Her Infernal Name & Other Nightmares Read online

  She pushed the thought of Royce judging her based on her outfit alone out of her head, and when the doors opened Shosh was greeted by a small woman of around seventy who welcomed her warmly. The woman, whose name was Inge, had a thick German accent, but it was decipherable if one listened carefully. Inge wore thick glasses (“Coke bottles” as Shosh’s dad might say), pink sweatpants, sandals, and a gray sweatshirt that had a picture of a kitten wearing electric green sunglasses on it. Even this broad’s dressed funkier than me, Shosh found herself thinking as she followed Inge deeper into the penthouse Shosh had seen so many times on YouTube.

  Shosh recognized the entire apartment for the hours she spent watching Royce live her life. In one corner was the amp and guitar Royce would play. There was the balcony Royce would dance on, usually wearing as little as humanly possible, with a tripod set up to catch the amazing NYC skyline in the background. There was a telescope nearby that was featured in one of Royce’s earlier videos, where she talked about how one of her favorite pastimes was staring at the night sky and dreaming of being in another place to escape her life. Escape this? Why? The walls were littered with diamond play buttons, gifts from YouTube for having millions of subscribers and views.

  In the living room, which was also the site of so many of the videos, sat the girl herself, Royce, in the flesh. She had a pair of Airpods in her ears, her hair in two explosive pink ponytails. She had a pair of glasses on, something that was never featured in the videos, as well as a lime green tank top, with strategic slashes in it showing off a hot pink bra. She wore a pair of pink running shorts that were impossibly small. Royce smiled widely when Shosh walked into the room, stood up, and walked over to her.

  “Hi. I’m Royce,” she said, extending her hand. Shosh shook it. The girl must’ve been freezing, as her hand radiated ice. “I make YouTube videos that are like, all about who I am as a person, but also, about my hopes and dreams.”

  Inge smiled, adoring the young girl. “This is Shoshana. She’s very interested in the job we talked about.”

  “Yeah, yeah, very cool, very real, you know?” Royce said, sitting back down. “Take a seat. Can I call you Shosh? Like on that old show, what’s the one?”

  “I’m not really sure, to be honest,” Shosh admitted. First mistake, not knowing pop culture.

  “Meh, it’ll come to me. They always do, you know what I mean?” Royce said/asked, laughing. She was as high-energy off-camera as she was on. Shosh wondered if the girl was on cocaine.

  “So, I’m interested in learning more about the position, I’m not entirely sure what I would be doing other than tutoring, should I get the job, of course,” Shosh began.

  “Let me stop you there,” Royce interrupted. “I basically just need someone to help me with my everyday-type shit. Inge is great and all, but she’s getting up there in years, and honestly, my style just doesn’t allow for her to be seen with me all the time. No offense, sugar mama.”

  Royce blew a kiss at Inge, who smiled and nodded in agreement. Shosh glanced at Inge uncomfortably, then back to Royce. “Gotcha.”

  “Good. So like, you have a degree in teaching, according to your resume, which I read last night, of course, what else are you good at? What’s college like? Did you fuck a lot of guys? What was your GPA? Were you in a sorority?”

  Wait, what?

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You must excuse Royce, Shoshana. It’s easy to forget that she’s just a child. Her mind runs a mile a minute. You know this new generation. They’re so easily distracted and all over the place with their thoughts,” Inge said.

  Royce smiled, “Totally, I love that, I love her, you know? She keeps me totally grounded.”

  Shosh nodded. “College was great. Met lots of people. No sorority, though. My school didn’t allow Greek culture on campus.”

  “Aww, that’s gay,” Royce sighed. She leaned back on the couch and sat, her legs open. Shosh looked away when she noticed Royce wasn’t wearing underwear. “Do you have a cigarette?”

  Shosh shook her head. “I do not, sorry. I don’t smoke.”

  “Good, me neither. Just a little pot. That was a test, Shosh, and you passed it! I love you for that!”

  Shosh nodded. Where the fuck am I?

  “Royce, you silly girl,” Inge smiled and patted Royce on the leg. As a reaction, Royce closed her legs.

