American Monster Read online

  Raye recoiled and scrambled to the edge of the bed as the woman got closer. In her clawed and bloody hand was Raye’s console, with a cracked screen now, the casing dented. It had been a gift from Raye’s father. She wouldn’t cry. The woman said something that Raye couldn’t understand, not because the words were foreign but because they sounded damp and at the wrong speed and Raye’s hands flew to her ears. There was blood on the woman’s face and on her clothes but no wounds that Raye could see. So the blood must be her own. Raye puked, into a bowl already half filled with puke by the side of the bed. The woman took the slops into the bathroom and Raye, who had also peed herself, grabbed her parka and half-jumped, half-fell off the bed. The room spun but she clenched her teeth and managed not to be sick again. She slid into her shoes, shuffled past the door of the bathroom where the woman was rummaging for something, and made it soundlessly out the door. Landed badly on the path and limped toward the beach trying, as she always did, to see the whole of things, the big picture. If one minute could get you to the next, then another could get you to the one after that. But you had to have a Plan B. She would call her old man and he would come for her. She could see it clear as day. She scrambled under the rail and down the litter-strewn ridge onto the beach, the ruins of Swami’s to the North and behind it the dead Onofre reactors and in her mind she could see him coming to get her, her father, not like he was now but the way he could have been in another time and place, coming to meet her on the beach. To take her home.

  Alaxenoesis: (n) A basic resequencing protocol whereby an embodied presence (the host) can change its appearance/gender/species at will, but typically limited, in Telefraxis (see below) to a delimited and finite category of being.

  (Saurum Nilea, AQn., trans. L.Shay 2656)

  11//: dichotomy

  Norma woke two days later arched and gasping. Entombed in sagging mattress. On the floor of the room lay the urchin’s bloody pillow. A roach kicked in a sticky glass by the bed.

  The tide was in, the ocean roared. Her alien vision illuminated the trailer and brought its sad objects into sharp red relief, the tossed clothes and open closet, the take-out boxes and crushed cans. There was no sign of the urchin. It came slowly back to Norma, the way the body had sprawled on the bed with its new-milk skin, the feathery lashes dark on the fighting face. Norma cursed herself but not with any conviction. She’d felt something besides her watching the girl’s struggle for life, felt something that compelled Norma to revive her, despite the risks.

  Who to ask? Retrievals were forbidden. From or beyond the brink. Her instructions had been clear on that point. But was it a retrieval? The urchin was strong—she may have recovered on her own, Norma told herself unconvincingly. In which case, the effect of Norma’s probing tongue on the child’s young brain was probably minimal. Possibly negligible.

  Deep within her false womb the dentata pulsed, sinking in its nucleotide claws, less a weapon of destruction than an instrument of self-slaughter. She felt it as a cosmic parasite taking up malignant digs, a passenger in her body, like a cure that barely kept you alive or a disease that never let you die. Norma grinned sourly up at the ceiling. Between a rock and a hard place. One of Mommy’s favorite expressions. She wondered again why the loneliness hadn’t killed her, began to understand that it never would. It was like the story, another one of Mommy’s, about the man—always a man—who kept halving the distance to his destination so that he never arrived. Norma beat the mattress with her hands. Leaving bloody prints.

  12//: fixed.2

  Auntie had a devil puppet she used to scare them with. When they did something bad, she fetched it from whereever she kept it, put it on her hand, and made it tell them what they did wrong and what their punishment was going to be. The puppet wore a flapping and threadbare red dress and one of its horns was chipped. Flat black wooden eyes and a mouth full of pointy teeth. One day soon after their mother got sick, Gene and Jesse were over at Auntie’s house playing with Ty while their father was at work. Gene was in the fifth grade, and Jesse was in eighth grade and Ty doing but his second of three tours of the seventh. The second floor of the old house smelled like mac and cheese and aftershave. Ty had a couple of bowls in his room and then must have gone and found the devil puppet because the next thing he had it on his hand, and lunged at Gene who could only take so much of those flat black eyes and that empty flapping dress. Gene took off. Ty followed him cackling, waving the thing with its terrible fluttering red dress, Gene in a world of terror, no longer associating the puppet with Ty or anyone else. It had taken on a life of its own, the devil on the loose and for his sins was after Gene and Gene alone, through the hallways and down the stairs of that old house, sputtering TVs in empty rooms, a game of checkers on a table, kittens mewling. Jesse cocooned in headphones somewhere. Behind Gene, the world reduced to Ty’s thundering pre-loved cowboy boots and a flapping red dress, until he found a door in the kitchen and stumbled down into the cellar. There he huddled in the cinderblock dark, his T-shirt soaked with sweat and pee in his jockeys, the devil on the other side of that damn door but not for long. Just when he thought he’d perish with terror, the hurricane door opened from the outside and there was Jesse, dangling wires and out of breath.

