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Olivia Templeman
flash fiction
excerpted from COOL TIMES FOREVER
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I
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On the afternoon of February 13, 2018, Beatrice was at work in that horrible little FBI lab in Petersen from which she always knew she was destined to get fired. By this point, she’d been employed there roughly nine months as a general office assistant, a job she’d been set up with by her cousin Patrick. Patrick, her only trustworthy relative besides her sister Wynona, worked for the Witness Protection Program and was shady enough to use his credentials to Beatrice’s advantage. He had helped her reinvent herself all five times she’d needed to change identities due to a fiasco of her own creation, but she suspected he was growing tired of her bullshit. He’d requested a sum of $800 for setting her up with this FBI gig, a lack of generosity unheard of for him, so she’d had to resort to snatching $1000 from under her ex’s mattress while he was out at “the races.” Knowing him, she figured he’d come home with enough winnings to replace the stolen money immediately.
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Beatrice quickly grew bored of her new civil servant life but continued to play the part because she didn’t want to fall out of Patrick’s good graces or look like a fuck-up (alas, it was too late), and she wanted her risky theft to be worth something. So, in search mostly of a vehicle for carrying this unbearably heavy facade, she became obsessed with her boss Reginald. He piqued her interest from the start because he was a good-looking enough man close enough to her age, but what she grew over time to know and love most about him was the fact that he was an ice king: a totally unavailable, unreachable enigma. Beatrice saw Reginald as the ideal source of entertainment: a game that never lost its novelty because it was endless and could never be beaten. Consciously, she believed she was in love, and she loved to fixate on all the transcendental, beautiful qualities of his that no one else noticed, like the green streak in his left eye and the hidden vulnerability she perceived behind his laugh. But can a purely aesthetic appreciation like this be considered love? The truth is - and I feel qualified to speak on this - every claim to love that exists or has ever existed creates a new and valid definition of the word, and every definition coexists at once. People debate endlessly over what love is and isn’t, because it’s just one word carrying a spectrum of experiences far too big for it, and people aren’t comfortable with one sign meaning many things. Beatrice’s experience was love, regardless of how convenient, contrived, and shallow it was, simply because she called it by name. But with love comes a responsibility she wasn’t willing to claim, so she opted by default to be massively fucked over in the end.
II
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As François could’ve predicted, locating the dark magician was incredibly easy. All he had to do was wait around at the decrepit 4-pump gas station by Keith Starr’s house for an eccentric goth man to show up. Sure enough, roughly five minutes of sitting in the parking lot was all it took before a guy around his own age pulled up to one of the pumps in a remodeled antique hearse. This was enough of an indicator to François that the magician had been located, but his suspicions were more than confirmed when the man got out of the car wearing a full black suit, complete with a black button down and bowtie, and three massive rings: one with a black gemstone, a skull-shaped one with rubies in the eye sockets, and another shaped like the head of Baphomet. The bourgeois sure love their ugly ass bling, François thought to himself, clearly not considering himself one of these people for some reason. He sat in this smugness for a minute before the magician walked past his car, most likely on the way to pick up some cigs, and was shocked to realize that this man was someone he knew and hated back in Baton Rouge.
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How the fuck? Tommy Surov’s a magician now?, he thought bitterly, feeling his own identity as a magician somehow threatened or invalidated by this new knowledge. Peering through the gas station windows out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tommy walk from the register to the bathroom and knew he would have to act fast. François whipped his car around to the pump on the other side of Tommy’s, got out, “accidentally” dropped his wallet on the ground near Tommy’s car, and took the opportunity to carve a small hole in one of the tires. Then he pumped a little gas into his own car to keep up the act. Tommy emerged from the store a few minutes later with a pack of cigs and - disgustingly characteristic of him - some cotton candy flavored cigarillos, before pumping his gas and driving away. About 30 seconds later, François left too.
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As could be expected of a shady country music millionaire with a lot to lose, Keith Starr lived in a mansion in the middle of nowhere. It was a twenty minute drive down an abandoned country road (aptly named “Dusty Road”) to even reach “Country Boy Court,” the unforgivably indulgent name of Starr’s two mile-long driveway. The driveway also clearly didn’t meet the criteria necessary for the “court” designation, but Starr - mad with power - had made it so anyway because the alliteration sounded better than “Country Boy Driveway.” Either way, these two long stretches of totally uninhabited road made it very easy for François to catch Tommy where there were no witnesses.
III
Beatrice, considering her government career already over, decided to spend the rest of her shift shopping online for 80’s-style workout wear while eating crispy pork rinds from 7-Eleven and all twelve chocolate cookies intended for Reginald. She’d decided to sniff a little bit of coke in the bathroom beforehand, but just a little bit, and all her senses were beginning to blend into one. Everything on getphyzikal.com appealed to her so much that she couldn’t decide what to buy, and as she scrolled down to the bottom of the leg warmers page, she was met with a gigantic pop-up ad for country music singer Keith Starr’s upcoming tour. $777 BACKSTAGE PASS, proclaimed the ad in obnoxiously huge letters animated to flash purple and gold. The sight of him made an immediate impression on Beatrice, who instantly found herself comparing this man with real star power and country swagger to the glorified office manager she was already pursuing. She gazed at the ad for roughly an eon, observing Starr’s boots, assertive hands-on-hips stance, and overly-edited blue eyes that seemed to beckon her in, but the longer she stared at him the more nauseated she started to feel. She wearily dumped more Sunkist into her paper cup and tried to steal a few more glances of him, but before she could even lift the cup to her lips, she knocked the juice all over her keyboard and then projectile vomited all over the juice for good measure.
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“FUCK,” she hissed between her fingers as the laptop died, and was immediately jolted by a loud tap on her window. Assuming it was probably just a wind-tossed tree branch or an especially stupid bird, she ignored this disruption and tried to collect herself, but the taps persisted. “WHAT?” she shrieked hysterically, spinning to face the window, only to find her insane ex, Larry, standing on the other side of it with a knife. Beatrice, stupid with terror and incomprehension, just stared at him and thought, I guess he didn’t win anything at the races? She only noticed all the scratches that had been dug into the glass once Larry prodded the window a few more times with the tip of the blade. Grinning at her hungrily, like a tiger watching prey from behind a string fence, he started carving a massive F into the glass, making sure to orient the letter to her viewpoint. F… U… C… he proceeded, Beatrice gaping at him in a dissociated stupor, until he simply gave up and yelled at the top of his lungs, “Fuck you Beatrice! You think you can get away with what you did?” She was horrified to hear him speak her real name, the name she had finally come full circle to for this fifth Witness Protection Program incarnation. She was called Linda when she and Larry had been together.
