Where Are You, Steve Breck?

"The room is unfamiliar. I don't know how I got here. I smell Steve Breck."

Two truths and a lie. I knew the lie. We all knew the lie. Steve Breck had been dead for three years. There was no way anyone could smell Steve Breck. Steve was this soul who would invite everyone to dinner. He'd blindfold us, seat us next to someone, and then on the other side of us would be one of his household staff who would cut our food and feed it to us.

We would never be seated near anyone we already knew. We were tasked with eating a delicious meal that we could not see or recreate, unless you could do it just from taste alone. We would interview our designated table mate throughout the dinner party, glean as much as we could, then we would, as a pair, put together a story. Sometimes it was fun to the the pair who began the story, but most of the time, it was better to have a place further into the narrative where we could force the characters to do something that would profoundly impact the plot.

While all this was going on, the whole session was being filmed and transcribed. The story we built during just such a dinner party three years earlier ended differently than anyone had ever anticipated, and we stopped having the parties for a time. However, the invitation had come, and I, who had been invited to what I assumed was the final party (given with how it ended) three years ago, was curious, and committed to seeing how everything would play out.

We were picked up from our homes and blindfolded. In the car, noise canceling headphones were placed on our heads. When we arrived at our final destination, we were sequestered and remained blindfolded. We were conveyed. We did not walk, run, crawl, do the hustle, skate, or skateboard where we were going. The blindfolds would not be removed until dinner was finished and it was time to play the game.

So...the room is unfamiliar. It doesn't smell, sound, or feel like anywhere I'd ever been before. And, I had no idea how I had gotten here, other than a speed boat or motorcycle. Whatever the motorized conveyance, I really couldn't make it out very well because of the headphones. The name of the game was sensory deprivation, which had always been one of Steve Breck's hallmarks.

Our dinner assistants removed the headphones, and we were instructed to turn toward one another to make introductions, without any name exclusions. Full speed ahead on the information dump. A modified voice announced to everyone that there was one person in the room who was going to lie about everything. If you were the liar, you had to work not to be discovered. If you weren't the liar, you were not allowed to lie about any information you would divulge. There were dire stakes for lying or not lying.

"Hello, there," I said to my dinner companion. "I'm Savannah."

"Well, hi, there," she said in the broad drawl of someone from Australia. "I'm Barbara. I'm a zookeeper from Sydney. Australia, if you couldn't tell from the accent."

"Barbara. Lovely to meet you. I'm just your garden variety American. I host a Saturday morning kids' show that's all about animals. I think hardly anyone watches it. It's on too early."

"What a shame!" Barbara said. "Children need to see all the animals they can while they still can. Our earth is changing. Do you know the last Dodo bird has only been extinct for around 300 years. Have you seen photos of the Dodo? I would have loved to have been able to see one in real life." Barbara sighed.

"It's funny you should bring up the Dodo," I said. "There's some mega-zillionaire who's trying to gather enough remaining DNA to clone one. Those birds were the size of a kindergartener, and they didn't fly."

"I always heard they ate themselves to death," said Barbara. "They got too fat for their own good. Kinda like humans. It sure would be something to see one, though, wouldn't it?"

"What kind of game do you think we're going to play here tonight? Have you been to one of these parties in the past?" I asked.

She leaned in conspiratorially. "I have," she whispered. "Steve Breck was my partner at the last party. I haven't seen or heard from him since."

"Barbara, I think he's dead," I said. "He was my brother's best friend, and we haven't heard anything from him since that night."

"I'll tell you what, Savannah, I don't think he's dead. Not at all. I think he spent the last three years putting every detail together for this night. Also, he told me about you during the party three years ago."

"What?" I actually blustered and was flummoxed. I had never known what being flummoxed looked, felt, or sounded like until I experienced it.

"You're the sister, right? Eddie is your brother? Steve Breck was mad about you," Barbara was whispering again.

"I never knew until that last night," I said. "He was just always around, since we were young kids. Then he invented some code that's a backdoor for every video game, and he moved on to bigger and better things."

"He never moved on from you and Eddie, though, did he? He always knew you and what you wanted before you ever wanted it," Barbara said, and I knew she was right. Why on earth didn't I see what was right in front of me when it was right in front of me?

We finished eating and getting to know each other. Then the two of us were tapped gently on the shoulder and led from our dining room table chairs to what felt like velvet wing chairs. The disembodied voice said, "Please listen to Barbara and Savannah. They are going to start tonight's story."

We began, "It was an ordinary night. Not too hot, not too cool. We sat on benches overlooking the seaport. In the quiet of the evening, we heard the sway of the branches, rustle of the leaves, skuttling of mice making their ways back into the storm drains. There were the sounds of tiny nips coming from the water's edge. Could have been the turtles, ducks, or carp floating near the surface, too lazy to hunt like their other fish brethren. We had returned from Steve's dinner party and were perhaps decompressing, unwinding, letting our hair down.

"Do you know something?" Steve asked.

"Not really," I answered. "Do you know something? If you do, I want to know."

