X-Mans X: Man, Shit Getting Crazy

by D D

After Monsta vanishes, Stormisha struggles to support her family while a mysterious figure hides a glowing, dangerous secret behind a handsome facade.

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X-Mans XMan, Shit Getting Crazy Three days after Monsta disappeared, Stormisha stood at the checkout counter of a small neighborhood grocery store, arguing with the cashier over the price of eggs. Fluorescent lights buzzed above the narrow aisles. Behind her, a refrigerator hummed beside a rack of bread, and her basket of milk, oatmeal, and fruit sat on the counter while she counted the bills in her hand. “You just watched me count this money.” The cashier tapped the register. Stormisha looked at the total again, removed a bottle of orange juice, and pushed the remaining bills across the counter. By the time she got back to the ridge house, the eggs had become an accusation. Twelve children needed breakfast. Scambit needed fresh bandages. The passenger van needed gas, and somewhere beneath the woods, Monsta needed people who could get through a goddamn door. She set the bags on the kitchen table harder than she meant to. “Don't nobody drop nothing. We eating everything in here, including mistakes.” Ice Tray caught a rolling apple before it reached the edge. A little girl beside him held up a spoon. “Even burned oatmeal?” Stormisha looked at the pot on the stove. “Who burned oatmeal?” Reen took a drink from his mug and inspected the window. “Ain't nobody say burned. It's thick.” Ice Tray turned off the burner. “Baby, the spoon standing up by itself.” In the back room, Z had been awake long enough for his eyes to ache. Plans covered the table: Monsta's original sketch, Reen's rough measurements, a diagram of the barriers they had failed to breach. Their second attempt had cost them a hydraulic cutter and half the van's fuel. The suppressant vents had activated before they reached the lower door. Now Cyrus stood beside the table fastening a respirator case. Nightwalka tested the movement in his bruised ribs and tried not to let anyone see it hurt. “Check the exterior first,” Z said. “We need to know whether the vents are still cycling before we bring the equipment.” “And if we can get him?” Nightwalka asked. Z looked at Monsta's empty chair. “Then you bring him home.” Stormisha watched them leave through the kitchen window. She waited until the car passed beyond the trees before taking out her phone. Peaches answered on the fourth ring, already irritated. “Girl, if you calling to tell me the world ending again, tell it wait till after Saturday.” “You got a shift tonight?” The irritation disappeared. “For you? Yeah. You all right?” Stormisha looked at the groceries. Behind her, Ice Tray was helping a child pour milk with both hands. “I need some money.” “Come in at eight.” She hung up before the relief could make her cry. * * * The woods had gone quiet in a way Cyrus did not like. He stopped beside a snapped branch and raised a hand. Nightwalka waited behind him, one palm against his side. Their boots sank into the wet ground where the service van's tracks had hardened and softened again through three days of rain. Monsta's equipment bag was still gone; Reen had taken it home. The muddy depression where it had rested had filled with brown water. Beyond it, the trapdoor stood open. Cyrus stared. The slab of grass and earth had been thrown backward far enough to tear its remaining hinge loose. Roots hung from its underside. A strip of steel curled away from the frame, and the recessed handle pointed toward the sky. Nightwalka moved beside him. “That wasn't open.” “No.” Cyrus crouched without touching anything. Dark marks stained the inside edge of the opening. Something had dragged through the mud toward the trees, leaving a deep furrow that ended where the ground became rocky. He pressed his radio. “Professor. The entrance is open.” Static answered before Z's voice came through. “Any sign of him?” Nightwalka looked down the narrow staircase. Daylight reached only the first few steps. “Not yet,” Cyrus said. * * * Two hours later, Z enlarged the first photograph on Cyrus's phone. Nobody in the back room spoke. The screen showed a steel worktable folded almost in half. Its edge was dark with blood. Behind it, a row of monitors had been struck so hard that pieces of their housings hung from the wall on cables. Cyrus swiped to the next picture. Bloody handprints covered a door. Some were high enough to suggest someone standing; others had slid down nearly to the floor. A strip of torn cloth lay caught beneath a broken console. Jeanetta recognized the fabric. She had watched Monsta leave wearing that