by James Maxey
"No," said Monday. "I'm not with the government. Yes, I'm here because of your powers, though that's just part of the reason."
"Just part?"
"I'm also your father," said Monday. "Your real father. I'm something of a quantum anomaly. The ordinary laws of physics don't fully apply to me. You've inherited some of my warped physics. It's taken a long time for your abilities to manifest, but you apparently have the ability to generate microscopic wormholes. Since the strongest gravity well in the neighborhood is the sun, the other ends of the wormholes tend to congregate there. Thus, when you open these wormholes, you're unleashing pure solar material here on earth. Keep in mind, these wormholes are very tiny. If you only opened one or two, we'd probably need sensitive instruments to detect the effect. Open a few thousand over a diffuse area and you get scorched sheets. Open a few million in the palm of your hand, and poof, dead nun."
Sunday rose up from the hot sand, brushing her bare knees clean.
"If you're my real father, why has my mother never mentioned you?"
Monday shrugged. "I raped her. That scar on her right eyebrow? I gave her that. She probably doesn't like to talk about it."
Sunday felt her guts tighten. "What kind of monster are you?"
"Oh, the very worst kind," said Monday. "There are two types of monsters. There are things that are less than human. And there are things that are more than human. I'm in the second category. Everyone is alive because of me. Since I created life, I feel no remorse about ending it. What I want, I take, since, really, everything is mine. I wanted your mother, so I took her. Now I want you."
Sunday gave him the fiercest look she could summon. "Touch me and I'll burn you."
"No," said Monday, with a dismissive wave. "I don't mean I want you like that. I want you as a soldier. I want to make use of your power in my ongoing war."
"You kill three cops, kidnap me, and brag about raping my mother," Sunday said, surprising herself with how calmly she recited this list. "Why, exactly, would I help you?"
Monday shrugged. "Do you have a better use for your time? You're a nun-killer. Fair or not, you'll get some of the blame for those three dead cops. For the rest of your life, you're going to be hunted. You can't go back to your mother. You can't go out and get a normal job. You're never going to have a house of your own, or a boyfriend, or any friends at all, once they find out the truth about you. Your life in the ordinary world is over."
"So what?" asked Sunday. "Am I supposed to just kill myself?"
"No. You're supposed to come live in the extraordinary world. You aren't my only child. All of you have powers. I've already harnessed the power of two of my children, a boy who causes panic and a particularly nasty little freak I call Baby Gun. Since you set things on fire, I was thinking it would be appropriate to call you Baby Burn."
"I'm nobody's baby," said Sunday, clenching her fists.
"Suit yourself. The name's not important. All that's important is your power. With one possible exception, I believe you've the potential to be the strongest of all my offspring. Given full command of your powers, you could reduce this desert to glass for a hundred miles in every direction. You could destroy cities with but a thought. I am not a kind and loving God. You will be the instrument of my wrath."
"Maybe I don't want to burn cities," said Sunday. "I didn't mean to kill that nun."
"You're still young," said Monday. "Let me show you the world. By the end of the tour, you'll hate all mankind."
Sunday locked her jaw to keep from speaking. She didn't want to confess she was halfway there. She'd had a string of stepfathers, each more stupid and mean than their predecessor. She hated them all, and she hated her mother even more for being too weak and foolish not to see the destruction she was bringing on herself by falling for these losers. As Sunday had grown older, her mother's stupidity seemed very much to be the pattern of the world. She could see it in all her schoolmates, each with their own unique mix of stupidity, cruelty, weakness and vanity.
Despite her general contempt for mankind, Sunday wasn't a murderer. At least, not on purpose. But should she tell Monday that? She decided she would try another tactic to get him to leave her alone. She crossed her arms. "I'm afraid you're wasting your time. I can't melt cities. I can't even melt a fucking camera so I can use the bathroom in private."
"You probably are a waste of my time," said Monday. "Almost everything is. But we both know you can melt a camera. You just wouldn't."
"I tried."
"Trying is the wrong technique. You first began to manifest your powers during the throes of sexual release, when your mind was wiped blank by pleasure."
