by Carver Pike
When they finally made it to dry land, Haylay collapsed on his back.
“I don’t know about you,” he said, “but I think the breast stroke would have been a whole lot easier without these breasts.”
Tania looked over at him and watched as Haylay pulled his bra off and dropped it on the ground. Gravity took hold of his wet breasts, making them fall to the sides.
“They’re real,” Tania said, more a question than a statement.
“As real as yours, honey. Well…as real as money…” He laughed and had to rephrase his answer. “As real as sexual deeds can buy.”
Tania wore a blank expression. She didn’t understand.
“I was a hooker, baby,” Haylay said, rolling his eyes.
“Like a prostitute?” Tania asked.
Haylay only nodded his head and looked up at the dark sky.
“I had sex with Twig,” Tania admitted.
Haylay laughed.
“I know you did,” he answered.
“What? How?” Tania asked.
“Sex changes ya. And you ain’t nearly as innocent as you was before you and Twig went off into the woods,” he said.
Tania blushed and hid her face in her hands.
“Don’t be embarrassed, sweetie. Sex is a normal thang. At least you did it for love. I didn’t have that option.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
He considered saving the story for a later time. He’d been on the run from a gang of warlords and big nasty four-legged beasts. Now didn’t seem like the best time to play “skeletons in the closet.”
However, he noticed she was strangely curious about the life and times of a Slum hooker, and seeing the young girl show interest while fighting back the pain made him feel guilty, so he gave in, leaned his head back, and introduced her to his story.
“What I mean is, when I appeared, in the Slums of York, I appeared in a rotten alley with the slimiest of scum. Both men and women. Violent, horrible, and horny muthafuckas. I was forced to do things you never want to imagine doing,” he told her.
For a moment he could see himself trapped in the small closet-like room they’d forced him to live in for so long, desperately awaiting each meal, like a dog. He remembered that once they’d broken him in, they’d given him the opportunity to do what they’d forced him to do, but for others, for money, money he would have to bring back to them. He’d jumped at the chance. It meant not living with chains around his wrists and ankles. He’d be free to roam the streets…well, sort of.
With Beans, the largest of the men in the gang, following him everywhere he went, freedom was only a city block at a time, and always meant returning home with a fist full of cash or a serious beating.
Haylay shook the horrible thoughts he’d promised to leave behind, far from memory, and looked over at Tania, who was staring at him.
“I killed ‘em all, though,” he said. “I locked ‘em up in the little apartment they were forcing me to turn tricks out of, and I burned that bitch down.”
He bit his lip. It was the first time in a long time that he’d felt the urge to cry. Back when he’d gone through the torture and pain, he’d cried himself to sleep plenty, and sometimes, while actually going through the abuse, he’d cried until he passed out.
At some point he’d toughened up; he wasn’t sure exactly when it had happened, but it did. He’d learned to drift away whenever he wasn’t feeling good. Short departures of the mind had saved his life.
Tania reached out and touched his cheek. That moment of sensitivity was like permission for Haylay to let the tears flow. He blinked and they began to run freely.
“You’re very strong,” Tania said. “I admire you. Ahh…”
Haylay opened his eyes to see Tania curl up in a ball and slam her face down on the muddy ground.
“Ah!” she screamed again. “What is it? It hurts so bad!”
Haylay rolled the girl over and lifted her dress up over her swollen belly. He suddenly jerked back, shocked at what he’d seen.
“Tania, honey. Somethin’ ain’t right,” he said.
A red bruise marked her belly, and wicked black veins spider-webbed out from it. The veins covered her stomach which had swollen and looked like a large bubble waiting to burst.
Tania looked down, trying to see what had spooked Haylay, but most of her stomach was out of view.
“You’re freaking me out,” she said.
Haylay reached over and put a hand to Tania’s forehead. He pushed her head back so that it was once again resting on the dirt.
“Trust me, T, you don’t want to see this,” Haylay warned her.
“Is that supposed to make me feel…ahh!”
A wave of pain hit her, making her cry out. She fought through the agony, ignored Haylay, and pushed herself up so that she was resting on her elbows. She stared down at her stomach and gasped.
“What…the…fuck!” she yelled. “What’s wrong with me?”
“Shh,” Haylay said, grabbing her arm. “You gotta keep it down, baby. You want more of them monster things huntin’ us down?”
“Fuck those things!” Tania yelled.
Haylay pulled back from the girl, surprised by her angry outburst. Suddenly Tania sat all the way up, turned to Haylay and then howled in pain as her eyes rolled back in her head. She collapsed and passed out.
Haylay looked to his left and right.
“Did you see that shit?” he said to no one at all. He looked around as if expecting to find someone to share his fear with. “I mean…holy…oh shit, that was freaky!”
