Shadow Seed 1: The Misbegotten (51 page)

“The tunnel?  You have a tunnel right outside your bedroom window?” asked Katie, her thin eyebrows coming together.

I let out a
disdainful line of air through a gap in my teeth.  “She’s talking about this sort of long hole or absence of growth in the bushes on that side of her house.  It is just large enough to crawl through
and
the bushes are large enough to conceal the fact that it is even there and it extends all the way to the alley behind Tirza’s house,” I explained, so that Tirza wouldn’t have to.

Katie’s frown deepened in thought, but I knew it would be Ramona who divined that which was left unsaid.

“You used to use that passage to sneak into her bedroom, huh?” asked my infuriatingly insightful girlfriend.

Tirza went
board-like for a second, and then she pushed away from me, as if I’d suddenly contracted the plague.  Her face went crimson with humiliation.

“From what I understand, the ‘tunnel’
was there years before the time Tirza and I were together,” was my diplomatic response.  It was ridiculous to make Tirza have to endure anything more than she had already.

“But still…,” added Ramona, leaving her implication hanging without being said.

“As a matter of fact, he did use it to get into my bedroom, just as I used to sneak out to come here,
OK?!?
”

I felt my face transfix with a mixture of awe and puzzlement.  It was Tirza speaking, her previous uneasiness apparently gone.

“You weren’t the first girl to know how to climb up the tree and which window to step through, Ramona.”

My girlfriend and ex-girlfriend stared at one another levelly.  I could feel the very air itself thicken.

Silence ensued; a long, stale and uncomfortable sort of quiet.

I tried my damnedest to put those errant thoughts of Tirza coming through my window with nothing on underneath her sweater, but the skin she was born with.  She had a knack for deliberately shedding her clothing before she would climb the tree on the side of the house, preferring instead to give me one of her a cute, little shows.  These typically involved her seductively disrobing that last garment before she would jump into my arms and we would begin to make out wildly.   Some of our best love making had followed those routines.  Sometimes we would make love until we couldn
’t any longer.  We’d just fall asleep wherever we happened to be at the time – the bathroom, on my bed, even on the floor.  Tirza might come across as Little Miss Fucking Goody-Two-Shoes to the world around her.  But, get her to fall in love with you, then get her alone - she too was a teeny-tiny fuck toy.

Oh god, and could she ever spin on a cock!
  Dude, stop!

“So from there, you made you way here?” asked my cousin, obviously tired of the awkward situation.

Tirza continued to gaze at Ramona for few more moments.  “Yeah, I really didn’t know what I was doing,” she retorted, her eyes reverted to Katie now, as if my girlfriend didn’t exist.  “I don’t really even remember how my clothes got all torn up or how I got so dirty.  Shit, I don’t even remember when I actually made the decision to come here.  I just did.  I just wanted to get away from those jerks that killed my parents.  I just wanted to get away...”  Her voice lost whatever edge it had gained while she’d confronted my girlfriend.  The tears began to fill within her eyelids once more.

Ramona – out of nowhere – released an exasperated sigh.

Automatically, my expression darkened. 
Fucking bitch, what’s your god damned problem!

Yet, my girlfriend proved my reaction false.  “Tirza?” she prodded quietly.

My ex-girl peered up at her through what had to be blurred vision.

“All of this change had
n’t been so sudden and so… so… so, fucking mind-blowing that I’m not quite sure how to ‘be’, you know?”

Tirza started to shake her head that she didn’t know what the other girl was talking about.

Ramona continued.  “I’m sorry.”

Now,  my mouth gaped as wide as one of those fucked up mummies in that old-school Brendon Frasier movie
¹.  It had to have been hanging down below my pectoral muscles after hearing what I had just heard.

“It’s just hard to get over the whole jealousy thing,” confessed the girl that, a few seconds ago
, I was certain was my girlfriend, but now sounded like an entirely different person.  “Knowing you had him first has always sort of bothered me.”

“Well, he’s yours now,” began the small teenage girl.  Then her gaze shifted to Katie.  “And apparently yours as well…”

Katie had the decency to blush.