shirt. “How much blood?” she asked. Cyrus paused. “A lot.” Reen stood behind Z with a bottle concealed badly against his thigh. He leaned forward when the next photograph appeared. “Those his hands?” “The size matches,” Cyrus said. “We found no one else. No body. No sign of anyone being carried out.” Z kept looking at the marks along the door. Blunt impacts. Torn metal. The same place struck again and again. “He hurt himself trying to get free.” Nightwalka sat carefully. Mud had dried along one knee of his trousers. “The cameras were broken too. Every one we could find.” Z lifted his head. Cyrus showed him a ceiling mount with its lens crushed inward. Then a second camera. A third had been pulled out of the wall entirely. The professor remembered the purple figure watching through Monsta's memories. He remembered the instant of clarity when Reen cut a cable, and the nightmare that returned as another lens turned. “He understood something,” Z said. “Understood what?” Jeanetta asked. “How they were reaching him. Perhaps how to stop it.” Reen set the bottle on the table. “Then he got out.” “We believe so.” “Don't do that professor shit. Door busted from inside. Cameras broke. He ain't there. He got out.” Z met his eyes. “Yes. But he hasn't come home.” The relief left Reen's face slowly. Cyrus brought up the last photograph. It showed the lower security barrier, its heavy bolts still extended through pieces of the frame. The whole assembly had been pushed outward into the stairwell. “There are tracks heading north,” he said. “Then gravel. We lost them near the old maintenance road.” Stormisha stood in the doorway holding her work bag. For three days she had imagined a rescue, a furious Jamaican lecture, Monsta ducking under the kitchen door and complaining about everything they had broken while he was gone. She had not imagined him escaping and choosing any direction except home. “Maybe he don't know where he at,” she said. Z looked back at the blood on the screen. “That is what worries me.” * * * The club smelled exactly the same. That almost made Stormisha angry. The mansion was rubble. Children were sleeping under borrowed blankets. Monsta was missing. Yet the bass still shook the dressing-room mirror, and somebody had once again stolen her lash glue. Peaches stood behind her counting singles with a wet thumb. She had a copper-colored bob, a headset she never used, and a talent for hearing foolishness through closed doors. “You ain't got to do the whole night,” she said. “I need the whole night's money.” “Then stop looking like you about to fight a bitch.” Stormisha adjusted an earring. “Did a bitch say something?” Peaches laid a hand briefly on her shoulder, then moved it before either of them had to acknowledge the gesture. “Go get paid.” For the first hour, working helped. She knew where to stand and how to move. She knew which smiles meant money and which meant a man wanted to take up her whole night for seven dollars. Under the lights, nobody asked her whether the children were safe or whether the professor had slept. Two men near the side stage kept testing that relief. One wore a shiny black jacket despite the heat. The other had a red cap tilted so far back it looked ready to leave without him. They had been watching since her first set, whispering to each other and laughing whenever she looked away. “Come here, snow bunny,” the one in the cap called when she passed. Stormisha stopped. “You see this brown skin?” “I'm talking about the hair.” “Then talk to a wig.” His friend reached toward her wrist. She moved it before he could touch her. “Keep your hands with your little money.” He stood halfway up. Across the room, a security guard straightened. Peaches appeared between them before anybody finished deciding what to do. “Sit your ass down or take it outside. Those your choices.” The man dropped back into his chair, muttering. Stormisha walked away with her smile gone. Near the bar, Peaches caught her elbow and leaned close. “Damn, he fine. I think he checking you out girl.” “Who?” “Don't turn your whole damn body.” Stormisha turned her whole body. The man sat alone at a small table beyond the brightest lights. Dark skin. A thin, carefully shaped mustache. Black durag tied neatly at the back, a plain shirt beneath a clean jacket, and a silver watch that did not need to announce itself across the room. He was looking directly at her. When she caught him, he smiled without pretending he had been looking somewhere else. Stormisha turned back. “He all right.” Peaches stared at her. “Go lie to somebody who ain't got eyes.” Stormisha took her time crossing the floor. He shifted his chair so she would not have to squeeze past the next table. “You