Midian Unmade

by Joseph Nassise

  “Three o’clock,” he said, his voice smooth as cream, trying not to betray his excitement.

  The others followed his gaze, and three more sets of eyes locked on the girl. Usually, the power of four male stares was enough to turn any woman’s head, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  Without exchanging a word, they began to move, fanning out so their paths would eventually draw them back together, hemming her in place. Weaving through the crowd, they took their time, sinewy muscles flexing as they engaged in the controlled stalking of their prey.

  Even though Jeb made the selection, Cal was in charge. He stepped up to the girl, his perfect white teeth flashing under the Boardwalk’s fluorescent lighting.

  “My friends and I couldn’t help noticing how beautiful you are.”

  The girl lifted her chin, head turning as her blank gaze settled in Cal’s direction, following the sound of his voice. Cal looked startled; then comprehension dawned across his face as he realized they’d missed the obvious—there was something wrong with her, a disturbance of the mind. He doubted she possessed the IQ of a small child.

  He shook his head at Jeb and the twins, letting them know he was aborting. The others drew back, disappearing into the anonymity of the crowd, leaving Cal alone to deal with the simpleminded girl.

  * * *

  It was a wash. They’d waited half the night, but no other woman had piqued their curiosity. Abra followed them as they left the Boardwalk, keeping a safe distance behind, not wanting them to know she was there. One of her gifts was the ability to move in silence. She glided, her footsteps muted as she shadowed them across the asphalt parking lot and onto the wide concrete sidewalk that paralleled the Boardwalk.

  It was early enough that there were still people out on the street, strolling couples holding hands, families with small children half asleep in their parents’ arms, and Abra used them like human cover, hiding behind them whenever she felt vulnerable. As they moved farther away from the Boardwalk, skirting the residential sections of town, the crowd began to thin and she had to fall back even more. There was almost no foot traffic once they moved into the suburban areas, and so she used the long shadows in between the streetlights to hide herself away, tucking up close to the bungalows and cottages she passed, ready to step into a front yard or garden and disappear from view.

  Up ahead, under a bright yellow streetlight, she saw them stop beside a red VW bus. The sound of the bus’s side door sliding open carried across the emptiness of the landscape, and she knew if she was going to make her move, it was now or never.

  * * *

  They climbed into the car, the twins in back, Jeb shotgun, Cal driving. The night’s search had been fruitless, but they were unfazed, used to such evenings. It was only a few weeks since their last kill and going without the feel of a woman underneath them for so long only built anticipation, heightening the next experience. Cal started the engine, the old bus knocking back and forth on its wheels as it came to life.

  They pulled out into the street, the bus slowly gathering speed as it prepared to melt away into the night, but then the sight of a figure standing in the middle of the road, bathed in the glow of their headlights, made Cal slam his foot on the brakes.

  It was too little, too late. They hit the figure straight on, the body slamming into the windshield.

  When the bus finally came to a jarring stop, they were all silent. The front windshield was cracked down the middle, flecked with what looked like black blood spatter. Cal opened his door and climbed out, the empty street ahead of him lit by the car’s headlights. He looked around, expecting to see a crumpled body lying in the road, but there was nothing. He felt a tap on his shoulder and he whirled around, expecting the worst.

  The simpleminded girl from the Boardwalk was standing behind him, her hair wild around her porcelain face. There was black fluid running from her left nostril and the corner of her mouth, and her left shoulder was out of joint, hanging limply at her side.

  “You,” Cal whispered, unsettled for maybe the first time ever in his life.

  He’d radically misjudged her. There was still a vacuous look in the girl’s violet eyes, but she was not simpleminded. He realized this, too late, as she smiled in his direction, revealing two rows of utterly inhuman crocodile teeth and a forked tongue that flicked out in his direction, tasting the air.

  “I want to play with you.”

  Her voice was soft and melodic, but frightening in the context of the black fluid and her injuries. She reached out with her good arm and touched his chest, her fingers smearing black fluid across the front of his neon-green tank top.

