by Pepper Pace
The door to the house opened. The human was standing in the doorway in an oversized shirt and leggings. Her belly seemed impossibly huge. Humans carried their offspring in such a strange way, but she looked healthy. He marveled that soon there would be a little one.
“This is some quiche that I made from the eggs and milk.” She held a covered dish in her hands.
He didn’t know what quiche was and didn’t care. His empty stomach growled, and he hoped she would give him some of it.
She set the dish on the rocker, returned to her house, and shut the door soundly behind her.
Bilal climbed the porch stairs and uncovered the dish. The smell of fresh baked food hit his nostrils, and his mouth began to water—which alarmed him. His mouth had never watered before. He sat on the floor and began to eat with his fingers. It was still warm, and half of the dish was left for him. When he finished eating, he stared at the empty dish then licked it clean. Afterwards he licked his fingers and checked for scraps on the porch floor. With a contented sigh, he left the dish on the porch and went to do the chores feeling energized and one hundred percent better.
Carmella had been watching from the window. A pleased smile tugged at her lips. He liked it. Well, he was an alien. A bucket of dirt would probably taste good to him.
She went into the kitchen and thought about what she could make for dinner. It wasn’t Sunday, but maybe she could make an exception and have chicken …
Chapter 13
~Wolf Comes Home~
Over the course of a week, Bilal and Carmella formed a routine. Routines were what Carmella had become accustomed to, and Bilal began to gauge the passage of time by the meals she left for him. Each day he would bring her milk and eggs, and a few hours later she would leave him a morning meal on the porch, often an omelet made with the fresh cheese, butter, and eggs. Sometimes it was an egg and biscuit sandwich. Bilal always ate every crumb before continuing with his chores.
At midday he would leave whatever vegetables he thought were good enough on the porch, and another meal of bread and cheese or soup would appear on the porch. It was always good, and it always made him feel more energized. While he ate, he would sometimes look up and see the human in the window watching him and eating her meal. She didn’t seem to like him looking at her, and he would move out of sight and “watch” her with his other senses. He was aware that she spent most of her time in front of various windows watching him. It didn’t bother him, but he was anxious for her to understand that he really did not mean her any harm.
After lunch, Bilal would disappear, knowing that the woman would not venture outside until he made himself scarce. Once he was out of sight in the barn or the woods, she would carry her slop bucket to the outhouse before pumping fresh water. She would check some of the chores he had done and then return to her home.
Bilal took that opportunity to watch her from his various hiding places. She seemed healthy and looked well, but he still worried.
When the sun began to set, he received his final meal. The evening meal always contained fresh vegetables, sometimes chicken, sometimes a thick stew. He would sit on the porch and gobble it up while resting from his chores. He liked evenings because he wasn’t checking the fences or fixing any holes the animals made. He wasn’t shoveling animal waste or feeding the chickens or letting the cow and bull graze. He wasn’t weeding the garden, mowing the lawn, or wiping the outside of the windows clean. Once fortified, Bilal explored the twilight world around him. He picked blades of grass and studied them with his new and improved eyesight. He tasted everything from rocks and rusted nails to paint chips and dust. When he wasn’t putting objects into his mouth, he ran his fingers over everything that he could, relishing the way things felt.
He sensed the world with delight. The feelers in his tongue amplified the sounds muted to his human ears. Smells were more prominent to him as a human, and the sensations his body experienced were stronger. When he had accidentally scratched himself on a bit of wire from a fence, a bead of blood appeared on his fragile skin. The pain was sharp and uncomfortable. As a Centaurian, he would have never noticed, but humans had a much more acute sense of touch.
Bilal stared in the direction of town for about the hundredth time. The air was cold and would only get colder. He needed provisions. He needed clothes as well as things for a child. He didn’t know as much as he should about caring for a human child but had seen human mothers with their infants. They often nursed from their breasts or used baby bottles, and the infants wore cloth or disposable diapers. Babies were wrapped in blankets even when it wasn’t cold.
He didn’t want to do it, but he had to.
He was going to leave the human.
~***~
Carmella saw Bilal come up the walkway for his evening meal. She hurried to the kitchen where she had kept her plate of food warming in the oven. She carried it to the window, settled in her chair, and waited until he was sitting on the floor before she began to eat. She wondered why he didn’t sit in the rocker instead of on the floor but shrugged. Not her problem.
She noted that he seemed to like the chicken the most and nodded in approval when he cleaned his plate. She didn’t like to admit this to herself, but she liked that he enjoyed the meals she cooked. When he was gone, she collected his plate and fork and then washed the dishes. As she stood at the sink, she thought about the baby growing in her belly.
What was it going to look like? Would it be Black and Asian? Would it have skin that wasn’t skin but a covering that was like an alien-chameleon? Carmella rubbed her head, trying to rid herself of the headache that developed almost every evening. Because she didn’t take prenatal vitamins, the baby sucked the nutrients from her body. Maybe an alien baby needed more nutrients than a human baby did. Maybe her freaking hair and teeth were going to fall out! She scowled and climbed the stairs to turn in early.
