by Patrick Kill
And now he was no longer gifted by her beautiful presence, but cursed by her morbid companionship.
James thought about suicide several times. Laura just stared through vacuous sockets, slowly degenerating more each day, to where her skin had turned brown in places. Portions of her skull poked through her sunken skin. Each time James looked at her, he was reminded of what was to come. And that fear alone kept him from slicing his wrists.
He begged her to change back. If she was imaginary, then she could go back to the beautiful, vibrant blonde-haired girl she used to be. But each time he asked her, no answer came forth. He yearned so much to touch her beautiful skin, to see something other than a decomposing corpse walking beside him each day.
When James lost hope, he took a knife and sliced a thin line across his wrists. Blood beaded atop his skin. He cut several other places up and down his arm. He felt rage flow with the blood and he would cut deeper, feeling more united with his dead friend with each flick of the blade.
* * *
“Hi James,” Laura said one morning. James had passed out the night before after cutting his arms and face in a haze of drugs and alcohol.
James focused, seeing Laura’s face had partially regenerated. Bone was now covered by skin.
“You’re talking to me again?”
“Yes,” she said, “you’ve allowed me to.”
James looked confused. Laura smiled with lips that had gained an ounce of color overnight.
James felt the pain in his arms and face. He looked into the mirror and noticed all the bloody cuts on his skin. And instead of scabs forming throughout the night, only dead skin appeared.
“My God,” James said. “You are coming back to me.”
His apartment was cold and empty, like the last half of his life. He wanted so much to fill it all with the old Laura.
He noticed that every incision he had made the night before had somehow effected Laura. Where his skin was brown and dead, her skin was now reformed and lifelike.
Realizing what had transpired, he slashed the blade across his chest. Two, three, four times, he carved a double X on each side.
And Laura’s rotted chest slowly gained color. Her discolored, sunken sternum inflated slowly, her breasts soon following until they peeked with pink nipples.
James leaned over and licked a nipple. He shuddered with love, lust and fulfillment.
He took the knife between his legs and cut his scrotum open. His bloody testicles emerged from the cavern of his wounded, wrinkled sack. And Laura’s clitoris came out of the dry darkness. It moistened before James’s eyes as vaginal lips glistened before him. And he tasted her there, running his tongue over her new vitality, tasting the salt and fluid. His heart beat quickened at the possibility.
He raked the blade over his legs, uprooting skin as Laura’s hairless legs sprung to life. He gouged out his right eye just to see the familiar brown irises emerge from a once barren place.
Torrents of blood ran across the floor from James’s body. He continued to cut until Laura was almost complete again. All that was left was a vacant eye socket.
“Give it to me, James. Please make me whole.”
James held the knife in front of him. He pondered the possibilities. If he were to take his own sight, he would never be able to look upon Laura and see what he had sacrificed to bring her back. He would never be able to gaze at her beauty again. But she would be completely his once again. He would no longer be alone in the world.
He placed the tip of the blade into his pupil and felt pain surge through his head. Liquid popped, running down his cheek. His sight blurred to stained-glass visions, then darkness.
But Laura still pleaded. “Make me complete.”
James felt his heart racing as he could barely feel her tongue curling around his ear. It was more the sense of something pressing on dead skin than real sensation, but James still had his imagination to make up for what was lacking in the stimulus.
“You are complete,” James replied.
“No,” she said. “You took my heart, James. And, without it, I cannot feel for you. I cannot grow with you.”
James lifted the knife to his chest and circled his left nipple with the tip. Either way, he didn’t want to continue living without her. His mistake, more than five years prior, had taken her away from him. She was once complete. She was once completely his.
He plunged the knife into his heart.
He waited to feel her warmth come back to him, but only coldness persisted. Through his partially ruptured eardrums, he could hear footsteps and breathing. Humming and laughter.
And a door slamming shut.
Tall Tail
The creature was pulp. A bloody smear across the road, bones ground almost flush with the asphalt.
“What the hell is it?” my brother Josh inquired.
I cringed at the mass. “Dunno.”
It could have been many things: a farm cat, a skunk or even a red fox, but not even the world’s most educated conservation officer or biologist would’ve had a clue.
I’ve seen dead things on the road all my life. But the most disturbing thing about this poor creature was its tail. While its body was mashed, its tail remained discolored, but still furry and fluffy, unmarred by the violent tread of tires that had squished the carcass.
It was a fresh kill. I had left work earlier that morning and there was nothing dead there. The damn thing was perfectly centered in the road beyond my driveway, to where my brother and I had easily spotted it out the picture window in my living room.
At first glimpse, it sent shivers down my spine. The tail was standing erect in the road.
“Did you see this when you pulled in?” I asked. He had arrived a half hour earlier.
Josh shook his head. “No, it wasn’t there.”
“But there hasn’t been a single car come down this road since you got here!” I looked across the quiet countryside. Nothing. Then I peered into the sky. Puffy white clouds dotted blue skies. I laughed. “Maybe it came from outer space!”
Josh glanced up, shook his head, not even the slightest smirk crossing his face. Obviously this was not a joke to him, but a logical conclusion. And that made me laugh harder.