  “When can you start? I’ve got a weird vibe off you that I’m addicted to. I can’t get enough. You’re really cute if you weren’t wearing that lame AF outfit, you know? I bet the guys blast in their pants over you. They do for me, usually,” Royce said, jumping up and standing on the couch. She extended her hand and Shosh shook it.

  “I can start whenever, I suppose,” Shosh said.

  “Good shit. Inge, show her the benefits package on her way out, and also, call Abda, I need my happy juice,” Royce said, walking away and peeling off her clothes as she walked down the hall toward what Shosh knew to be a bedroom that also featured prominently in her videos.

  Inge walked Shosh back to the elevator and explained payment, benefits, and more to Shosh. While the entire interview experience was bizarre and manic, Shosh couldn’t deny that the money she’d make was astounding. She’d also have benefits, which was something she never had before, really. She’d also be able to give up her bartending job, which she’d have to do anyway, as the position working for Royce meant she would have to be on-call 24/7.

  Most importantly, her debt would be wiped out completely. As part of Royce’s deal with Irwin Agencies, any debt accrued to that point would be wiped out entirely after six months of service under her contract with Royce. Shosh read over the contract briefly, and signed. She was to start the following week. When she got home, she called her parents and told them she got a new job. Then she emailed her boss at the marketing firm, thanking him for the opportunity and vacating her current position. That night, she went to the bar to quit and was met with rounds of drinks from the owner, who had no hard feelings.

  ***

  When Monday rolled around, Shosh woke up early and was getting ready when there was a knock at the door. When she opened it, there was a package on the tattered welcome mat with a letter reading “Dress for the job you want, not the job you have, - Royce” with smiley faces and poop emojis drawn all over it. Shosh opened the pink box, bound with purple leather straps and inside were a variety of outfits, all colorful and stylish, similar to the types of clothing Royce wore frequently in her videos. Shosh laid out some clothes from the box, showered, and finished getting ready, putting on a pair of orange tennis shoes from the gift box, along with a blue plaid skirt and white dress shirt. She had seen Royce wear a similar outfit, which she playfully referred to as “Catholic school chic.”

  On her way to Royce’s building, Shosh received a fair amount of odd looks from other professionals riding the subway into Manhattan. She looked like a teenager and felt ridiculous, but she was willing to do whatever Royce wanted if it meant her debt would be wiped out completely in a matter of months. What’s a few months of looking like an idiot compared to a debt-free lifetime? she asked herself.

  At Royce’s building, she rode the elevator all the way up, staring at her reflection in the doors while waiting to reach the penthouse. When the doors opened, the first thing Shosh noticed was an odd smell, like the scent of burnt rubber or something, filling the air. As she stepped off the elevator she looked around for Royce. The penthouse was a mess. She had seen Royce’s upload on Saturday night; the group of people she had over had wrecked the place more than she imagined. The camera only caught a small glimpse of the mayhem in the penthouse and in no way reflected the actual amount of mess that was thrown all over. Shosh walked into the living room area and saw Royce lying on an inflatable pink flamingo, drinking coffee from a mug with Garfield on it saying “I don’t do Mondays,” and wearing a pair of pink Ray-Ban aviators.

  “Oh my god, you’re here, that’s great. I missed you!” Royce sprung up and ran over to
Shosh, hugging her hard. Coffee spilled on the floor behind Shosh, and she turned and looked around, confused.

  “Where’s Inge?”

  “Oh, yeah, well, she had to take a trip back to the motherland, you know, like, fucking Germany or whatever, she’ll be back in a few weeks, until then, it’s just me, you, Garfield here, and like, this place, is that cool or what? We could have a sleepover.”

  Shosh stared at the girl. There was a faint look of sadness in her face, even with the massive aviators covering her eyes. “That’s cool, for sure. Would you like me to clean this place up a bit before we get started on your lessons?”

  “No way, you’re dressed too cute for that, Inge hired like, some Vietnamese housecleaner a year or so ago, she’s late as fuck all the time, but she’ll be here soon, basically, you look adorable, I’m glad you got the clothes I sent you.”