{ ¹”Brendon Frasier movie’’: refers to
The
Mummy
and
The
Mummy Returns
, wherein the mummies yell and scream with what seems like unhinged jaws. }

~~~~~~~~~~~~♦~~~~~~~~~~~~

(Summer – 2018)

Manifest Destiny

T
irza’s gaze was on me now.  “So, it was her you were thinking about that day and not Katy Emerson from school, huh?”  She paused, gesturing toward Katie.  “Jesus, Estefan, your
cousin
?  Are you crazy or something?”

I sighed, knowing the truth was too obvious to ignore.  “I’m not crazy, Tirza.  I’m just in love with her.  I have been for as long as I ca
n remember, and the funny thing, Teezee, is she’s in love with me too.”

If Ramona could grow as a person, then motherfuckers, so could I!

Tirza’s eyes slitted.  “Is that true?” she demanded of my cousin.

Katie just
shrugged nonchalantly and stared back at my ex- with a twisted grin on her face.

Tirza returned her gaze upon me.  “She does!  Sonofabitch, she does!”  Disgusted
exasperation was dripping from her tone.  “And you’re ok with it?” came the abrupt question directed at Ramona. Tirza’s look altered again, incensed, astonished, mistrusting – all in one.

My girlfriend shrugged.  “Just as I am ok with him calming you down, with you and him holding onto one
another as you cried.  I remained calm.  What can I do?  What can you do?”  Tirza’s eyebrows rose.  “You know damn well, at some point, you’re going to stop denying what you feel for him.  You gonna take him to your bed.  But,” Ramona began, raising her hand when Tirza started to interrupt, “before you say anything, I will give you this.  Yeah, I may not be one hundred percent ok with this, but I’m accepting of it.  I accept the inevitability of what is to come, so should you.”

“I will never take him ‘back into my bed!’” declared Tirza, which made me flush with embarrassment.  She even used her fingers to physically quote Ramona.

Both Katie and Ramona laughed at that.

“If he wants you, Tirza, you will go to him with open arms… and with open legs all the same,” countered my cousin.

“I will
not! 
I’m not that kind of girl”   Tirza crossed her arms under her pert breasts.

“You might think that now, but later, whether it is a few days or even a few months, you will think different.  Trust me,
you will,” rebutted my cousin.

My girlfriend preferred to stay quiet for the time being.

“I doubt it…,” my ex-girlfriend trailed off into silence when her eyes met mine.  “I don’t mean to sound… well, mean, because you’ve been so nice to me when you didn’t have to be.  It’s just… well, that’s how I feel,” she said to me.  She was already blushing, probably at the recollection, scant minutes prior, she’d been hugging me fairly tight.

I
hunched, non-committedly, mostly due to the fact, I wanted absolutely nothing more than out of this conversation.  “That sort of stuff is always up to you, Tirza.  I’m just your friend; therefore, I have no claim on you, other than civility and kindness.  A while ago, you seemed to need just that, I was here – or rather, you came here, and that was that.”  I chanced a quick glance at my cousin.  “I think the gist of what they are trying to say to you, is just be cool and don’t judge.  A lot has happened between the three of us, and though we know others might not understand or agree.  If you want to hang around, then you’re gonna have to accept it for what it is.  Right?” I asked the room.

“Right,” echoed Katie.

Ramona just nodded.

Tirza looked away, whatever sense of perversion she had over me and the girls seemed to dissipate, or rather, it was swallowed.  Like bad tasting medicine, she took hers, whether she agreed or not.  “It really doesn’t matter all that much in light of the way things are going now… after…”

Before yet another awkward moment could descend upon our beleaguered group, Katie asked, “So, guys – ah, what’s the plan?”

“The plan?” I queried.

“Yeah, cuz, the plan,” she repeated emphatically.  “I mean what are we going to do about Tirza in the short term, the long term and all the rest of the shit we’re going to have to figure out in between?”

I still didn’t comprehend the point she was trying to make.  I shook my head and shoulders, one eyebrow raised above the other.  I was clueless.