always this quiet?” she asked. “You want me yelling?” “Most of y'all do.” “How that's working for them?” She glanced toward the two men by the stage. “Bad.” His laugh was low. Up close, he smelled clean, something warm beneath a faint trace of cologne. He had the kind of face that made her look twice even after she had already decided he was handsome. “What's your name?” she asked. “Frank.” “Frank?” “You disappointed?” “Little bit. You look like you should have a better name.” “Give me one after you get to know me.” She smiled before she could help it. “I'm Stormisha.” “I heard.” “Then why you ain't call me over?” “You were working.” That answer stayed with her longer than the flirting. He asked when she got a break. She told him she was taking one now and sat down. They talked while the next song started, then through half the song after it. He did maintenance work, he said. Whatever needed fixing. He had been out of the neighborhood for a while and was getting settled again. “You got a woman who think you at work right now?” she asked. “No.” “A woman who don't know she ain't your woman?” He laughed. “No.” “Gotta ask both.” When Peaches passed, she pointed two fingers toward her own eyes, then toward Stormisha. Stormisha ignored her badly enough to make Frank look over his shoulder. “Your manager?” “Unfortunately.” Later, during another break, he stood with her near the quiet end of the hallway. She had meant to tell him when she finished. Instead, she found herself watching his mouth while he talked. “You listening?” he asked. “Not really.” She caught the front of his jacket and kissed him. He let her draw him closer. His hand settled at her waist, warm and steady, and for a few seconds she forgot how many people needed her phone to stay charged. When she pulled back, he was smiling. “What time you eat?” “Depends who paying.” “Me.” “Then I'm hungry.” * * * Reen found the ruined fence just before midnight. He stood in the borrowed car's headlights while Cyrus unfolded a road map across the hood. A section of chain-link lay flat in the weeds. Beyond it, a maintenance truck had been shoved sideways into a drainage ditch, its rear wheels off the ground. No one was inside. An older security guard waited near the office with a towel pressed to a cut above his ear. He kept describing a crash against the gate, then the truck moving while he was still reaching for his radio. “I didn't stick around to introduce myself,” he said when Cyrus asked what he had seen. “Something that big comes through a fence, you get the hell out.” Reen crouched near a bent post. A dark smear marked the metal. Farther on, the weeds had been flattened toward a concrete culvert. “Monsta?” Cyrus asked quietly. Reen did not answer right away. Mud and fuel spoiled the air, but beneath them was a familiar scent that tightened something in his chest. “He came through here.” The guard looked between them. “Y'all know what did this?” Cyrus folded the map. “We're trying to find him.” “Well, when you do, tell him I wasn't chasing him. I was trying to turn the damn lights on.” Reen looked at the floodlights above the gate. One had been ripped from its bracket. He took out his flask, held it a moment, then shoved it back into his jacket. “Which way?” Cyrus asked. Reen pointed past the culvert toward the dark industrial lots. They kept looking. * * * Frank took her to a restaurant that still served real food after midnight. Stormisha approved before they sat down. The windows were fogged near the kitchen, the waitress called everyone sweetheart without sounding like she meant it, and somebody at the counter was arguing about a basketball game that had ended hours earlier. “You bring all your little dates here?” Stormisha asked. “Only the ones who interrogate me.” “Good. So I'm special.” She ordered chicken, greens, and macaroni, then watched him order as though a man's choice of sides might reveal a hidden criminal record. He caught her looking and handed the menu back to the waitress. “Did I pass?” “You ain't order no raisins in nothing. We off to a start.” Her phone buzzed while they waited. Rougie had sent a message asking whether she had eaten. Beneath it was an update from Cyrus: they had found more signs, but still no Monsta. Stormisha read the second message twice. Frank waited until she put the phone down. “Everything good?” “Somebody I care about missing.” His expression softened. “Family?” “Yeah. Not blood, but yeah.” She rubbed at a spot on the table with her thumb. “Feel fucked up being out eating when he somewhere hurt.” “You stop eating, that bring him back?” “No.” “Then eat. Answer your phone if they call.” He said it without a lecture. She appreciated that more