  – Come on outa there, Gene. Fuck Ty, that’s enough.

  Chubby bed-wetter Gene on all fours up the stairs into the light on legs like jelly and there behind Jesse, Ty with his fist still stuck up the devil’s ass, his face crazed with glee, thundering down toward them from the porch.

  – That’s enough Ty, said Jesse, again holding out two hands as if to stop what even Gene knew could not be stopped, and Gene saw Auntie on the porch hunched over her ashtray and the shelled peas and she knew it too, motionless except for a strange smile tugging at her lips. Gene just running, his chest on fire, the dampness chafing at his crotch. Jesse saw the Chevy first, yelled out a warning. Their father fishtailing down the hill to collect his sons, the setting sun and a cloud of dirt and exhaust training behind. Gene’s vision cleared and he tried to stop but could not and felt both pushed and pulled toward the oncoming truck. Their old man’s open mouth dangled a Pall Mall, one arm flailing out the open window and soundlessly yelling something. Jesse was nearly six feet tall already and county hundred-yard dash champion for his age, caught up to Gene like the Roadrunner, and catapulted Gene out of the path of the truck. Gene face-planted in the dirt, his nose making the sound of a squashed tomato as it broke, Jesse on top of him. Tangled around each other, the brothers looked up to where Ty had become airborne. His legs did a Wile E. Coyote in the air with the devil still clamped to his hand. He made no sound or none that Gene could hear as he impacted the hood of the Chevy and bounced off it and again off the windscreen like one of those bouncing balls on the old Looney Tunes cartoons, the ones in black and white.

  Jesse broke three ribs and cracked his wrist and had to sit out his first season on the football team. The six months Ty spent in the hospital and year in rehab added prescription painkillers to his list of dependencies. It wasn’t just the cracked pelvis and subsequent erectile issues, or the nerve damage to his face (the wiper had gone through his cheek) or the way his shoulder would dislocate in the night and he’d wake up screaming. At first Ty asked did they find the devil puppet but they never did, and after a while he stopped asking. Jesse never asked Gene what he did with it, and Gene never told him. He never told anyone.

  Two winters later their mother had died and the old man was off somewhere trying to find work and Jesse and Ty had gone up North to live on the rez and it was just Gene alone for his sins with Auntie and Uncle in that house by the woods that doesn’t exist anymore, Gene woke up one morning to see footprints in the snow. Wolves. On the roofs of the scattered houses, satellite dishes turned their cratered faces to a sky white and as ragged as the old baby blanket he still kept under his mattress. The wolf prints ringed the house in concentric circles and Gene knelt down and took off his glove. He wiggled his fingers and shivered rememberin
g the devil puppet. Then he put his bare hand over the paw print in the snow and kept it there until it burned with the cold and he smiled, knowing for the first time in years that he was no longer alone.

  13//: zumba apocalypse

  – Bunny?

  – Who’s this?

  – Bunny. It’s me.

  – I don’t know a me.

  – Me. Norma. Give me a break.

  – I don’t know a Norma.