  “Oh, thank you, that was really sweet of you to send them,” Shosh said. “I didn’t want to make another fashion faux pas like I did during our interview. So, what would you like me to do when we’re done with school?”

  “Well, there are a bunch of emails and comments to get to on my YouTube and Instagram. There’s about three hundred Snaps I have to return to my followers, too, not to mention the DMs on Twitter and Insta, too. Wanna get started with those, then do class after lunchy?”

  “Sure, whatever you like,” Shosh said.

  With that, the two sat down, put on some music, and went through Royce’s social media accounts. They laughed at the variety of ridiculous messages sent by horny guys, most including pictures of their erect members of varying sizes. Royce told Shosh stories about guys she’d slept with, about which actors she knew had the biggest penises, the ones who didn’t measure up. The fact that Royce was only fifteen as she described these encounters, often in detail, wasn’t lost on Shosh.

  Abda came by frequently, and Shosh learned that not only was Abda a fertility expert for Royce to showcase on social media, she also pulled double duty as Royce’s personal wellness guru. Abda, it turns out, wasn’t just a bubbly blond occasionally guesting in Royce’s YouTube videos, but was, in fact, a licensed nutritionist, with her own practice on the Upper West Side. She was connected to Royce in the same way Shosh was, through Irwin Agencies, and was happy to share her message of wellness and health to Royce’s enormous following. Abda was friendly, but protective of Royce when she was around, and often regarded Shosh with a careful eye. She was attractive, blond, tall with a tight, muscular body, befitting someone who ate nothing but beet root and worked out for a living. Royce often reflected on how she’d like to be as “fit” and “hot” as Abda but understood that because she spent so little time working out, it would be difficult to achieve the same results, so instead, the girl followed Abda’s advice the best she could.

  When it came to the actual tutoring and teaching portion of their day, Royce was a fairly remarkable student. She focused on the work, mostly in an effort to get it done so they could move onto “the fun shit” as she called it. Royce often impressed Shosh with her knowledge of history, and though she often interpreted things her own way, using common parlance instead of textbook-based terminology, Shosh found it refreshing to work with a student who seemed to have a passion for antiquity in a way no other student she’d met had.

  ***

  The first week went on like this. Eventually, usually late in the evening, the Vietnamese housekeeper did appear, each day, to clean and make repairs when needed. The housekeeper didn’t speak to Shosh, and only slightly acknowledged Royce, when greeted. While Royce was certainly annoying in the way that most teenagers, regardless of gender, are, she was also somewhat endearing in a neglected pet kind of way. Shosh pushed these thoughts out of her mind when she saw contract offers to promote items and appear in music videos and other things. Royce made more money than Shosh or any of her friends or family would ever make in their entire lives, and so Shosh tried to keep it in mind at all times that this was a girl who made money off the attention of others.

  There were numerous offers from a variety of men, contracts from law firms for extended periods of Royce’s time. The contracts called for her to meet these men at private airports all over New York and be flown off to exotic parts of the world to spend time as an influencer and experience their private estates or their privately owned resorts or spas or whatever. Shosh asked what, exactly, did Royce have to do for these men when she got to the locations and Royce just shrugged and said “mostly posts from the places, whatever, nothing crazy.”

  The packages kept arriving on Shosh’s doorstep. Each filled with five or six outfits. Royce, though she needed Shosh on-call 24/7, allowed her new employee one day off per week, typically a Friday. These days, Royce told her, were important for her own mental wellbeing and that she would typically go technology-free on these days. In the short amount of time Shosh had been with Royce, she never called her at a weird hour of the night, nor did she ever contact her on Fridays. She encouraged Shosh to “be her own woman on Fridays” and to “experience all that New York City has to offer.” The fact that Shosh had been experiencing the sights and sounds of New York City for almost as long as Royce had been alive didn’t matter. In Royce’s fifteen short years on the planet, she had already amassed a variety of experiences that made Shosh’s own seem childish in comparison.