than she wanted to. When the food arrived, he slid the hot plate away from her elbow before she knocked it. She stole a bite from his and decided he had ordered better. “You could've told me those was good.” “You were judging me.” She laughed with her mouth full and covered it with a napkin. He laughed too, and the tightness she had carried all day loosened a little. They talked about music, bad apartments, and people who borrowed money with detailed explanations but paid it back in silence, if they paid it back at all. She told him about a landlord who had painted over a roach. He told her about fixing a woman's sink three times before discovering she kept putting rice down it because the drain looked hungry. “You lying.” “I wish I was.” By the time the waitress brought the check, Stormisha had stopped checking how she looked in the dark restaurant window. Frank paid. She left the tip, despite his objection. “I work for tips. Don't start.” Outside, the air had turned cold. His car was in the small rear lot, down a narrow passage between the restaurant and a shuttered beauty supply store. She slipped her hand through his arm as they walked. “So where you taking me next, Frank?” Before he could answer, someone stepped away from the wall ahead. The red cap came into the light first. “There she go.” Stormisha stopped. The man in the shiny jacket stood near the mouth of the parking lot, grinning with his hands in his pockets. The two of them had been at the restaurant counter. She remembered the cap now, the voice beneath the basketball argument. “Keep walking,” she told them. “Damn. We can't speak outside the club?” the one in the jacket asked. “You spoke. Move.” Frank released her hand, but stayed beside her. “Let us through.” The man in the cap looked him over. “I'm talking to her.” “And she answered.” Stormisha felt a small current lift the hair near her temples. Above the passage, loose paper stirred on a fire escape. “Y'all really picked the wrong night,” she said. The man in the jacket stepped close and reached for her arm. Frank caught his wrist. Everything happened quickly after that. The man swung with his other hand; Frank slipped the punch and drove him backward into the brick. His friend rushed in from the side and caught a short blow across the mouth that sent his cap skidding beneath a dumpster. Stormisha moved clear of them. “Frank!” The first man lunged again, catching Frank's jacket and tearing a seam. Frank hit him twice, hard enough that the second blow left him sitting against the wall, trying to remember how his legs worked. The other one grabbed Frank from behind. Frank drove an elbow back, turned, and put him on the pavement beside his hat. For a moment there was only the restaurant's exhaust fan and the sound of somebody struggling to breathe through a bloody nose. “We good,” Stormisha said sharply. “Leave them.” Frank looked at her. Then he stepped away. The man against the wall raised one hand when they passed. He had nothing left to say. At the car, Stormisha took Frank's wrist and turned his hand beneath the parking-lot light. One knuckle had split. “You could've let me handle that.” “I saw him reach for you.” “I saw it too. I ain't helpless.” “I know.” There was no argument in his voice. No demand that she thank him. He looked down at her hands holding his and asked, “You hurt?” She shook her head. The current around her faded. He opened the passenger door, and she stood between him and the seat a moment longer than necessary. “Your jacket messed up,” she said. “It's a jacket.” She pulled him down by its torn collar and kissed him harder than she had at the club. * * * The motel had a buzzing ice machine, a flickering vacancy sign, and a woman behind the desk who slid over the room key without looking impressed by either of them. Stormisha waited until they reached the second-floor walkway before laughing. “She looked at us like she know my mama.” Frank unlocked the door. “You want somewhere else?” She looked past him at the room: clean sheets, tired curtains, a dresser with one handle missing. Nothing fancy. Nothing waiting for her to fix it. “This fine.” She texted Rougie that she was safe, staying out, and would be home in the morning. Rougie answered almost immediately. Girl. Then three dots appeared, vanished, and appeared again. Stormisha typed, Don't start, and put her phone on the charger. Frank came back from the bathroom drying his hands. She made him sit on the edge of the bed while she cleaned his split knuckle with supplies from the little travel pouch in her bag. “You carry a whole clinic?” “You should meet the people I live with.” He watched her work. Without the restaurant noise, the room felt