What Happened To Agnes Moore?

“Daddy was dumb, said that I’d be something special.” - Life Itself, Glass Animals

Martin gave his boss, now ex-boss, one final middle finger before kicking open the front door of the Piggly Wiggly. He heard the glass of the door quiver as he stomped through the parking lot. The glass was probably going to crack. Good, Martin thought to himself.

Martin walked to his twenty year old Honda Accord parked in the back. The red paint was faded, the trunk was usually stuck close, and the engine sounds like a dying bear, but Martin had no right to complain since it was a hand me down from his cousin. Martin fumbled with his keys, and unlocked the door to the front seat. For a few moments, Martin sat in the humid heat, clenching the worn down steering wheel. He considered going back to his grandma’s but then he would have to deal with questions of why he was home hours before he was expected to be. Martin would try to shrug it off, but Grandma Ellen was persistent and he’d eventually have to explain that he had been fired … again.

Then there was the option of crashing at Ben’s place for a couple of hours. After nearly fifteen years of friendship, Ben was one of the few people Martin knew who didn’t get quickly annoyed with his antics, most of the time. But it was the middle of the afternoon on a Monday and like most people their age, Ben was at work.

Which left only one other option. Martin pulled out his phone from the pocket of his hoodie. He went to his contacts, scrolled down to the D’s, and hovered his thumb over “Dad”. The smiling face of his dad looked up at him. He was standing behind the stone sign that welcomed tourists to Miami Beach. It must have been the hottest day in Miami because Martin’s dad’s face was a firetruck red and patches of his light pink Polo were noticeably darker around his collar and armpits due to his sweat. Martin remembered that the sun was facing them and his dad forgot his shades, out of all things to forget when visiting Miami in June, so Martin’s dad was squinting so much his eyes were unseeable. It wasn’t the most photogenic moment of his dad but the trip was a month after his high school graduation. His dad bought them a suite at a luxury hotel that was only a brief walk from the beach. They both thought it was the last time that they could really spend time together before Martin left for college in the fall. Too bad that they didn’t know Martin would be back permanently the next spring before wasting all of that money.

“Fuck this,” Martin decided, closing his phone. He tossed it on his console, and turned the keys in the ignition.

Martin sped out of the parking lot and turned on to Holly Drive. The streets were mostly empty so Martin pressed his foot down harder on the gas pedal. He parked in front of the empty Methodist church. The sign in the font was supposed to read “EMBRACE THE LOVE OF GOD” but the M and D so it read “E BRACE THE LOVE OF GO”. Martin reached over to open the glove compartment. Its light had blown out a long time ago so it took a solid minute of blindly feeling around until he found what he was looking for.

And that’s how Martin ended up leaning against a tree covered with pale green lichen taking a long, deep inhale of his blunt then blowing out a cloud of smoke. Martin felt his muscles loosen and his toes in his Converse uncurl. No worries of finding a new job, his nagging grandmother, his too good of a friend, or doting father infiltrated his thoughts. Martin was thinking of absolutely nothing.

There was an assortment of Hostess wrappers and cigarette butts littering the ground. Martin watched in mild interest as a horde of huge black ants surrounded a half eaten Ding Dong. One of the ants abandoned the processed cake and crawled to what looked like a strand of blue hair sticking out of a bush. Wait, Martin thought, hair? Is someone sleeping here?

It wouldn’t be the most unusual thing to happen in this area. The woods behind the Methodist church was known to be a hot spot for rebellious teenagers and camps of homeless people. But the thought of a huge ant crawling into the gaping mouth of a stranger was too amusing for Martin to pass up. So he peeked over the bush with his phone ready to record.

A woman was laying on her back motionless, wearing only a pair of gray and black gym shorts and a white tank top despite the chilly autumn weather. Her brown eyes were wide open, looking up at the sun, and her pale, chapped lips was partly open. The most vibrant part of her was her curly vibrant blue hair framing her face, the rest of her all seemed to be faded out. Her brown skin looked ashen. She seemed to be … dead.

Martin’s fingers trembled. The relaxed numbness of the weed was gone. He switched from the camera app to the phone app intending to call 9-1-1 when he felt something tightly clutching his ankle. Martin looked down and met the eyes of the woman staring intensely at him.