  Norma was at the Boardroom, a bar across the highway in the old marketplace. On one side of the Boardroom was a 7-Eleven with a line in Nayarit Mescal. At any hour of the day or night, the shadows of the extended Armenian family who earned eight dollars an hour to run it for its Cartel owners, could be seen moving around the dimly lit store or eating their meals from a cloth laid over the freezers. On the other side of the Boardroom was a laundromat with a smashed window webbed together by silicon spray and an empty place that had once been Mears Realty, yellowed property listings taped to the inside of the windows. From those portions of the Boardroom window that weren’t smeared, cracked or taped up with notices and stickers Norma could see the food trucks and tents of the 101 markets, a patchwork sea of tarps and garbage bags taped and stapled together against the rain. The outside of the Boardroom was painted with a faded mural depicting crashing surf and bikini-ed sun bakers. Inside was small and narrow and wrapped around a central counter pictographed with initials, cocks and balls, cigarette burns. Console booths ran along one wall.

  – Bunny. Come on.

  Norma’s signal would fry the newer satellite consoles, but older, off-radar places like the Boardroom had managed to jack into the obsolete fibre optic network. This type of network could withstand her alien frequency for short bursts before any other user became aware of the drain on the system, and a short burst was all she needed. A holo of Bunny’s face floated up from the console. He was down at World Wide Wang, the Border Town joint he danced at, doing his make-up for the show. His face was a lurid mask of orange-tinted pancake.

  – I’m sorry I ran out on you again, Norma said. I was hungry.

  – You’re always hungry.

  Bunny’s face on the projection looked frail and rigid. He was concentrating with a frightening intensity on gluing his left eyelash to his eye. He lit a cigarette with shaking hands while the glue dried. A pot-bellied drinker weaved past Norma on his way to the restroom. When he moved out of range, Norma tried again but Bunny cut in.

  – Don’t flatter yourself. I don’t expect you not to run off—you been hungry and running ever since I’ve known you. But slipping fuck money into my wallet? Who do you think you are?

  Bunny’s false eyelash fluttered from his left eye like an exotic bird.

  – That wasn’t—

  The bartender looked over at her. She lowered her voice.

  – You wouldn’t have taken it if I’d offered.

  – I’ll never take it. Doesn’t matter who offers, and Earth to Norma, I get a lot of offers. In case you think you’re the only game in town. God help me. I dance for cash. I drive for cash, when I can get it. But I’ll never fuck for it.

  – Don’t flatter yourself, Norma said with a smile. It wasn’t for you. I thought you could have used it for your family. The picture in the wallet.

  Bunny fixed Norma with a stony gaze. The cheap holo imbued his pancaked face with a purple glow. What’s my family to you?

  Norma just shook her head. Nothing, she said.

  – Good. Let’s keep it that way.

  Norma began to tell Bunny what happened at Una’s, how the urchin fell, and how Norma ended up with the winnings, everything except for the bit about taking her home and probing her brain. Bunny picked up his cigarette and with the other adjusted his right eyelash.

  – I don’t want to know. You just keep your ill-gotten gains to yourself. Buy yourself some new tech. New clothes. Everything about you is broken, messed up. You’re a throwback. I don’t know how you get any action at all.

  Norma shot a sidelong glance at the clock in the corner of the screen, already five minutes. The transmission was beginning to degrade but she knew she had to let Bunny get it out of his system, and then he’d be okay. He usually was.

  – I’d really like to see your show, she said.

  – You said that before.

  – Bunny?

  Again that manicured man-hand shot up in her face. Bunny’s nails were varnished in stars and stripes.

  – Look. Some Grimey hit the deck at Una’s you won some cash and skewered some lunk’s left nut to the formica. Another night in the city, said Bunny. So what? Main thing is they’re not happy about it and say you owe them four hundred bucks.

  Norma exhaled. Spill City was like that. A vast and complex system of connections that came together at nodal points like Bunny. She waited. Patience was in her program.

  – How did you know? said Norma.

  – That guy you de-balled, his bitch comes down here sometimes. Big suckass with a nose to match. He reckons his man Augustine—that’s his name, right—had a boner for you once. Still does.

  Bunny killed his butt and stretched his thin lips in a gap-toothed smile. You always knew how to empty a room, girl. Just saying.

  Norma did not try to smile back.

