Elizabeth Massie - Wire Mesh Mothers

Mam said, “We’ll have this done, don’t you worry, Angela.”

Burton, who now had a ten-gallon hat perched jauntily atop his dark hair, said, “Got an elm branch for digging. Knife handle just won’t grab good. Gonna get those bastards out, hold still.”

A searing pain. Tony screamed. Above, in the rafters, Leroy and DeeWee, and now Little Joe and Whitey, flicked dried bird poop at each other and said, “Eat this! Dare, dare!”

Tony tried to sit up, to pull her legs together, but Burton said, “No, don’t be such a cow. Hold still.”

Mam said, “Honey, I need a beer. When we’re done here, would you please get me a beer? My throat’s so dry.”

Burton tugged at Tony’s insides. Tony tried to move with the tug, trying to keep her guts from coming out with the dreadful, powerful suction.

“Hold still!” said Burton. Something in Tony popped and gave way. Burton clucked, and smiled, and held up two wet, writhing earthworms the size of pythons. “Look at this,” he said. “Don’t take after you at all. Must be their daddy.”

She bolted awake.

Fuck!

Breaths. Huh, huh, huh, huh .

Blurry eyes. She wiped them with the heel of her hand. Fucking dream. Who invented fucking dreams?

Who the hell thought us such a damn thing?

And she saw the teacher, standing before her with the ax raised above her head, her teeth barred, her lips peeled back, the eyes of Satan himself staring out from the sockets.

Mistie heard something, someone, scream, and she tried to open her eyes but they were glued shut. It sounded a little like Mama screaming.

“Valerie!” Mama had screamed and Daddy had said, “Shut your face, you wanna be thrown in prison?”

“Valerie!” Mama had screamed, and Mistie had cried, a higher sound that blended with Mama’s into something like a song. But the screams and the cries were all Mistie recalled, the wailing voices in the kitchen in the apartment in Kentucky.

Daddy had said, “It was a bad liver. We can’t help she had a bad liver.” And he had buried her somewhere where no one could find out it wasn’t a bad liver.

That was all Mistie knew. It was too far away, Kentucky. It was too long ago, Valerie.

The scream came again. Mistie scratched the glue from one eye and looked out in the fire-lit barn where the teacher was standing over the girl, and it was the girl who was screaming.

The teacher arced the ax over and down with a grunt, and as the whistling of the dull blade reached Tony’s ears, Tony threw herself backward in a violent tumble, over the sagging straw bale and to the shadowed floor behind. The ax-head bit into the straw, a solid whack that split the top half in two.

“Shit!” Tony rolled to her side, scrambled to her feet. The teacher shook the ax like a rabid dog with a groundhog, and pulled it out of the straw. She lifted it up again, both her sweating torso and the old blade catching firelight briefly. The eyes again, cold and terrible.

“Back off!” screamed Tony.

The teacher walked around the straw bale, her footsteps rhythmic, robot-like. The ax held position over her head. Tony scrabbled back, slipping in the loose straw, her hands going before her face. “No!”

The teacher’s lips opened and closed, speaking something Tony couldn’t hear, and then the ax came down again. Tony flopped to the right and the ax struck dead center of the straw where she’d been. Tony scooted away on her knees, panting, snatching for the ax handle before the teacher could wrench it free of the floor.

“Bitch! You fucking shit-brain!” Tony caught the slick wood of the handle, the sporadic splinters, but the teacher threw out her foot and caught Tony in the shoulder, knocking her away. Tony lost her breath, caught it, skidding in the needle-sharp straw. The teacher grinned, the flickering fire-glow twisting her face into myriad subhuman shapes. She raised the ax and stepped forward.

Tony scooted back on the floor, head reeling. “Don’t kill me, you goddamn bitch! Teachers don’t kill kids!” The teacher smiled. Tony shoved herself to her feet, ducking just in time to miss the blade as it swung at her head.

The teacher stumbled then, the blow connecting with nothing but air, and she took several weird, skipping steps forward. Air hissed through her teeth with the sound of a car radiator about to blow. Tony shouted, “Ha!” and threw the whole of her weight against the woman. Tony and the teacher sprawled to the floor, Tony on top of the woman, the woman cracking into a stall door. Tony dove for the ax handle, her fingers catching it and locking tightly. She yanked with all her strength, knees bearing down in the straw, body throwing itself back. But the teacher’s grasp didn’t loosen. She yelped, planted her foot on Tony’s chest, and kicked her away. She then sat up and waved the ax.

“Stop it!” Tony cried. “Crazy ass shit!”

Still seated, the teacher swung the ax in evenly measured side sweeps, like a farmer wielding a scythe. Back and forth, swoosh, swoosh , daring Tony to step up and loose her feet from the rest of her body. As the ax kept up its steady sweeps, the teacher braced herself against the stall door and pushed herself, slowly and steadily, to her feet.

“Back off!” screamed Tony. She looked behind her, her eyes probing the darkness for the pitchfork, the saw, something. Something to kill the teacher. Something to save herself.

Baby Doll. Tony saw the little girl lying on the floor, her head cradled in the balled-up sweatshirt. Baby Doll!

Tony scooted around the fire-bearing wheelbarrow and dropped down by the child. She picked her up and held her to her chest. So I catch what she’s got, Tony thought. Small price.

The teacher was fully on her feet now, turning like a Disney animatron toward Tony and Baby Doll. She strode forward, and stopped. The ax held position over her head.

“Kill me, kill us both,” said Tony simply.

“Let her go,” the teacher growled.

“Kill me, kill us both.”

Baby Doll opened her eyes. She squinted at Tony, then into the shadows beyond the teacher. “Mama had a baby,” she whispered.

The teacher stared.

“Put it the fuck down,” said Tony.

“I — ” began the teacher.

“I ain’t letting her go, bitch.”

The teacher tilted her head, shut her eyes, opened them, and said, “What?”

“Huh?” echoed Baby Doll.

Tony said nothing. She counted. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven….

The teacher looked at Baby Doll, then Tony, then her own upraised arms and the ax handle she clutched. “I…?”

Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen….

A strange gasping sound from the teacher. Her mouth opening, snapping shut. The body wavering slightly, the muscles of the arms twitching within the flesh.

Twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven….

“Ah,” said the teacher. Her tongue appearing briefly at the front of her mouth, disappearing. The ax, still in place overhead, a deadly torch in the hands of a mad Lady Liberty.

There was a rustling sound to Tony’s right. She glanced over the same moment the teacher did. There were wide, iridescent eyes in the dark, a crouched body in the straw.

The teacher whooped, spun on her toe, and brought the ax down in a powerful strike. The blade connected, cut through, slammed to a stop in the floor.

The cat’s head rolled lazily through the straw and came to stop against Tony’s boot.

Baby Doll stared at it. She reached out one clammy hand to touch the furry ears, the glistening eyes.