American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,232

ghostly and distant, something ephemeral and far away… something that didn’t happen, or at least it didn’t happen here.

Was that me I saw? Or another version of me?

She remembers her current situation when she hears a voice say, “Cut.”

She releases the big lens. She’s still sitting in the chair with her wrists bound behind her, the hand lens in her right hand and the knife in her left. She begins sawing at the rope as fast as she can, trying to summon all her remaining strength. Her left hand and arm are so numb that it’s difficult to tell how far she’s getting.

The man, now sweaterless, takes a breath. “All right,” he says softly. “All right.”

He takes a step forward, still staring at her with that detached, blank gaze. Whatever swims in his eyes is wriggling madly.

Mona feels the rope begin to give way. She frees the pinky and ring finger of her right hand and twists the rope, trying to stretch the fibers against the blade.

“Just a cut,” whispers the man.

He takes another step.

The rope frays. Pops.

Mona strains her left shoulder. More pops sound from the rope.

“Hm?” says the man. He leans in, confused.

The rope snaps.

Mona clenches her teeth, and swings her left hand around.

There is a soft thud. It is so soft that it is surprising, really. But then, the knife does bite into a very soft place, just behind the esophagus of the man in the brown sweater, piercing God knows how many tendons and muscles and veins.

Blood sprays from the corners of the knife in tiny, furious geysers, like pinholes in a dike. The man stares at Mona, mouth open. She can already see blood welling up in his mouth. Mona, in disbelief, stares back.

Then rage begins to bubble inside her. My fucking daughter, she thinks.

She drops the hand lens, brings her right hand around, grasps the top of the man’s head with it, and rips the knife forward with her left.

She is totally and utterly showered in a hot wave of blood, which shocks her, but she really should have expected that since she’s just partially decapitated this man. As he tumbles to the ground, all she can think is Man oh man am I happy I kept my mouth closed.

He twitches for a moment, still just spewing blood (this does not surprise Mona—she’s seen a few murder scenes, which is when you realize the shocking amount of blood in the human body), and then he goes still.

There is the soft sound of thunder from somewhere.

“Shit,” she says. She hopes she didn’t just send this stupid bastard into someone else’s body. But that seems highly plausible right now.

She looks at herself in the lens. She’s bloody from head to toe. But she’s alive. And she’s not quite as weak as she thought. Which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, since she’s just lost a shitload of blood.

But maybe, she thinks as she stares at herself in the lens, it’s because you’re not completely human.

She looks at the vat of blood before the lens. She almost wishes to touch it. She cannot conceive that a child was just there, and that that child might have been her daughter…

Mona decides she doesn’t understand a goddamn bit of this. But she knows someone who does.

She takes off her shoes before venturing out into the hall, and she moves silently and swiftly over the cracked concrete floor. She has her Glock, but she doesn’t want to use it (because fuck knows what that bitch in the blue suit would do if she heard her coming), so she’s got two of the knives stuffed into the belt loops of her shorts as backup.

It isn’t very long until she hears voices echoing down the hall.

“—if She’ll be happy to see us,” says a man’s voice.

“Of course She’ll be happy to see us,” says another’s. “We’re Her children.”

“But She’s been gone so long. Will She remember us?”

Silence for a moment. “I had not thought about that. I had not thought that She could forget.”

Mona creeps toward the voices. She comes to a hallway entrance on her left, and listens.

“Do you forget Her?” asks the first voice. “I do, sometimes… it seems awfully hard to remember Her. I remember being happy. I think I remember being happy. But it seems very long ago.”

“We were meant to be happy here. That was what we decided.”

“I know.”

“But I… I will admit that I found it… hard. It was not as easy as I had