The Complex Read online

  Terri frowns, wondering what some of her feminist friends from college would make of her musings. Then she decides that she really doesn’t care. Yes, she’s doing a fine job of raising Caleb, and no, he doesn’t need a father figure in his life, but—arguments about gender politics, patriarchy, and sexism aside—it would be nice if he had one anyway.

  Randy would fit the bill. They’ve been friends—best friends—for years, but it’s no secret that he wants more from their relationship. She’s helped him through two break-ups with two serious girlfriends, and he’s helped her by listening and being there for her and Caleb, and one time they even fell asleep together on the couch while watching a movie, but they’ve never gone beyond that. She loves Randy, the way one loves a dear, dear friend, but her feelings for him are just that—friendship. She’s told him many times that there’s no chance of a romantic entanglement, no possibility of being friends with ‘benefits.’ Randy swears that he understands and is okay with it, but sometimes, Terri wonders if that’s really true. Sometimes, she feels guilty, feels that maybe she’s leading him on. He promises her that she’s not, that he’s just not into dating anyone right now, and enjoys just hanging out with her and Caleb. But Terri is concerned that, in doing so, he might miss his chance at something more with someone else.

  She also wonders sometimes how she’d feel if he got that chance with someone else.

  “You okay?” Randy asks, tromping down the ramp with another armload of boxes.

  Terri smiles. “Yeah. I’m sorry. I got distracted for a moment.”

  Shrugging, Randy returns the smile. “No worries. You look beat. We’ve been at this all day. Why don’t you take a break?”

  “No.” Terri shakes her head. “I want to get this finished. I’m sure you’ve got better things to do tonight than help me move.”

  “I can’t think of any.”

  His smile grows broader. He takes the last few steps down the ramp, and stumbles. The top box on the stack he’s carrying falls onto the ramp with a loud clang.

  “Shit! I’m sorry, Terri.”

  “It’s okay,” she assures him. “It’s full of Christmas decorations from my Aunt Hildy. I never put them up because they’re too gaudy. If you broke them, you’ll have done me a favor.”

  Randy performs a mock bow, and almost drops the rest of the boxes. He catches his balance, and they both laugh. There is a pause, as they look at each other. Terri feels a warmth of emotion in that moment. She suspects that Randy feels something, too. He starts to say something else, but then Caleb emerges from the open apartment door, and walks toward them.

  “It’s getting dark, Mom.”

  Terri glances up at the sky, and indeed, it is getting dark. Night is falling, and there is still so much to do. Luckily, they have already unloaded the big furniture. Some of their friends helped with that earlier. But there are still several rows of boxes to haul off the truck, not to mention unpacking, setting up the beds, and returning the truck to the rental agency so she doesn’t get charged for another day.

  “Let’s take five,” Randy says. “Caleb, you’re in charge of making sure your mom takes a break.”

  Caleb nods. He still doesn’t look Randy in the eye, but he’s grinning.

  “I’m fine,” she insists. “Unless you want to sleep on the floor tonight, Caleb, we’ve got to get this done. And we still have to return the truck or they’ll charge us for another day.”

  “I’ll take care of that,” Randy says. “You just make…”

  He trails off, staring over her shoulder. Caleb is doing the same. Confused, Terri turns around slowly. At first, she doesn’t comprehend what she’s seeing. Across the apartment complex’s parking lot, there is a small strip of gnarled trees and crooked saplings. Beyond those trees are a vacant lot, and a row of garages with peeling paint and sagging roofs. A shockingly obese man plods across the vacant lot toward them. As she watches, he pushes past the trees. It is then that Terri realizes he is naked. She screams in surprise.

  “What the hell?” Randy wobbles on his feet, still holding the boxes.

  “It’s a tick-tock man,” Caleb says.

