The Almost Rock Star (A Ghost Story) (DRAFT)

The Almost Rock Star (A Ghost Story) 9, Dissected Fetal Pigs

Chapter Nine

Dissected Fetal Pigs

I didn’t want to step into the woods. I felt like I had an aversion to woods now. All of a sudden. My whole life I had loved trees and flowers and green areas. I loved parks. I used to come to this park all the time to listen to music and write songs, laying out on a blanket with a backpack full of mineral water and nacho cheese goldfish.

Aja was looking around, then he said quietly, “Where did you walk in?”

I wasn’t concentrating on being visible. Aja had said I shouldn’t appear in public right now. 

“Right there. On the main path.” 

We walked right in, the killer and me, like lovers do on Saturday nights. It was late enough that nobody was around. The park closes at sunset, but there are million ways to get in. Okeeheelee Park is 1,702 acres of former Everglades, ball fields, lakes for boating and dog and horse parks. 

Most of the teens had curfews of midnight. The latest curfew for people my age was about 1 a.m., especially guys who take dates out. The guys had convinced their parents they needed extra time to drive home and maybe get gas. Everybody else who hung around was older, and had their own places and no curfew. But the park was usually cleared out by about 1 a.m. at the latest.

There were no lights on the path that night, I remembered as we walked along. It was daylight now, and sunlight burned down on the sandy path. As we walked further, cypress trees mixed with pine. The whole area was shaded and the underbrush was thick in spots. Like a jungle. The Everglades was Florida’s jungle. Okeeheelee was an oasis of old Florida before development.

Aja stopped suddenly. 

“We must be close. I feel terrible here. It feels evil.” 

I looked at him. I couldn’t feel anything except an increasing anxiety over how my body looked. I was deciding right there I didn’t want Aja to see me in that condition.

“I can feel evil here. I can feel it. We need to hurry up. There’s something bad out here.”

I looked at Aja like he was crazy, then I remembered he couldn’t even see me. 

“Maybe you’re just picking up on my stress. I really don’t want to look at my body, Aja. Maybe we can just call the police and tell them.”

Aja was walking along the path fast now. It was getting darker and darker as we walked. I looked up, and through some openings in the leaf cover saw a black cloud. Typical Florida. Storms blew up so suddenly you could walk in the grocery store on a sunny cloudless day and walk out after picking up a frozen pizza, and it would be one of the worst storms you could imagine. Black clouds, lightening cracking all over around you and thunder so loud it felt like it split your head open. Rain comes down in Florida so hard and thick sometimes that it looks like giant buckets of water dumped all at once.

The cloud above was so black that I knew it was one of those storms. They often had a tornado, too. 

“Aja, we better leave. This looks like a bad storm all of a sudden.”

He looked up. Dark Florida clouds brought with them a presence. It was like a huge ship rode in ahead of the black cloud. Invisible forces came before it. Deadening. Thick and heavy, every such presence in Florida was a warning to get out. Get out of the way, get to shelter. Sometimes I felt like a black storm was saying, “Get out of Florida.” 

The only feeling darker than a Florida black cloud storm was a Florida hurricane. 

“No, I’ve got to see it.” 

I had the weirdest thought then. Aja was going to paint my corrupted half-naked body. My black blood still on the pine needles. The black flies all over what was left of my face. I thought about Aja’s most famous work, “Biology Class: Fetal Pig Dissection by Jamie.” 

Even though it was an abstract oil painting, it was clear it was the dissected baby pig. I had seen both. The picture and the painting. Aja had taken a picture of the mess at my former high school and brought it back to his studio, which was the entire ground floor of the two-story white building. Aja got to live there for free while he fixed it up. His Dad owned it. Aja’s Dad owned a lot of buildings in West Palm Beach. He also owned an Indian restaurant, The Ring of Fire Curry House, that was always packed, right on the main drag parallel to the ocean, South Dixie Highway.

And now Aja would take a picture of me at what easily was my worst, and record it for all time. It might end up in a museum someday. His most famous work. Dead me. Dead Allie Swift. Raped and Murdered Allie Swift. Rotting Allie Swift.

I looked at Aja’s backpack and wondered if he had brought his camera.