American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,99

mountain, except the eldest two stayed behind.

“I wonder,” said the second-eldest bird, “what sort of place these children shall make. I doubt if it will be much good.”

But the eldest bird was quiet, and looked to the sky. He could perceive many things, and what he saw in those moments no one could guess. Finally he said, “I know what kind of place.”

“What kind?”

“It does not matter.”

“Why not?” asked his brother.

And the eldest little bird said, “Because she will come back one day, regardless of what they do. And when she does, they will see she

But there Parson stops. He looks around as if he’s just heard something disconcerting outside and is listening to see if he can hear it again.

“What is it?” Mona asks.

Parson opens his mouth, but he never answers. All the features of his face, which is usually so blank and reserved, suddenly snap open: his eyes shoot wide, his lips stretch back into a horrible grimace, and his eyebrows leap inches up his forehead. He shoves himself back in his chair, veins bulging, and a wet gagging sound comes from somewhere in his throat.

“Mr. Parson?” says Mona.

He begins shaking, his cheeks quivering and his hands clutched around the armrests of his chair. He sticks his legs out so hard and so straight that he shoves off the desk and knocks himself out of his seat.

Mona jumps up and begins to rush around the desk. “Mr. Parson!”

Parson lies on his back on the floor behind his desk, knees and wrists strangely bent. He rubs the knuckle of one hand against his breast; the fingers of the other mindlessly search the inside of his thigh, next to his crotch. His back and neck are almost completely bowed up: he is balancing on the very top of his head (his wide, oddly purplish mouth open to the ceiling) and the base of his buttocks. He coughs, and a dark cloud of urine blossoms across his khaki slacks.

“Oh, Christ,” says Mona. She recognizes this as a seizure, and for a moment she considers sticking a pen in his mouth or something before recalling a snippet of a first aid class that said the whole swallowing-your-tongue thing was horseshit and the best thing to do is make sure people seizing can’t hurt themselves. So she grabs his chair and pushes it away, a well-timed move, as Parson soon starts thrashing from side to side.

Finally he goes limp and falls to the floor, his eyes shut and his head on one side, facing the wall. Mona can see he’s breathing—just barely—and she stoops and feels his pulse. It’s regular, or at least regular enough.

Mona gently takes him by the chin and moves his head so she can see his face. He appears uninjured, for the most part. “What the hell was that?” she murmurs. She wonders what to do. There’s no hospital for miles, and she isn’t aware of any doctor in Wink.

She’s about to check his fingers to see if any are broken when, with absolutely no warning, an immense pain stabs through her shoulder. Then gravity stops working for her, and she starts flying over the desk.

It’s true that, in moments of extreme stress, things appear to slow down, like putting your finger on a revolving record or running a roll of film at the wrong speed. As Mona flies over Parson’s desk, everything slows down just enough for the cold, quiet cop part of her brain to contemplate what’s happening to her and dissect all her sensations one by one. Because as crazy as this night has been for her, it’s still not the sort of crazy where people suddenly start flying, especially not with such great speed and alarmingly terrible coordination.

The first thing Mona thinks is: My shoulder sure does hurt. Why is that?

The second thing she thinks is: Where’s my gun? After a moment of mental searching, she identifies the cold lump against her pelvic bone as the Glock. It doesn’t seem to be budging yet, which is surprising as right now Mona appears to be upside down.

Which, naturally, makes her think a third thing: How the fuck did I get upside down?

And as the world tumbles over and over again for Mona, she realizes that, among all the dusky honey colors and darkness of Parson’s office, there is a large splotch of purple fabric with white polka dots at his desk, something Mona definitely didn’t notice before. The pattern is familiar to her, she thinks…

But she