  Inside the bus, the others watched as Cal took a step backward. The girl dropped her hand, her beautiful face scrunching up in a frown of confusion. With a violent shake of her torso, she snapped her disjointed shoulder back into place and smiled—but there was nothing happy about the angle of her lips.

  * * *

  When Abra realized they were leaving, that her chance was slipping away, she didn’t think. She just stepped into the road. There was no pain as she slammed into the glass windshield, cracking her head and tearing her shoulder from its socket, only the thrill of excitement, and knowing she was going to share herself with creatures that were as deviant on the inside as she was on the outside. But then he’d stepped away from her—the only one who’d been bold enough to catch the eyes of the women on the Boardwalk—and she realized he was scared, his fear a heady musk leaking from his mouth and his pores. Confused, she’d tried to touch him, to let him know she just wanted to play, but the fear smell only increased and he moved even farther away from her.

  She wanted to be human, so she could cry and bang her head against something hard until the skin and skull split open and the brain inside was mashed to a pulp and she didn’t have to think anymore—anything that made the pain of being so alone go away.

  These men were supposed to embrace her. They’d come her way once, and she’d dropped the ball, so nervous she hadn’t been able to talk. Now here she was again, ready to join them for the night, but in the space of a few hours something had changed. She was a pariah even to these monsters.

  She howled in pain, her mind on fire with misery and anger—and then she stopped thinking at all and began to act.

  * * *

  The girl lashed out with her right hand, driving her fist into Cal’s chest. With a wet, sucking sound, she extracted his heart and hefted it into the air so the others could see it in the glow of the headlight. Eyes rolling up into the back of his head, Cal pitched face-first onto the asphalt, where he stayed, unmoving, as the girl threw the bloody thing on the ground and stomped it into pieces with her bare foot.

  When she was done, she leapt catlike over his body and raced to the driver’s-side door of the bus, where the others were sitting in stunned silence, watching the action play out through the cracked windshield like a scene in a violent action movie. As soon as the girl made her move for the bus, Jeb threw himself across the front seat, hand poised over the door lock to engage it, but the girl was faster, grasping the outside handle and ripping the door out of its frame before Jeb could lock it. She reached through the empty doorframe and grabbed Jeb’s left arm, tearing it from his torso then throwing the meaty limb behind her, where it landed on the road with a loud thwack.

  Jeb screamed, and the girl punched him in the throat, compressing his windpipe until the scream became a gurgle. He collapsed against the passenger door, grasping at his throat with his hand as the girl placed her hands on either side of his head and twisted until it detached from his neck. Dropping the offensive head into the well between the front seats, she turned her attention to the twins, who were falling all over themselves to get out of the bus, hands scrambling to unlatch the door.

  Grabbing a fistful of blond hair in each hand, she dragged them backward across the seat, pulling them into the front so she could get a better grip on their necks. Then she bent over each one in turn, and used her crocodile te
eth to rip out their throats.

  * * *

  The police had blocked off both sides of the street, yellow crime-scene tape flapping in the chilly early-morning breeze, but the neighbors ignored the cordon, standing on their porches and out on the street in their pajamas and robes, eyes wide as they took in the procession of investigators and forensic technicians alighting on the crime scene.

  Abra sat on the roof of a nearby house and watched as the coroner loaded the four mangled bodies onto stretchers and took them away. She wasn’t sorry for what she’d done, only for what she was.

  Not that any of it mattered anymore—she wasn’t going to make it back to one of her bolt-holes before the sun came out, and she was glad for it. Besides, it was nice up here, the coolness of the slate roof radiating up through her back and head as she watched the stars wink out one by one above her.

  It wouldn’t be long now.