It had been at least an hour since Tania’s last outburst. Haylay had managed to drag the girl deeper into the woods, far away from the river. He had a feeling they were no longer being hunted. It had been the babies they’d been after in the first place and Haylay didn’t have any damned babies. So, he decided to risk it and light a fire, the way Bronc showed him long ago.
It didn’t take long for the dry twigs to catch, and soon he and Tania had the warmth of a small fire. She didn’t seem to notice though as she lay on her back, oblivious to the world around her.
Movement under Tania’s dress caused Haylay to cover his eyes with his hands. He didn’t like being alone with her while she was busy being freakish. Like a squeamish little girl about to move her shoe when she knew a large cockroach sat on the other side, Haylay gingerly made his way around the fire and over to where Tania rested. He held his fingers out like a set of tongs and hesitated, not sure he was ready to lift the girl’s shirt and see what was causing such a ruckus beneath.
“Please don’t eat me, little monster,” he said as he pulled up her dress and then slid away from her on his butt.
He threw his hands up, fully expecting something to come launching out from beneath the skin of her belly. When nothing did, he nodded his head and toughened up a bit.
“You pussy,” he told himself.
He scooted closer and then stopped and watched in terror as a large, round object moved beneath the flesh of Tania’s stomach, like a mamole making its way through fertile soil. It pressed against her flesh, stretching it out as it moved left and right, then up and down, back and forth. It seemed to be searching for a way out of her body.
Tania suddenly screamed and grabbed her thighs. She gripped her skin like she was trying to rip through it with her fingernails. She sat up and belted out the loudest of screams.
“Tania, listen to me, baby!” Haylay shouted. “You gotta calm down. You’re gonna hurt yourself.”
“It hurts so bad!” Tania screamed.
“Listen, whatever’s in there wants to come out. I think you gonna have a baby…baby!” Haylay said.
Tania turned her head to look at him and for a moment, a hint of joy crossed her face. She smiled.
“A baby?” she asked. “Like Vision and Vincent? It would be Twig’s baby, right?”
Haylay didn’t know how to answer her. It wasn’t possible. Unless somehow the other babies’ arrival had trigge
red some new unknown ability for images to have children, but Haylay somehow knew that wasn’t the case. He’d been with Gabe and Lisa a long time, and it had taken that long for Lisa to have the babies. Tania and Twig had had sex for the first time the other night.
“It’s gonna be a real baby, right, Haylay?” Tania asked.
She smiled and reached out for Haylay’s hand. A new wave of pain came over her and she fell back onto the ground. She thrashed wildly, once…twice…then her legs shot open.
The creature beneath her skin shoved forward. Her skin stretched out and Haylay could see the thing ramming at the spot between her legs, as if it finally found its escape hatch. Tania threw a hand to her vaginal area, clutching it, and trying to hold whatever it was inside her.
“Stop it!” she screamed. “Help me!”
Haylay grabbed her hand.
“Baby, you need to push. Whatever it is, you need to get it out!” Haylay ordered.
Tania shook her head, refusing to cooperate.
“It’s going to rip my pussy open!” she cried out.
“That’s why you need to get it out of you!” he argued.
Tania nodded her head, desperately agreeing, willing to do anything to make the pain stop.
“Get it out of me!” she screamed.
She thrashed around on the ground and held her legs open in an unnatural position. Her legs were open wider than legs should ever be pried.
“Tania, please, don’t do that to yourself,” Haylay begged.
“It hurts!” Tania howled. “Owwwooooooooaaaaah!”
Haylay reached down and ripped the panties from between Tania’s legs and tossed them over his shoulder.
“Okay now!” he announced. “You gotta push, T. Push it out, baby!”
Tania grunted and strained. Her face grew bright red as she pushed with all her might. Haylay sat on his knees, watching. He’d seen Segundo and Emma practice with Lisa, and knew that at some point he should be in front of her, with his hands out and open as if waiting to catch a football, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to receive whatever it was that would be blazing its way out of her twat.
Tania pushed again and Haylay shook his head, scooting farther way. She pushed one last, final push, and with the release, fell back onto the ground into unconsciousness.
From between Tania’s legs slithered a black blob the size of a newborn baby. Featureless and slimy, the dark substance oozed out and clung to the ground. It swayed left and right, slithering across the dirt like a slimy snake, and tried to escape. It seemed to have no limbs, like a blob of black tar.
The dark gooey substance rapidly approached Haylay. He scooted across the ground on his ass and squealed, afraid. Just as it looked like it was about to climb onto his leg, the black goo slid to the left and raced into the trees.
Haylay fell onto his hands and knees and felt like he was going to vomit.
“What the fuck!” he yelled.
