The war that morning had been about hair. It was picture day, and Heather wanted the boys to slick their hair back, but they both wanted it shaggy, and they fought so bitterly about it that she found herself close to tears. In the end, the boys won, like always.
The drop-off line was a poorly functioning intestine, clogged with luxury minivans. Heather bit her nails while the boys bickered in the back about Rocket League. She finally pulled up to the front of the school, and they got out without saying goodbye.
It began to rain as Heather pulled away. She thought about what she needed to do today. Pick up Leo’s new mouth guard. Buy some Cab Sauv for wine night with Angela. Take the dog to the groomer. But—first. She pulled into the hardware store lot and parked by the dumpsters. She put her knees up against the wheel and took out her phone. She breathed out.
She started with watchpeopledie.com. She watched a video of a teenager hanging herself on a live stream. Then, a video of a bull rider getting gored. She watched videos of men getting sucked into machines. Surveillance footage of people shot dead during robberies. Eventually, she got tired of the predictability of these videos, the anticlimax of death, and so she moved over to Reddit, where she looked at medical gore. An amputated foot. An infected spinal incision. A woman’s breast, nipple torn off by a dog. She scrolled the endless pulp in a familiar, drugged state, until a degloved hand and a necrotic crotch appeared indistinct from each other.
She checked the time and realized she’d been here for almost ninety minutes. The rain had stopped. The sun bled through an obscene slit in the clouds.
***
For dinner, she made shakshuka. The boys ate while looking at their phones, notifications jingling like Christmas bells in the cold bright of the kitchen.
Heather was scraping red from the pan when Scott came home, drunk, and grabbed her vagina from behind. They went to bed, where he fucked her, then passed out, puffing gusts of Scotch-flavored breath from his mouth. She stayed up and watched cartel torture videos until the sun rose.
***
It was a home game. Heather sat in a lawn chair on the sidelines. Angela sat beside her.
“Is it tomorrow yet?” Angela said. “All I want right now is to be drunk at your house.”
The game was slow. It was raining again, and neither team was scoring. Leo was on offense and Jake was on defense. Both looked bored and frustrated, and Heather dreaded the car ride home, their smugness if they won, their brattish indignance if they lost.
During the second half, something happened. A blur of pubescent cleated feet and Day-Glo pinnies followed by girlish screaming. Angela and Heather jogged onto the field to find a body, collapsed on the turf. Heather recognized the hair—it was Ethan, a towheaded, likeable boy. He sat upright, crying snottily, clutching his knee.
“Oh fuck,” said Angela, and that was when Heather saw it. A jagged claw of white bone protruding from Ethan’s kneecap. Exposed flesh. Blood coming in uneven gushes and spurts. Looking at the mess of bone, Heather felt a sensation in her belly that she both recognized and didn’t. A warm rush. Like her organs were separated from her Self. Somebody was on with 911, and the coach was jamming a water bottle against Ethan’s chattering mouth. Nobody was looking at Heather, so she took a picture.
***
The following morning, a mom sent out an invite for an emergency Youth Sports Safety meeting. Heather received the notification while watching a video of a man getting curb stomped.
Scott departed for San Diego early that afternoon. He left his personal laptop in his office. It was open to Asian teen porn.
***
Heather was nearly a bottle of Cab Sauv deep when Angela arrived for wine night. They sat in the living room together and drank and ate almonds. They talked about the mom who brought tequila in a water bottle to PTA meetings. The hot new math teacher. Once Angela was drunk enough, she looked at Heather guiltily.
“I have something to confess,” she said. “Last year, when Jeff and I separated, I started doing webcam sessions with this…adult actor. He wears a suit and talks to me like I’m his student. He tells me I’m a bad girl and stuff.”
Heather was so drunk she began to feel that dislocated sensation from yesterday, on the field, organs floating above her head. “I have a worse one,” she said. “When I want to relax, I watch these videos.”
Angela leaned forward. “Do tell.”
“Wanna see?”
Heather dimmed the lights and mirrored her phone to the TV. She decided to show Angela watchpeopledie.com first. She played an ISIS beheading. A self-immolation. During a dashcam video of a woman getting a tire to the face, Angela stood, hand over her mouth. “Is this real?”
“Yes. That’s real dashcam footage of—”
“No, I mean. You don’t actually look at this shit?”
“Look at this.” Heather went into her camera roll and pulled up the photo of Ethan’s decimated knee.
Angela slapped the light back on. “I have to go.”
“Angela—”
Heather followed Angela out onto the street. “How is this different from your webcam guy?” she shouted. “I’m just unwinding. It makes me feel okay. It’s just videos. It’s just pictures.”
“It’s not just pictures. Ethan’s real.”
“But the picture isn’t him. It’s something else.”
Before Heather could respond, Angela got in her Lexus and drove away.
Heather went back inside. On the TV, the tire exploded against the woman’s face endlessly. Heather closed her eyes. Behind her lids, a feed unspooled, an endless downpour of gore. Faces, peeled off. Bodies crushed under wheels. Bones exploding out of kneecaps. A video flickered behind her eyelids, then came into focus. It was grainy, but it was real, and it was of her boys, their curly heads split open by machetes.