  – He had it coming. Her pitch sounded all wrong. She cleared her throat and said it again an octave higher.

  – I wouldn’t worry too much about it, said Bunny with an unconvincingly indifferent shrug. He’ll probably go for the Grimey. Men like that never pick on those their own size.

  An ad cut into the transmission. There was an Independence Day party scheduled for out on the lagoon, fireworks and DJs. Norma clenched her jaw and waited for the ad to finish—she was running out of time.

  – What’d you call her?

  – She’s a Grimey-punk, said Bunny. Or was. Little Barry said she’s dead. So like I said, I wouldn’t worry about it.

  Norma whispered, She’s not dead.

  She said it to convince herself as much as Mommy, just in case it was listening because Norma was sure, almost positive that, the urchin, when Norma had started to probe her brain, had not been quite dead.

  – Where do I find her, Bunny? The money belongs to her. Not me. Not Augustine.

  Bunny blotted the last blobs of glue on his eye with his sparkly fingernail and began to adjust his wig.

  – She got the knife down, hissed Norma. The seconds unreeled in the corner of the screen. That’s what the odds were on.

  – Seems to be some kind of communication breakdown here, girl. Maybe they were your odds. But for men like that it’s never on if a woman falls but just on how hard. That’s what the odds were on. Game over, Norma. Move on.

  Bunny took a sideways look at her through the clouds of smoke and talc in the dressing room miles away at the old border town.

  – You’re not getting creep on me are you? It’s Independence Day soon, he said, wiggling his stars and stripes nails. Go celebrate. Clear your head.

  – Please. Tell me where to find her, said Norma.

  With an exaggerated weariness that pixelated the holo, made his face rematerialize with a greenish tinge, Bunny said, You think you can stop this. You think Spill City will be any different after you’ve gone? Or her or me? That you can make a difference? That anyone can? It’s like saying you can make a difference to a storm, or a rainbow or a Zumba apocalypse.

  – Zombie.

  – Clearly you’ve never tried Zumba, said Bunny. Brushed his throat with powder.

  – Anything you want, said Norma. Name it.

  Bunny peered at Norma across the ether. Serious?

  He raised his eyes to fleetingly and inexactly meet hers across virtual space, and in them was a question she could not answer, not with there being any chance of Mommy listening. Not to mention a roomful of Boardroom barflies. Norma pushed her tangled hair out of her face so he could see her eyes and in them he seemed to find some kind of answer.

  �
�� Fine. Come and see my show. Tomorrow, the next night. But soon.

  Norma said, That’s it?

  – And let me buy you a drink, he said. You look like you could use one.

  She watched him smooth down his Wonder Whoa-Man curls, flutter his lashes as if getting into character. Check out his left and right profile in front of the glass. He pulled a pout that made her belly quiver, and then he sighed. Turned back into Bunny again.

  – It’s a deal, she said.

  He said something else but his voice came across at the wrong speed and one of his eyes looked like it was melting. Norma fiddled with the dial but it was too late. The transmission cut out and she was alone again.

  January 27th was Independence Day. That was what the Consortium called it and once a year it funded parties and fireworks and food trucks and wiener roasts. Good old-fashioned fun was what they called it. Others called it mob rule. Federalists called it the Day of Reckoning and they marched beneath banners that said, Cut Off the Head and the Body Will Die. There were prayers and riots and rallies to be returned to the Union. For the SLA it was a day of Commemoration and they marched beneath flickering holos of Niemen Van Aldren, whose plot to assassinate the president, and the subsequent cover-up by Sacramento finally earned the state its independence. For its sins.

  As Norma moved from the Boardroom through the market she saw something. A black hat atop hair the color of lightning. It was just a flash through the food trucks and stalls, the jugglers and buskers and fortune tellers, a flash of old gold between a Starbucks converted into a Franciscan shrine and a pizza place that delivered its iconic pies via chopper to Consortium execs across the Zone. And then he was gone—she was so sure it was the Guy that she stopped in the crowd like a piece of driftwood caught on a rock down a rapids. She scanned the flow for the hat, for the pale face, but it was gone.