American Elsewhere

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  Mona sees her Glock resting on the bedside table, and reaches out to pick it up.

  “No,” says Mrs. Benjamin.

  “No what?”

  “That would do no good.”

  “A bullet between the eyes would do no fucking good?”

  “You presume,” says Mrs. Benjamin, “that it has eyes. Which might not necessarily be the case.”

  Mona pauses to reflect on this.

  “Help him,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “Help him move. Help him get out. Help him run, very fast. They aren’t here for you. They’re here for me, I think.”

  “Well, fuck,” says Mona, and she grabs Parson by one arm, pulls him to his feet, and partially throws him over her shoulder. She’s had a lot of practice at this in her day. “But don’t you want help?” she asks.

  “Of course I want help,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “But help is not something you can give. Not with this. This is—let’s say—a family matter, or so I suspect. And you would not hold up well during our squabbles.”

  She silently flits out of the room and down the hall like a magenta ghost, leaving Mona to limp out the back door and unceremoniously dump Parson over the fence. He groans upon contact with the grass, while Mona hops over, squats, and watches.

  Parson grabs her ankle: “No, no. You do not want to even be near for this.”

  She thinks. Then she gathers him up and leaves.

  The sun is crawling back under a blanket of black. Swallows skim the dancing grasses in the park, snatching moths out of the air. Two black squirrels in a spruce hear her walk out to her porch, freeze, and swivel to watch, ears perked and pointed. Mrs. Benjamin outwaits them: after three minutes, they snake away. Then the streetlamps come on, with one rusting malcontent taking a full minute to persuade its bulb to shine.

  Mrs. Benjamin stands on her porch staring at the street. Once the entity that wore this body before her sat in this spot and watched lightning weave down from the sky like penguins snatching fish. And though this scene is much more quiet, much more calm, it is no less deadly.

  Mrs. Benjamin sits.

  Waits.

  Watches.

  And then:

  Her eye registers movement, then identifies a white hat in the darkness below the spruce.

  “Well, come out then,” she says.

  The figure does not move.

  “Come on then,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “Be polite. Don’t just stand there.”

  But he does not move.

  “Come out!” she commands.

  The white hat tips to the side, just a touch. She imagines its wearer is pleased to see her so frustrated.

  “What do you want?” she asks, more softly.

  A long pause.

  “What?” she asks.

  “For you,” says a voice, “to stop.”

  “Stop what?” she asks.

  The hat slowly teeters to the right.

  “Such a nice house,” says the voice. “Such a nice yard. Such pretty flowers. Good porch. Good place to put your heels up, if your hips permit. If I were you—and I am not—I would wish to spend many an evening here.”

  “Kindly get to your point.”

  The hat tips back and forth like a ship on turbulent seas. “I wonder,” says the voice, “why one would ever want to leave this place. No. No, one shouldn’t want to. Better to stay here. Stay here, on your porch, in your town. And do not come out to the wilderness. Leave what is there alone.”

  Mrs. Benjamin stands. “Who are you?”

  Silence.

  “Come out.”

  “But if you do come outside,” says the voice, “out to the wilderness, it would be tolerated only if you ventured out with purpose.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” says the voice, “with us. Help us. You are with us, whether you know it or not.”

  “Who is us?” says Mrs. Benjamin. “Who are you?”

  The man steps out of the shadows. He wears a pale blue suit, but his face is decidedly nondescript, clean-shaven and unassuming, the face of a father, criminal, brother, son.

  Yet Mrs. Benjamin recognizes him. “Mr. Deirdry?” she says. “From… the doughnut shop? What are you doing here? You aren’t… you aren’t involved in this. I should know. Who told you to say this to me?”

  He smiles wider.

  “But, Mr. Deirdry… listen, you’ve nothing to do with these affairs. Whoever told you to do this or is making you do this, I can help you, I can protect you against—”

  “Mr. Deirdry,” says the man, “is dead.”

