do this.
Their arms stayed separate, so Sierra could stroke her back. Come on! Just a little further and you won’t even notice it. Ohh, I can’t believe I’m this close to Heather Anderson! Her hands slipped down lower, squeezed and massaged Heather’s ass. It was totally incomprehensible that Heather felt horny about this but here they were.
God! I can’t believe how lucky I am, Sierra thought. It went on now without Sierra pulling: stomach suctioning onto stomach, thigh gluing to thigh. Of course there was more but Heather felt barely aware of it; Sierra had hands all over her, it felt like, awareness, attention. She was receding, becoming secondary, a smaller person melting into a bigger will. Sierra had one hand pushed in the small of Heather’s back and the other fingers curled against her pussy, one finger teasing at her, zeroing in on her clit, circling it in little strokes.
You’re all mine now. Only a thought but greedy and pleased enough that it wafted its own musk and arousal, even to Heather, compressed into a loosely-clenched fist of a mind, hemmed in by Sierra, Sierra who was dead and gone but opening Heather’s eyes and stretching out Heather’s legs, rolling out the crick in Heather’s neck from how long she’d been leaning her head back.
You feel good. The worshipper inhabited the goddess and thought it was super pleasant. Heather could see someone else was here. Her mind and body were not her own anymore. She was held, caressed, by stray protuberances of thought that laved over her body (what was left of it - a construct) worshipfully. The coils grew into her, through her, around her, holding her and pinning her. Heather Anderson, no longer in charge, reclined in her own brain and relaxed into the pleasure of no longer having to try so hard.
-
There Heather was held, and there she stayed, as if she’d become just a layer of cells coating the inside of her brain while Sierra took precedence. Or: she remained as the pit of her self in the peach, or: she existed as the fetus cushioned by the amniotic fluid of Sierra’s adoration. Tracy might say she was different. Jill, the one who remembered, might realize Heather was no longer Heather.
But it was ok with Heather if both of them failed to notice.