“Go on, tell her everything,” bawled the creature now as passively as it could be on the edge of its chair.
“Yes, do go on husband; such an interesting story of how you cheated on me,” I sarcastically purred.
“Well, she told me that although she had stopped the pill they still could not conceive. She went to the doctor telling me they can do tests without the consent of the man. It turned out that it was not her; it was him, that his sperm count was barely zero. I tried to get dressed, I wanted out. I told her I was married, and that I loved you more than anything. I told her I had made a bad mistake and I apologised. She told me that she had seen the pictures of my children on Facebook so she knew I was fertile. I told her that I did not want to hear this; I could never have a child with her. She said that I did not have to have anything to do with the child, that after it was done I could go on my way and that she would not tell you, she would never corrupt my life and marriage. All she wanted was a child. I still protested and made my way to the door. That is when she told me it was too late, mumbling some spill about ovulating times and dates, told me that she had worked it all out and if we were lucky I would not have to come back; the deed was done.”
I paced the room, not really wanting to hear anymore. I mean, if this was just some kid sitting with us then I would have kicked my husband in the bollocks and left but how could I now, what was the connection with this, this creature; this monster before me? I shivered and allowed him to go on.
“Well, at that point I went mad; obviously I was in a rage. I turned and told her that it was an evil thing to do. I told her I had nothing to do with this and then she cried. She cried out so hard I had to stop and comfort her. She was so desperate, told me she did not know where to turn, then I popped up on the internet and I was the answer to her prayers. She loved me back then and she knew I was the only man that would help her. From here I knew she was mad, the plan would backfire I pointed out to her. She, I and my children, I told her, showing her the photo of David in my wallet, were all blond haired and blue eyed and therefore it would be a good chance that any offspring we had together would be too. It would be obvious to her husband that the child would not be his. I mean I never met the bloke but her married name on the fruit box’s invoice was Mrs Wong.”
4.
I stood up, trying to find some amusement in the end of his last sentence but as I paced the room frustrated and looked upon the creature, watching the desperation and horror in his eyes I knew I had to refrain from laughing the insane giggle that was trying to force itself out of my lips. “Shit,” I began, “you do know some fucking fruitcakes. If you were going to have an affair I would have thought it would have been with some girl with half a brain cell at the very least!”
“Oh,” he said quite confidently, “she was no fool. You see she went on to tell me that her husband was from Peeking and he was at Cambridge to study genetic mutations. He was only a bloody professor of genetics, a scientist that was mapping out and restructuring babies DNA patterns. She showed me his lab, said she had been watching him work, reading his notes. She then said that she could alter the baby’s genetic code to match that of her husband. He may have been seedless but he still had a DNA makeup that could be easily inserted into the embryo and thus the baby would turn out looking like a cross between her and him as opposed to look anything like me. I was stunned, slightly amazed at the technology but more just shocked by the whole concept of what she was proposing, the dishonesty of it; the Frankenstein nature of her idea. I ran out of the house and made a promise to myself never to return.”
“However as time went on I found myself intrigued by the whole idea, I mean could man play God and create a designer baby? I felt in some perverted way proud that I was partial to an experiment which would break such new ground in genetics. So, I went back and saw her standing on her doorstep welcoming me back, blossoming in full pregnancy. She told me she took a swab of her husband’s DNA from his favourite coffee mug and inserted it into the baby. I couldn’t believe it would be that simple but she seemed sure that the baby would be born with Chinese racial features. She was quite relaxed with her attitude and welcoming to my visit. She told me it was alright, that I had to do nothing more. She was grateful for the use of my sperm and although she explained that she could not think of anyone she would rather have a baby with it did not come across flirty, just very scientific. I must admit that after my original thoughts about how scatter-brained she could become, I was impressed by thus scientific side to her nature. So I went on my way, I did have a slight sad feeling that I would never see the child but was safe in the knowledge that it would not look like me and I theorised that with that being so I would not feel so attached to it.”
Well, I sat there not knowing what to think, my original rage about the affair had melded into a feeling of curiosity and intrigue. The creature just sat rubbing his hands as the story unfolded and at this point it leaned forward and spoke, “But it was not the DNA of Mr Wong was it Roger, it was the DNA of their pet cat that had been wandering over the kitchen sideboards. You found this out didn’t you and you decided that I was a freak of nature and you came to kill me, isn’t that right? Tell your wife what you did next, oh father.”
Roger looked cross, the first time he looked like he needed anything other than sympathy. I guess he needed a break from the accusation as he pleaded “no,” he cried with tears literally falling from his sore looking eyes, “I came to rescue you. They used you for their experimentations and when you could not give them anything more they planned to put you down like an animal, your mother told me.”
“Hold on a moment?” I thought aloud, “who are they?” The conversation was getting a little bit beyond me now.