Sunday wrinkled her nose. "How can you know that?"
"Please," said Monday. "If I can build a machine to take me anyplace in the world, don't you think I can build one to let me watch anyone in the world? If you'd gone to the bathroom in the jail, it would have simply joined the thousands of hours of similar recordings I've made of you."
"You bastard!" she said, pushing her hands toward him. She hoped a wall of flame would sweep out and vaporize him. It didn't.
Monday sighed. "Very dramatic. But also very cerebral. You've done very well in your studies over the years, despite a long history of behavioral problems. You've scored as high as 156 on IQ scores. You're good at thinking. I need you to be good at emotion. I need anger! I need hate!"
"I'm as pissed off as I've ever been right now!" she growled, shaking her fist. But was she? She'd always been introspective, even detached. She often felt like an actress playing the role of Sunday. She was constantly improvising her lines. But did she really feel them?
She once more pointed her arms at Monday. "Burn!" she screamed, and tried to blast the man with the full force of her anger.
Monday stared at her silently, waiting for flames that never came. A moment later, he shook his head. "Pathetic." He pulled the calculator out of his shirt pocket. "If you can't use your powers, you're of no use to me. Unfortunately, I've revealed too much about myself to let you live."
"For what it's worth, I haven't understood even half of what you've said."
"No one ever does," said Monday, punching in a series of numbers.
Suddenly, there was an old man standing to his right. He looked like a bum, in worn and dirty clothes, his thin hair unwashed, his face covered in gray stubble. He stank so badly Sunday's eyes watered from ten feet away.
The bum dropped to his knees and let out a loud retching sound, though nothing but a long line of yellowish spit came from his mouth.
"Christ almighty," the bum whimpered, wiping his lips. "No disrespect, Mr. Monday, but can't you give me a warning 'fore you do that?"
"Stop whining and get on your feet. I need you to eat my daughter."
The bum rose on wobbly legs, eying Sunday with confusion.
"Your daughter?"
"Eat her," said Monday.
"Excuse me?" said Sunday. "Is this some kind of weird not-quite-rape threat?"
"No," said Monday. "I found my associate here working at a carnival in Mexico. He's a geek. If you're unfamiliar with that particular act, it means that he was the wild man in a pit who bit the heads off chickens. Only, this freak could suck down an entire goat in one bite. They called him El Chupacabra. Since he doesn't remember his real name, I've taken to calling him Pit Geek."
"Just so I'm straight on this, you think he's going to eat me like he ate a goat?" Sunday really wasn't sure if this was supposed to be menacing, or just the least funny joke she'd ever heard.
"I've watched Pit Geek swallow an entire crane before. He can handle you."
"Crane? Like the bird?"
"Like the thing they use to build skyscrapers."
Sunday's confusion evidently showed in her face, because Monday added, "For some reason, he generates space warps as he chews, and can suck down anything. I'm still puzzling out the exact source of his powers."
"He looks too old to be your kid," said Sunday.
"I
ndeed. He's a mystery. And one day I'll solve that mystery for him, as long as he obeys me."
Pit Geek sighed loudly and scratched his head. "Well, sir, you're right that I don't know much about myself. And I'd really like to find out who I am, or who I used to be. But one thing I do know, Mr. Monday, is that I ain't gonna swallow no little girl."
"She's no longer a little girl," said Monday. "She's been menstruating for almost four years. She's biologically as much of an adult as you are. Eat her."
"Can we leave my biology out of this?" asked Sunday.
Pit Geek shrugged. "Kid, you might think about running."
"Fucking useless goatsucker," Monday mumbled as he punched in more coordinates. He pointed toward Sunday in with a rather melodramatic pose and shouted, "Crush her!"
Sunday looked up. There was now a two hundred foot tall baby doll standing next to Rex Monday. The flesh was a little too pink to be life-like. The doll had a flabby toddler body, and jutting from his shoulders where his head should have been there was an old fashioned revolver the size of a school bus. Perhaps the masculine symbolism of the gun explained why she thought of the giant as male. In truth, the monster's crotch was as smooth and featureless as the dunes that surrounded them.