Katie huffed in exasperation.  “Jezuz, Eff, if you weren’t such a fucking saint, you would understand that for all intents and purposes, Tirza is a fugitive.  She is wanted by the NIA, Estefan, that’s like half of the world, and when they find her they’re gonna shoot her on sight.  Don’t you get it?  What the fuck are we going to do about it?”

It hit me like a floppy cock upside my cheek - …

(NOTE: For the record, I am speaking metaphorically.  I
’ve never actually felt a man’s dick along the side of my face.  Thank you.)

…I stood there, as a flood of thought washed over me.  I tried to solve each and every aspect of what Katie had purposed at once.  The only thing I succeeded in doing was develop of an unwelcomed pain behind my eyes.  There was so much to figure out.  It was happening all at once.

“Well, we are definitely not going to let
that
happen,” announced Ramona resolutely.  “We might not see eye to eye on Estefan, but, Tirza, I’m not going to let some government assholes fuck with you.”

Tirza - and I
think
this was the first time it had ever happened – smiled warmly at my girlfriend.  It was the sort that touched her eyes and made them squint.   Her full cheeks nearly shut them entirely.

“She’ll have to stay here,” proclaimed Katie, inadvertently glancing about the Loft as she did so.

All three of us peered back at her, flummoxed and uncomfortable.

“
She
will
?” I quacked like an idiot, my voice suddenly excruciatingly high-pitched and cracking.

“Where the hell else is she going to stay?  Her house has been bum-rushed by a bunch of chink-goons with the complete authority of the NIA behind them.  Her parents -,” she paused and reached out and squeezed the smaller girls shoulder, “– have been murdered.”  She said this in a much lower tone.  “Her sister had been missing for days…  Where else is she going to go…?

“Besides…,” she added with a wicked gleam in her eyes, and then let her voice drop to nothing.

“Besides what?” wondered Ramona.  Her
hands clasped before her, wringing, furtive movements, disturbed.  A sarcastic glare tried to surface upon her face with every ounce of strength it could muster .  To her credit she held herself in check.

“Who the fuck is going to believe her ex-boyfriend, the very guy she reputedly hates to the very center of her guts, is the person hiding her.  It’s fucking perfect!” came Katie’s enthusiastic response.

“I don’t hate his guts,” corrected Tirza, then she gazed in my direction.  “I don’t hate you, Estefan.”  She seemed adamant I know that.

I nodded positively, but that did appear to
assuage what she was feeling.  Only a half-sick cast etched her visage now.

“That part of it might be perfect, but how in the hell are we all going to make it work when there had been
so
much bullshit between her, me and Eff?” outlined my girlfriend.  “I mean that alone raises a lot of doubt in my mind.  Plus, we still have to think about how we are going to keep her out of sight.  I mean, Effy, this is your parent’s house.  How are we going to keep them from seeing her?  And what about your brothers and sisters, what’re we gonna do about them?  Once the little ones find out, they’re gonna blab like crazy.  You know little kids can’t keep anything from their parents.  They’ll be excited to tell.  Also, today is Saturday, your parents don’t go to work.  In a few hours, everyone will be awake and no one is going to leave.  We’re going to have to figure that out as well.”  She looked at each of us in turn, her face plaintive, but not angry or jealous in any way.  She appeared to have real concerns, and, as it turned out, she had more.  “That’s only the tip of the iceberg, guys.  How are we going to feed her?   How are we going to make sure she has clean clothes?  And what about all the other shit that goes into keeping someone alive and healthy?  How are we going to do all of that?”  She put her hands over her head in frustration and stood.

I stared at Ramona, knowing I was going to have to walk a narrow precipice to convince her.  I had already decided, there was no way Tirza was going to go back out on the streets.  I wouldn’t let her out of my sight, if it meant she was to be killed.  No way.  I might have grown to be extremely annoyed with her.  Because of it, I had decided months ago, it would be best to exclude her entirely from my life.  Still, that didn’t mean I wished her dead.  She and I had some good times together – real good times… cute dates, camping trips with my family, long languorous days where we sat before my flatscreen TV and made love throughout the morning, afternoon and night.  I had many fond memories of the girl.  I didn’t want her shot to death
