American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,174

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