Seven Devils

by M. Chris Benner

  Chris’ cell phone rings – he checks the number and sends it to voicemail.

  With an exhale, Traycee offers to let them stay the night.

  “You can stay here if’n you want. Almost night now anyway. I’ll make some of my special butterbeans—” Lizzy release a low groan at the sound of something else being “special” but Traycee misinterprets, “—see, missy here is hungry. Where’d yer lemonade go, sweetie—”

  Once again, Lizzy is cut off before she has the opportunity to lie, this time when Chris wraps his arms around Traycee and dips her back, kissing the nape of her neck before returning her to a standing position. Before he removes himself fully, Chris plants a kiss on her newly flushed cheek.

  “Oh my,” Traycee giggles, steadying herself once Chris releases her. “Headin’ off to Mississippi after this?”

  “Yeah, just for a day.”

  Chris glances at Lizzy, who’s become subdued with the realization that they would, in fact, be staying the night.

  “Tell yer mama I said hi,” Traycee says, heading toward the kitchen.

  “You crazy, Trace?”—she looks at him, quizzically—“I ain’t goin’ anywhere near her.”

  SPECIAL OVERNIGHT

  As the living room lights go out and Chris calls out an extra “goodnight” before following Traycee upstairs, Lizzy closes her eyes to relive the evening again. She doesn’t get very far before she’s diverted by a smell from the dirt-brown couch (or it could be from the handmade pillow, or it could be from the thin, scratchy half-blanket she’s tucked under); whatever it is and wherever it’s from, the scent reminds her of an old, musty basement full of discarded furniture.

  Only momentarily distracted, she returns to that evening.

  Dinner had been interesting: butterbeans, fried chicken, leftover BBQ ribs from the night before, buttermilk biscuits, store-bought potato salad, and a fresh apple pie that Traycee made as an after-thought. Incorporating both Chris and Lizzy as sous chefs and beginning from scratch with everything except the ribs and potato salad, Traycee (who did a vast majority of the work) finished everything in less than an hour. It had taken all of Lizzy’s self control to finally sit down and try a bite. She quickly found that each subsequent bite was much, much easier. In the end, the food had been so delicious that she genuinely considered re-tasting the lemonade still hidden behind the picture on the bureau; however, there wasn’t much chance as she ate too much and spent the twenty minutes following dinner sitting on the toilet, staring into the plastic trashcan between her feet while breathing deeply and trying not to vomit.

  Even more peculiar than the incredible food was the behavior of the three boys. At the sound of dinner, all three had rushed inside and straight to the first floor bathroom, where they graciously took turns washing up. During the meal, they hardly spoke and, when they did, showed better manners than Chris, who had his elbows repeatedly swept off the table by Traycee. Once dinner was over, the children returned to their loud, insufferable screaming and rampaging, this time sectioned off to the upstairs while Lizzy, Traycee, and Chris cleaned.

  The food had made Lizzy sleepy and she had forgone a bath for an early bedtime. As she drifts away on the comfy cushions of the dirt-brown couch, her memories of the evening wander and begin to meld with the associations she made to the pronounced scent around her: in a dusty old basement living room, discarded furniture belongs on the ceiling and Chris should marry his cousin ‘cause they seem good together; the particulars float ethereally, time and places coast between one another and out in all directions. When Lizzy wakes in the middle of the night, the only snippet of her dream still lingering is a household where Chris and her dad were married and everyone lived on the roof…and even those fine points sift like sand and vanish as Lizzy rubs sleep from her eyes to find the face of a (naked) four year old boy inches from her own.

  NAKED COUSINS

  “Do you wanna talk about why you left?” Traycee asks, her head bent over in stern concentration as she uses a pair of sewing shears to dice marijuana on her dresser top.

  They’re in her pink-tinted bedroom; it’s past midnight.

  Lifting her head to blow her curly black bangs out of her eyes, she stops long enough to look over her shoulder at Chris. He’s lying on top of the blankets on her bed wearing nothing but his boxers, both arms folded over his belly and his hands interlocked.

  “Not really, dude.”

