Read Online Upright Beasts by Lincoln Michel - Free Book Online

I can broker a peace meeting, get the two sides to come to terms. “There is a phone in a plastic bag in the middle of the casserole. Use it outside, and Donald won’t be able to monitor it. Call us if you can help end the madness.”
    I drag all of my files—every neighbor I’ve gathered data on, each .doc of their life and .xls of their history—and place them in the recycle bin. I tell myself it’s unhealthy to spend so muchtime monitoring the lives of others and so little time looking at my own. Plus, when the twins finally arrive, I won’t have time to look up my neighbors and video chat with masked faces. I’ll be shaking brightly colored toys before their newborn eyes or watching to make sure they don’t eat rat poison or loose nails.
    I hover my cursor over the trash can icon. I click on it, and my breath gets short. I hit undo, sending the files flying back to the proper folders. There will always be time to delete them after the twins are born. I’ll be able to make a clean break when that happens.
    Until then, I fire up the browser and log back in.
    And then one morning I wake up and the neighborhood is quiet. I don’t hear the drones flying past. I don’t hear Chet and Chad struggling with masked Donalds. I don’t even hear the sounds of cars driving quickly down the street.
    I get up and pee, wash my hands with antibacterial soap. I struggle to the window.
    At the end of the street, I see two people being shoved into a patrol car. The rest of the houses have their driveways blocked off with police tape.
    I move to my laptop, do a Wizsearch News search for “Middle Pond.” No results.
    I look over at the casserole phone still in its plastic bag. I dial the preprogrammed contact, listen to it go straight to voicemail.
    Someone taps spryly on the door.
    Donald extends a handful of roses. His face is shaved, and he’s wearing a new suit that fits just right. He looks nothing like the disheveled figure hunched over his charts in the basement I’ve been monitoring.
    â€œIt’s all over, baby. We won, you and me.”
    My heart is beating quickly, and I’m unsure what combination of fear, relief, and confusion is mixing in my head.
    He hugs me and tells me he’s taken down the cameras and will be renting the drones out for overhead photos of upscale weddings. “The North Lake Committee asked me to give you this.” He hands me a pendant of an eye surrounded by a white picket fence. The bottom says, “Sponsored by Wizsearch.”
    â€œThere will be a ceremony later, of course.” He pins it carefully to my blouse. “Margot, I have to say I had my doubts about you for a little while. I thought you were looking for kicks elsewhere, but I couldn’t see the big picture. Obviously you knew I was monitoring your online activities. You knew I’d copy your files. Your research was the key to the whole operation’s success. The data you had on the neighbors exposed it all: tax fraud, drug use, and everything else we needed to take them down.”
    Donald takes me by the hand and leads me downstairs and out onto our front porch. “There’ll be a housing depression for a little while, but with the bad elements gone, the market will stabilize before the twins are even in preschool.”
    We step onto the trimmed green grass. I can feel the twins swimming inside me. The empty neighborhood they will be born into surrounds us. I look at the facade of the house across the street. It is similar to our house, but different. It has the garage on the left, and ours has the garage on the right.

FILLING POOLS
    P eople say I have a baby face. You can look at me and pretend I’m drowning. I do this watery thing with my eyes. How you work the face is important in this line of work. Window to the soul and all that.
    â€œYour child’s childhood ain’t your momma’s childhood,” I tell the woman at