  Terri doesn’t understand what her son means. She’s too stunned by the fat man’s appearance. He’s like those people you sometimes read about in news stories, so morbidly obese that when they suffer a medical crisis, it takes rescue workers and a construction crew just to remove them from their house. The difference is that this person is apparently still mobile, and not via a scooter or motorized device. No, he’s walking on his own two legs. Those legs are the size of tree trunks, and remind her of swollen, glistening sausage links. Terri suddenly feels queasy.

  The fat man strides with purpose—a purpose unknown to her, but clearly evident as he emerges from the trees and steps onto the parking lot, barely squeezing his slick, naked bulk between two parked cars. His massive buttocks smack against one of the vehicles, a red Ford Focus, and the car alarm begins to wail. Lights flash and the horn blares, but the fat man doesn’t seem to mind the disturbance.

  Caleb does, though. He clasps his hands over his ears and gapes at the naked behemoth. Caleb has always been sensitive to loud, sudden sounds. When he was younger, Terri worried that this might be a sign of autism or Asperger syndrome, but he has been tested for both and pronounced negative. He just doesn’t like loud noises. They rarely go to the movies because the volume on the movie trailers cause him discomfort. Caleb prefers to wait for the DVD release, except for the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, which he’ll usually brave in the theatre—because if he doesn’t, he’ll be left out of the conversation with his friends at school.

  “He’s a tick-tock man, and…he’s naked!” Caleb’s voice is thick with a horrible sense of wonder.

  The car alarm seems to grow louder. The naked man continues to plod toward them. Now, at last, Terri understands the strange nickname her son has provided for him. The man’s head nods back and forth, side to side, as he walks, and the motion is very much like the pendulum of the grandfather clock in her mother’s living room. Now that she’s noticed it, Terri has a hard time seeing anything else. The man stares at them with emotionless eyes, head swaying. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

  “You guys go inside,” Randy says, setting the boxes down. Terri has to struggle to hear him over the alarm. “I don’t like the look of this.”

  Understatement of the year, Terri thinks. There is nothing likeable about the look of this strange intruder. She can hear his labored, heavy breathing even from this distance. His gelatinous body jiggles with each methodical step, and he glistens with sweat. His penis is almost nonexistent, just a tiny nub lost in the folds of flab hanging down from his waist. His smooth, hairless skin is almost fish-belly white, except for a small Hello Kitty tattoo above his left nipple. She almost laughs at the bizarreness of this, but then she notices the machete clutched in his hand. It had been hidden before, concealed in the shadows between the cars. Now, it gleams dully, reflecting the light spilling from one of her neighbor’s windows.

  “Mommy…”

  “Go inside, honey.” Terri moves over to Caleb, putting herself between her son and the oncoming obesity.

  “Both of you go inside,” Randy says. There is an edge to his voice that Terri has never heard before. “And call 911.”

  “Randy, what are you—?”

  Ignoring her, Randy steps forward, approaching the naked man. The stranger doesn’t break stride, nor does he show any reaction. He merely continues toward them, closing the distance.

  “Randy,” Terri calls, and then grabs Caleb’s hand tightly. “Come on, Caleb. Let’s get inside. Now!”

  Caleb doesn’t argue or protest. Indeed, he seems to be the one pulling her as he turns toward the apartment. Terri glances back over her shoulder in time to see Randy confront the fat man.

  “Listen, friend, I don’t know if you’re high on bath salts or something, but—”

  He never finishes, because Tick-Tock (as she thinks of him n
ow) raises the machete—stretching his Hello Kitty tattoo—and swings the weapon down in a vicious arc. She hears the sound the blade makes as it cleaves through Randy’s skull. When she was a kid, Terri’s parents would get bushels of Maryland crabs in the summer. Then they’d spread newspaper out over the picnic table, crack the shells with a wooden hammer, and pry them apart to get at the meat. Randy’s skull makes that same sound. Then, the machete’s trajectory curves to the side, cleaving through Randy’s head and exiting just above his left ear.

  His eyes meet Terri’s. He opens his mouth to speak and blood pours from his lips.

