American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,243

rolls that quiver with each motion.

And its head… the head is tiny in comparison to the body. It is a grayish, gleaming little pearl atop the vast mountain of shoulders and biceps and belly. It has no mouth: just a section at its neck where it becomes a dripping patch of baleen and pinkish flesh.

But its eyes are the worst part. They are so huge and round, and they glow like lighthouses, the golden light blooming through the dust…

But though Mona registers this form as an abomination, a total violation of every concept of beauty and symmetry and biology she possesses, it also registers with her, somehow. This image, this form is imprinted in her, as if etched into the space right between her eyes. This thing has been with Mona her entire life, casting its immense shadow over every second, every moment of her consciousness.

She knows it. She knows it as well as she knows herself.

“Hello, Momma,” she says softly.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

The natives of Wink—the real, human natives—have up until this point stayed inside their houses, eyes obediently averted from all windows. Because when Things Happen in Wink, you stay indoors, and you stay quiet. That’s the way it’s always been, and if they keep to this, they think, then they’ll be fine, just like always—though some do mutter that really, this is ridiculous, don’t they have their time at night for these sorts of goings-on?

But then the natives feel the earth shake, and the air turns beige with the crush of dust, and when they look out the window they notice the queerly pale red skies, and the thin shadows…

This is different. This is not supposed to be happening. This is not normal.

And then, one by one, they begin to See.

It starts happening at the southern end of Wink first. They, of course, are closest to the Arrival: they cannot avoid seeing the form rising up from the mountaintop, arms extended as if seeking to embrace the valley. Mark Huey of 124 Littleridge Lane is given the inauspicious honor of being first: he runs a fairly decent lawn mower repair shop, and when the earth begins to shake he looks up from his work. His wife bursts in and frantically asks what is going on, and Mark, being the man and all, takes the responsibility of peeping out his blinds.

And he Sees.

He looks for ten seconds. Then, without a word, without answering a single question from his wife, he walks to his workbench, opens a drawer, takes out a lawn mower blade he’s been working on, and jams it into his throat.

He dies almost instantly: all the blood in his skull simply falls out in a rush. His wife, shrieking in terror, runs out of the shop. When she hits the street, she looks back. And she Sees.

She stops screaming. Instead she walks back to the shop, rummages in its front flower bed, finds a good-sized rock, and begins to pound it against her temple with a very singular concentration. This proves less efficient than her husband’s method: it takes nearly a minute before her right eye socket caves in, followed by the coronal suture of her skull, which causes her brain to begin madly swelling. She drops to the ground, shivering and dying, but thankfully blind.

Slightly more effective is Angela Clurry’s approach: she walks out to her back patio to try to see the source of the dust; and when she does, she walks back in, goes to her sink, turns on the Dispose-All, and, with calm, Buddhist-like focus, slowly inserts one arm all the way up to the elbow, and then the other.

It takes her a little over three minutes to bleed out. But this, of course, is better than Seeing.

Ashley and David Crompton, married for three years, happen to See together. Without any discussion they walk upstairs, wake their children from their naps, and usher them into the garage. The two parents buckle them into their seat belts, give them their preferred comfort toys (for Michael, a blanket; for Dana, a bear), turn on both cars, and patiently sit back and wait for the fumes to do their work.

It takes a lot less time for the children, small as they are. But this is so much better than allowing their children to See.

Seven-year-old Megan Twohey is quite fortunate: she has chosen to stay hidden down in Lady Fish’s home. She does not want to come out—she never wants to come out, ever again—but when she hears