The Grinding

by Dinniman, Matt

  As we drove, Nif stared out the window. She was soaked in the amniotic fluid from the monster’s womb. She quivered, and she kept her hand on my knee.

  “Adam,” she said after a few minutes of silence. “I’m pregnant.”

  I didn’t say anything, but I feared the sound of my heart beating out of my chest would be louder than the truck’s engine. I already knew she was pregnant. The Grinder had told me.

  “I suspected for a while now, but I found out for sure yesterday, before the bout. I took a test.” She turned toward me. “Pretty crazy, huh?”

  “Yeah,” I whispered. “Imagine that.”

  “I talked to the boys,” she continued. Her hand clutched my knee, hurting. “While I was in…in there, in my dream. Our first babies came to me. They said they would forgive me. They said everything would be okay as long as we did it right this time. They said you would save me. And you did. You saved me.”

  I had left the Rambo knife on the ground at the gardens.

  My original plan was to kill Nif with the knife. I purposely left it behind.

  The Grinder was right. I wasn’t going to hurt Nif. The Grinder knew I would never do it. The monster told me that she was going to use me, and she was correct. The right thing to do would be to kill Nif. As horrible as it was, the only sane choice was to kill her.

  We stopped at our house at Nif’s insistence. We rushed inside. Our front door had been kicked in even though I’d left the back open. Scooter’s friends were long gone. Someone wrote the misspelled “Your Dead” on our wall with a Sharpie. Nif didn’t ask. She bent down, picked up the framed picture of Pee-wee Herman and clutched it to her chest. She grabbed a bag and filled it with her Punk Rock Smurfs and her stuffed alligator. She took a framed picture of Cece, and after rooting through her drawers for much too long, she found a picture of her dad and took that as well.

  To my surprise, Hamlet was in the house, alive. I don’t know how or why, but the crazy little rodent had survived. Nif stuffed him in his travel case, and we headed out.

  We drove along the side of the road, cutting through the heavy, abandoned freeway traffic as we angled our way to Douglas. Several roadblocks had been set up along the way, but they were all left unmanned. After the first one, the road opened up, and we took off. We were forced to take the long way, using Highway 80 through Tombstone and Bisbee. We passed several people walking on the side of the road, and most of them tried to flag us down. We didn’t stop.

  Despite the warning that whatever was going to happen would happen at 2:30, nothing did until almost 4:00, just as we pulled into Royce and Randy’s parent’s driveway.

  We parked alongside Clementine’s van, and as we stepped out of the car, the entire horizon to the northwest turned white. No noise. Just a flash.

  “Don’t look at it,” I said. We crouched down behind the truck and held onto each other as we closed our eyes. Nif held my hand over her stomach as we huddled there and wondered about radiation and fallout.

  “Cocksuckers,” Nif said. “I wonder what they’re going to tell people.”

  “They’ll say they didn’t do it,” I said. “They’ll say the monster nuked itself.”

  Nif and I held onto each other and cried. I shook, terrified of the days to come.

  There’s that quote by Nietzsche that people on the internet love to fling around. It goes something like If you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss gazes back into you.

  I think of that quote all the time. I see it used now sometimes when people reference the aftermath of the nuclear explosion over Tucson. As expected, the government claimed it wasn’t intentional. They claimed the Grinder had gotten hold of a nuke when it invaded Davis Monthan, and a drone dropped it from a stolen airplane as the infantry moved in. They also claimed the crash of Air Force One was the result of a drone flying a fighter jet.

  People aren’t stupid. Some believe the bullshit, of course. There are always those who’ll believe the bullshit, no matter how high it’s piled. But nobody does anything. Nobody calls them out on it, not really. Not when they’re as scared as they are. When a major city in the United States suddenly becomes uninhabitable, when upwards of 300,000 people all die in one day—with more dying every day from radiation-related ailments, people sit down, shut up, and they do what they’re told.