He fought to catch his breath and then finally let it out. He puked and spewed all of the fear, disbelief, and horror out onto the ground. Dry heaves came after, and finally, spent and exhausted, he collapsed.
“What the hell was that?”
He forced himself to crawl over to Tania’s unconscious body. He shook her, but she didn’t move. He called her name and slapped her cheek softly, but the girl was out cold. She was breathing; he could tell by the way her chest moved up and down. Relieved that she wasn’t dead, he finally gave in to his own exhaustion and lay down on the ground, his eyes glued to the black blob’s escape route, in case it decided to come back.
Chapter 11 - Plan B
For being such a bad ass brawler, Tact was a quiet guy, and when Gabe was in need of information, he hated quiet guys.
“I don’t mean to be a dick,” he announced, knowing that it fully meant he was about to be a dick, “but where are you taking us, man? And before you say what you’re about to say, I, for one, am tired of hearing the whole, “The less you know, the better” bullshit.”
Tact spun on his heals, stalked past Hawks and Ayana and stopped about an inch from Gabe’s face. They stared at each other, eye to eye. Tact looked angry for a minute, then smiled.
“Trust me, Mel Brooks, the less you know, the better,” he replied.
Then he walked away, leaving Gabe to shrug his shoulders and look back at Lisa.
“Babe…” she said.
“Look,” Gabe called out. “I get it. You wish you would have stayed with your people. You’ve reminded us of that several times already. But you didn’t. You chose to come with us. So let’s make the best of it. And by the way, what the fuck is up with you and the name calling? Billie Jean King, Groucho Marx, Mel Brooks…what’s wrong with you, man?”
Tact ignored him and pushed his way through the thick trees of the forest. Gabe turned his attention to Lisa, who looked exhausted as she stroked Vision’s head and forced a smile in Gabe’s direction.
Behind them, Bronc and Emma navigated the treacherous terrain together. The slashing of vegetation up ahead by the machete Tact had borrowed from Bronc brought Gabe back to reality. It seemed as if they’d reached the end of the jungle.
Vincent whimpered softly and Gabe looked down to see him resting peacefully against his chest.
“Emma,” Gabe called out. “You’ve known this guy for awhile. What’s with the name calling?”
Bronc laughed under his breath.
“He’s an avid magazine reader,” Emma explained. “Somebody brought a whole box of magazines back from your side of the mirror, long ago, the magazines full of naked women…”
“Playboys,” Bronc added.
“Those,” Emma agreed. “From the 80s or something like that.”
“From the 70s, the best!” Tact shouted from the front of the line.
“And he’s read them all,” Emma continued. “Front to back, over and over and over…”
“I don’t get it,” Gabe said. “He read a bunch of magazines with naked women from the 70s. How does that translate to…”
“Great men were interviewed in the 70s. You can learn a lot from great men!” Tact shouted once again from the front of the line.
“So,” Emma said, “when he doesn’t know somebody…”
“He just comes up with a name,” Gabe finished. “I get it now. So, who else was interviewed in the 70s, Tact?”
“Hmm, let’s see,” Tact said. “Peter Fonda, O.J. Simpson…hey did you know that O.J. Simpson, the real O.J., died over here? His image was trapped on your side of the mirror. He was a bad dude, and I’m talkin’ about his good side, so I bet he wreaked havoc over there.”
“You have no idea,” Gabe replied.
“Here,” Tact announced as he slashed through the last tangle of vines.
“Here where?” Gabe asked.
Tact looked back at Gabe and smiled.
“I’m not an asshole, you know. I just had a feeling you wouldn’t trust me to captain your ship across the Black Lake. So…the less you knew…”
“The better,” Gabe finished.
“Yup yup!” Tact cheered and walked out onto the black sand shore.
They exited the trees and followed him onto the beach. The darkness wrapped around them, and to Gabe it seemed even darker than it had been in the jungle. The moon overhead must have hidden behind clouds and the stars must’ve thought it clever to burn out because the night sky was pitch black and the world around them was the same.
Lisa gripped Gabe’s arm and leaned in close.
“Why do I feel like we’re back on dangerous ground? This doesn’t feel safe at all,” she said.
“I know what you mean,” he said, “but Bronc and Emma trust this guy, and he seems to know where we’re headed. At this point we don’t have much of a choice. It’s this or…or nothing. It’s just this.”
“Our options always seem so limited here. Remember when serious choices meant ham and cheese or peanut butter and jelly?” she joked.
With her face so c
lose to his he could see her scrunch up her lips and nose in her “this sucks” expression. God, he loved when she did that. Apparently, while adoring her cute gesture, he let the silence linger too long.
“What?” she asked.
“I love you,” he reminded her.