Shadow Seed 1: The Misbegotten (76 page)

What I do remember was the gunfire, hundreds – no, thousands of rounds!  The Black Hawks were firing as well.  The inhuman screech was silenced in seconds.

I leaned into Sandy, a little woozy.  “Please tell me that is not your house,” I murmured, through the haze of marijuana and the horror unfolding below.

“It’s not,” was all she said, her eyes riveted to the carnage before us.

I could smell burning wood, cordite and something else I couldn’t identify back then, but I know now as the smell of crisped human flesh.  It’s a smell you never forget, a smell that sticks in your nostrils for days, wakes you up at night from a nightmare, nearly drives you insane because it is inescapable.  It gets in your clothes.  It sticks to your hair.  It saturates your pores, so when you sweat, you smell it all over again, even after you’ve showered.  You can taste it for weeks…

“You did park a block away like we planned, correct?” I queried, touching Sandy lightly on the back of her hand.

She nodded.

“Good, we have to make sure we can get out of the house on a moments’ notice and we have to stick to what we planned,” I stressed, retching.

She nodded again.

I couldn’t tell you if the others were listening.

“Okay, I gotta go inside.”  I was choking now.  “I think I’m going to throw-up.”

I stumbled onto the roof of the second floor and made my way to the window.

Everyone else was right behind me – zombiefied – walking corpses in a world of murder.

~~~~~~~~~~~~♦~~~~~~~~~~~~

(Summer – 2018)

Painful Revelations

I was awakened by a mild shove against my shoulder.  I opened my eyes and found myself looking into Tirza’s.  I sat up and glanced around trying to get my bearings, realizing I was sleeping at the foot of my bed.  The girls were a tangle of
arms and legs and bodies at its head.  I wondered how I had been tossed from my spot, and then shrugged it off.  Maybe I got up to take a piss and one of them took my spot.  It didn’t matter.  It wasn’t important.

Tirza put a forefinger to her lips, the ubiquitous signal to be quiet and held out her hand.  I took it and let her help me, slowly and silently, to my feet.  She tugged at me once I was upright.  I noticed at once, she was leading me away from the bed and toward the bathroom.  She didn’t let go of my hand.
  It should’ve felt as hard as rock, but, to me, it didn’t…

It felt strange to feel something as familiar as her touch once again, after all the fighting, the vows of never again, and time.  My hand literally swallowed hers, but I remembered how to hold her without hurting her.  I positioned her tiny fingertips within the crease of flesh marking the end of my palm and the beginning of my fingers.  She even dug-in her nails like she used to when we were dating, when something as simple as holding hands wasn’t such a big deal.

My vision was still on our conjoined extremities when she led me into the smaller room.  It was bizarre how our hands would know precisely how to react to the other, while our minds had grown so far apart, almost indistinguishable to one another.

At one time, I thought in my deepest of hearts, we were going to be married
.  Tirza, I loved you that much…

…Yeah, dick, with Katie on the side as your mistress?  That would’ve gone over well with the family.  I’m so sure!

“Close the door, Estefan,” she commanded levelly, letting me go, so she could stand near the light switch.

I did and the light came on once the door latch engaged.

She moved to sit on the toilet, so I sat opposite her, on the edge of the bathtub.  She ran her fingers halfway through her hair, and then stopped once they were perched atop her skull.  She made claws of her fingers and for three, maybe four seconds; she aggressively massaged the skin of her scalp.  Just as suddenly, she pulled them from her head, staring at me through a waterfall of hair as she took as series of deep breaths.

“Jeez, Tirza, what’s wrong?  Are you ok?” I asked, starting to get a little freaked out, because she was really starting to look like that crazy Japanese ghost from
The
Grudge
¹
. 
Though it was an older movie, it still creeped me the fuck out.

“You incense me, Estefan, that’s the problem,” she answered, gathering her hair and whipping back over her head, her eyes accusatory daggers.

I put both of my hands in front my in supplication.  “Teezee, I haven’t done anything to make you mad, have I?”  I was amazed to see her gaze intensify.  “And if have, I’m sorry, ok!” I blurted, unaccustomed to seeing Tirza Cardenas gaze upon me as though I was better off dead.

“That’s the problem,” she said, but it only made me more confused.

I spread my hands wide.  “I don’t understand what you are trying to tell me.”

“Of course you don’t, Estefan, and why would you when you’re up to your neck