  When I see that Nietzsche quote now, I don’t think of the military. I think of what happened to me. The military did what they had to. The leadership went about it in a cowardly way, killing more people than the monster did, but in the end, they did what they thought was right, and they didn’t do it easily.

  I am no better. Before all this, I feared I was a coward, and that I’d freeze up when it mattered the most. It turns out I did much worse than that. I’ve come to accept it. If it means I get to keep Nif with me, then I will happily live as a coward.

  The abyss gazed into me, and it found nothing to change.

  So I write this now as I wait for my babies to be born. I won’t tell you where we are, but it’s not in the United States. We move a lot now. You know how it is, how they’re hunting the few of us who survived that day.

  Take Ruben Villanova, for example. They keep showing his face and the censored video of the standoff on the news. They shot him down like a dog, citing national security. Right in front of all those people at the border crossing into Tijuana, women and little kids, they shot him. He didn’t do anything wrong. His only crime was being attracted to a girl on a roller derby team. He was the Mexican kid, by the way. He was the one who had fallen off the Grinder right at the beginning.

  I know the truth. It’s only fair you know it, too.

  The only way now for Nif to enter heaven is if the gates are open when she arrives. Same for me. You know that much. But there’s more to it than that.

  In that moment, as the Grinder died, she whispered her true plan in my ear.

  Nif was pregnant. She was just over two months along. The babies, of course, are mine. They are twins. Two boys, just like last time.

  From the very beginning, the Grinder sought someone just like Nif: an already-pregnant human with a partner who would protect her no matter what. I had to be told the plan. I had to know it, because I also had to know what would happen if I failed.

  Even though the babies are mine, the Grinder has become part of one of them. I don’t know which one. She isn’t possessing the baby like a demon would. I don’t have to worry about one of them spontaneously twisting his head 360 degrees and vomiting pea soup all over the place. The Grinder is more like a hitchhiker, like I had been when I visited heaven those three separate times. She won’t control the baby. He won’t ever know she’s there.

  The Grinder won’t get to heaven until my child dies, hopefully not until he’s an old man and has lived a full life. But to her, I imagine 80 or 90 years is a short wait, after so long.

  But first, heaven still has to be opened. The grinder in the sky still has to be damaged enough that it breaks, so that the gristle-encrusted souls will be allowed in. Otherwise, when my child dies, the Grinder within will once again be rejected, and she’ll have to start all over.

  That’s where Nif comes in. In addition to being the mother of the Grinder reborn on earth, she—like all mothers—is responsible for protecting our children. By carrying the Grinder within her, she has been marked and changed in a way no others were.

  If Nif died now, she would ascend to heaven like the others. She would be fed through the process, and she would be rejected and cast out. But unlike the others, she would find herself in the lake of fire, ablaze and conscious of the burning. She would be subjected to an eternal damnation of endless pain, the same damnation that plagued her dreams.

  Even after the babies are born, she will keep this mark about her.

  In fact, this taint is so strong that anyone who comes into contact with Nif in any way is marked. It would be as if they had been a part of the Grinder themselves.

  In other words, Nif is contagious.


  A simple conversation. A handshake. You won’t know it. You won’t feel it. You can live another fifty years. The stain is there. A microscopic taint on your soul. Once you die, you are rejected, and those you love are taken down with you.

  I can’t let Nif burn. I won’t let it happen.

  If I hadn’t saved her, if I just let her die that day, it would’ve been over. We few survivors would further damage heaven, but that would be it. It would be done. The Grinder would be gone. I shouldn’t have let Nif live. But I did.

  Nif and I spend our days delivering flowers to the elderly. I tell her it’s so we can earn a little money. The six grand from Big Shot Chicken is almost all gone. The old people love to touch her stomach.

  I feel terrible, I do, denying them heaven. How could I not?

  Nif doesn’t know the truth about herself. Thankfully, her mind has erased much of what happened that night. I don’t know what the truth would do to her. I don’t intend on finding out.

  The Grinder didn’t know how many more tainted souls it would take to clog and break the gates of heaven. But she figured it’d be a lot. A whole lifetime of souls.