  BUTTON, BUTTON

  Ernie W. Cooper

  Kathryn Miller wrinkled her nose as she dug into the damp mass at her feet. The breeze was cold, colder than she had expected when she first decided to haul the overflowing laundry basket to the small yard behind the modest house. Their dryer had broken several weeks ago, and she now had to hope for the weather to cooperate whenever the piles of clothing in her or Elliot’s room approached critical mass.

  At the other end of the yard, Elliot crouched in the grass. The stiff breeze tousled the twelve-year-old’s brownish hair as he lined up a row of twigs meticulously in the soft earth.

  “… seven … eight … nine.”

  He nodded slowly at the ninth stick, and then knocked the collection to the ground. Kathryn sighed as, moments later, he began to line them up once more.

  “Elliot!” she called to him, softly at first, and then again.

  Her son destroyed his handiwork, oblivious to her calls. She sighed and shook out one of her work skirts. As she lifted it to the line, she swore softly. The three buttons that ran down the side of the garment were missing. She ran her fingers over the little frayed areas where they had been plucked off, and then strode across the lawn to Elliot.

  He plunged the seventh twig into the ground, and then her shadow made him pause. He looked up, blinking. She held the skirt out to him.

  “Did you do this?”

  He stared at the skirt and then gingerly reached up, running his hand across the cloth.

  “One … two…”

  She pulled the skirt away. “Three, yes. All three buttons are gone. Why did you take Mommy’s buttons? You know she needs this skirt for work.”

  Elliot’s fingers slowly twitched in the air, still feeling for the third cloth nub. “Didn’t,” he replied sullenly.

  Kathryn threw the skirt over her shoulder and knelt down in front of her son. She held him firmly by his shoulders. “Can you give me the buttons? I can sew them back on, I won’t need to buy a new skirt.”

  Elliot looked away. “I don’t have them.”

  “Please, baby.”

  “I didn’t do it.”

  Her grip tightened on his shoulders. “Give Mommy her buttons.”

  His hands began to spasmodically reach out and snap the twigs in front of him. “Didn’t.”

  “Why are you lying to me?”

  Elliot stopped breaking sticks. His brow furrowed, and he whispered softly, “Why don’t you believe me?”

  There was a heartbreaking silence. They’d had this conversation before. It wasn’t always about a button, but it always ended the same way.

  Kathryn chewed softly on the inside of her cheek and ran her hand slowly down the side of his face. She could feel his slight shaking. Her stomach twisted. A mother’s touch should not evoke such a reaction in a child. It was all just so frustrating. Two years. Two years and no end in sight.

  Her hands dropped to the ground and she tilted forward, resting her forehead against his. “Why don’t you go to the park? Maybe I’ll meet you there when I’m done with the laundry.”

  Elliot knew he was being exiled. Rather than continue their discussion, his mother found it easier to just give up and send him away. It was happening more and more of late. Laundry would give way to dinnertime, and there would be no meeting him at the park. They would both find some peace apart from each other, their mutual accusations fading temporarily.

  He brushed his lips against her forehead and turned without a word. Kathryn watched his small, hunched back retreat from the yard. She went back to the clothes basket, unaware that the buttons in question were roughly twenty feet away, under her back porch.

  * * *

  The three buttons were laid out on the cold earth in the darkness. There were two holes in each dark blue button, and they ran perfectly in a line from one to the next. Five white buttons lay in a line that ran perpendicular to the blue ones. Six black buttons ran parallel to these. They were slightly smaller than the blue ones, with four holes.

  A small figure lay next to the arrangement, his black eyes watching Elliot walk away. He was the same size as Elliot, but it had been a very long time since anyone had considered Simon a boy. One long-fingered hand hovered protectively over the missing buttons. They were his now. He had taken them from the woman’s room the night before. Now he lay in the cool darkness, waiting to take his night’s haul back to his new—albeit temporary—home. The sun would not be kind to his pale, almost translucent skin. In the days following the fall of Midian, he had learned to travel by night. Normally, he would have been in and out of a house long before the dawn, but the boy had been up most of the night again. Simon had stood in the hallway, listening to the soft counting on the other side of the boy’s door. It had been hypnotic, comforting.

