American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,221

dozen wounds and covered in copper-stained gauze, he chose instead to back away silently and sprint down the street without another word.

Really, Mrs. Benjamin can’t blame him. She is not at her most presentable. And she hates not being presentable.

So when she hears the footsteps on the walk out front, she feels both resigned and a little anxious about what the reaction will be. To her surprise, her visitor, who is a thin woman in a dress so short the original Mrs. Benjamin (the “real” one) would have positively died, simply looks at her with a curious, blank smile, and says, “Still alive, I see.”

“What?” says Mrs. Benjamin. “Yes, I’m still alive. I’m trying my very hardest to stay that way, too. Who are you?”

“Don’t you recognize me?”

“No. No, I do not.”

“Well, I recognize you,” says the woman. She walks inside the store. There is something self-satisfied and smug in the way she moves: she’s like a cat who’s cornered a mouse, and is taking the time to enjoy it. “And I recognize all those wounds. I should. I did them to you.”

Mrs. Benjamin peers closely at the woman. “No…”

“I told you I’d died before,” says the woman. “You should have listened. You can’t kill me. No one can. It’s not allowed.”

“Who are you?”

“Just a sibling. A concerned sibling who is willing to take up the matters of the family when its elders have fallen into lethargy.” She smiles coldly at Mrs. Benjamin. “And you’re going to help me.”

“I certainly will not,” says Mrs. Benjamin. She wants to stand and thrash this stranger, except one of her arms isn’t working too well and she feels quite faint. How fragile these vessels are… perhaps that’s for the best since, if this stranger is to be believed, physical violence wouldn’t actually hurt the occupant of that body.

Well, that’s not right—Mrs. Benjamin knows it would certainly hurt. It just wouldn’t accomplish anything.

“You are,” says the woman. “I’m going to bring Mother back. And you’re going to help me. Did you know that?”

“That’s… that’s ridiculous,” says Mrs. Benjamin. She coughs: one of her lungs is not working so well. “If Mother comes back—and She’s quite late to do so, if you ask me—it’ll be of Her own accord. Such a thing cannot be forced, especially not by us.”

“I am doing Mother’s wishes,” says the woman softly. “I am part of Her great plan. And you will help me.”

“I will not.”

“You will. Because I have the woman.”

Mrs. Benjamin’s steely glare softens. “You what? Which woman?”

“The one you and Parson groomed and escorted and tested so thoroughly. She is safe, to a certain extent—she is trapped in the trunk of a car out in the wilderness. It is quite dry there, and it will get cold at night. Her situation will quickly become uncomfortable. So unless you wish her to perish—and I don’t think you do—you will help me.”

“You wouldn’t kill her,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “You need her.”

The woman stares back, smiling serenely. “Do you know,” she says, “how much I hate this flesh? How much I hate wearing this awful skin? Breathing this air? Needing to breathe this air? It is… incredibly frustrating, like itching, all over your body. I despise it. And I despise these people. Including her. I wouldn’t kill her, no, but I would have no qualms about relieving some of my frustrations on her. Do you understand?”

If Mrs. Benjamin were not sitting here, her body reporting terrible pain in nearly every limb, she probably would not have had much of a reaction to the idea of the woman’s being tortured. Yet now that she knows what physical pain is, she finds herself holding the curious belief that it should never be willfully visited upon anybody.

Mrs. Benjamin nods glumly.

“Yes, you do,” says the strange woman. “Isn’t it sad? How pathetic you’ve become. You care about her, just enough to spare her that misery. Imagine that, a little thing like her.”

“I do not find it particularly pathetic,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “But you wouldn’t understand.”

“Nor do I wish to. You’re going to help me now, aren’t you?”

“What is it you need me to do?”

“I need your strength.”

Mrs. Benjamin spreads her arms. They crackle slightly: she is covered in dried blood. “I am in no condition to use it.”

“Come now, Sister,” says the woman, “you wouldn’t be one of my elders if you were so easily defeated. Get up. Now.”

She prods at Mrs. Benjamin with her toe, first gently, then harder. Mrs. Benjamin has half