  His answer is sullen.

  Traycee returns to dicing the weed.

  “Nothing, huh?” her voice is hurt and she stops again, staring down.

  Chris moves his legs over the side of the bed. He slouches forward in order to give himself the momentum to stand. Traycee hears him approach and returns to SNICK-SNICK-SNICK slicing the bits of weed, which is now so thoroughly diced that she’s turning it into powder. Chris rest his hands on her shoulders a moment, feeling her bare skin. Her breasts are reflected in the mirror. In a slow, clear motion, Chris bows forward and kisses the side of her neck.

  She smells the same as she did when they were young.

  Goosebumps spread over her body. Her head turns toward his. She doesn’t kiss him but cradles her head between his neck and shoulder in a backward embrace.

  “You smell the same,” she says, sniffing.

  “Traycee…” and Chris bends his knees, wrapping his warm arms around her bare chest, her head tilting back onto his shoulder, “…I love you, sugar. And your pop…he’s—I mean, he took me in when no one else did. No one would’ve done for me what he did, one in a million. And I’d repay him—just, if he wasn’t in prison…”

  Chris doesn’t have the words for sorrow – it’s not a way he functions.

  Traycee drops the shears and she’s up out of the chair before Chris’ body has time to lift and react. She turns on him and, without a hint of good-humor, she pushes at him twice. Startled, he’s caught off guard, causing his instincts to block the first and second effort. This serves to infuriate her and she shoves, shoves again, and then pushes as hard as she can with both hands. His defenses purposely down, she knocks him onto the bed.

  “I haven’t seen you in years, Christian! Years! And you come back here with someone’s child and everything’s fucking alright—IT’S NOT FUCKING ALRIGHT! You—I’ve never been as hurt,” and the last word causes her to choke back a sob, quietly finishing her sentence, “as I was with you.

  “You woke up next to me one morning and we had breakfast and the future—the whole future…and you left for school like any other day and…and you didn’t come back for six years. Six…” the number depresses her more, “six whole fucking years. I’ve seen more’a you on those porno videos on the internet than I’ve had you in my life. What the fuck, Christian? Do you…d’you have any idea what that’s like?”

  CHRISTIAN EDWARD LEE GIBBERTS – AGE 8

  “The best love stories are short and sweet. Romeo and Juliet wouldn’t have bin as rad if she woke up an’ was, like, a minute earlier and been, like, ‘Yo, don’t drink that, dude.’”

  Christian Edward Lee Gibberts has a crew cut and a blue-and-white dress shirt tucked into slacks and buttoned to the neck. He jabs his thick-rimmed glasses further up his nose, pacing in front of the swings with a puckish grin on his face. His friends Seth and Reegan are both leaning forward on the chains of the swings, staring at a half-visible worm struggling in the moist ground they had kicked up. Neither listens to Christian but he continues undeterred.

  “Like the Tempest – I mean really? Who cares, right?” he laughs, looking at his

  friends.

  One begins to spin. The other’s falling asleep.

  “‘Your tale, sir, may cure deafness’ my rear! Right?” he says under his breath in one final, declarative statement, as if it were an affirmation of everything he had said up to that point.

  A few of the remaining congregation leaves the church, including Christian’s mother. She’s huffy and pink-faced, obviously annoyed at something. Her thin, light bl
onde hair is disheveled and one clump is turned upward. She hobbles from a bad knee and, as she’s short and a bit wide, her waddle has become more pronounced.

  “Your mom’s ugly,” Seth says, watching Christian’s mother huff and puff out of breath on her travels down the church stairs and across the street. “And she’s fat.” Reegan laughs, no longer trying to dose off – even at eleven, he has a dead tooth in the front of his mouth. Seth’s only ten. He has wavy blonde hair that had only recently been cut to the scalp for the summer (same as Reegan’s, same as Christian’s), and the act of losing his most attractive feature had made him grumpier than normal. Neither Reegan nor Seth had ever liked Christian. They would call him names and exclude him, push him to the ground, haze him, but he always took it in good faith – Christian assumed that’s just how friends treat each other. This is the first day in a while they didn’t torment him relentlessly – it’s just too hot.