“The lab where Mr Wong worked,” replied Roger, I should have guessed but my mind was so full of confusing and lose endings I guess the obvious evaded me. He continued, “Listen Carol, I will tell you what happened next. Obviously right this was after the baby was born and I had tried to push it all to the back of mind. I wanted to get on with my life. How could I have guessed that the DNA would have been from the cat instead of Mr Wong? I was delivering my fruit and veg like I always do when the car in front of my van spun a handbrake turn and three huge men in black suits came to drag me out of my seat and bashed me about a bit. You remember when I told you I had fallen down the steps in the fruit yard? I was back from work really late as I had been in A&E?”
I thought back, over 15 years ago this was right, I do recall this and I nodded allowing him to go on.
“I was taken to the lab, held prisoner there. They ran all kinds of tests on me, probed me and questioned me about my ancestry. They did not explain who they were or why they were doing this. They threw locked me in a room and from an air duct I could hear a female voice calling me; it was Hannah. She was in tears, she told me the baby was born deformed. It had fur and the features of a cat. She told me when they ran tests they found the DNA of a feline and so they bought me here and questioned her, tortured her into confessing all that happened. Then she apologised for bringing me into it all but she was forced to tell them my name. She said that Mr Wong told her that once various tests were carried out the specimen would need to be destroyed. Then she burst into tears saying they called our baby a specimen!”
At this point the creature had broken down in tears and sat sobbing on its chair. I was fully engaged with the story. My amazement had surpassed the sensation of jealously and hate for this man, he was my husband, he had done wrong but could I blame him now after all the hassle he had been through….should this story be true. I would have deemed it unfathomable if it wasn’t for one simple element; there was a man-like tiger sitting on the chair next to me sobbing into a glass of water.
“Mr Wong came into the room, he was angry,” my husband explained, “Then he apologised for my inconvenience, told me they had the wrong man. He offered me compensation to keep quiet about the incident. My head was spinning as I fled from the compo
und; I slipped on the way and twisted my ankle. That was my alibi as to where I had been. That night I sat awake, trying to make sense of it all. It was impossible, it all seemed so surreal. It haunted my every nightmare for many years but as time went on I learned to brush it all under the carpet. I would have to, I could not tell anyone, it would jeopardise my marriage to you Carol and I love you so much. I am so sorry for all this, in a way it was my fault and I should never had the affair; I know that now. But for the best part of fifteen years the horrific events began to dwindle in importance. Sorry to you to son, I had to try and forget you. I still thought about you from time to time but it felt like it was all such a horrid nightmare that I actually convinced myself it was just a bad dream. If I knew you were still alive…….”
With that my husband broke down and it was time for the creature to get angry.
5.
There was a lethal expression on the creature’s face, its fangs drawing on its bottom lip, cutting into them. I screamed as it launched across the room at Roger. As much as I wanted to strangle him myself I tried to delete the image of him with this Hannah girl from cropping up in my mind. I didn’t even know what she looked like but I imagined she was a slapper. She kept whirling around a bedroom naked, seducing my husband. All the scientific bullshit didn’t really matter anymore, he had an affair pure and simple, he fathered a child with this woman and he never told me. This was a hard pill to swallow and I only kept my nerve by the fact that things had obviously backfired upon him so badly that here was his bastard teenage son about to rip him to shreds like a tiger with a lamb.
“This serves you right!” I shouted, equalling with anger with that of the tiger, allowing the creature to pounce on him. The creature perched on his chair, its back legs poised to thrust its body into his and feast on him at any given second. I was in mixed emotions; I admit there was a little part of me that would have egged the creature to do it. Then I came to my senses, yes, he was wrong but he did not mean this to happen. I was just about to shout at it, try to convince it not to act on its anger and leave my husband alone when I noted the look in its eyes. It was scanning his eyes, perhaps, I thought looking for some likeness, looking for some parental resemblance, hoping and praying for some moral, fatherly advice. But Roger was a wreck of nerves; he was trembling, pleading for his life. As the creature saw the tear drop from his cheek he matched it, “tell me it isn’t so?” the creature asked.
“What do you mean?” I asked the creature, braving myself enough to place my hand on its back in comfort.
“Tell me you do not lie, for this is not as I was told,” it said.
“Tell us your story, please,” I calmed the cat-man. It retreated slowly without moving eye contact from Roger as he gradually stopped his nervous twitch.
“I was raised at the lab; it was all that I knew,” the creature began, “My life was years of experiments, observations. They taught me how to talk, how to read and write and they recorded all the results. I began to read books that educated me to the world outside but when I questioned these to my masters they simply informed me that it was all fiction. They told me there was a world outside but it was evil, that if other men saw me they would kill me. I learned that I should not trust outsiders that they would only want to destroy me because I was special and they would be jealous.”
The creature put his head in his hands, “they never told me that I had a mother and a father, I was raised there in that lab, I never even thought to question it until this man burst into my home with all guns blazing.”
This was the turning point for me, my husband; the useless tub of lard that normally sat in front of the TV munching salt ‘n’ vinegar chip-sticks in his y-fronts while the football was on. This was him, with guns, blasting his way into a restricted, high security laboratory to save a hybrid animal that he thought was his genetic son? If my husband had a “Rambo” side then he certainly kept it from me all these years. “What?” I asked alarmed, “I trust this guns-a-blazing thing was metaphorical? I mean when the fuck have you ever even fired so much as a spud-gun Roger?”