  Abda and Royce took the occasional appointment with women who spent a fortune for an hour of their time. Most of these appointments were set up through Irwin Agencies and involved women coming to Royce’s apartment for one-on-one counseling or sessions with Abda where the two women would disappear into Royce’s bedroom for an hour at a clip for a “healing panel” involving Abda’s superfood-juice, followed by encouragement and words from Royce and then an “empowerment ritual,” which was essentially a feminist/fertility take on chanting. Shosh was never allowed in the room during these sessions, but from time to time she found herself pressed to the door, eavesdropping, listening for any clue as to what “empowerment” meant to Royce and Abda. The room was silent, soundproofed, no doubt, but Shosh could sometimes make out the chanting as a low hum. She didn’t think much of it after a while, and she felt that Abda and Royce, though they were charging a fortune for their time, were actually helping these women who showed up for these sessions. Many were repeat clients, some were one-offs, but they all left the apartment smiling and looking refreshed.

  Shosh found herself oddly protective of Royce. Over the course of a few short weeks, she began looking at Royce as a friend, more than just a boss. Royce didn’t act much like a boss, except when she had a tantrum of sorts, or a meltdown over what to wear for a particular video or selfie.

  Still, things were off with her new job. Royce had a tendency to walk around nude, showing off her overly developed body whenever she could. Shosh, one morning, had entered the penthouse from the elevator and found the girl on the balcony, sans clothing, looking through the telescope. She seemed frantic most mornings, as though awakening from a nightmare and searching for some kind of escape. Mornings were confusing for Royce, as though she hadn’t had much of a clue as to where she was, what she did the night before, or what she had to do, day-to-day. That fell under Shosh’s job description, anyway.

  Shosh inquired often about Inge, who was scheduled to return sometime the following month after being delayed due to family obligations in Germany. Shosh didn’t pry any further, but she thought about the old woman often. Royce had commented that Inge was a “sweet kid” but couldn’t “hang” anymore.

  One night, Royce begged Shosh to stay late, and, having no reason to say no, as well as a contractual obligation to say yes, she did. They sat, watched Mean Girls (Royce’s favorite movie), and talked about Shosh’s high school experience. They ate pizza and relaxed and when Royce inquired about guys, Shosh changed the subject quickly. Royce often asked about Shosh’s sex life, which always made her uncomfortable. She felt that maybe the child was trying to get a rise out of her, with all of her b
udding sexuality and comments about Shosh’s private life.

  “You never tell me anything juicy,” Royce said, turning her attention back to the movie. “I always tell you everything, and you never give me anything back.”

  “I’m sorry, I just don’t know that I should, you’re --” Shosh started, then trailed off.

  “What? Your boss?”

  “No, you’re a kid. It’s awkward to talk about that stuff with a kid,” Shosh admitted.

  “Well, technically, as your boss, I could order you to tell me everything. I could order you to do whatever I want, right? It’s in the contract.”

  Shosh thought about this. She supposed Royce was right. “I guess so, yeah.”

  Royce seemed annoyed. Shosh hadn’t really seen her annoyed before. Something dark came over her face, the glow of the high definition TV casting light on the girl. “Maybe I should act more like a boss. I dunno. Inge did whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, so, I dunno. I knew Inge’s entire dating history, which wasn’t much, but still, she gave me the juicy deets, you know?”

  Shosh just sat there and stared at her. Royce’s face relaxed, as though a revelation hit her.

  “Shosh, stand up,” Royce said, rising suddenly.

  She did. Standing next to Royce, she felt pretty bad about herself. In her twenties and nowhere near as developed as this fifteen year old, it was almost unfair. Royce stood next to her, and grabbed her hand.

  “What’re you --?”

  Without warning, Royce forced Shosh’s hand onto her own breast. When Shosh recoiled in fright, Royce laughed. “Gotcha! Titty grabber!” Royce collapsed back onto the couch, laughing hysterically. Shosh just stood there, frozen, confused about what just happened.

  “What the fuck?”

  “That’s the first time I heard you say the f word! Say it again!”

  Shosh just stared at Royce, confused and disturbed. “Royce, please don’t do that again, that was really inappropriate.”