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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Let me rewind.
The first time I stepped inside Lucky's motel room, it was dark. The lights were quiet and the curtains couldn't remember what it meant to be open. The interior was stale, cigarettes and coffee and mildew from the bathroom.
I switched on the lamp by the bedside and helped Lucky sit on the mattress. Seeing him made me simmer. His face was blistered, sore bruises too young to be purple spread across his cheekbone. There was blood on his eyebrow and a split in his lip. Shadows lived in the valleys under his eyes. I removed his jacket and lifted his shirt. A map of my dad's boot heels pointed my anger in one direction.
I muttered to myself as I searched for a towel. I settled for an extra shirt. I wet it in the bathroom sink and returned to kneel on the carpet, carefully cleaning the cuts on his chin.
Lucky wrapped a hand around mine, "Thanks."
"It was my fault."
"No, it wasn't."
I brushed his hair off his forehead. It was coarse on my skin. "My daddy. My fault."
He shook his head and leaned to kiss me.
It wasn't a surprise. But kissing someone who's bleeding isn't how it seems in the movies. There's a medley of tastes to get past before you can even start to enjoy the good stuff. At first, I was sucking on bike handlebars. Nickel and dimes and rust. But then I warmed to it and it wasn't so strange, I felt removed. From myself from the world. Silence dropped like the darkness in the theater and I could hear nothing. Kissing Lucky was like the edge of summer tipping into fall. Forlorn expectancy.
When we stopped I said, "I'm gonna get some ice for your head," and I left.
Here's how it started:
I brought Lucky back to his motel. When I went to the ice machine he was alone. When I came back, as soon as the door opened, something hit me in the face.
