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

O gluttons of murder, wherefore do ye fast? Bring down the red rain, for in hell we are greatly thirsting…!

Below, crossing the courtyard, were a Spanish girl, her nigga, and their little baby in a stroller. Smiling church ladies, fat and overdressed, stood by the intersection passing out tracts. On the benches, every cell phone out, a girl clique was holding conference. Boys on bikes, on scooters, on skateboards. She didn’t want the blood of these people, her people, but somebody had to die and pretty fucking soon. A whole lot of somebodies, and day in and day out. How to be evil without doing bad? There’s a problem for you, huh?

Around seven they ate take-out tins of chicken, yellow rice and beans from the joint around the corner, sharing a Corona 24 oz. between them—plenty of food and drink, you would’ve thought, except this fare only made them hungrier, thirstier, for another repast richer by far than this shit. She kept having to move the machète from here to there. Whether propped against the wall, or laid on the floor, table, or bed, its metal seemed to pick up some vibration and whine slightly, a rattle and hum that was setting her teeth on edge. Anhell said he couldn’t hear it, but then she couldn’t hear the weird crackling noise he said the old wood of the shotgun kept making. He stuffed it in the back of the closet, under laundry, but said that didn’t really help. He was on his cell a lot, restless. In and out the bathroom, texting hoes. In and out that closet.

“And where you call yourself going?”

“Nowhere,” Anhell said, giving his lips a little lick. “Just about to grab a couple phillies at the deli.”

“I see you got that gun.”

“It’s mine, ain’t it.”

“What, you just gon’ head up the block, pop whoever you see first. That’s ya plan?”

“Naw! I just, uh…”

“Leave it here, Anhell. Tomorrow, me and you will go fuck shit up real good, okay?” She knew what he was feeling, because she was fiending just as bad. But first she needed to figure this thing out, the how and who and all that. Cause the way you start is how you go on. “Us, together. At least one sweet kill each, I promise.”

“Look, I just need to step out real fast, baby.” Nigga wasn’t even trying to run game! Where was the smoothness at, the slick lies? “Just for a minute. I be right back.”

He turned his back on her like he was gonna just walk out that door still holding the shotgun. Right now she could care less about him fucking around, but she was the boss of murder up in this bitch, and it wasn’t gon’ be no extracurriculars on that front.

She threw a Timb at his head with intent to kill. Anhell’s ducking and dodging was some next level shit, so it missed. “You heard? I said, leave it here gotdamnit! Or I will chop yo ass up fast as I did that whitenigga yesterday. Try me .” She thought she’d left it across the room, under the bed, but no, the machète was right here in her hand, eager to make good the lady’s word.

There was a moment where you could see him wondering whether females with just a knife should really be coming out the side of they neck at niggas holding guns. She laughed and flicked beckoning fingers. “Play yourself, then. Come on . I wish to fuck you would.”

They fought a lot and they were both tired, both sick of it. Anhell’s litebrite eyes took on a glint far more sharp and steel-like than diamond-pretty.

“Oh yeah, daddy,” she moaned, as if muvver were wet from all the foreplay and good to go now. “You only gotta act like you wanna raise that gun at me, and I will pay you back every motherfucking thing . Let’s do this.” The gun trembled in his hand, his eyes hard, and the odds that his arm would come up went up—thirty, forty, fifty percent. Satan had her hype as fuck. “ Do it , you bitch ass faggot ass PUNK!”

Mumbling under his breath, making faces with his eyes down, Anhell propped it with the umbrellas beside the door and leff out. She went and got the gun, laid it on the table in front of her.

Madison, Tiphanie, Arelys, and nem sent a group text right then, tryna get the crew together to go to this new Harlem club, and at first… but then she thought of the narcotic bass, the tight-packed bodies writhing together to the music, and her just swinging the machète through all the niggas and her girls like some reaper in the corn…

Nah , she texted back. I’m in for the night. Sorry . One of em called. “Yo, put ya nigga on, girl. I’m bout to tell Anhell we just going out dancing. Ladies’ night. Fuckit, he can come too. Ain’t nobody seen you in a minute—’ Nisha ! What is it…?”

She was sobbing and she never cried. “He said, he said…” Anhell had muttered I hate you when going out the door, and it had hurt her feelings bad. You just don’t say shit like that!

“Oh my God, Anhell said that? Well, what led up to it?” Madison said. “Tell me everything that happen, exactly .”

She sketched a version of events that, mmm, skimmed the details of the Brooklyn adventure and double homicide, swearing fealty to infernal powers, and the carnivorous griping of demonic weapons. Perhaps not every fact concerning her own foul-mouthed instigation made it into the story, either.

They talked a long time, until the girls were all in the taxi together on their way to the club. And because Madison was that ride-or-die friend, always one hundred percent team ’Nisha, she felt a lot better when they hung up.

It was very late, but Mama would still be winding down from the hospital, nodding on the couch in front of some documentary. She called.

“Oh, hey, baby.” Soft voice, sleepy. TV muttering in the background. “I guess you went back over there, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“You know you ain’t gotta stay with him, right? You could definitely get into nursing school. Girl, you smart , and that boy—”

“Let’s not do this tonight, Mommy, please. Okay?” Mama talked a tough game when Anhell wasn’t up in her face, but them gray eyes worked on her, too, getting her all oh-you-want-a-plate-baby ? and tee-hee-hee in person. “I don’t feel like talking bout him. And is that gunshots I hear on your TV? I thought you hated them cop shows. What you watching?”

“Turn on channel thirteen,” Mama murmured. “Just for today, PBS is showing that new film DuVernay won Sundance with, BLM .”

“Oh, word?” She reached for the remote, but kept the TV muted, her eyes on her Sudoku book. “What’s it about?” She penciled in numbers while Mama sleepily ran on and on and on.

… of us gunned down six days out of every week by the police. Hoping that cell phone camera and video technology… to disrupt the historical impunity of police brutality and extrajudicial murder…

“Yeah?” she said, paying attention only to the cadences. Mama’s voice soothing, lovely, there since the beginning. 6. “Huh.”

…reinstituting Jim Crow and slavery through the carceral state and prison labor… felons, afterwards, barred from the franchise, employment, or even basic welfare benefits.

“That’s awful, dang.” 6.

…electing Trump… a direct consequence of Pence, for example, sending state police troopers to close down African-American voter registration in Indiana.

“Wow, I ain’t even know that.” 6.

Mama fell asleep, so she hung up.

Anhell came in, eyes all droopy and red from smoking in the street. Mostly she just felt, as usual, glad to see his fine yellow ass home again, though she fronted like whatever, who cares? Smelling very clean, of coconut lime bodywash that wasn’t in the bathroom here, Anhell leaned in to kiss her. Ew !