Genni Runs the Voodoo Down

[Macha*]

Nicholas Hayward returned home to find his wife nervously smoking on the balcony. The smell of cigarette smoke had long signified trouble in the family. Jess kicked smoking years earlier, just after they started taking care of Genni full-time. In thirteen years, Nick had never known her to relapse. In the living room, their computer was connected to a livestream of some kind. On the screen, a red-haired girl was talking to a girl who looked a whole lot like--

“Jess?” He asked. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he already knew the answer. “What's wrong?”

“They took her,” Jessica said, between long drags on the cigarette. “They took Genni.”

Nick opened the door to the usual mess of their surrogate daughter's room. One of Genni's movie posters had fallen from the wall and her books- young adult crap no one else in the family had ever cared for- were strewn across her bed. Her school bag was left at the foot of her bed and the covers were strewn across the floor. Something was wrong. It looked like Genevieve hadn't slept in her room.

“Did she go back to the Cordovas last night?” Nick asked.

“No,” Aimee, Genevieve's disappointing friend-girl, was curled in a ball on the couch in the living room with her head in her hands. “No, s-she was having trouble getting back into the apartment and didn't want to wake you two up... so Zara and I let her stay with us for the night.”

Nick walked over to the computer and glared at the video feed. There was no doubt that it was Genevieve on the screen. They put her in that damn school on the grounds that it would make her exempt from that kind of death game but there it was, and there she was, and there wasn't a damn thing they could do about it. Nick stared daggers at Aimee. Her relationship with Genevieve had always been suspect. Nick half-believed that Aimee had sold their daughter down the river.

“I-I'm sorry!” Aimee spluttered. Tears streamed down her face. “These men with guns, they just came into our apartment and they took her-- they said they were going to kill Zara and I if we didn't co-operate.”

“You gave our daughter away.” Nick said, shaking with frustration. “You gave our daughter away!”

“It's not her fault, Nick.” Jessica said, resigned. “In her shoes, we'd have done the same.”

“To hell we would!” Nick roared. He pounded at the image of Genni on the computer monitor until the video cable came loose. “It's not fair, damn it! Make them give her back!”

“Nick, stop!” Jessica said. “This isn't helping.”

“I'm sorry, it's just--” Nick said, on the verge of tears. He reattached the monitor in time to watch a pixellated Genevieve have her nervous breakdown on the beach. “What do we do, Jess? What do we do?”

“We just sit here and wait for the phone call,” She said. “Or hope she comes home.”

–

[Genevieve Cordova, continued from Plot Twist.]

After eating a sparse lunch in the Aquarium-Museum, Genevieve decided another confessional was in order. If nothing else, then to clear up for her dedicated viewers why she went from preaching patience and caution like a good slave to the voice from her collar to singing for the announcements.

Genevieve flung herself into it in a vain attempt to ignore the guilt she felt for being unable to prevent the deaths of the people she cared about. Isaiah and Lucy were dead and there was nothing she could do but she still felt responsible for not being there, and that responsibility clung to her like a spectre. But that was only half the story. The other half, the niggling doubt in the back of her mind that Genevieve had to accept before it burst from her and killed her in her sleep, was that it was nothing more than a shallow attention grab. An attempt to grab the spotlight and run with it, to do something so openly stupid and wacky that they would have no choice but to give her a starring role, if only for a few seconds.

Genevieve knew that was part of it, and she accepted it because deep down, Genevieve was still just a fangirl.

So this speech was going to be her. Actually her, stripping away all the shallow ratings grabs and the ideological rants and the shit and presenting her to whoever happened to be watching the livestream- because this sure as hell wasn't making it onto the edited broadcast- and making sure they knew she was a person, not a character. So Genevieve pulled up the closest thing she had to a stool to a camera and gave one last confessional.

“Alright, I just did the song and dance routine so I figure anything I say from now until the next announcement's gonna be edited out.” Genevieve said, “So for once, I guess I can just talk and not have to cover it up in bullshit. So, let's start with this: I'm gay. I'm into girls. That's not a ratings stunt and it's not an attention thing, it's who I am and it's who I've always been and I've been too afraid to out-and-out say it. So now I did, on national television, or internet livestream, whichever. TV's gonna be dead in a few years anyway.”

Genevieve paused, and inhaled deeply. She closed her eyes, opening them with a weak smile.

“Nick, Jessica, Aimee. You know I love you guys more than anything. If you're watching this, turn the screen off. Don't give them the satisfaction or the ratings. Move on with your lives. You don't have to watch me die just to get closure.” Genevieve continued, now frantically pleading with the unblinking red glare of the camera. “I'm sorry, I'll miss you all and I know you'll miss me.”

She paused again.

“I'm not coming out of this alive,” She said, finally. “This road I'm on leads to the grave. I'm smart enough and strong enough to make it a leisurely trip but make no mistake- that's where I'm heading. There's no coming back from this game.”

“So please,” Genevieve said. “Just turn it off. Everything I do from here on out is just going to disappoint you. I know this isn't how any of us wanted things to turn out.”

Regardless, her family ignored her wishes and watched intently. Tears in their eyes the whole time, they watched intently.

[Genevieve Cordova, continued in We Throw Parties, You Throw Knives.]