The day that Congress passed the law granting full hunting privileges to the syneidophagi was considered an auspicious victory for the metaconservative majority, and indeed in many respects shaped the course of American politics for decades to come. It came after many long months of filibusters and vicious, partisan in-fighting, slipped in as a rider at the end of a bill meant to further curtail the rights afforded to homosexual partnerships, among them the right to adopt children and the right to mental health insurance. The President had threatened to veto, but the truth was that he had already expended most of his political capital the previous year, pushing the Freedom of Conscience Act through a reluctant Senate. In the end, he proved too timid to move so diametrically against what he supposed to be the will of his constituency. Several news agencies later reported that the President's hand shook visibly as he signed the Act before a beaming audience, including several syneidophagi who had been invited specifically for the occasion, and who pounced on and devoured him almost as soon as the ink was dry. By the time they were done, nothing remained but a pair of empty shoes and a bare, sticky skeleton.
The significance of this was not immediately apparent to Beverly, who on that day was leaving her lover of ten years for the last time.
She had been hunched over a blank sheet of notebook paper for nearly an hour, pen clutched in her hand. Her clothes were already packed and in the car. The bruise under her right eye was yellowing but still tender. From the next room, she could hear Patty's soft breathing, still asleep.
Finally, she scrawled, Fuck you anyway. I wanted kids. She left it on the kitchen table.
It was a lie, and a cruel one at that. But she could not write about the times she had held her in the bathroom, when the vomiting had left Patty too weak to hold her own head over the toilet; nor about the times when Patty had lashed out, at first verbally but then, more recently, physically, reviling Beverly for staying with her and then in the next breath begging her to stay. She could not write about the disgust she felt when she looked at Patty's body, wasted by the disease and by the drugs that were supposed to hold back the disease; nor about the guilt and self-loathing that followed the disgust like tide follows tide. She could not write about how badly she just wanted some sex, God, just for someone else to touch her gently and with love, instead of with a slap or a desperate, needy claw; someone to hold her, and not burst into tears and then vomit for an hour and then shit themselves in the night and then call her a ghoul, a martyr, a pathetic cunt while she cleaned it all up the next morning; someone she could fall in love with again. Because that was the thing, really. She did not love Patty anymore. And that was more than she could write on a single sheet of notebook paper.
Beverly quietly let herself out the front door, and she did not cry. She got on Route 30 and she headed east, how far she didn't know, maybe all the way to the other coast, but anywhere, as long as it was far, far away. She didn't cry. And she was nearly to Troutsdale, just past the city limits, before it hit her, the terrible enormity of what she had done, which was to leave Patty to die, and what's more to die alone.
She cried. But she kept on driving.
An hour or so east of The Dalles, Beverly pulled in to a rest stop. She got out of her car, stretched, and shaded her eyes. The hills were like vast mountain lions, sleeping under the dusty sun.
There were a couple of trucks parked in the lot, but no people about. A small bungalow stood nearby, under a billboard with the word DINER painted on it. Probably not good for much more than a cup of coffee and a greasy, grilled-cheese sandwich, but to Beverly, who had been driving without a break since early that morning, it looked perfect. A bell above the door dinged as she walked in, and then fell quiet. Beverly could hear something sizzling in the back — burgers on the grille, probably. It made her stomach rumble.
She looked around for a waitress, but there was no one, not even any customers... except for a little girl, sitting at the end of the counter. She couldn't have been more than eight years old, ten at the most.
"Hello," said the little girl. She wore a sky-blue dress and white pinafore, white stockings, little black shoes with buckles.
"Uh, hello," said Beverly. "Where is everybody?"
"They're in back," said the girl. "They'll probably be out in just a second."
"Oh." Beverly sat down at the other end of the counter, several stools over.
"Are you from Portland?" asked the girl.
"Uh, yes." Beverly frowned. She craned her neck to see back into the kitchen, but the narrow doorway was at a bad angle. All she could hear was that sizzling sound. No clinking of plates. No talking. Nothing.
"Where are you going?" asked the girl.
Beverly frowned harder. The girl's pinafore reminded her of Alice in Wonderland. She kept her hands folded neatly on the counter. She had no plate, no food in front of her.
"What's your name?" Beverly asked.
"I don't have a name," responded the girl. Before Beverly could fully process this, she added, "Do you think you're a good person?"
Beverly had already decided to leave, but the abruptness of the girl's non sequitur kept her on her stool for a few more moments. The sizzling sound from the kitchen was getting louder. Underneath it, Beverly could hear another sound: something wet, and thick, and meaty.
"You never told her, did you?"
A cold thing uncurled in the pit of Beverly's stomach. "What?"
"You never told her how you slept with him," said the girl in the same, smiling voice. "You slept with him all those times. Even before she got sick."
Beverly jerked to her feet. Something was burning; she could smell it. And she realized now what the little girl was.
"You can't..."
"Yes, we can," said the syneidophagos. Two more appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, identical in every detail to the first, down to their starched white pinafores. Smoke billowed around them. Their faces and hands were smeared with red.
"You don't..."
"Yes, we do."
Beverly turned, and saw a dozen more outside the diner, pressing their hands against the glass.
The one at the counter grinned, showing row upon row of tiny, hook-like teeth. The knife that it drew forth from under its pinafore looked very old and very, very sharp.
"The note that you left," it said, "it wasn't really a lie. Was it?"
"No," whispered Beverly.
The glass shattered, and they were on her.
(back to main page) (back to story index)