  “Does yer mom know you talk like a faggot?” Reegan asks, his black tooth making another brief appearance.

  “Mommy, they said I was talkin’ like a ‘fag’,” Christian whines to his mother as she climbs each of the three wood blocks embedded into the ground serving as the stairs to the playground’s front entrance.

  “Don’t be a tattle,” she wheezes, trying to catch her breath as she takes hold of Christian’s arm and begins yanking him in the direction of their house two blocks over.

  “And they’s prolly right, you talk like a queer, God rest yer soul,” she adds.

  The boys laugh behind him. Seth blows out his cheeks and starts waddling around like he’s fat. Reegan lets the dead tooth pop up once more in a wide smile.

  Christian calls back, “See you guys Wednesday,”

  FACTS ABOUT GRAMMAR

  “Did you know that the asterisk exists so that printers could distinguish the date someone was born back in feudal times?” Travis says, speaking purely out of boredom.

  “No one gives a shit,” I respond.

  “Seconded,” says Augustus.

  “What did they use to signify death?” Steve asks.

  “I…don’t know. Augustus, look it up,” Travis answers after thinking a moment.

  “Nope. And t-minus five minutes to two,” Augustus alerts us.

  We’re all of us scattered:

  Travis is near Logan Circle, Steve’s on Market Street just passed Washington Square West, Augustus is roasting in his room, and I’m on South Street in the Southwest. There were other areas of interest but we just couldn’t survey all of them in a day; plus, all of them didn’t matter – only the proof that there was another setup like the one in North Philly.

  The locations to scout were determined by an overlooked detail:

  Mans el-Ray Pasquale had visited several hotels and it was assumed that he was following campaigners from his job as an aide; with a second, fresh look, we determined that the locations and dates were too broad to be solely to follow his former coworkers, that he must be doing the same thing at each hotel as he was in North Philly – watching, looking for these places.

  Travis and I had both identified a suspicious apartment, both with a magnetic lock on the front and reinforced doors, though otherwise indistinguishable from the surrounding. Steve hadn’t found one but he walks the neighborhood with an eye out for suits or sedans, hoping for some luck.

  Augustus lets out a self-satisfied chuckle.

  “What’d you find?” I ask.

  He begins to say something but cuts himself off with an, “Ewww.”

  This sparks all of our interest and we ask again what he’s found.

  “I found out some information on this Sinto guy, finally. Like the fact that his first name is Hue…”

  “Hue Sinto? What kind of name is that?” Travis asks.

  “Parents were…mother was Polynesian, father was German and Japanese – fought with the Japanese on Iwo Jima, died there. And,” he breaths out a disgusted breath, “this guy apparently loves to crush.”

  We’re all silent.

  “What the fuck does that mean?” Steve finally asks.

  “Crush—crush videos. Where people crush small animals, like small cats and shit. I—this guy, he’s a piece of work. I’ll show you what else I found when you get back. T-minus three and counting.”

  The next three minutes are silent.

  The three minutes after that are silent.

  “Maybe these other places got different schedules—” I start.

  “Got ‘em. Hold,” Steve says, low.

  There’s another three minutes of silence.

  “Same situation here,” Steve comes back. “Two go in at 2:00 a.m. The place is a block down from where I was.”

  “What about the other places?” Travis asks.

  “I’m betting different schedules,” I answer. “If there’s more than one than I’m betting there’s more than two. But…” I think a moment, “…I doubt there’s one at every location…”

  I close my eyes and picture Philadelphia as a map.

  “Where…would…”

  There was one in North Philadelphia. One on Market between the Convention Center and Old City, south of Chinatown. And the rest of the hotels were in Center City except the one in North Philadelphia, and even that was just past the line. There were still hotels he stayed at in Queen’s Village, Northern Liberties, Rittenhouse Square, Art Museum, Spring Garden, and Society Hill. Each area on the Center City map in my head has a round red circle around it, signifying the approximate space of the area; however, it finally seems clear.

