said.
My gut might be wrong. My imagination might be failing me.
Okay, look on the bright side of things. For one, perhaps she was lonely. Perhaps she wanted a peer, wanted companionship, wanted someone to help her hunt.
Or someone to distract the FBI away from her.
Keaton’s evil gave me a bigger problem. Not only had she killed, what, a hundred or more Transforms in her career – if I had worked out the numbers correctly – but according to the press and the TV news, she had killed at least as many innocents. The authorities and press labeled her as the most heinous killer of all time. They even invented new words to describe her: serial killer, spree killer. She wasn’t the sort of person who went to confession once a month.
I would at the least end up as her accomplice if I went with her. I wouldn’t kill innocents, of course, but as her accomplice, I would be legally, morally and ethically aiding her in her murderous rampages. What sort of person would do such a thing?
Someone desperate, someone willing to do anything to survive. That’s what I had become.
Death with dignity was not for me. Nor was suicide.
Mother
“Mother, I beseech you,” Dr. Henry Zielinski said. “Make me forget.”
He had even gone so far as to take Mother’s hands over the kitchen table in her Focus household, a ramshackle place on the bad side of the tracks outside of Montpelier, Vermont. She wasn’t his mother in the biological sense. Everyone just called her Mother. When she became a Focus back in ’60, looking ten years older than God, Zielinski had cared for her, becoming the first to understand her and help her. Before she Transformed, Mother had senile dementia, failing kidneys, and inoperable cataracts. A woman of her age surviving a Focus transformation by itself was enough to make her a patron saint of the younger generation of Focuses. Her obscure talents as a Focus and her caring ways only served to enhance her reputation. Since her Focus transformation, she had served as Dr. Zielinski’s touchstone.
“You’ve overheard my friends talking, have you, Hank?”
He nodded. Her ‘friends’ were the 55 Transforms and 34 normals in her Focus household. Yes, 89. Her Focus household was the largest, not just in the United States, but also in the world. No one understood how she did it, and Dr. Zielinski had written four speculative papers on the subject. Whatever she did, none of the other Focuses understood either.
Her Transforms often asked her to make them forget. She could, a trick unique to her, or at least unique among those Focuses willing to tell the world their tricks.
Mother patted his hands. “I can’t make you forget, Hank, because you aren’t a Transform. I don’t make them forget. The juice does.”
Dr. Zielinski sighed. Mother often said such things, utterance that didn’t make sense to anyone else. She had a different way of looking at the universe.
“Besides, you probably need to remember whatever happened.”
“No,” Dr. Zielinski said. “What happened is nothing anyone would want to remember, save perhaps one particularly sadistic Arm.” When he spoke the word ‘Arm’, the young woman Transform serving them dropped the cookie plate in her hand.
“Ingrid, for shame. We can’t afford to be wasting plates,” Mother said.
“I’m sorry, Mother,” Ingrid said, ashamed, but her hands still shook. Dr. Zielinski had never thought about how terrifying an Arm must seem to a Transform. To Transforms, an Arm must be a demon straight out of hell, with their name on her little list.
“One of my friends had been a room away from Keaton several years ago, back when he was held in a Clinic,” Ingrid said. “She came to take her juice from one of the newly transformed men, and killed the man in the cell next to him. So close. One cell over, and he would have been the one to die. He had nightmares.” Until Mother took the dreams away, of course.
Mother’s Focus household was, despite its size, about the poorest Focus household Dr. Zielinski he had encountered. Like nearly all Focus households, they had to move often to keep the juice flowing. Unfortunately, because Mother’s transformation hadn’t brought back her dementia-lost memories of her old life, she was too friendly and empathic to avoid con artists. They were attracted to her like dogs to the lone tree in a park. In every move, Mother’s household lost their shirts.
Dr. Zielinski tended to come by to Mother’s often, for counseling, as well as to perform free medical services. Mother wasn’t in good shape; unlike the more normal Focuses, she didn’t look like someone in her late teens. She looked like someone in her late 40s. Most Focuses healed and regenerated much faster than Mother did, but Mother was, well, atypical. She still was a fount of wisdom. Something wise in her subconscious had survived her Focus transformation.