in pussy!  Why would you take the time to think about how someone else might be feeling?”  She had slipped to the edge of the toilet seat, pointing a little finger in my direction.   Though it was small, it seemed like a sword slicing through the air.

Then her point began to register.  “Tirza, you told me, quite firmly, I might add, that you and I would never be ‘together’ that way.  Those were your words, and I agreed to them.  We agreed, created common ground between us, and now you’re telling me different?  What’s going on, I don’t understand.”

She glared at me like a deer in the headlights for two heartbeats, maybe three.  A single tear fell from her left eye and splashed onto her exposed knee.  In my ears, it sounded as loud as a thousand pound J-DAM² detonating below ground.  Her face began to flush pink as the cords in her neck began to strain.

“I can’t turn it off,” she uttered.  Suddenly, she was like a deflating balloon, wrapping and folding onto herself as if she was admitting some un
imaginable shame.

For some strange, unexplainable reason that pissed me off as a million, million flashes of thought and emotion came ripping through my consciousness and, in a blink of an eye, I was
there
again.  “And you think it was easy for me to turn off?  Are you fucking kidding me?

“
I said one errant name. I made one mistake and you fucking threw all that we had away in less than a millisecond.  Everything! You tossed it all aside like it didn’t mean shit to you, Tirza!  I endured your dip-shit father.  I made friends with your adorable sister.  I went to Church with you when you damn well know, I didn’t believe in that shit.  I went on retreats.  I gave speeches.  I volunteered.  I did everything you asked of me.  And because I said my cousin’s name ONCE… you threw me aside like a used tampon…”  I was breathless, and couldn’t have said more even if I tried.

She was breathing as heavily as I was, though she hadn’t said a word.  “You said her name, while you were cuming inside of me.  You arched your back.  You threw you head backward.  You thrusted your dick as far as you could inside of me, and you came… and I came… and you said
her
name!  Right at the moment when I was bringing you to the point of ultimate release, you said her name.  Right when I was giving
all
of myself to you, you said her name.  I was
fucking
you, Estefan!

“
I was taught, my entire life, to find a husband, to wait to have sex, and then – and only then – to make babies.  Yet, there I was
fucking
!  I wasn’t trying to make a baby.  You and I weren’t married.  We were fucking, and you know what?  You know what makes it all the more worse?”  She paused to catch her breath.  I didn’t move.  “I was enjoying it!  I liked fucking you, because you were so good at it.  Everything you did to me was wonderful, you made me want to question myself and my upbringing.  You made me want to do things for myself.  You made me strong enough to want to stand on my own two feet, to want to be my own person and someone who’s constantly spoon-fed by her parents.

“Don’t you get what I’m trying to say?”  She was distraught now, almost pleading for me to understand, but there was no need. 
I knew exactly what she meant.
  “And then you said her name.”

I felt myself slump to the floor, the edge of the bathtub was no longer sturdy enough to hold me and not let me fall.  The whole room rumbled as my weight hit the floor.  “I have no defense, Teezee.  I have always loved her.  When she was first out of diapers and could walk normal, she was
captivating to me, but that doesn’t take away from what we had back then.  Katie was taboo.  You weren’t.  Katie was a dream.  You were, and could’ve been, my future, because never in my wildest imagination did I ever think circumstances would be perfect enough to allow Katie and I to be together.  I was ready to let all of those earlier - younger - feelings go, because I believed in us.

“But, I made a mistake.  Ok, Tirza, I admit it.  I made a mistake.”  Now, tears were threatening to fall down my cheeks. 
Sonofabitch!
   “I regret saying it, and not because being with Ramona was been bad or being with Katie is either, but because what it did to the two of us.  We had been friends so long, before we finally got together.  When we did, when we became boyfriend and girlfriend, it just grew better day after day, week after week, month after month.  I would’ve done anything for you, anything you asked.

“Finding it all gone, so quickly and so brutally, tore a hole in me I have been trying to fill ever since.”  I pinched the bridge of my nose to stop the tears.  I was
not
going to cry in front of her.  I’d be damned first.  “I got lucky, though,” I went on looking up at her.  She was still on the toilets’ edge, her knees touching, her ankles spread wide, making her look pigeon-toed.  “I found Ramona, and she made things easier.  She made things seem less raw, less current and more past tense.  I needed
