A Devil's Dictionary

1980-8

ONE THING IS CERTAIN, and that is that everyone who was standing when she let loose the bolts was no longer standing when they disappeared—including, to our surprise, the girl-thing herself, who collapsed even as we collapsed, as the Benson g**g collapsed, their bodies shriveled like prunes and their faces sucked in, as though they’d simply imploded when their life-force had been extracted, which, I suppose, they had.

Then it was over and we had climbed to our feet, shaking ourselves off, grateful to be alive, but aghast at the destruction and loss of life all around us. For the Benson g**g was dead, each and every one, and their nude bodies had become husks— their clothes having burned away in the incident, I supposed—which rattled in the sand as they were buffeted by the breeze and eventually just dis-incorporated, blowing away like dandelion seeds.

As for the thing, we knew exactly what had happened (we’d been in her head, after all, at least that’s how we interpreted it, just a few moments before): she’d expended all her energy in the extraction of their life-force and yet wouldn’t gain from the transfer until it had been converted by her system, a process which might take hours, even days.

Unless, we knew, we could get her to her ship, which had begun to glow amidst the trees like a white-hot iron and which would restore her to full health if she were just able to join with it—an outcome which seemed increasingly unlikely as we watched her try to stand and come crashing back down, her arms barely capable of breaking her fall and her legs all but useless in their compromised condition. So, too, did we know that any attempt to touch her would result in the same type of injury suffered by Benson. And thus we could only watch as she began to crawl toward her ship across the rocks and sand, pleased that she seemed to be gaining strength with each foot traveled—but knowing, also, that it would not be enough.

“Jesus, look at her face,” said Orley at last, and when I followed his gaze I saw that her features had begun to droop and her hair to fall out, so that she was starting to look like Jason Voorhees in Friday the 13th(when he bursts from the water at the end of the movie), her brow sagging and her mouth twisting, her head balding, her eyes mismatched.

“She’s using all her strength to get to her ship,” I said, “and can no longer maintain the ruse. But I don’t she’s going to make it.”

“And yet she might,” said Kevin, his freckles standing out harsh and clear in the sun and his red hair a veritable fire. “She might.”

At length Orley said, “I feel sorry for them if she does.”

I think I just looked at him: at his earnest, intense eyes and his unruly mop of hair, at his shitty, threadbare clothes because his mother was too poor to dress him. “What do you mean?” I said.

“I mean everything—everyone. All our parents, all our siblings. Everything we have ever known, just gone. Like Benson and his friends.”

We watched as she tried to stand, surer-footed this time, stronger, but then came crashing back down.

“That’s not it,” I said. “You were there. Other timelines will be created, other dimensions, all of them like this one. All of them populated by the same people. It’s just that one of them will—”

“Be modified and left alone, I know. But what about the others? What of the millions, the trillions, whatever, that will exist only to be killed, to be harvested, like cattle? What about this world, right here?”

I looked to where the thing was again crawling to its feet—it was no longer proper to call it a she—its fingers and toes shrinking as I watched.

“But they’re all the same, don’t you see? They’re all the same thing, just replicated a thousand-fold. How can ...” I paused, staring at him.

“Are they?” he said.

I continued looking at him, the sun beating upon our heads, the breeze jostling our hair. When I glanced at Kevin I found him already looking at me.

“She’s going to make it,” he said—calmly, meditatively. “Look.”

We peered beyond him and saw that it was so, that the thing was up again and stumbling toward the trees. Stumbling, not crawling, as the arrowhead-shaped ship glowed and the brush we’d piled atop it caught fire, poofing like bags full of air opened too quickly, smoking like fireworks about to explode.

“Jesus,” I mumbled. “Do you think we’re evolved enough to ...”

I glanced at our sticks only several feet away, canted in the sand, their shafts crude but straight— then at the thing, which was nearly to its ship. And the truth of it is I was running before I’d even made a conscious decision to do so, running with the friends I’d had since 4th grade at Broadway Elementary, both of whom beat me to the pikes. Nor did we stop to think about it as we chased the thing down like chieftains and Orley delivered the first blow, lancing its back decisively and pinning it to the earth as I slid mine into what would have been its ribcage and Kevin impaled its neck, all of which caused the thing to struggle furiously even as it tried to scream—this most assuredly—but found it had no mouth; as it melted away from our sticks like butter and reconstituted itself on the go, finally closing to within a few feet of its ship before Orley ran it through its back yet again and smashed it to the ground, stopping it in its tracks—even as Kevin and I stabbed it repeatedly—the sun filtering through the pines as it shuddered and bled, its ship beginning to falter, growing cool amidst the shadows.

And yet we kept stabbing as though infected with blood-l**t: exhilarated by each blow, hot for the kill, while nonetheless feeling as though we had lost something with each strike. Something of who we were and might have become. Something which felt good and bad at the same time. Like romantic love, I suppose, which we had yet to experience. Or the bite of cigarette smoke into the esophagus and lungs.

Until at last the ship lie dormant and the Thing from Another World was dead, if it had ever lived at all, at least in the way we understood it. And then we just stood there for a time amongst the shafts of light and brooded in our youth and vigor and passion; there in July of 1980 in the sweltering heat and humidity of the day. There in the forest by the lake, which was shot through with orange and gold, in the brief, burning cathedral of summer.

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