smaller. She became aware of his knee against hers and the way he had stopped smiling just to look at her. “What?” she asked. “Nothing.” “Don't nothing me. You staring.” “You want me to stop?” She taped the dressing into place. “No.” He reached for her slowly enough that she could choose the distance. She closed it herself, settling beside him and kissing him until the little packet of gauze slipped from her lap. Later, she untied his durag and discovered the smooth bald head beneath it. “All that presentation and ain't a strand up here.” He laughed against her shoulder. “You checking inventory?” “I like to know what I'm working with.” He kissed her again before she could continue. She drew him closer, her laughter softening into quiet. Their clothes joined her bag on the chair, and the room settled around them. For once, when her phone lit up, it was only a notification she could ignore. Much later, the television played low while they lay tangled beneath the sheet. Somebody in the next room dropped something heavy and swore. Stormisha laughed into Frank's chest. “They going through it over there.” His hand moved slowly along her shoulder. She rested more of her weight against him. “I needed tonight,” she admitted. He kissed her forehead. She almost told him more: about the mansion falling, the little boy asking permission to eat, the photograph of Monsta's blood. Instead, she listened to the television and let herself enjoy having nothing to explain. Before sleep took her, she checked her phone one last time. No emergency. No news of Monsta. She set the alarm for seven and turned back toward Frank. * * * Morning reached the ridge house before anyone was ready for it. Reen and Cyrus had returned just before dawn, carrying mud, a broken flashlight, and no good news. Reen sat on the back steps with his bottle between his boots. Cyrus washed his hands twice and could still see the bloody fingerprints from the bunker. In the kitchen, Jeanetta was trying to open a jar while Rougie watched from the table. “Let me,” Rougie said. “I can open a jar.” The lid flew off and struck the ceiling. They both looked up. “Apparently,” Rougie said. Jeanetta set it down carefully. “Okay, next time you open it.” Outside, Z sat near the front steps with the photographs open on a tablet. He had brought them into the morning light as though that might reveal something the kitchen lamp had missed. A dark car turned onto the drive. He lowered the tablet when Stormisha climbed out of the passenger seat wearing last night's clothes beneath her coat. A man got out on the other side and came around to hand her the bag she had forgotten. She said something that made him smile. There was an ease in her face Z had not seen in days. “Morning,” she called. “Good morning.” She came up the path with the man beside her. “This Frank. Frank, this Professor Z.” “Nice to meet you,” Frank said. Z studied him. The neat mustache, the set of the eyes, something familiar around the mouth that refused to become a memory. The durag framed a face he felt he should have been able to place. “You look really familiar.” Frank's smile stayed easy. “I'm from around the way.” “Have we met before?” “Might've seen each other. I've been in and out the neighborhood for years.” Stormisha touched Frank's arm. “Z know everybody. Don't let him start asking what elementary school you went to.” The front door opened behind them. Jeanetta stood in the doorway with a mug in one hand and the other resting beneath her stomach. “Stormisha, you got your charger? Somebody took mine.” “In my bag. And by somebody, you mean Reen.” Jeanetta glanced at Frank, gave a small polite smile, and stepped back inside. Stormisha turned to him. “Text me when you get where you going.” “I will.” She kissed him goodbye without caring that Z was there. Then she took her bag up the steps, calling after Jeanetta to leave the pocket with her money alone. Frank nodded to the professor. “Have a good one.” “You too.” Z watched him walk back to the car. Behind him, Stormisha asked whether there was any news, and the tiredness in her voice brought his attention back to the house. He turned his chair toward the door. Frank slid behind the wheel and shut himself inside. The tinted windows hid him from the porch. He untied the durag and laid it on the passenger seat. A purple light gathered beneath his skin. The handsome face dissolved into the glow. Dark flesh became luminous violet; his features blurred, their edges burning softly in the dim car. Behind the windshield sat the same silent purple figure that had watched Monsta through the bunker screens.

X-Mans X: Man, Shit Getting Crazy

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