back to her, shuddering. Then, with a sound like someone crinkling wax paper, it begins to unfold.
Mona sees a head that is far less rigid than its body: though it is not facing her, she sees something pendulous and flabby, with scarab-like pincers protruding from the trembling flesh. Four spindly legs tipped with tarsal claws hesitantly reach out and begin tapping the asphalt. But the most horrifying feature of this thing is what emerges from either side of its midsection: two quivering appendages that very distinctly resemble human arms and hands, each one with seven fingers, the first two fingers bearing flagella or antennae that are over a foot long.
Mona doesn’t wait for it to turn around: she puts a round just below the thing’s head, where she thinks its neck should be. There’s a dull thud, like a hammer striking wood, and a spot on its plated back turns a somewhat lighter color. But the shot does not penetrate.
She reloads, fires again. Another thunk, another divot in the thing’s back. It does not seem to notice or care at all: it just keeps unfolding, until it is well over seven feet tall, a shuddering, hunched thing that slowly begins whipping its antennaed fingers about, as if it’s using them to smell the air…
It starts buzzing, making the same nauseating whine that seems to be echoing throughout all of Wink right now. Then it turns around.
It is like nothing Mona has ever seen before: the bottom half is four spider legs, the top half two distended arms with feathery fingers, and there’s an eyeless lump of a head. Its mouth is a gash, a rent, dripping something quite runny that hisses on the asphalt. Swimmerets and feelers and all sorts of tiny appendages line the edges of its underbelly, each squirming like mad.
Mona dimly realizes she is somehow related to this thing, and feels sick.
The thing makes no noise, no hisses or screeches: it simply scutters toward her, its four clawed legs daintily picking their way around the car and over the road. It is such a queerly delicate, teetering thing, like a dancer.
Mona picks what she thinks is a weak spot in its armor—right where its shoulder merges with its underbelly—and fires again. It nicks the creature a little more deeply, but it still does not penetrate. The thing hardly twitches at the shot. It waves its feathered fingers toward her, as if trying to see her.
Mona starts backing away. She tries to draw a bead on its legs, but they move shockingly fast. Does she run? Draw it away from the car, then circle back for her child?
“Oh, goodness,” says Mrs. Benjamin’s voice. “Must I handle this myself?”
The old woman stumps around the hood of the car and toward the scuttering black creature.
“No!” shouts Mona. “Get back, goddamn it!”
“You are mistaken,” says Mrs. Benjamin. “I am not the one in over my head here.”
She walks to stand directly in the creature’s path. Its feathered fingers swish in her direction.
The thing pauses. Then, in a move that is blindingly, blindingly fast, it gallops toward her, and when it’s mere feet away it rises up on its back two legs, the top two legs shooting forward like giant pincers, and leaps.
Mona ducks down. Yet Mrs. Benjamin is ready: she dodges to the side, grabs one of the pincer-legs, and yanks the thing to the ground. Then she grasps the top of its armor, plants her foot in the small of its back, and pulls.
The thing shrieks, and it is a terribly human sound, like that of many children. There are pops, like stitching popping in a pair of jeans; its many arms and feelers wave wildly, trying to find flesh to tear; one of the segments begins to separate; and then, with a sound like a sewer line breaking, white, creamy intestines spill out of its body to flop onto the ground, where they begin sizzling on the asphalt.
Mrs. Benjamin—and though Mona knows what she is, she can’t help but think of her as “old” and “doddering”—has just torn this horrific monstrosity in half. She holds its top half aloft, as one would a severed head, though this is about the size of a municipal garbage can and God knows how heavy.
The thing is still somewhat alive, however, its arms wheeling back and forth and its dollop of a head thrashing about in its carapace, and one of its feathered index fingers just happens to whip around and catch the