that
more than anything at the time…”  I stopped, because I had to; otherwise, I would’ve broken down.  I didn’t want to do that.

A long, thoughtful silence fell between us.  All I could hear was her breathing and my heart thumping in my chest, making my ears ring slightly.

“I was stupid, Estefan.”

I brought my head up to gaze at her once again.

“I didn’t give you a chance to explain yourself or the situation.  I didn’t do anything, but run away.  I should’ve at least tried.”  She was wringing her hands atop her knees.

“Twenty, twenty is a bitch, huh?” I joked, trying to lighten the mood.

Her face was stricken, the jibe went entirely unnoticed.  She peered at me earnestly.  I could tell there was more she wanted to say, but something was holding her back.  Her pride or maybe some inner fear, or both, were preventing her.  I was struggling to distinguish the feelings she wore plainly upon her visage.

“Well, at least, we can still be friends, right?” I asked, hopefully.

She stood suddenly.  I was taken aback by the sudden movement, and raised myself from the floor to the edge of the bathtub like before.  My eyes searched her face, her demeanor, the way she stood, trying to comprehend what was transpiring within her.

Then, she stared directly at me, all sense of uncertainty and self-consciousness gone.  “No, we can’t, Eff.  We cannot be friends because, no matter how many times I tell myself otherwise, I’m still in love with you, and it
fucking hurts so much!!! 
I can forgive you for being with your cousin, but I can’t, if you and I are intimate, and yet I love you so much, I almost don’t care.  It is so confusing; I don’t know what to do!”  She let go then, staggering against the counter, crying hard, but trying, with every ounce of strength she had within her, not to make noise.

I bounded toward her, supporting her by an elbow, unsure if she was going to collapse or not.  She didn’t shy away from my touch, but stayed her ground for a moment or two, before she turned into me and nearly crushed me with a ferocious hug.  “I love you, damn it!” she mumbled against my bare chest.  “I want you so bad.  I don’t know what to do, because
every single one
of those girls out there loves you too, and it’s tearing me apart.  What the fuck am I supposed to do, Estefan?  I wasn’t raised this way.  I’m not supposed to share a man with another woman and be okay with it.  And here I find myself entertaining the idea of sharing you with
four
other women!  What the fuck is wrong with me?  Why am I so fucked up in my head?  Why can’t I just walk away and say you’re a sick bastard for fucking your
first
cousin, and let it lie?  Why can’t I do that?  Why can’t I just recant what it says in the Bible and label you destined for hell?  It would be sooo much easier.  I could pound my Bible and denounced you and yours for all time.  It’s not like many people wouldn’t disagree with me.  Most of your own family would.  Why can’t I do that?  Why!”  She shuddered in my arms as though she was in sub-zero temperatures.  Her entire body shook to the marrow.

Then, she did the bravest thing I had ever seen her do.  She went on.  “The answer is so agonizingly simply, it’s vexing.  It makes me seethe with rage, because I don’t want things to be this way.  But, it doesn’t matter what I want or think.  It’s what I
feel
that takes the cake. 
It
has the final say and I am powerless against it.

“I love you so much; I’m willing to damn myself to the Fires of Hell for all time.  Nothing means more to me than you.”  She looked up at me; her gaze was so incredibly intense it was like looking into a singularity.  She drew me so fast, so thoroughly, it was painful.  “I have no family.  I have no home.  All I have is you.  What am I going to do…?”

“I told you before I will never leave you until you want me to.”  I reminded her of my vow.

“I don’t want you to go,” she murmured, and made certain I believed her by brushing her lips against my chest.

“Good.”

“But,” she began, but her throat constricted and she was momentarily unable to speak.  “But, h-how am I going to deal with
all
of them?  They love you too.  They all do.  I can see it.  I don’t even need Ramona’s Mutation to know it for truth.  How am I going to allow this to happen between you and me, and yet, not get jealous when one of them kisses you or wants to be intimate with you and you go off together?  How am I supposed to deal with that when I don’t really even know Sandy or Leda?”

I shook my head.  “I don’t know.”

She raised her eyebrows at me.

“I don’t, really!  How they manage to do what they do
and not get mad or jealous or feel left out, is a complete mystery to me,” I said, holding her by either side of the head to kiss her upon the forehead.