  Shit, I think to myself.

  It’s all clear.

  This is bigger than I thought.

  A CONVERSATION BARTLEBY AND I ONCE HAD

  The first time I had heard from Bartleby was less than a week before he showed up at my buffet to poison my water.

  He had contacted Charne and tried to tell her what was so important. Not even halfway through, she grew angry and outright refused to listen to anymore, having only taken the call as a courtesy to the memory of his father.

  She then contacted me, and I told her he could talk to me.

  We didn’t greet each other when our line was connected.

  “There’s gonna be a terrorist attack in Philadelphia. They’re going after Center City. Someone I used to know, he came to me and he told me that there was a Senator named Richard Atwater. Said this guy…” and he breathed long and deep, “…this Republican Senator has heavily invested in a company called Nethuns Mining recently. It’s a deep sea mining company. Apparently, there’s been the discovery of a massive ore deposit deep down under the ground just outside the Gulf of Oman. But there’s an embargo on that specific area of coast.

  “My source believes that there’s an active plan to set off multiple explosives in Center City. He believes they will pin it on a terrorist sect in Iran so that they can invade Iran and drill in their ocean.”

  “The United States can get around an embargo for a massive—”

  “One, Iran will automatically get a large piece of it as it’s on their land – unless we invade, in which case it’s American territory while it’s occupied. A hundred percent. And they estimate nearly a trillion in wealth by today’s market, all just under the surface in precious metals. Gold, platinum…whoever gets it first will be the wealthiest person in the world tenfold.”

  “And you want the Seven Devil Nation to help?”

  “No. I want you to help. I believe…I believe the Seven Devils may be involved in some capacity.”

  “And why do you believe that?”

  “Because Charne said something. When I was telling her, I said Senator. She called him a Republican. I didn’t say his party. It could have been any Senator. But she knew—I know she knew.”

  “Is this line secure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Yes.”

  . . .

  “Who is your source?”

  “I’m only going to tell you in p
erson—”

  “It’s mighty dangerous letting you around me. For both of us.”

  “I’m not going to say his name. Only in person.”

  “…okay. You come and you tell me this man’s name. And I won’t kill you.”

  He came, told me, and poisoned me. He could have poisoned me because he thought the tail I had was the Seven Devil Nation and he didn’t want them to see us conversing buddy-buddy; more likely, he poisoned me to weaken my defenses and hoped to kill me and take my place among the Seven Devil Nation; and there’s a slight part that thinks he may have just wanted me to kill him. I reacted instinctually – like he knew I would – coincidentally using a dose of the same poison he had used on me, one that I kept on a tack-like point hidden inside a ring.

  And as I left him convulsing on the beach, I sent a text:

  SCATTERSHOT 14

  And then I called an ambulance to save Bartleby’s life once more.

  Had I let him die, he would have been the first to die by my hand since the violent end of Sensei Ki-Jo.

  Honestly, I just don’t think I can kill Roger Dupont.

  If I haven’t thus far…

  SILENT ALARM

  David had finished the meeting and gone back to his hotel to pop the last two motion sickness pills in the package, knocking him deep into a heavy slumber, one that’s broken the next morning by a heavy pounding on the door. Though obvious in retrospect, setting the alarm clock had been more routine than anything: It didn’t wake him at 9:00 a.m. – when he had wanted to wake in order to get ready for the noon book signing near Times Square – because he didn’t hear it and, after a few buzzes, it shut itself off.

  The knocking, however, is heavy and reverberates through the room.

  After shifting, finding himself in the same clothes as yesterday, on top of the sheets and not at home, he groggily checks the clock next to the bed to learn that it’s half past eleven. Panic sets in. There’s another THUD THUD THUD on the door – one that quells the panic momentarily, as David can faintly hear the sound of fist on wood.

  Rushing, he opens the door knowing full well it’s an agitated Shepard.

  “Where the fuck have you—” Shepard starts, then stops when he realizes David can’t hear him; David doesn’t let him know otherwise, that he can hear the faded yet distinct words coming from Shepard’s mouth.