"I don't think you really want to know this, but I can't keep not telling you," Steve said. "I only have about 5 minutes before I'm out of time," he continued after looking at his wristwatch.

"Eddie has killed five people. I'm next on his list, if he manages to find me. I've been hiding from him for over a year. After tonight, you're either not going to see me again, or if you do see me again, we're going to pretend we don't know or recognize each other. Knowing what you know now will make you vulnerable to your brother, and I can't have him connecting the dots. He knows I have deep feelings for you," Steve said.

"Hold on a second, bucko," I said. "You realize everything you just left on my doormat, and you're leaving. Do I get to have a say in anything?"

"Unfortunately, no, you don't," Steve said. He leaned toward me, first kissed my forehead, then my nose, then my lips. Then he was gone. I heard footsteps on both sides of me, running away, and running toward.

I looked up, not surprised to see Eddie. He was agitated, "Savvy, hey. What are you doing here?"

"What are you doing here?" I countered. "It's a nice night, and I don't get down here very often. Come. Sit. Let's listen for a bit."

"Sure. Are you all right?" Eddie asked me.

"I am," I said. "Did I tell you I sold all of my Amazon, Netflix, and Tesla stock?"

"No. Why would you do that?" he asked.

"I wanted a place of my own, all my own. Somewhere out of sight, out of mind. I wanted to be able to come and go into the world as I wished, when I wished. I wanted to have guests who were like-minded and felt strongly about achieving a personal peace and finding social justice."

"Huh. Sounds pretty new agey," he said.

"I suppose it is. I have four people staying with me right now. I might allow a fifth. Would you like to visit? I have a boat standing by waiting for me. I would really like you to come with me. You have no idea what it would mean to me."

"Sav," Eddie said. "I'm kind of in the middle of something. Can it wait?"

"No," I said grimly. "It really can't wait. You have to make a decision. Come to my place, my island, and stay a while. If you stay here on the mainland, I don't think you're going to see me for a very long time. Your choice."

I watched him weighing the pros and cons. He wanted to know what I knew about him. About Steve. About the five people. I already knew before I met with Steve--about the five people. I didn't know which of the two of them killed the people until Steve confirmed it. My brother was a problem. Barbara and my blindfolds were removed. We looked at one another with bleary eyes and smiled.

The next pair of storytellers moved into the velvet seats. I looked at the other blindfolded guests. These were the parents of Eddie's first victim. After they finished, they were replaced by Steve's parents. Each pair after that were one or both parents of one of Eddie's victims. The last person was joined by me and by Barbara. We flanked my brother. He was crying. He smelled terrible, like he had been living in a cave like a wild beast, like he'd been forgotten for the past three years, like he had lived in what I liked to call Circe's Folly. He lived like a pig. He was treated like a pig. He had been a killer for sport, which disgusted me. Most days, I forgot that we even needed to feed him, but there were ample people who wanted to see the punishment Eddie wore like a hairshirt every day. The guests were the parents and spouses of the people whose lives he snuffed. I wished I could find Steve. His parents were the last of the storytellers. I felt like they knew where Steve was.

Right before I was going to rescind the offer to Eddie, he asked for 30 minutes to decide on whether or not he would come to my island. In that 30 minutes, I allowed Eddie to be on his own. He returned to where I had been sitting, a resigned look on his face.

"Yeah, sure. I'm ready. I'll come see your little island," he said. His nonchalance made me think he might have harmed Steve in the short time we had been parted. That was when I knew my brother was a pig. The first night, I treated him well. He stayed in one of the guest houses on my island. The next morning, I took him fishing. We both caught small sunfish, which we threw back into the sea.

"Eddie, I have some more to show you." We wandered down to the cave and meadow. I spread my arms out wide, "This is yours."

His eyes grew wide. "Mine? Like to do with as I wish?"

"Kind of," I said. "Come. See." I felt for the locking remote in my pocket. He wandered around a bit. I hadn't turned on the lasers yet. Even if I had, he wouldn't have been able to see them. They would have to be obscured with smoke or steam to be visible to the naked eye.

Eddie became excited, like a little boy, a little boy who didn't mutilate rodents, small animals, birds, our pets, our neighbors' pets. I had found the remains of his work when we were children, but I didn't know what it meant. I didn't know Eddie needed help. I didn't know that I should have told our parents. I didn't know until it was too late. Something was broken inside of my brother. He was building up to hurting larger and larger organisms, and some day, he would be put on trial, and it would kill our parents. This, what I was doing, wasn't a labor of love. He was an animal, and I treated him like an animal.

I moved gingerly outside the perimeter and pressed the button that turned on all of the security I had spent the previous year building. I had contacted the families of all of Eddie's victims, and I wished in my heart of hearts that Barbara was right, that Steve was still out there. I hoped he belonged to her, and that they were keeping each other safe. That was my wish anyway. But who knows what Eddie did during the 30 minutes he was making his decision. I hoped he hadn't caught up with Steve, but I didn't think I was able to save him. And maybe my two truths and a lie were two lies and a truth.