American Monster by J.S. Breukelaar

Author:J.S. Breukelaar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lazy Fascist Press
Published: 2014-02-05T00:00:00+00:00

27//:pull

A woman and a child moving through the mean streets, nothing that hadn’t been seen before. It would be light soon. A Consortium guard’s knuckles tightened over the butt of his rifle—Norma’s shadow loomed at the mouth of an alleyway, but he relaxed when he saw the child. Norma had managed to get her cleaned up—in her cruddy parka she blended in, her pallor, the hunger in her eyes reflected in a thousand other faces, untold other eyes. All around them, the persistent swoosh of skateboard wheels, the clack of cowboy boots, black hat brims, and Norma wheeled wildly to and fro but there was no one there. Around them nothing but the space of darkness, the space of fear.

Raye was talked out. But as they neared the Sanctuary, she said, expressionless, Leeks.

The sour, overcooked reek of whatever seethed in the Crock-Pot had drifted down to the street and Raye picked it up a block before Norma did. At the door to the Sanctuary Norma gave the girl a couple of Valiums and left her there without making eye contact. Without saying goodbye.

Norma jumped a GMC recombo with Tijuana plates and flew off at the trailer park. She landed badly and splashed in some standing water at the edge of the road. Her arms flailed as she regained her balance. By the time she got to the trailer, numb with exhaustion, all she could do was kick off her boots and fall face-down on the bed. Her eyes burned yet she couldn’t sleep. She dry-swallowed some off-market triazolam but it didn’t help. She went outside, wondered if she should go down to the beach. And then what? Take a dip?

Mommy said, A daemon cannot die.

If that is what she was once, what was she now? She’s adopted a street kid, longed for a man she couldn’t have and suffered from killer PMS. What was that? There was no way of knowing.

The wind was bitter and the ocean was a roiling hole. And also a whole. Mirror of the world, source of all its pain, all its life and time. She saw it in its entirety. All the way down, two-three-four miles. The trick was getting back up. A daemon couldn’t die but how far could a woman fall? How many miles to mortality, Mommy? Are we there yet?

Dawn touched the fleshy cliffs. Their tufted vegetation rippled like living pelt. Eroded monsters, doomed gorillas with slumped and leathery bodies swathed in mist. The path beneath her feet was lined with wrappers, cans and burger boxes in various states of decay. An odor of petals, pine and corrosives. She put her hands on the wooden rail at the edge overlooking the beach. The countless hands and unending seasons that had touched this rail, felt the call of the unfathomed sea—find out what you truly are.

Norma could see beneath its surface, see it in its entirety. The whole. Float through it in her mind—the sand bars and buried reefs, the shipwrecks and underwater crevasses.

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