or worse, raped by some maniac trooper and
then
shot through the temple.

“I think some of those things can be worked out,” I began.  I wasn’t all that surprised when Ramona’s eyes flashed.  Yet, amazingly, it was only for a second – or two – and then she quickly filed it away and forced her face blank.

I continued only after the briefest of a pause.  “We’ll just have to tackle them one at a time and not all at once.  That makes the entire situation a bit overwhelming, but I will say this,” my voice took on the very slightest of an edge, “Tirza stays if she wants to.  I won’t turn away a friend in need, even if, at times, we wanted nothing more than to pull out each other’s hair.”  I made a point to look at both of the other girls in the room.

Katie wasn’t going to be a problem.  She’d been nodding through the entire exchange.

My girlfriend, on the other hand, cupped her elbow with one hand and chewed on her lower lip as if the pain from her gnawing could prevent what she really wanted to do and say.  I could see the tears beginning to well at the corner of her right eye socket; she was in profile at the time, so I couldn’t see both.

I forced myself to gaze at my ex-girlfriend.  In this matter, I would
have
to be strong.  It was what Tirza’s mother and little sister would have wished.  I wasn’t about to let them down.  “Teezee, do you want to stay here… at my house?  I promise I will try my hardest to keep you safe.”

Through most of the exchange she had been peering down at the comforter that covered my bed.  When I asked the question of her, she looked up at me.  I could see she’d been silently, if not stoically, weeping the entire time.

“Is that something you could handle after everything that has gone on?” I inquired once more.

She sighed hugely.  Then she wiped at her face, fingers first, followed by her palms.  For a few moments, she made her eyes slant.  “I will try my hardest to not cause any problems for you, Estefan,” was all she managed.

I frowned for a heartbeat.  “Does that mean you will stay?”

She merely bobbed her head up and down in affirmation.

Suddenly, Katie was all action.  “Good, so that settles, but first things first, girl, let’s get you cleaned up and out of those torn up clothes, ‘cuz you’re boobs are practically falling out.”

“What?!?” screeched Tirza, covering her chest with her arms.

Katie giggled snidely.  “It’s just a figure of speech, dude – chill.  Come on I have some PJ’s that might not be too terribly big for you.  You can wear them after you shower.”

A sense of relie
f, a relaxation of tension left Tirza’s shoulders.  She seemed uplifted.  She chortled nervously and scooted off the bed to follow my cousin to the other side of the room, and eventually into the bathroom.

Above me, Ramona spoke abruptly.  “Fuck, Steve, you are going to drive me absolutely crazy with this shit.  Trust me, I will go fucking insane.”  Then she sat down upon the bed in a huff, so close to me her nice round ass was bumping against my knee.

“What shit, my dear?” I asked.  I was watching the two other girls from across the Loft.  Katie was going through her drawers looking for the sleepwear she had in mind for my one-time girlfriend to sleep in.

“She still loves you, Effy.  It is written all over her like graffiti on a wall, plain as fucking day.  I could see it a mile away.”

“No way, Mona, you’re crazy, she doesn’t think of me that way,” I disagreed, but my eyes stayed upon the tiny form of my ex-.

“She doesn’t know any other way to think of you, other than that way.  There is no ‘friend-zone’ for her
, when it comes to you.”  Ramona sniffed then.

I jerked my head in her direction, scared that she might be crying.

She wasn’t; she was just rubbing her nose as if it was itching, but she kept on speaking.  “And soon Leda and Sandy will be there too, and then what, I’ll be sharing you with four other girls, that’s what!”  She tried to add anger, but it only sounded like hurt in my ears.

I stared at her like I was seeing her for the first time.  “Don’t you think you are exaggerating things just a little bit?” I asked, thinking she was being dramatic.