  “Terri…I…”

  Randy jitters for a moment, his shirt turning wet with blood, and then part of the top half of his head slides down his shoulder. He stands there, trying to speak, bleeding and dying, missing a quarter of his head, but unable to fall.

  Terri screams.

  Caleb shrieks.

  Tick-Tock pushes Randy over. Randy slams into the pavement, arms and legs sprawled like noodles. The brains left inside of his cloven skull splatter across the blacktop like some garish Rorschach painting made from oatmeal. Steam rises from the gore.

  Finally, the car alarm falls silent.

  Terri screams again. Her hands flutter to her face. She doesn’t feel it as her own fingernails claw her cheeks. She spins around, grabs Caleb’s hand, and flees for their apartment.

  Grinning, his head still ticking from side to side, the naked fat man raises the dripping machete and plods after them.

  Three - Stephanie [Stephen] [Rose]: Apartment 3-D

  Stephanie doesn’t hear the police sirens or the car alarm or the screams, because she’s in the bathroom, looking at herself in the mirror. The bathroom’s exhaust fan comes on automatically with the light; something that annoys Stephanie to no end. She can understand running the fan when she takes a shower, but she shouldn’t need to listen to it rattling and wheezing when she’s only brushing her teeth or putting on make-up. The fan is making that noise now, the motor sputtering and the blades sounding like they have a small rodent trapped between them, but she barely notices.

  Instead, she’s thinking—not for the first time—that she can no longer see Stephen’s reflection in the mirror.

  Stephanie has never thought of her birth gender as a separate person, and she doesn’t really do so now, either, but she has noticed that she’s prone to studying her facial features with a strange, discomforting sort of nostalgia. She’s not having doubts about her decision. Indeed, Stephanie has never been more certain of anything in her life. And even if she was uncertain, it would be too late now. She’s been undergoing the medical transitioning for the past three and a half years. She’s been open about the process, and has received support and encouragement from most of her family and friends. But still…it’s strange to look at your reflection in the mirror and see the person you really are staring back at you, rather than the person who you used to be.

  Her face is different now, in structure and shape. Her skin is smoother. Her complexion has changed. When she looks at pictures of who she was, versus who she is now, she can still see elements of her old self, but they are muted.

  For twenty-two years, she was Stephen.

  Now, she is Stephanie.

  Who she’d like to be, however, is Rose.

  The transition has been hard work. Stephanie has spent the last three and a half years growing her hair out, and working on her body language and voice. She’s even worked with a speech therapist who specializes in transgendered clients. She has taken a hormone regimen and watched in wonder, bemusement, and occasionally fear as the estrogen and anti-androgen have redesigned her body, shrinking muscles, changing the look and feel of her skin, adding new shapes and curves, and redistributing fat. She has been surprised at the more subtle changes the hormones have worked on her emotions, as well, to the point where even certain television commercials can make her cry. She has undergone numerous hours of excruciating electrolysis, and has suffered through painful calcium aches common with the transition. She has marveled over how her breasts have grown, satisfactorily enough that she has decided against breast implants—at least for now. She has considered facial feminization surgery, but has been urged by her doctor to wait, and give the hormones more time to work. And for the most part, they have.

  There have been other hurdles, too. She has constantly struggled with the gender-specific social conditioning that exists all around her, permeating society, and has felt at times like she is still caught between two worlds, even though most of the process is now over. She has spent time discovering what style of clothing compliments her, and what doesn’t. She has worked hard to stop automatically heading for the men’s room when in public, and course-correcting for the women’s restroom instead.

  She has undergone all this and, for the most part, has received nothing but love, support, patience, and understanding from her family and friends. But there is one thing (besides sexual reassignment surgery) that she cannot bring herself to do.

  And that is to call herself Rose.

