FEATURE: “Oscarquiet” by Riley Passmore

SITUATION REPORT

On the morning of Monday, 03/05/2007, at 08:31am, Concealer MELISSA MARIE BENNET (Asset# OSCARQUIET) failed to report to her handler, Special Agent JOSEPH CONNERS. On the orders of the Director, Special Agents CONNERS and AMANDA WATANABE were tasked with performing a wellness check on OSCARQUIET. Upon arriving at her home in SPRINGFIELD, MA, the Special Agents discovered it empty. OSCARQUIET and her three children, ages 10, 8, and 6, were nowhere to be found. They are presumed fled.

Significant Details

1. Front door ajar upon arrival at OSCARQUIET’s address, 91093 CAMBRIAN. No signs of forced entry. Mail in mailbox. Uncollected since postmark 03/02/2007.
2. Children’s rooms left clean, but dressers and closets were empty. No suitcases present in any room. Attic and basement also clear.
3. OSCARQUIET’s WHITE 2005 COROLLA (LP# 2WP C19) also missing. Neighborhood interviews corroborate time of departure: roughly 04:30am on 03/02/2007.
4. Four messages have been left throughout the house, written in various media. OSCARQUIET is the presumed author. Handwriting photographed and sent for analysis.
5. Each note is numbered, indicating that OSCARQUIET preferred them read in a certain order. They are addressed “To Whomever Finds This.”

Asset Messages

1. Black barber’s cape. Thrown over a coatrack in the foyer. Immediately visible upon entering OSCARQUIET’s residence. Contains message written in metallic permanent marker.

Let me start with a confirmation, an admission that you’ve already suspected your entire life: we are not alone. We were never alone. They’ve been here since the beginning, long long before calloused mammalian hands rose up from the Earth and overtook the land they once called theirs. And you know what? They’re still here. In the crystal hives of our cities, in the concrete rivers of our streets. They pour our coffee and wait our tables and drive our taxis and hawk our newspapers. I know this – I know this for certain – because I help them hide.

2. Refrigerator door. Stainless steel. Message engraved into surface (nail file?). Had to have taken hours. Metal filings on kitchen floor, including footprints. Presumed OSCARQUIET’s.

We’re more like them (and they’re more like us) than you think. On November 20th, 2002, on a night so cold in eastern Mass. my windows had laced themselves with frost, a few of ours came into my home after me and my three little girls had gone to bed, a dozen men from everyone’s favorite three-letter, alphabet soup agency in Langley, Virginia. I had a dream that my youngest had called my name but when my eyes popped open in the dark my Kimberly was not there. Only men. They put a bag over my head and when I asked my future employers what I had done and what they were going to do they said I was going to serve my country, that sometimes the call is not answered but received. It’s funny, thinking about it now, how similar they are to the things they ask me to hide.

3. Bathroom mirror. Primary bedroom. Black eyeliner (pencil). Written in tiny, nearly unreadable, letters. Mentions the Director. Celebrities. Smudges throughout.

The contouring comes first if their faces are close enough to ours, and if not they’re fitted with pros-theses, dummy arms and dummy legs to conceal extraneous arms and extraneous legs. This, more than anything, is the greatest challenge, my personal Everest. When I won my Oscar for makeup and hairstyling I never thought I would be doing this, secreting third eyes from prying eyes and tucking wings into overcoats and fitting dentures for creatures with beetle mouths and needle teeth. I should be at home with my girls playing dress up or on a boat off the coast of Cannes with George Clooney, not helping whatever monsters are these. But, as the Director says, they need to fit in. They need to look like us, act like us, most of all. That’s what the treaty says, the one we signed the day they made themselves known. They need to be able to pass, as hard as that may be to believe.

4. Carved into baseboard around master bedroom, starting by entrance then wrapping around into the living room. Finishes near couch. Tool unknown (possibly cuticle trimmer).

That’s why I’m leaving. I’ve had enough of these things that walk along our shores, these people who are not people but insist that they are. On my desk you’ll find everything you’ve ever given me: my ID and my swipe, my phone and my gun. But let me tell you, I’ve taken everything else: my bags of Sephora brushes, my boxes of Chanel makeup palettes, the airbrushing kits and the million dollar skin tone pigments that blot out flesh not from this world. I’m gone you Langley, Virginia bastards, you assholes who broke into my home. I’m gone and I’m gone and I’m gone and I dare you to come and find me, to pick me out from the crowd if you can.

Riley Passmore (he/him) is a speculative fiction writer and essayist based in Tampa. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of South Florida, and attended the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop this past summer. His work has appeared in Swamp Ape Review, Small World City, Barnstorm Journal, Five on the Fifth, and many others. Follow him on Bluesky @RDPassmore and read more of his work at www.rileypassmore.com.