"You must be Baby Gun," she said.
There was a flash of light.
A loud boom followed instantaneously, followed by the tink tink tink tink of a thousand bits of shrapnel landing on the black glass around her. It was suddenly daylight in the desert. Sunday had her hands raised over her head. She'd just blown a bullet the size of a sports car to smithereens before it touched her. She'd vaporized her clothes as a result. But since both Pit Geek and Rex Monday had their hands over their eyes, she was apparently glowing too brightly for them to see anything. Which was a relief, since in addition to being naked, she'd also lost control of her bladder.
Above her, the giant revolver clicked to the next chamber. She ran, still glowing, but uncertain she could blow apart a second bullet when she really hadn't even seen the first one. She was thrown from her feet as the bullet slammed into the ground behind her. She crashed into the sand seconds later. It splashed like liquid as her heat melted the ground into a goopy bubbling syrup.
She struggled to rise in the molten slop as the hair rose on the back of her neck. She looked up to see Baby Gun's enormous foot falling toward her. She lifted her hand and touched his heel as it fell. It felt like it was made of rubber. Then it wasn't made of anything, as the solar flare that spilled out of her fingers tore the leg into a slurry of elemental particles. The giant toppled, crashing into the dunes. The air stank of burning plastic.
Sunday sat up, studying the flickering plasma that sheathed her. She giggled. "Not half bad! Bring me another nun!"
Rex Monday stomped toward her, pressing a button on his belt. By the time he reached her, his clothes and skin were coated in a thin sheen of what looked like Vaseline, though Sunday was pretty sure Vaseline would have burned.
Monday grabbed her by the wrist and yanked her back to her feet.
"Sorry I broke your doll," she said, in the most taunting tone she could summon.
"You ran from the bullet!" Monday screamed, then slapped her.
Sunday placed a hand on her cheek as the flames around her grew brighter. None of her stepfathers had ever struck her. The pain was such a surprise she didn't know how to react.
"You should be able to fly!" Monday snarled, striking her again, this time with his knuckles cutting into her eyebrow. She raised her arms to block further blows and he kicked her in the gut. "You think half good is good enough? You should be able to shoot into the air like a rocket! You still aren't in control!"
"Make up your damned mind!" Sunday screamed. "You told me I needed to lose cont---" Her protest was cut short when he slammed his fist into her lips. She fell back on the sand, blinking away tears. He drove his foot down on her left breast with such force if felt as if he'd bruised her heart.
She could barely breathe as he leaned down and grabbed her by the hair. He pulled her into a seating position and raised his hand to strike her face once more. Sunday closed her eyes.
The blow never came.
She opened her eyes and found that Pit Geek was holding Monday's arm.
"Mr. Monday, calm down. She's your flesh and blood. Don't kill her!"
Monday responded by pulling the pistol out of his back pocket and shooting Pit Geek in the center of his chest. The old bum dropped back onto the sand, limp.
"You killed him!" Sunday said, though why she felt shocked by this she couldn't quite say.
"I wish," grumbled Monday, as Pit Geek flopped his arms around uselessly. "As near as I can tell, he's immortal. He's shrugged off worse than a bullet."
Monday glared down at Sunday. Then he smiled. "With your face bleeding like that, you remind me of your mother."
Sunday growled. Monday disappeared in a maelstrom of swirling light. The radiance was so great that even she couldn't see what was happening. Three seconds later, when the flash of fury faded away and her eyes adjusted, she discovered she was roughly three hundred feet in the air. Pit Geek and Rex Monday looked like little bugs. To her disappointment, Monday was unscathed by the maelstrom she'd unleashed, though Pit Geek was now rolling around in the scalding sand, his clothes on fire.
Rex Monday looked up at her. Once more, he beamed with pride. He gave her a thumb's up.
"Welcome to the family," he shouted.
She blinked away the blood that trickled into her eyes. Flying felt . . . well, it felt like lying on a really, really wobbly under-inflated air mattress. She was spread-eagled, like a paratrooper in freefall, only she wasn't falling. The slightest motion of her hands or feet sent her skittering across the sky. She felt insanely unsteady and unsafe, both in body and soul.