Carmella tossed and turned and fell into a restless sleep. She dreamed that her belly was full with an unborn baby. When the first dream-cramp hit her, the dream-Carmella realized she was in labor. Afraid and alone she strained and screamed in pain until the searing pain reached its epoch and the baby had found its way out of her body.
Only what came out were tentacles, long gray tentacles that waved in the air.
Dream-Carmella screamed at the sight of the hideous thing, and then the real Carmella sat up in bed soaked in her sweat with her heart thumping within her chest. She trembled so hard that her teeth chattered. She jumped up out of bed and hurried to her slop bucket where she became ill.
Please God. Please don’t let this happen to me.
~***~
While Bilal did not dream, his sleep was also restless. He wrapped himself in one blanket, placed a quilt on the ground, and covered himself with the other. This was it. Tomorrow he would tell the human that he would need to leave for a few days but would return. He needed to get his supplies because for the first time he saw snow flurries and the birth of the child was growing nearer. He needed to be present because a human’s body was not predictable, and he wouldn’t take a chance that he would not be present should she go into labor.
The next morning he milked the cow. He would tell her about his plan when he had his morning meal. He felt worried about admitting that he was going away. What if she ran away? He frowned. She would be foolish to do such a thing. And besides, whether or not she tried to run away would be based on how much she despised him. She fed him. That counted for something, even if she hated him and all Centaurians.
Bilal was so caught up in his thoughts that he didn’t sense two approaching animals. The cow became nervous, and he rubbed her flank. “Its fine, girl. I’m nearly finished.”
His nostrils flared suddenly, but by that time the wolves were in the doorway. Bilal scrambled from the stool only to land on his backside. He could move faster than a human but not fast enough to come to his feet before one of the wolves was on top of him.
Bilal knew there was no way that he would survive
, not when he was on the ground with two wolves on top of him.
Yet … the smaller wolf only stood and watched.
Bilal clasped his hands around the attacking wolf’s neck, but the animal was much too strong. The wolf whipped his head back and forth with his teeth bared and dug claws into Bilal’s delicate flesh, leaving ribbons of torn skin their wake. Bilal screamed in pain, a sound he had never made before, and the pain seared through him as his adrenaline rose.
As the wolf growled and barked and snapped its massive teeth mere inches from his face, Bilal gripped the animal’s fur. Mustering all of his strength and with one last scream, he rolled the animal from atop of him.
It was a mistake.
The wolf found his footing on the packed earth and managed to shake loose from Bilal’s grip. A split-second later, the wolf’s teeth sank into Bilal’s shoulder as Bilal beat uselessly at the animal. The wolf released its grip to go for his throat. Bilal’s arm went up reflexively, and he felt teeth sinking into his forearm. Bilal kicked the wolf’s underbelly, but the wolf wouldn’t let go, his teeth clamped tight and causing bone to shatter. Bilal peeled off scream after scream.
“Wolf!”
Bilal saw the woman standing outside the barn door and holding a rifle.
“Down!” she shouted.
The wolf clamped even harder onto Bilal’s arm, growling in renewed fervor.
Carmella glared at her son in disbelief. No, he did not just stand there and defy her! She stormed toward him with fire in her eyes, and Wolf released Bilal’s arm and backed away.
“Bad puppy! You don’t bite! No no no!” She shook her finger at him, and Wolf whined again and averted his eyes, walking a restless circle until Carmella’s attention focused on the writhing and bleeding man.
Carmella dropped carefully to her knees and pulled back the alien’s ripped shirt. “Jesus …”
Bilal clutched at the torn flesh of his shoulder, face twisting in pain. He rolled into a ball onto his side.
Carmella chewed her lip lightly. “Can you fix this?” she asked. “Can you, because … this is pretty bad.”
Bilal shook his head. “No,” he whimpered. “I cannot.”
“Fuck …”
Bilal concentrated on his injuries. His stomach and chest burned from the clawing, but it was the blood pouring from his shoulder that would kill him. He concentrated on making the repairs, going through the steps as if he was totally Centaurian instead of mostly human. He tried to slow the heart, slow the blood flow, and repair the artery.
The cells, he thought. The cells need to reproduce quickly …
Bilal lost consciousness.
~***~
There was nothing but quiet, and then he realized that this was not true. There was something more than the quiet.
There was pain.
Bilal tried to block it but couldn’t, and then he tried to move but his body felt strange. He was no longer himself but a human hybrid with limbs and a neck—and a shoulder that was in searing pain.
“Try to keep this down. If you throw up again I swear I’m going to let you stew in your own filth.”
The words were harsh, but the voice wasn’t. There was a soothing quality to it, and Bilal’s eyes opened. The woman. She was close to him. She held a cup to his lips, but he didn’t want anything. His stomach felt empty but queasy, and his body shivered with sickness.
She put her hand behind his head and held it up and not too gently.
He grimaced as the movement caused his torn flesh to throb, but lukewarm liquid slipped between his lips, and the taste was good. He swallowed some and then more until he was drinking it steadily.
“Good,” she said. “Broth.”
He didn’t know what that meant and didn’t care. He only wanted more in his body. Soon he felt sated and drifted back into unconsciousness.
