Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes

lining the driveways of the historic homes.
    He pulled into the gravel parking lot of the cozy Tudor-style building and nudged the truck right up against the fence under the tree near the road, away from the other cars, to make it harder to spot his broken windshield.
    The fat security guard held open the door for him as he carried his load in, warm air wafting out.
    “Help you there, sir?”
    “I’m fine,” Clayton said. It almost felt true, here in this bright shop with its shelves of arts and crafts tiles with their iridescent glaze. Historic buildings all over the city were decorated with Miskwabic mosaics, hallways turned into geometries of light, cornerstones and edgings marked out in bright patterns. But they don’t sell anything like that here. Instead they have “gift tiles,” botanicals and devotionals and simple geometrics, the city skyline, a Tigers D, street numbers, a little ballerina girl, pumpkins for Halloween. You take all the beauty in the world and you boil it down to kitsch, he thought.
    Inside, a family was browsing while a hipster with wild hair talked them through the history, paying special attention to the twenty-something daughter. Betty was behind the counter, her graying hair in a loose braid, wearing a red sweater and a necklace of colored beads. She looked up at the sound of his voice, peering over her glasses at him. “Knock me down. Clayton Broom, where have you been hiding yourself?”
    “I got this,” he said, lamely, indicating the box in his arms.
    “I can see that, sweetie,” she said. He’s always thought of her as no-nonsense apple pie. “You want to bring that in back? Hey, Robin, when you’re done flirting, can you mind the register?”
    “Sure, Betty.” The youngster with the twists of hair nodded at him in a friendly way, but his attention was already swinging back to the daughter, who absolutely
had
to look at the earrings in the display case. Clayton watched them circling each other with the documentary dispassion of someone who had never got that right.
    Betty marched through to the firing room, past the two industrial kilns sitting alongside each other like a history lesson—the old brick oven with the burn marks down the front beside the aggressively shiny steel kiln—to her office in the back.
    She cleared a space on the desk, shoving her files onto her chair, so he’d have space to set down the box. “Now, what have we got here? Can I take a peek?” But she was already folding back the cardboard flaps and taking out one of the figurines, a woman with a bird’s head, like a skinny Degas ballerina, her arms flung back as if she could lift off. There were a flock of them in the box, with various faces. “Hmmf,” she said, but he could tell she was impressed. “You been practicing?”
    “Trying new things,” he said.
    “That’s important. I got my little goddaughter to try pottery, and now her parents are complaining they haven’t got room for all her masterpieces.”
    “Me too. I don’t have space. I’ve been on a…binge. It all came out of me. It keeps coming.”
    “Well, that’s great. You got some of the muse pixie dust to share around, you let me know. I’ve been experimenting, too. What do you think?” She gave a self-deprecating nod at the workspace countertop, where an elaborate vase of overlapping folds glazed in delicate greens and whites running to dusky pink at the tip sat next to a decrepit old laptop. “I’ve been playing with shapes in nature. Flowers, insects, sea anemones.”
    Clayton examined the tulip vase, the twirl of petals unfurling from the base. “It’s pretty,” he managed and then blurted it out. “I think I have a brain tumor, Betty.”
    Her eyes softened. “That’s a big jump, honey. Have you seen a doctor about this?”
    Clayton shook his head. “I don’t trust ’em. They all work for the pharmaceutical companies. But my old man died of pancreatic cancer. I know the signs. I’ve been feeling shaky,