She hated Rex Monday. She hated that she'd failed to kill him with her fire. But a part of her felt a strange, pathetic gratitude toward the creep. Not even in her wildest imagination had she thought that scorch marks on her sheets were evidence that she could fly.
She could fly.
There were two kinds of monsters. Those who were less than human. And those who were more.
Doing her best to maintain her balance, she looked around the heavens until she found the Big Dipper, and used this to find the North Star. If this really was the Sahara, she need only fly in that direction to make it to Europe. She might even wind up in Spain, and she spoke Spanish, at least a little. Maybe Rex Monday wouldn't find her there. Maybe she could still have an ordinary life.
Or maybe she should try to land and talk more to the man who'd known she could fly. She gazed at the ground. The giant doll's leg looked like it was growing back. Pit Geek was back on his feet, looking barely inconvenienced by a hole in his chest and third degree burns to his legs.
Going back down to a known murderer who'd just beaten her was the dumbest thing she could possibly do, and Sunday was anything but dumb. But Sunday couldn't shake the feeling this had all been a carefully staged lesson, designed to trigger her powers and teach her how to use them. Rex Monday had just blasted away whole mountains of her ignorance regarding her abilities. What more might Rex Monday teach her?
Bringing her arms closer to her sides, she reduced the thrust that held her in the air and descended toward the man who claimed to be her father. Whether it was true or not didn't matter. He was a violent psychopath with delusions of grandeur. She'd never trust him. But how could she turn her back on the man who'd just given her the sky?
Found a typewriter in the rubble today. Beaten up, but it works. Remington. Seems old. The keys are perfectly round, yellowed with age. The ribbon barely leaves a mark on the brown sheets of grocery bag paper.
There's something sentimental about the keys clicking. I remember sitting in a hot room. It's an attic somewhere; the walls are made of beadboard, painted pale puke green. There's an oil lamp hanging on the hook next to me, unlit. The daylight is slowly fading out the window. A dingy w
hite curtain hangs limp in the stale air. For as far as the eye can see, there's wasteland, little scrub bushes, dust and rocks everywhere, flat as can be. There's a bottle of tequila on the desk next to the typewriter, a bowl of limes, a knife.
I'd taken my bike out to the high desert to find words. I'd gone to write a new story.
I'd gone to become a new man.
I'd still believed then, still believed in the redeeming power of stories.
But story's just another word for lie.
Chapter Two
* * *
The Beast of Bladenboro
Today
BLADENBORO, NORTH CAROLINA, can fairly be described as the middle of nowhere. Its sits on a crossroads of two highways that few people travel. To the west lies Butters, south is Boardman, east is Clarkton and north is Dublin, but not the Dublin you've heard of. The primary thing you'd remember about Bladenboro was how flat it was, surrounded by yellow dirt fields planted with soybeans, amid countless miles of pine forest. Beyond the trees, meandering creeks wound through long patches of swampland.
Bladenboro's only claim to fame was its monster. Starting back in the 1950s, residents reported livestock disappearing. What bodies were discovered were mangled with strange wounds, the eyes and genitals removed with nearly surgical precision. By the sixties the reports fell off, and by the turn of the century hardly anybody remembered the Beast of Bladenboro.
But two years ago goats started disappearing again. Or at least, parts of them. Farmers would find the back half of a goat lying in their pen, the front half nowhere to be seen. Bones weren't crushed or even scratched by whatever chopped the goats in two. The severing was as clean and neat as if an industrial laser had carved up the beast.
The History Channel came to town and shot some footage of the surrounding swamps for their new Alien Hunter series. They had the bad luck to arrive on a week that no animals were reported killed. They left with some old photos and lots of footage of shadowy forests and edited together a one-hour special on the beast. After it aired, amateur monster hunters would arrive in town and traipse around the swamps with night vision goggles, taping motion-sensitive cameras to every other tree. They got a lot of pictures of deer and more than a few snapshots of startled hunters.
