Kevin Singer
This is the true accounting of the events of the night of August 28, 2023, as recorded by me, Ellie Sears. Don’t share this with anyone, or I’m liable to get murdered.
I was in the Dollar World store out on Fairfax Avenue, armed with my notebook and pen and my oversized canvas tote strapped across me like a shield, to work on my Econ thesis, The History of Value Shopping in 21st-Century America. After weeks of research, I’d compiled all the supposedly relevant stats: founded by Henry Dollar in 1985 in Albuquerque, New Mexico; opened their one hundredth store in 1998; Henry died in a shark attack off the coast of Acapulco in 2004; purchased for an undisclosed sum by a Swiss conglomerate (later rocked by a Nazi gold scandal); gross revenues for the last fiscal year estimated at a not-at-all-suspicious $666 million dollars.
Truth is, who cares about those cold facts? Nobody. Not even me.
I needed flesh and blood. People. Real people. Real items. So I lurked the aisles like Harriet the Spy, scribbling notes on who came here for their off-brand toilet paper, packs of latex balloons (mostly only yellow left), toy cars branded HotBox, not-quite Barbies with crooked make-up. All the while, I didn’t realize Lucinda was spying on me.
It was late. The last remaining customer, a woman in hair rollers and a walker who’d paid all in coins for a new shower cap, just shuffled out. That’s when Lucinda marched out from behind the register, straight toward me. “You a cop?”
When I didn’t answer her, she rolled her eyes and slowly repeated her question, like I was a baby. I squeezed my notebook against my chest and worked my jaws, waiting for words to come out. She grinded her gum. Her hair was long stringy blonde with grown-out black roots. Her eyeliner was Amy Winehouse cat-eyed and her mascara like stucco. She looked like she was aching to punch me in the teeth. Finally, some words came up from somewhere.
“I’m working on a project. I’ve gone to every dollar store in a twenty mile radius.”
She grinned, gap-toothed. “Relax, sister, I’m just messing. What’s your name?”
I told her, Ellie Sears, both together like I always do, and then I asked her. She told me.
“What’s your last name, Lucinda?”
“Nope.”
“Nope what?”
“Don’t got one. What, you don’t believe me?” She whipped out her license. She didn’t lie. Just Lucinda. I blinked a couple of times at her driver’s license number. Secret is, I’ve always been great with numbers.
She worked her jaw like a lioness. “I went to foster care when I was six. Allegedly, they didn’t know my last name. Supposedly, I couldn’t remember it and I refused to take one, so they just left it blank.”
“Not even X?”
She shook her head. “Way I figure it, there’s a good reason I couldn’t remember.” She glared at me. “And mark my words in that notebook of yours. Any motherfucker who tries to make me remember will regret it.”
My palms got all sweaty. “I bet you’ve stabbed someone before.”
“Possibly. Say, why aren’t you out having fun on a Saturday night?”
I shifted on my feet. “I’m fine.”
She narrowed her eyes and I imagined what it must be like to be interrogated by the FBI. “Wait, you’re a virgin!”
“First off, that’s very rude,” I stammered. “Second off, if you must know, I gave someone a…” I lowered my voice, “…a hand job once.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, Ellie Sears, don’t you bother with that. Jerking off a boy is like giving Picasso painting lessons. They’ve been practicing that forever. Anyway, you’re best off waiting for love. Corny as hell but true.” Her gaze jumped to the back of the store. “Hey, wanna help me out?”
“Like with restocking?”
She shook her head. “Something much, much cooler. But we’ve gotta leave here to do it. And you’ve gotta swear your complete silence.”
Such a smart girl you are, people always told me, like I was a talking doll or a computer. Well, they’d be wrong now, wouldn’t they? A smart girl would’ve asked Lucinda exactly what she had in mind. A smart girl would’ve said, “No thank you.” A smart girl would’ve been okay with spending her free time cataloging the customers and contents of discount stores. But this smart girl was dying for a little fun in her life. “I swear it,” I told her. “I won’t utter a word. Not ever.”
The deal done, she walked me toward the exit. On the way out she told me to take something, on the house, so I grabbed a roll of Lemon Tarty-Tarts and dropped them into my bag.
Outside, the heat wouldn’t let up despite the night. Steam rose off the pavement. She led me to her car, a rusted red Chevy Malibu with broken A/c, and we drove windows down a ways outside the town limits. All the while she smoked Marlboros and sang along to Edith Piaf in what I guessed was perfect French. She lowered the music now and then and told me dirty things about boys, so much so that it all sounded like a mess, but just as I got to the point where I never wanted to do it, she swept in and cleaned it all up with love.
She stopped us on an overpass above the Caddo River. She cut the engine and the lights and was about to flick her cigarette out the window when she thought better of it and instead rolled the ember onto the pavement and pocketed the butt and climbed out.
“Come here, Ellie.”
I joined her by the trunk. The thick air sizzled. Mosquitoes the size of gumballs buzzed and bobbed.
She brushed the strands of blonde from her eyes. “Remember, not a word. To anyone. Ever. Or else.”
She opened the trunk. Inside was a big thing wrapped in a green tarp. Body sized.
“Is that what I think it is?”
“Sure as hell ain’t no mannequin, sister.”
“Can I see it?”
She leaned her body into the trunk and ratcheted her neck my way, her eyes all glassy and frenzied. “No. You don’t want those nightmares. Come on. I need you to help me. You grab the bottom. I’ll take the top.”
I can’t lie. It was heavy. But somehow we got it out of the trunk and to the railing and gave it up to gravity and the churning black river. After it sunk out of sight, I felt unburdened. I felt on fire. I felt like a goddess.
On the drive back, she smoked more of her Marlboros. “Look at you, Ellie, all aglow.”
“What did he do?”
“Bastard claimed he knew my family history. My last name. So,” Lucinda turned my way and exhaled smoke right into my face. “I had to kill him.”
She left me back there in the parking lot of that Dollar World. The last thing she told me was this: “don’t do it just to do it. Wait for love. Make sure you love him. And make sure he tells you he loves you, at least three times. And make sure he treats you good. Trust me, it’s better that way.” Her mascara must have been waterproof. She blasted Edith Piaf and roared off in her Malibu.
I watched her taillights vanish. The whole week I could barely sleep. I checked the news for word of a found body but nothing. The next Saturday I went back to that Dollar World. Lucinda wasn’t there. A kid with acne who barely looked old enough to work there legally told me she’d quit, no notice. Gone like that body in the Caddo River.
At first, I didn’t want to do it. After all, she said she murdered a man for doing what I planned. But my curiosity got the best of me, and with that driver’s license number I’d memorized I scoured the internet using a secure and anonymous VPN until I found her real last name. Dollar, Lucinda Dollar. A grand-niece of none other than Henry. Brotherly squabbles and hard luck leading to a branch severed from that family tree.
I couldn’t blame her. I’d murder someone, too.
Not long after that, I went back to the scene of our crime. I couldn’t find any evidence of our visit—no tarp caught in the weeds, nothing. But standing there on that bridge I got this strange—okay, amazing—rush throughout my body that convinced me I shouldn’t ever return.
Eventually, I ate one of those Tarty-Tarts. Outside was indeed lemony sweet as advertised. But the coating was so hard it almost cracked my teeth. Inside was a whole other story. It tasted like chalk rolled in bleach.
Kevin Singer is an army veteran and medical editor who loves snowboarding and writing. His fiction has appeared in several anthologies and literary magazines, most recently Folklore Review and Uncharted. He lives in Jersey City. Follow him at ReadByKevin.com.
Photo by Cam Ballard on Unsplash