  He began to count, quietly running through the fourteen buttons that kept him company. He rolled the numbers slowly around in his mouth as if he were tasting them. They did not soothe him as the boy’s droning had, but he still felt his eyelids grow heavy. Sleep had been a luxury since he’d lost his friends and family, his tribe, on that terrible night.

  * * *

  As fitful slumber claimed Simon, Elliot was cutting across one of the neighbors’ yards. Since he knew that his mother was unlikely to join him, he could freely skip the park. There would be other children there, and he had no desire to see them. Generally, they were cruel. Best-case scenario, they were confused by his behavior. He would rather be alone than face their taunts or pointed ambivalence.

  His left hand absently plucked at one of the buttons on his shirt. Kathryn had planted the seed, and even though he had not ruined her skirt, he found his way to his own buttons. His thumb played around the smooth plastic. It was solid, comforting. It was an anchor.

  The town’s cemetery loomed ahead, and Elliot eagerly pushed the gate open. The headstones were neat and orderly, and that pleased him. The rows of white stone glistened slightly in the sunlight as they climbed up and back over the low hillside. Elliot breathed deeply as he caressed the first stone he came to. The name was irrelevant. Instead, he felt his eyes drawn to the date of death.

  Elliot knew death. His grandparents and his father had all died. One set of grandparents and his father were in this very cemetery. He vaguely recalled their funerals, but had never found his way back to them on the days he came here to play among the headstones. Or maybe he had, but was so caught up in the numbers that their names had not registered.

  1947.

  He smiled and raced off among the stubby monuments, searching for 1948.

  * * *

  Back under the house, Simon twitched in his sleep. The nightmare came, like it always did. He was lost in a sea of noise and confusion. There were uncertain cries of terror ringing out down the tunnels of their sanctuary. Simon’s brother, Alexander, had him by the hand and was pulling him toward the surface. There was smoke, there was fire, and when they finally reached the surface, there was the Button Man.

  Alexander had turned toward him. He was outwardly calm, but the organs visible beneath his pale skin betrayed
his mood. They pulsed and twisted like a school of fish, or perhaps a bloom of jellyfish, bunching and breaking in agitated waves. He looked as if he were about to speak, perhaps to say something reassuring, but he retched up black bile instead. A knife tip blossomed in the center of his chest.

  The multitude of black organs attempted to move away from the invasive steel, but the knife plunged in again, and Alexander fell heavily, black blood continuing to gurgle from his mouth. A figure towered above him. In the orange glow of the flames, Simon could see the glint of two buttons staring down at him. The Button Man cocked his head, listening, and then casually opened Alexander’s throat before striding purposefully away. Simon watched him cut down another one of the Breed before being swallowed up by the acrid smoke.

  The smoke grew thicker in the dream, the screams louder. As they reached a crescendo, his eyes snapped open under the porch. The sun was still somewhere overhead. He had probably been sleeping for mere moments.

  Every time he closed his eyes, the Button Man came for him. As much as it terrified him, he was always a little disappointed, though, that it was just in his head. In the confusion after the fall, when the tribe began to scatter, he had been told that the Button Man had been killed.

  Simon knew better.

  The thing that had taken his brother from him was still out there. While the survivors of the fall spread out into the harsh world, Simon began to move slowly from town to town. He would avenge his brother. When others called for reunification, Simon knew that he must strike out on his own.

  He needed only to find the right button.

  He had been here for several weeks now. Among the pristine white headstones in the cemetery was an older mausoleum. When he had first slid inside, he had unearthed a small tunnel that led to a tunnel that cut back into the hillside. Obviously, some of his people had been there, many years ago. For now, he would use the mausoleum as a way station. There had been three other towns before this one, but something felt right about this place. It might have been the familiarity of the graveyard, but over the last week, as his collection grew, he also found himself drawn back to the same house.