~***~
Carmella was washing the clothes in the washtub that she kept outside. She fantasized about the time when she could simply dump clothes into the washer. Why did she ever complain about that? Throw the clothes in, add some detergent, and press a button. Damn, how spoiled she had been back in those days.
At least the boiling water and hard work kept her warm. Laundry was an ordeal when it had been only her clothes, but now she had to clean up after the alien. His bandages had to be sanitized, and he had to be cleaned like a baby that pooped his diaper. Not that she blamed him for that. At least he was alive. For a few days she had doubts that he would make it. He burned up with fever, and his wounds became infected. She plied him with aspirin and kept the wounds disinfected.
When the fever broke, he was able to hold down food. She was more than a little relieved, though admitting that cost her a lot. She hated the alien, but he was the only one present who could help her with the delivery.
Wolf brushed her leg with his furry body and whined.
She reached down and scratched behind his ear, and then Girl wanted the same treatment. After Carmella scratched behind Girl’s ears, Girl returned to her spot on the edge of the woods. She wouldn’t come close to the house with the alien in it, and Wolf seemed equally distressed though he did come into the house. He sniffed the unconscious alien warily under his mother’s watchful eyes.
Carmella’s posture and vibe seemed to dare him not to even think about baring a tooth at the sick creature. Wolf didn’t seem interested in testing his mother’s wrath even though the alien creature smelled of things that should be far away from his mother’s home.
Wolf watched the creature warily. He would leave it alone—for now.
Chapter 14
~Bilal Meets his son~
The next time Bilal opened his eyes, he was warm and comfortable.
He couldn’t remember the last time that his body felt so relaxed. There was still pain, but beyond dull aches was the feel of soft cushions beneath his body. He took a few moments to look around before attempting to move. He recognized the living room.
He grimaced at the memory of the wolf.
Though exhausted and wanting to roll over and return to sleep, he was more curious than he was interested in resting. He sat up on the couch and looked around. It was quiet … too quiet. Where was the human?
He placed his hand on his injured shoulder, surprised that it didn’t hurt nearly as bad as it did before. He lifted the corner of the tape holding down a bandage. He peeked at the angry red wound and grimaced. She had sewn his flesh together with thread. He pressed the tape back into place thinking that she had done a fine job—and happy that he had been asleep when she did it.
He examined his forearm next, sure that it was fractured, but there was nothing to be done about that. The bone would mend without any help from him. He also didn’t bother trying to unwrap the bandage and ran his fingers over the bandages on his chest and belly. He winced slightly and felt a bit disappointed that he had allowed his human skin to become marred. He was happy to be alive, but he also had to live in this body. Though he might not live to be as old as a pure Centaurian, he could live longer than the average human and it would be a shame to wreck it so soon.
Bilal pushed the blanket back and stood. As soon as he was standing he grew lightheaded and had to sit. He tried standing again, and this time held onto the edge of the couch. He took a tentative step toward the window. When he felt that he wouldn’t fall, he continued until he could see out into the yard.
The human was hanging freshly washed clothes on a clothesline. His eyes lingered on her swollen belly. With a frown he wondered if she would give birth earlier than he had anticipated. He wanted to examine her but knew that she wouldn’t like that.
Bilal caught sight of the big black wolf lolling a few feet from her. He nearly jumped back from the window. With a frown he closed the curtain and looked around. The fireplace held a small fire that kept the room pleasantly warm. There was a solarium with French doors beside it where he could see more wood for the fireplace.
The house was immaculate and tastefully furnis
hed. He moved into the kitchen and saw a pot of something simmering on the stove. Curious, he lifted the lid and saw broth. His stomach grumbled. He also had to relieve himself.
He walked to the back door, worried the wolf would hear him opening the door. It was a good thing he had a penis. He could aim it and pee without leaving the porch, and if he had to, he could dart back into the house.
Bilal opened the door and sniffed the air for anything amiss. He reached into his waistband, gripped his penis, and let lose a stream of urine over the edge of the porch. He sighed, relishing the feel of pissing. When the stream ended, he shook it the way he had seem Raj and Lawrence do it then tucked his penis into his pants.
He closed the door behind him and entered the kitchen. He saw bread on the table and snatched a slice, eating it quickly while returning to the living room. He was about to head upstairs when the door opened. He swung around and saw the wolf enter the house ahead of the human, who was carrying a basket of folded clothes. Bilal’s knees went weak, and he stopped breathing. He gripped the banister, prepared to dart up the stairs.
The wolf growled.
“Wolf! Sit!”
Bilal saw that the wolf listened to the woman, and the wolf sat at her feet. Bilal let out a relieved breath, and the woman lowered the basket with a grimace and a soft grunt.
She reached down and rubbed the wolf’s neck and pointed out the door. “Outside, Wolf. Outside!” When he didn’t move fast enough, she gripped his scruff and gently nudged him out. “Sorry, boy. You can come back later.”
Once the door was shut and the animal was on the other side, Bilal relaxed.
The two watched each other more curious than wary.
“I didn’t expect you to be awake,” she said. “Your fever just broke last night.”
He touched his shoulder. “Thank you for helping. You sewed the wound close, and there is no infection.”