Каарон Уоррен - The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2018 Edition

A thousand frog-tongues lashing out to snatch as many bugs from the air, every glob of gore vanished in the twinkling of an eye, slurped up by the thirsty machète. How long had this poor baby lain in that awful, awful chest?

Though drinking to the last drop was neither delicious nor easy as that first perfect pull, she kept going and swallowed the man down.

The Russian in two pieces desiccated, turning to a spoonful’s worth of blown dust between one breath and the next. What, maybe twenty seconds had passed since the door opened? Russkie number two, quick on the uptake and fast on his feet, had spun around and was booking up the hall.

She looked at Anhell and jerked her chin toward the runaway. “Pop ’im.”

“I ain’t never even shot a gun before.”

“Just pull the trigger, dumb ass.”

Hoisting it up to his shoulder, he aimed. “But what if it ain’t loaded?”

It was, though. The discharge, noiseless on earth, made no flash, either, resounding instead throughout hell. All the souls screaming in their lakes were startled into a moment of silence, so loud was that report, so bright. A burst watermelon of gore blew out the white back of the running man’s t-shirt. He was snatched forward—off his feet and several yards through the air—by the impact of the demonbullet, which smashed him facedown into the checkered tiles with such goofy, slapstick violence, she and Anhell turned open-mouthed to each other, dead. They died laughing, grabbing at one another and collapsing to the floor, it was that funny how dude had thought he was getting away, but psych !

“Okay, okay,” she said finally. “Let’s get serious.” She pointed to the problematic scene in the hallway. “Get out there and clean that shit up, fore somebody come out they apartment.”

Unlike firing a gun for the first time, she didn’t need to break it down for Anhell how the devil got his due. He walked up the hall, she with him, and put the thirsty muzzle of the gun down into that sucking wet wound.

In no time the juicy corpse was all bled out, the borschty color of a freshly dead whiteman depinking into gray. Anhell lifted the gun from the dry pit of torn lavender flesh, shattered pale bone. “I don’t want no more,” he whined, screwing up his face. “The sweet part’s gone.”

“Shut the fuck up,” she said, in zero mood for his finicky complaints. “ Finish it. ”

Anhell pooched his bottom lip like a four-year-old with just the broccoli left on his plate, but he put the muzzle back down in.

Soon he was gagging, and not faking, either. “All right, all right,” she conceded. “Carry the rest back to the apartment.” There was no splatter on the floor or walls, no more mess, only a shrunken dry thing like the historical Christ, if those skinny bones were pulled from a tomb in Sinai today. She stomped the old body down into the chest and it burst and crumpled like papier mâché, till there was room for Anhell to roll the new one on top. Fingerprints, wipe shit down, tidy up? Nah, fuck that. The devil got you. He looks after his own.

They bounced, Anhell following her out to the elevator.

“So we just kinda slide into the fires sideways, not far, and from there nobody can really see…”

“I get it ,” Anhell said. “You always think I’m so stupid, ’Nisha, but I got it all the same time you did!”

“Well, don’t fuck it up, nigga. Cause we carrying this machète and shotgun right through the streets, onto the MT fucking A.”

Just newly knighted to this darkest order, they hardly dared more than a step into hell, and so their half-assed little cantrip that first night wouldn’t have worked at all, except in a place like New York, where everybody was already trying so hard not to notice strangers.

Night had come to Brooklyn, but you could still see a half inch of daylight glowing behind Manhattan’s fallen constellations. They didn’t slink from the building like street dogs after grubbing through some alley trash, their heads down, eyes slewing nervously left and right—oh no! They loped like winter wolves, thin yet, but bellies hanging full of fresh kill, and future tooth and scenting nose toward all these little lambs gamboling on every side. Nay, sweeter than lambs! For creatures even so gentle can yet scent the beast that would eat them, while men and women and children walking home under soft rain don’t know to fear the slavering jaws, the click of claws on concrete.

Shadow and flame licking in the corners of their eyes, machète and gun in hand, they strutted through the evening rush. When they descended to the subway, nine-to-fivers were trudging up and teenagers, just out of basketball practice, leaping stairs two at a time. Down in the station, patrolmen to bust fare-jumpers and dudes selling swipes, and more patrolmen posted at the terrorist table, didn’t even blink when two murderers fresh off the deed, weapons naked in hand, rolled past. Busker on the sax, “You’ve Changed.” Nobody tried to bogart, nobody jostled them on the crowded way back uptown. Where you woulda swore there was none, space opened up on the packed train. Coupla seats came free.

You can pray all day, babygirl, but God won’t answer. He ain’t thinking bout you. Now that other guy, though? Will treat you like a fucking rockstar. VIP. Perks.

Anhell crawled across the bed, over her, flipped on the lights, crashed around the studio. He gathered up and threw out all the bottles, flushed the roaches and ashes, hid the tray, opened the windows and turned the fan on high. He came to the bed whispering. “You don’t wanna put on some clothes, mami?” Sleepy and cold from the fan, she just groaned and pulled the covers over her, his pillow over her head. His caseworker buzzed at 8:45, as always, as bimonthly, this middle-aged African bitch who hated her and thought she was the biggest slut on earth, but loved Anhell, no doubt to the point of hand-on-the-Bible swearing his shit smelled like patchouli and roses. Um, hello …? That nigga gave it to me .

Mrs. Okorie asked Anhell the same stupid social worker questions that had you like duh …! the answers to which not only hadn’t changed since last time but couldn’t. Spotting in the heaped up blankets on the bed signs pointing to the presence of a certain fast ass American black girl, Mrs. Okorie reminded Anhell that it was against the rules for “company to cohabitate.” There was, in fact, this scholarship program which Mrs. Okorie thought Anhell (who wasn’t no fucking college material, not unless y’all got a PhD in PS4) could apply to, even earn his associate’s degree, if not for the influence of a certain fast ass American black girl.

Special for people who controlled his benefits, Anhell had this soft sweet voice, this lightskin innocent voice. Saying things like “just visiting” and “a couple days,” he almost had Mrs. Okorie calmed down when she got up booty-nekkid from bed, crossed to the bathroom and, just half-closing the door, pissed loud for a mad ass long time, like some loose bitch who’d been up till four in the morning drinking with her man. Anhell had to work them gray eyes, that good hair, hard to get Mrs. Okorie calmed down again.

They napped and woke up at noon. They fucked but that wasn’t it. Neither was a puff or two off Anhell’s first blunt of the day, nor coffee light and sweet, bagel egg and cheese from the corner. And, no, TV wasn’t it, and not a nap, and not fooling around again later in bed. Nor staring out the window while Anhell played his videogames. He that giveth thee all shall too expect somewhat in return.