  This stops her short. He smiles wide enough for her to see his teeth. And as he smiles, there comes a sound like a particularly vicious cicada buzzing from somewhere around the man, like it is hanging on his back.

  Mrs. Benjamin’s mouth opens in shock. “What? Where did you… did you come from the other side?”

  The man just smiles.

  “We are all accounted for… everyone who came here is still here. There is no one new. Who are you?”

  “All accounted for,” says the man, “except two. They have been laid low. Because they forgot.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He does not answer.

  “You?” asks Mrs. Benjamin, shocked. “Do you mean you are behind Weringer and Macey’s deaths?”

  “They forgot who they were,” he says. “Willfully.”

  “But who are—”

  “They chose complacence over truth, comfort over reality. I tried to wake them from their slumber. But still they slept, so I made them sleep deeper, sleep forever.” He walks to the front path and stands before her porch. “Do you betray us?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “She said to wait,” says the man. “To wait for Her. But She never said not to look. None of you old ones have looked for Her. You sat, and waited. You grew soft. I had to be the one. Me. And She was here. Waiting. All around us.”

  “What do you—”

  “All of us younger ones, we knew. We knew we had to look for Her. I went to where they sat or slept in their prisons, be it in the hills or under stones, and they joined me gladly. They were eager. They had been waiting for their chance. They knew that anything would be better than living like this.”

  “You are why the younger ones are missing? What have you done with th—”

  “Help me,” says the man. He opens his arm like a long-departed relative returning from overseas. “Help us. We cannot go home. But we can bring home here. She can bring home here. If only we bring Her back.”

  “Who are you?” asks Mrs. Benjamin angrily.

  “If you do not join us,” says the man, “then you must stay here, waiting for Her judgment. And it will come. Do you think you can bear it?”

  “You cannot tell me what to do. I do not know who you are, but I am far older than you no matter.”

  The man moves forward until he stands on the front step of her porch. “Tell me to leave. Make me leave.”

  “I do not want you to leave,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “After what you have said to me? You must answer for everything you’ve done, if you have really done anything.”

  “I have done so much,” says the man softly. He reaches into his blue coat and takes out a pearl-handled straight razor. He unfolds it with soft, delicate hands. “Make me answer. Make me.” He begins to move toward her.

  “You cannot hurt me,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “It is not allowed for us to hurt one another.”

  “Hurt me,” says the man. “Kill me. Crush me with your hands, O mighty one.”

  The straight razor flashes out, and Mrs. Benjamin cries in the dark.

  She grasps her forearm. Red-black blood leaps from between her fingers to spatter on the porch.

  She falls back, shocked. “You are not allowed to hurt me!”

  “And is this you?” asks the man. “Is this you, in that dress, in that body? Who are you? Where are you?”

  He darts forward again, a bit
awkwardly, for he is obviously untrained in physical assault. This strike is less precise, and he winds up nicking her shoulder.

  “Stop!” she cries.

  He grabs her by the sleeve of her dress. There is a yowl of ripping fabric, and she spins to hit the wall. “I will slough off that skin you wear,” he says. “I will, I will—”

  There is a flurry of slapping hands. The razor makes cuts and slashes on her fingers until it finally navigates her blows to make a wandering incision on her cheek. Blood wells up from the slash like oil.

  “Get away!” she shouts again, and shoves him back. She spins to the side and staggers back into her house.

  “I have died so many times,” says the man. “But we are not allowed to leave this place. Not now. Not yet. Not until Mother comes.” He enters her door.

  “Get out!”

  “I can show you. Let me show you.”

  Mrs. Benjamin, ragged, bloody, torn, looks at her hands, which now bear many leaking notches. She remembers that, truthfully, these blue-veined things with skin like paper are not her hands; and she is not really an old woman, defenseless and frail. And though she has not seen violence since arriving at this place, that does not mean she has forgotten it; and simply because she is currently housed within this aging vessel, that does not mean her true nature does not leak into this place.

  A deep, low buzz begins emanating from about her person as she begins to rally.

