Kill Marguerite and Other Stories

PRAISE FOR KILL MARGUERITE

“
Kill Marguerite
is a fearless romp through the post-avant wasteland of fictions both Lynchian and Homeric. Milks puts Shelley Jackson's
The Melancholy of Anatomy
through a cement mixer, grinding out tales as sure to delight as they radically defamiliarize. Here,
Sweet Valley Twins
gets a reboot finally worthy of the weird world it built. Milks is a master of the absurd grotesque, and
Kill Marguerite
is her powerful annunciation.”

—Davis Schneiderman, author of
Drain
and the DEAD/BOOKS trilogy—
Blank, [SIC], Ink

“Genre conventions are commonly thought of as restrictive rules, but in
Kill Marguerite
Megan Milks shows that these conventions can be agents of perversion, both glaringly porous and ridiculously invasive. Over the course of the book, Milks invokes and employs the genre conventions of fan fiction on, for example, Kafka's
Metamorphosis
, and then mixes in teen comedies, young adult novels, video games, choose-your-own adventure tales, epistolary novels, gothic tales, family romances, and ‘traumarama' entries, until these many genres interrupt each other, parasite each other, and distort each other. The result of this romp is absurd, grotesque, parapornographic, violent, gurlesque, but most of all hilarious in a deadpan kind of way.”

—Johannes Göransson, editor of Action Books and author of
Haute Couture
and
Entrance to a Colonial Pageant

Copyright © 2014 by Megan Milks

All rights reserved

For information about permissions to reproduce selections from this book, translation rights, or to order bulk purchases, write to Emergency Press at
[email protected]
.

Design by Artsy Geek

Front cover concept by James Share

“Kill Marguerite” illustrations by Bill Ripley

“Earl and Ed” illustrations by Marian Runk

The print version of
Kill Marguerite
includes the story, “Circe.” Due to ebook formatting limitations, it is excluded in this version. The story can be found, free of charge, at the author's website:
meganmilks.com
.

Milks, Megan

Kill Marguerite and Other Stories

ISBN 978-0-9894736-8-2

1. Fiction—General. 2. Fiction—Literary. 3. Fiction—Short Stories. 4. Fiction—Lesbian. 5. Fiction—Contemporary Women.

Excerpts of original artworks are included in this text: Tegan and Sara (various lyrics);
Ulysses
, by James Joyce;
Sweet Valley Twins
, numbers 5, 9, 12, 14, and 34, by Francine Pascal;
Choose Your Own Adventure #3: Space and Beyond
, by R.A. Montgomery;
My Teacher Is an Alien
, by Bruce Coville;
The Baby-Sitters Club #35
, by Ann M. Martin; and
Obsession
, by Lennard J. Davis.

Emergency Press

New York

emergencypress.org

Distributed by Publishers Group West

KILL MARGUERITE

AND OTHER STORIES

KILL MARGUERITE

SLUG

DIONYSUS

TOMATO HEART

CIRCE

FLOATERS (WRITTEN WITH LEEYANNE MOORE)

MY FATHER AND I WERE BENT GROUNDWARD

TWINS:

ELIZABETH'S LAMENT

SWEET VALLEY TWINS #119: ABDUCTED!

INCEST DREAM. OR SLAM POEM FOR E

EARL AND ED

THE GIRL WITH THE EXPECTORATING ORIFICES

TRAUMARAMA: A COLLABORATION

SWAMP CYCLE

KILL MARGUERITE

LEVEL ONE: THE ROPE SWING

BEGIN>> So they are at the rope swing, swinging. The rope swing is this dinky little wooden seat knotted onto a long rope that hangs from a sturdy big tree branch and it swoops back and forth over Swift Creek Reservoir, and you can stand on the seat or sit or whatever. Some of the boys even climb up the rope while it's swinging because they're showoffs like that. And there is Caty in her jean shorts and old New Kids on the Block t-shirt getting Hot and Heavy with Alex on the rope swing, at least she guesses that this is what that means. They are making out with her straddling him on that little seat while they're swinging, back and forth, back and forth, over the creek, and the muddy water smell is lifting up to them every pass, making Caty think of tadpoles and crawdads and such.

If the water's not too low, you can jump off the rope swing into the creek and then swim to the creekbank. It's about a fifteen-foot drop, depending on the water level. You have to make sure to jump off at exactly the right moment because there are rocks in the wrong spots and they can bang you up good. And although Caty is a little bit worried about falling into the creek and dying, she feels okay for now with the wind swooping through her hair and Alex rubbing his tongue around the insides of her mouth. A-plus, Caty thinks, especially since Ray and
Matt and Brendan are hooting in support, and Caty can hear Kim's tinkly laughter cutting through. She knows she is doing something right to get this sort of reaction, to be bonding this way with her best friend forever who has already had a go with Brendan, and so there is this like Amazing fizzy feeling in her gut, and she thinks of all the secret-sharing she and Kim will do after this. But maybe secret-sharing is too kiddish now that they are getting Hot with boys.

So Caty starts kneading the meat of Alex's shoulder with her left hand while holding on for dear life with her right. She is surprised at how noisy it is to suck face, but then, this is her first official time. Official. O-f-f-i-c-i-a-l. Official. The school spelling bee is in two days, and Caty is her class representative. But she won't think about that now. Her eyes are closed, the air feels good, the birds are singing. It's Happily Ever After, and Caty feels safe and sweet with her man who loves her so bad, even though he's not really her man officially, just in her head when she's dreaming sometimes. He'll probably ignore her the minute they get off the rope swing, and that's fine because for boys, hanging out with girls is only okay sometimes.

Whoosh, whoosh. Back and forth.

Then the sky crashes open and flashes red. The birds scatter, screeching out portents of doom. Caty feels Alex freeze up and she opens her eyes in alarm.

“Did you
see
Nicole's bangs today?”

Fucking shit.

“I know, they were like totally vertical.”

It's them, the new girls, the sisters, the evil bitch queens of the universe.

“At lunch her hair spray was like flaking off into her food. She's a fricking snow globe.”

“
Dis
-gusting.”

Marguerite and Shelly Thurwood of 1611 Glebe Point Road. Caty can hear the whip of Ellie's riding crop as she whacks her way through the forest. Caty can see the undergrowth wilting to protect itself as the ground trembles under the stomp of Marguerite's red Keds.

“We're surrounded by white trash,” Marguerite is saying.

“
Such
white trash,” Shelly agrees. Whap. She sighs. “I hate it here.”

“We've
got
to get Dad to move back,” says Marguerite. “He'll break down sooner or—”

“Hey y'all!” Kim rings out as they break through the trees into the clearing.

“Hey y'all!” Marguerite sing-songs back with mock enthusiasm. Kim doesn't get the sarcasm. She can be such an idiot sometimes. Since they moved here Kim has been the bitch queens' entry point into the Glebe Point Posse even though (1) no one else really likes them and (2) they make fun of Kim all the time, she just never notices. It's like, all of their neverending snickers and jeers are so totally infuriating. Caty watches in restrained fury as they come sauntering into the clearing like they own the place, all so very look-at-us, all so very we-are-the-bomb-diggity, with those looks on their faces like everything is stupid, especially you. Ellie, the younger one, twirls her ponytail and lashes at a tree trunk with her crop. Whap. Her shirt flashes Hakuna Matata and Caty's like Shit, she has the same shirt but of course it looks better on Ellie because Ellie is a ballerina and Caty is Fat, and now Caty can never wear that shirt again because Ellie owns it and Ellie is related to Marguerite and Marguerite is a twofaced hussy who has it in for Caty like nobody else.