  I have become the Grinder. I introduce Nif to new people, and they become gristle.

  This is how the gristle grinds now. I make it so. I have to pave the way.

  That’s the worst part, not knowing when I’ve succeeded. So I will keep going, raising my children, trying to make life for them as normal as I can. I promised Nif, and I promised them.

  It’s a promise I intend on keeping. As we live our lives, I will make sure Nif infects as many people as she can.

  But I am afraid. I’m afraid simply introducing her to people isn’t enough. So, I’ve taken it upon myself to help it along.

  No, I’m not killing people. I’m not having Nif meet people and then following them home and knifing them down, though I have thought of that. I can’t bring myself to do such a thing.

  So instead, I’ve decided to write.

  I warned you in the very first paragraph this wasn’t going to be a one-way exchange. From me, you got the truth. In exchange, you learned about Nif. Like I said, this is Nif’s story. But it’s your story now, too.

  I should’ve killed Nif, damned her to eternal pain. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.

  So strong is the mark upon her soul, just by reading this, just by learning the truth of what happened that night, and by learning about Nif, you are marked. Her impression is etched into you. Your soul has been tainted, whether you believe in souls or not. You picked up this book innocent, and you put it down as gristle.

  I won’t say I’m sorry. I feel terrible. I feel a guilt like no one could ever know. But I’m not sorry. If I could trade places with Nif, I would. I was forced to choose between Nif and everybody else in this world. I was forced to choose between Nif and God.

  My choice has been made.

  If you’re young, maybe the final soul will break open heaven long before you get there. And then it’ll be okay. You’ll die, and you’ll be welcomed, no matter how tainted your soul may be. That’s how it should be anyway, don’t you think? As much of a monster the Grinder was, she was right about that. God was an asshole to her. God had rejected the Grinder simply because she was a little bit like Him. And it’s funny. She was mad at God for the very same reason. He was a little bit like her.

  Believe me, I take no joy in this. Like the mythical Cyclops who gave up an eye to see the future, only to be tricked into seeing his own death, I live each moment in dread of the inevitable Grinder we all face. Like after that first scream I heard in the roller derby when Cece was attacked by the infant monster, I am filled with fear that I haven’t marked enough. That Nif will die too soon. The terror fills me. It consumes me. It won’t go away.

  So please, my friend. Forgive me. And pass this story on. Hand off this book. Tell them it is the truth. Tell them it’s their story, as much as it is yours. Make copies. For all of our sakes. Pass it on.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I have a confession. I never read the acknowledgements when I finish a book. I was about to type out some humbuggery about how it can ruin the magic of the end of blah, blah, blah, but the real answer is these things put me to sleep. As a result, I feel a bit like a hypocrite writing one myself. Still, I must do it. The fact is I couldn’t have written this without the help of several people, and they need to be thanked. In a way, it doesn’t feel like a simple page is enough. But it’s all I got, so here goes:

  Thank you Meredyth and the crew. (Usually I would say, “You are my muse,” but I don’t think you’d appreciate it after reading this book.) Thanks to Necro Dave, Erik Wilson, and the editors. As always, thanks to Blair Underwood, and the music that paved the way. Most notably this time Green Carnation, Evergrey, Fates Warning, Pain of Salvation, and Dream Theater.

  A special thanks to my beta readers: Ryan Ward, Kim Neville, Gio Clairval, Juanita McConnachie, Anna Maria Olsen, Rebecca Ogrodowski, and several others who I may have forgotten. I truly appreciate it.

  Also, to those of you who read The Shivered Sky and Trailer Park Fairy Tales and wrote to tell me you enjoyed it. It helps. It really does.

  This book was written as I left Tucson. It was my way of saying goodbye. I’m not so sure I should actually thank the city, but I have to acknowledge it.

  Farewell, Tucson.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Matt Dinniman lives in Seattle, Washington with his wife, his family, and his zoo of animals. When he isn’t writing, he works as an artist.