  “Go on,” says the man. “Do it. Do it!” He raises the razor, intending to make a swooping signature on her shoulder, but Mrs. Benjamin grasps his arm (with a soft series of cracks), plants her feet, and twists.

  The man is hurled across the room as if shot out of a cannon. He crashes into a bookcase and collapses in a heap, then looks up at her, head askew as if some stabilizing bone has snapped.

  “There it is,” he gasps. “There’s that”—he coughs—“famous strength.”

  “Who are you?” asks Mrs. Benjamin, feeling much firmer now.

  He uses the cracked bookshelf as a ladder and forces himself to his feet. “Break me,” he says. His incisors are smeared with red. “Hurt me. Do it. I will”—he gags, and a blob of blood rolls off his tongue—“show you how silly these lives are.” He turns, staggering drunkenly, still brandishing the straight razor.

  She is ready. Her small, wrinkled fist finds the underside of his ribs. There is a snap like a truck driving over old wood, and he crumples, coughing. When he looks up at her he is grinning, his mouth now brimming with blood.

  “It was me,” he says to her. “I did it. I killed them. I killed your brothers.”

  “They were your brothers too!”

  “Only by blood. They didn’t even know my name. Any of our names.” The straight razor flitters up like a red butterfly. Mrs. Benjamin grunts as it finds the inside of her bicep. In response her dainty, patent-leather-bound foot rises up and stomps down on his ankle. His joint is crushed as if made of rubber tubing; seas of blood come roaring out around the exposed shards of bone; when she removes her heel his foot dangles from his shin by a few red and blue harp strings. He exhales, spewing a gnat cloud of red drops into the air, yet the corners of his mouth are still upturned: he is laughing, grinning.

  “It all tears away from us,” he says, “like paper.”

  “Tell me,” she says, dragging him up, “who you are.”

  Again the straight razor glimmers through the air, and it buries itself deep in her shoulder. He slaps at it, trying to force it deeper into her, but she snatches his hand out of the air and squeezes. His hand pops like a house settling in the night. Blood begins dribbling through her tiny fingers.

  “Kill me,” he says. Flags of tissue whip and rattle down in his chest. “Do it.”

  “We cannot kill one another,” she says.

  “First it was hurt,” he says. “Now it’s kill. You don’t know for sure, do you? You don’t know what She forbade us from. You don’t really know what we can do, if we want to.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “I’m giving you a choice,” he says. “You can’t hurt me. Nothing can hurt me, besides being separated from Her. But you… you can either help us, or, when She gets here, learn what hurt really is.”

  “I am Her daughter,” says Mrs. Benjamin.

  “Then act like it,” he snarls.

  She reaches out and grabs his shoulder. Her fingers dig into the flesh, pulling it apart as easily as one would cottage cheese, exposing cords and sinews that swell and deflate like concertinas.

  Yet he does not react one bit. “When you’re all alone, that’s when you see who you really are,” he says. “And they were alone. But they were weak. I feel no regret. I feel nothing, anymore.” His red teeth snap forward and snag a nugget of flesh on her arm. Red drops leap up his cheek like dolphins playing in ocean waves.

  She falls on him then, all teeth and fingernails, and the two slash and snap and tear at one another like rabid animals, though the damage she does is by far the greater: her teeth leave flaps of skin missing from his cheek, neck, shoulder. He grabs the razor handle protruding from her shoulder and rips it out. A fan of blood marks her out-of-tune Wurlitzer. He intends to send the razor deep into her belly, but she brings her other palm down and strikes his chin.

  A torrential gout of blood begins pouring from his mouth, which is now lopsided, suggesting that the connective tissue of half his jaw has partially snapped, causing a massive hemorrhage in his throat. Yet even though nearly every cavity in his head and chest is now filling with blood, she can still see his teeth open and shut and his tongue thrash about as he mouths, “Do it. Do it. Do it,” with a burst of gore gurgling up each time as he tries to force his breath through his ruined mouth.