“Arms, dear Hank, are predators. Violent. You should have grown to expect their violence, by now.” She gave him another hand pat. “Did she rape you again?”
Sometimes he wished he hadn’t told Mother everything that happened to him. Mother’s memory was perfect, another anomaly, the only Focus without some sort of memory problem.
“Not quite. I was present at…” He stopped. He couldn’t face what he had seen and experienced. He thought he would be able to talk about it, but he couldn’t. Not easily. He turned away from Mother.
“My. The last time you were thrown like this was when the Council grilled you about Rose Desmond’s death.” Dr. Zielinski hadn’t fully recovered from his own gunshot wounds at the time he had been brought before the Focus Council to explain what had happened to the Arm.
“This episode was worse,” Dr. Zielinski said. “Stacy made me participate.”
“So, why did you stay? How did you get into such a position, anyway?” Mother asked.
“How familiar are you with the politics associated with our new Arm?”
“Not much. My political position among the Focuses is rather close to the bottom of the barrel. I’m more likely to read about it in the newspapers than learn about it from a Focus.”
Dr. Zielinski nodded. “The new Arm is being held against her will by the Arm Task Force and being used as a lab rat. Keaton will rescue her, but I had to bribe her to help. With juice. Normally, these juice volunteers are in periwithdrawl and don’t care, but this case was special. He was a real volunteer. Keaton was going to try to keep him alive by slowing her draw rate down and having intercourse with him as she drew. She made me stay and take notes.”
“This ‘volunteer’? Did he live?”
Dr. Zielinski paused, looking firmly out the window, his face a dark mask. “No. Keaton said, afterwards, she had experienced a holy sacrament. Me, I would rather forget the experience.”
Mother laughed. “Is that all, Henry? Did you take good notes?”
“Unfortunately, that isn’t all.” Dr. Zielinski turned red. “Keaton cornered me and made me choose between helping her and the other Arms, all in, and never seeing her again.”
“I think I see,” Mother said. “You’re not sure you want to hold to your end of the deal.”
Dr. Zielinski nodded. “It will mean the end of my career.”
“You’re saying if you can’t use the Arms, it means the end of your career,” Mother said.
He nodded.
“Keaton’s got a point. I certainly wouldn’t be happy if you were helping me and my household simply to advance your career.”
“But if I lose my career, how can I help anyone?”
Mother shrugged and took sip of tea. “If anyone can find a way, it’s you.”
Dr. Zielinski shook his head and stared at the green and gold striped wallpaper, covered by far too many Hummel plates. She had more faith in him than he had in himself.
“So, do you think Keaton be able to save your new Arm?”
“I’m not sure,” he said, happier to be on firmer ground. “My new Arm is well educated, but she’s a small-town Missouri girl. She’s read all the literary classics, can spe
ak French at least a little bit, and can whip up formal dinners at the drop of a hat. She’s naive, though, and has almost no self-discipline. I have no idea how someone like her will even be able to survive Keaton’s rough ways, not to mention mastering being an Arm.”
Mother laughed. “So animated you are, Henry! So forceful. You’re hooked on her, aren’t you? A little in love?”
Dr. Zielinski shook his head. “I can barely stand to be around her. She’s not a nice person.” He paused. “But something about her is different. She has a presence, and she’s the sort of person who fills up a room just by being there. Now that I’m off her case, I find myself missing her. I have no idea what’s going on in my head.”
“I think you’ve found someone to protect,” Mother said. “You would make a good father figure, Hank. Start talking like a man instead of like a PhD, stop fretting about your bald spot, start wearing dumpier clothes. You’ll do fine.”
He turned away from Mother, with a sigh. She was likely right, as she often was, but still, her advice was often hard to accept.
Tonya’s Last Monster Hunt
(1964)
“Holy moly,” Ronda said. “Boss, ma’am, big emergency. Some damned Monster’s moved into the Bronx.”
Tonya looked up from the household paperwork, bleary. Ever since the episode with Keaton, she had been beating up on herself. She didn’t like the direction of her life, but she couldn’t pin down the exact problem. She had been biting