“In desperate times Carol, in desperate times,” said the tub of lard but I still couldn’t picture it. “She sent me an email out of the blue, a couple of weeks ago. I was just feeding the budgie when it popped up on my screen. She told me that she was sorry to contact me again after so many years but she did not know where else to turn. Mr Wong had a heart attack in their family home, lying there he thought he was going to die and so he confessed to some home truths that he felt he owed Hannah. He told her that the lab decided to keep the child alive, to carry out extensive experiments on it and it was never terminated like he said it would be. But now that the child had grown to puberty and, if it escaped it could reproduce……”
“So you came back to kill me?!” the creature interrupted, “Mr Wong told me!”
“No!” cried Roger falling to his knees at the creatures paws, “I did not, I came to save you. They were going to terminate you so you could not reproduce and create a new life that would threaten mankind don’t you see, but I could not have that, I was so overjoyed that my son was still alive after all those years of getting over what I thought was your death, you were alive! You see Mr Wong was alright and made a fair recovery after all but he had his wife locked in the lab by the security so she couldn’t tell anyone what he had confessed. She managed to get this email sent out to me before they came to take her away. So I called on Dan, you know you does the Bedfordshire run at work? Well, he is gun crazy and so he gave me a crash course and we went out to the lab and broke in by force.”
“When the security alarms came on,” the creature said solemnly, “Mr Wong came into my room, he told me that a man who is really my father has found out about me and he was coming to kill me. I figured it must be true; all I ever had was his word. I imagined you to be a huge, fierce creature like myself and so I busted my way clean out of the room by smashing the window. As I looked around before I leapt to the ground I saw you come into the room and saw that you were but a feeble looking man.”
“Well, thank you,” said Roger and I gave a giggle under my breath.
“So,” finished the creature, “I vowed to reach you first and to kill you before you killed me…..”
Roger looked over to the creature, “I came to rescue you but when I saw you escape by your own means I was overcome with parental pride, that you had found your own way out son. I realised then that you would probably not even understand who I was, what I was to you, I doubted that you would really even be able comprehend what a father or mother are. I was just glad that you got away from them. Now, I could just go back, you my darling wife would be none-the-wiser and I was intent on trying to rekindle the romance in our relationship. This is why I planned a holiday, to get us away from it all. Then, on the way here, at the service station where I was buying an overpriced new plastic cover for my phone I saw Mr Wong, he recognised me and came over to me. He said that the creature was out looking for me and he had told it to kill me before I killed it. Well naturally I ran away and got in the car with the intentions of bringing you here to this cottage to finally explain it all to you Carol, honestly.”
I thought about it all long and hard as the creature and my husband made it up. They hugged and he promised the creature to give it a name, to trust and teach it, to love and play with it just like a real father should. Naturally I was touched by the whole thing, it was something just to behold, the love in his arms for his long lost son no matter how hideous a creature he looked. Could this be the start of a magical new chapter in our lives, a man, a woman and a giant cat like beast? Would this work, really, could it? I think I could understand everything; I was a strong woman after all. Could I trust him not to have another affair, well; I think he has learned his lesson. Could I forgive him for sleeping with this flossy Hannah or whatever her name was in the first place........?
That would be a thing wouldn’t it? So, coming to my decision I turned to him and loo
ked him deep in the eyes and calmly but sternly told him, “that is the fucking worst excuse I have ever heard in all my life!” And then I went to get a saucer of milk for the cat.
Hide and Seek.
1.
That dry dusty hole in the ground had been his home for the last two weeks and now, despite his abhorrence of it, despite the lap of luxuries he was used to stripped down to the very core, he was miserable and afraid that it was time to depart with it.
Would the soldier’s that were aiming their weapons upon his head know the real truth, could they conceive that this was not as it would seem, might they understand or believe him when he explained that this was all part of a crazy game of hide and seek? John was not an international terrorist; he was, he hoped, the winner.
The stale stench from a build-up of two weeks of his own faeces, the funk of his own sweat as having not cleaned for a fortnight, maybe more, the smells he had to learn quickly to ignore now poisoned his very soul, they flooded back as reality set in. For an immeasurable amount of days John had sat there, his nervous twitch turning into an insane rock, back and forth, back and forth. The original perpetual question revolving through his melted mind had long faded but now, in the light of the day, with the bramble pulled aside and the twinkle of the sun deflecting off the barrel of the rifles he had come to recall it with horror, why the fuck did I agree to play?
Pressure, peer pressure of a massive magnitude, a sort that no man could resist; not one that cared for money that is. A cool billion dollars, that would patch over the bad business dealing this oil tycoon had made in the recent years. Decisions he took the chances of, he gambled without concern. Now, at the state function he had a chance to redeem himself, a chance that would only work if he bowed down to his every whim. However he was a joker, he was an elaborate trickster and that is how he became the president of the USA in the first place.
Tales of Worrow Volume II Page 10