  She drops him. When he hits the ground, he immediately begins crawling toward the pearl-handled razor. Mrs. Benjamin, as if remembering a pie she has in the oven, turns and walks to the kitchen, so she cannot see his labored crawl across the floor, which becomes more and more difficult as each alveolus in his lungs fills with fluid.

  The man has grasped the razor and is wheeling around, looking for more flesh to slash, when the front of Mrs. Benjamin’s KitchenAid tilt-head stand mixer connects with the crown of his skull. Immediately he goes limp. She brings it down again and again, like an otter crushing a sea urchin. On the third hit, the structural integrity of his skull gives away entirely, the hat (which is now quite red) deflating under the force of the mixer. She keeps smashing the remains of his head against the floor until something ropy and translucent becomes visible among all the shards and viscera, as if there is a jellyfish swimming in the puddle of red. She glimpses tiny, serrated teeth, many writhing tendrils, minuscule suckers…

  She keeps striking it. Again and again and again.

  Finally there is a reedy cry, like that of a monstrous cricket searching for a mate, and the wriggling translucent thing trembles and turns to white foam whose bubbles coast through the oceans of blood.

  It is gone.

  Mrs. Benjamin drops the mixer.

  She has killed him. She has really killed him.

  It could not be done. Mother said it could not be done. Yet here he is, this stranger, rapidly cooling at her feet.

  What does one do, she thinks, after committing fratricide?

  Her dress is black and red with blood. She is checking her wounds (something she has not ever had to do before) when the windows flash white, and she sees a bolt of lightning shoot down on the far side of Wink.

  She marvels at it, and whispers, “No,” though the word has not left her lips when the crash of thunder splits the air.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  The world is alive with cheeps and chitters, reels and ribbits. Are they insects, she wonders, or something else? Why have I never noticed them before? Parson’s lame feet scuff the stony ground as she hauls him forward. The moon floods the alleyways with light the shade of Pepto-Bismol; Mona’s eyes search the fence-board cracks for movement and listenin
g ears; somewhere a nighthawk twitters and falls abruptly silent. Perhaps even the animals know it is wise to be away.

  Mona takes a right, back toward Mrs. Benjamin’s house. “What are you doing?” Parson says. “I said we must get away.”

  “The truck,” says Mona, and points. The black monstrosity is still sitting just around the corner from the house. She is glad she didn’t park right outside.

  As she helps Parson in, a series of huge crashes echo through the street. It sounds like someone busting apart furniture. She looks back at Mrs. Benjamin’s house, but sees nothing. Lights blink on in the front rooms of houses all around her. Doors open, casting golden pathways onto yards and sidewalks.

  Mona feels for the Glock again. She’s not used to inaction, and she especially isn’t used to running away. But Parson whispers, “What are you waiting for?”

  Mona jumps in and starts the truck. She does not peel out, as every muscle in her body wishes her to do, but eases away, eluding any undue attention.

  She counts the cars again. They’re all still there. No one new, no one missing. She can never say for sure, of course, but she thinks her visit to Mrs. Benjamin’s has gone unnoticed.

  They drive on in silence, going nowhere except away.

  “Is she going to get hurt?” asks Mona.

  “I don’t know,” says Parson. “I would not think so. But now… so much is uncertain. We were told we could not die, and yet we die. We were told not to harm one another, yet clearly some can do so, or at least attempt it.”

  “Shit. What should happen if they tried?”

  He makes a hmph, as if the subject embarrasses him.

  “What?” she says.

  “I have told you this already,” he says irritably. “They would break the rules, and be punished. And you have seen the consequences.”

  “I have? When?”

  “Yes. Was I not punished before your eyes?”

  “Wait. Wait, your coma?”

  “Yes. Like I said, I broke a rule. We are not permitted to discuss our nature with any outsiders, with any who do not know. I violated that particular law, a little, but just enough. The same should happen to any who attempt to harm another. Yet some of Her laws now appear malleable. So what do they know—whoever they are—that I do not?”