  Rose is who she has always wanted to be. Early in the process, when she first spoke about it with her parents, and informed them of her decision, she’d taken to calling herself Stephanie. She’d thought, at the time, that it might make the entire transition easier on her parents, and it has. But they’ve been so awesome about everything else, and have taken to it so wholeheartedly, that she’s afraid to change her name again. Stephanie, after all, is just a variation of her birth name—a name they gave her. A name they obviously liked. Rose is something entirely different. Stephanie realizes this is illogical, but she can’t help it. As she recently explained to a friend of hers, it feels like Stephanie was trapped inside Stephen for all those years, but now Rose is trapped inside Stephanie, like a series of Russian nesting dolls.

  Sighing, Stephanie turns away from the mirror, thinking that maybe she’ll try talking to her parents about it this weekend. She goes over to their house every Saturday to visit and do laundry, because the laundry facility here at the Pine Village Apartment Complex is filthy and decrepit, like something out of a post-apocalyptic movie. Half of the machines don’t work, and the ones that do are caked with grime and hair and detergent residue. The dryers are no better. During her first week living here, she found what appeared to be the flea-ridden remnants of a mouse nest in one of the lint traps. Plus, the washing machines cost $1.50 for a load and the dryers are $1.75 for sixty minutes. It costs more to do the laundry here than it costs her in gas to do it at her parent’s house.

  She turns off the light and the exhaust fan rumbles to a stop and then falls silent. That’s when she hears the car alarm blaring and people screaming. She recognizes the sound of the vehicle alarm. It’s hers.

  Frowning, she hurries down the hall to the living room. She noticed a moving van parked outside earlier today. She wonders if the new tenants are fighting. That would suck. The previous tenant was a quiet divorced father who she never heard and barely ever saw.

  The renter on the other side of that until-recently-vacant apartment is Sam, the writer. Stephanie has talked with him a few times, exchanging pleasantries. Although she has never told Sam this, Stephanie tried reading one of his books, after she saw some friends talking about him on Tumblr. She was disappointed. His stuff is definitely not her cup of tea. The book she sampled took place on an island, and had monsters and some pretty graphic violence and several particularly horrific rape scenes. Extreme violence and rape aren’t necessarily triggers for her, but neither are they something she wants to read about or watch. Stephanie prefers comics by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Alex de Campi, books by Neil Gaiman and Chuck Wendig, and television shows like Sherlock and Doctor Who. She is especially fond of the latter. Stephanie has always found comfort in the Doctor’s ability to regenerate into a new body.

  Her neighbor on the other side is Mrs. Carlucci. She’s a nice enough old lady, although Stephanie strongly suspects that she disapproves of Step
hanie’s transition. Mrs. Carlucci has never come right out and said this, unlike some other people—strangers and a few casual acquaintances—who have unfortunately done so. But still, the looks Mrs. Carlucci gives her speak silently of disapproval. Despite this, Stephanie likes the old lady, because she sometimes bakes cookies and gives them to her neighbors, and also because she’s quiet. The only time Stephanie hears her through the walls is when Mrs. Carlucci is feeding her four cats. The Pine Village management only allows for one cat per apartment, but so far, Mrs. Carlucci has gotten around that lease restriction.

  Stephanie grabs her keys off the shelf next to the front door and presses a button on the fob. The car alarm stops. She hears a door slam in the apartment next to hers. She sets the car keys back down on the shelf and is about to open the door and look outside, when the screams start again, louder this time. They’re coming from right on the other side of the wall. Definitely the new neighbors. They sound like a woman and a kid. Then, a series of loud thuds reverberate through the building as someone begins pounding on the shrieking neighbor’s door. Stephanie decides that it might not be safe to open her door. Instead, she grabs her cell phone from its charger on the end table, pondering whether or not she should call 911, and then moves to the kitchen window. She parts the curtains and blinds with her free hand, and peeks outside, trying very hard not to be seen. Her eyes widen in shock.

  There is an obscenely fat, naked man banging on her new neighbor’s door with the handle of a bloodstained machete. His head ticks back and forth, reminding her of a bobble head figure. At first, she thinks he has a small birthmark on his chest but then she realizes the splotch is a Hello Kitty tattoo.