Based on the song "Life on Mars" by David Bowie...
Someone is killing girls in the little town of Nowhere, South Dakota and they all look like Fiona Mars.
Fiona has a secret she can't quite remember. A secret her father, the Sheriff, is trying hard...
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Street lights in Nowhere South Dakota were little to none.
And people wondered why so many girls turned up dead that summer?
Traveling at night required high beams and focus. Or, if you were me, a trip to see your father which landed you in the back of a coffee-n-creamer police cruiser so you didn't have to drive at all. I was chauffeured often by Deputy Bithell. I liked to run away and my dad always sent Bithell after me. It was kinda like having a sexy bus driver with handcuffs. I was attracted to the gun on his belt and the way he sat in the driver's seat: deep on his seat bones with his knees spread, an elbow on the door, right hand firmly on the wheel. He glanced at me in the rearview, then not at me, then at me again like I might slip the safety lock somehow and escape at a red light.
He wasn't tall, but his gruff attitude added a vanity inch or two; filling the shoulder seams on his khaki shirt, his chest pushing the lighter against the fabric of his front pen pocket. Menthol hung around him, moving with him, a barrier. If I sat directly behind the driver's seat and pushed my nose against the cage, I could breathe deep enough to clear my sniffles.
Sometimes, I'd talk to him:
"Jimmy."
"Yes, Fiona."
"How old are you?"
"Older than you."
"How much?"
Silence.
"That much, huh?"
Other times, I'd lean back on the duck taped vinyl upholstery and imagine him setting my lifeless body on fire; leaving the car to melt in around me as he thumbed himself a minty cigarette.
But on that night, his eyes didn't twitch, they held me in the mirror. Both of his hands had the wheel. Miles of black tarmac ran ahead of us, scored by high beams and hemmed by guardrails:
"Fiona," he said.
"What're you doing?"
I stared out the window at the pine trees crowding the road. The light hit them and they froze mid-step, waiting for the car to pass before they continued on undercover of darkness.
"Living." I said, but I didn't believe that was possible.
Bithell's gun was heavier than I expected. I pressed the symmetrical mouth to my temple, knocking on those blue-green veins that pulsed just beneath the surface as big as train tunnels. It smelled dank like greased metal and not like menthol and I pulled the trigger. Bang.
I pulled the trigger again. Close up. Bang.
I pulled the trigger again. Wide shot. Bang.
I pulled the trigger again—
"He's trying to keep you safe," Bithell said, turning onto my home property.
I put the gun back. The world would fog over, and I'd pull it out again soon enough. It played on loop. Jump cuts. Sad music. Too close. Too far. Then the reel would slip the projector and I'd still be in the theater: the blank screen on the wall, bits of fuzz and hair flashing twenty feet tall, and I'd shove that gun back in its holster to warm for the next show.
The car idled. Bithell rubbed his bristled chin. I couldn't tell which of us was in a cage, was he looking in while I looked out? Or was I watching him, a wild animal in a zoo.
I wondered if Freud had notes somewhere about girls wanting to fuck men that reminded them of their fathers. But then I realized, Deputy Bithell just reminded me of me.
"What do you know about it," I said.
"There's a killer out there, Fiona," Bithell said. "Do you wanna die?"