“How the hell?” Josh asked, obviously troubled, watching the tail blowing in the breeze. He picked up a stick beside the road then poked the dried-out hide, scraping the encrusted meat in an attempt to discover what kind of animal it actually was.
“There’s no smell to it,” I stated.
Josh moved the stick down and batted the furry erection.
The tail jerked.
“Shit!” Josh yelled, jumping back. “Did you see that?”
I laughed. “It was the wind, dipshit.”
“The hell it was!”
“Then poke it again!”
He stepped back farther and looked at me as if I’d just told him to fuck a wild boar. Seconds passed, then the sibling rivalry kick in. He knew he’d never hear the end of it if he chickened out in front of his older brother, especially over a damn tail.
So he poked it again.
And the furry appendage ripped free from its anchored mass.
Josh shrieked and stumbled backwards.
I stood there, shocked, and unable to flee. I could only watch the thing slither. It reached Josh within seconds. The tail wrapped around his ankle and coiled its way up his leg. Josh screamed as the creature dove beneath the gap in his shorts.
“GET IT THE FUCK OFF ME!” he yelled.
“Hold on!” I replied. I reached into my pants pocket and pulled the Swiss army knife free. I tossed it on the ground beside me then I dug deeper into my pocket, pulling out my cell phone. I jabbed the picture button, but it was slow to load. “Come on, hurry up,” I said. Finally an image of the road came into view. I panned over to frame the scene unfolding.
Josh was on his stomach, both hands reaching around his backside, pushing down on his jean shorts near the crotch. Beneath the denim, the mas
s wriggled, closer to his—
“Oh God, it’s in my ASS!” he cried.
I snapped the picture.
The whole horrible event lasted mere seconds.
The thing penetrated Josh, disappearing somewhere inside his ass.
To this very day, we never talk about that incident. In fact, we seldom talk at all anymore, only seeing each other during the holidays. There is always this awkward silence that, to this very day, still lingers between us.
But I can’t help but laugh sometimes. Especially after Mom told me about the day it finally came out. It was during his third date with Monica, a girl he had a crush on back in high school, when the creature tore its way out. Josh ripped his pants off in the middle of a movie theater, spilling popcorn and pop, straddling two seats, yanking violently to pull the creature free.
Panic spread throughout the theater after Monica screamed and ran for the exit.
Now there’s an “urban legend” around these parts about a “dog-boy” who was caught chasing his own tail in a public theater, but people just laugh and dismiss this story as a joke.
I sure don’t.
Three weeks after the thing emerged, Josh called me on my cell phone, asked me to meet him on a farm several miles from my house. He said he had been trying to find it since the night it escaped from the theater.
I arrived, finding one pissed off farmer with a giant hole in his overalls.
And the tail had grown.
It was at least five feet tall, standing erect at the edge of the cornfield, looking like a furry king cobra, watching the cattle graze.
“Holy fuck!” I commented.
All three of us unloaded several rounds into the creature that day. It slithered away into the woods and hasn’t been seen since.
But it will, I’m sure. One day it will emerge again. Each time that thing crawls up someone’s or something’s ass, it comes out taller. And with all the livestock spread across these Indiana farmlands, that son-of-a-bitch has to be a hundred feet tall by now.
Twins
It was the first time Nathan had really looked at his girlfriend’s vagina. It seemed like such a foreign terrain now, like some kind of stretched and mutated alien landscape. Even the smell seemed odd, like she had been bathing in fish oil or douching with salmon cakes.
The whole moment of revelation almost eclipsed the excitement of labor. But Nathan quickly snapped out of it as Jenny screamed, “God, get it out of me!”
“Okay, now push!” the doctor said calmly.
Nathan stared into the dark tunnel as blood trickled out the side. Mucus and water soon trailed as he could almost see her dilating by the minute.
“Okay, I see the head!” the doctor informed them.
Nathan just knelt there, glaring into the dark void that was now eclipsed by a tiny ball of flesh with hair. He dreaded the coming moments, knowing that Jenny was too unstable to become a mom so soon.
* * *
The pregnancy was a mistake. Nathan had been seeing Jenny for only six months when they found out the news. Nathan went into a depression after the shock and Jenny was full of excitement and anticipation. Nathan couldn’t understand why.
Then came the talk about twins. Jenny was suddenly obsessed with having twins. She told him that she had always dreamed about having twins.
Next came the matching outfits and double strollers. Twin cribs and changing tables.
But the first ultrasound only showed one.
And Nathan thought the madness would end.
It didn’t.
Next came a new apartment for the “twins” to grow up in. Jenny wanted something with more space, so that both kids could have their own room. Nathan argued with her, stressed the point of the ultrasound, but it was no use.
“So, it was wrong!” Jenny said. “I’m having twins!”
“But you seen it with your own eyes!” Nathan shouted.
“But I can feel them both. My body doesn’t lie to me!”
Nathan felt his anger subside and sadness and pity eclipse everything. He felt sorry for Jenny. He knew she was unstable. Nuts, to be exact, but he couldn’t muster the nerve to leave her. Not in her fragile condition. And he couldn’t bear to leave his firstborn child to live with a nutcase-mother.
* * *
The baby slid out in a torrent of blood and mucus. It didn’t scream. It didn’t move.
The doctor flipped it over and slapped its back. Nathan noticed its body was blue, its head was strangely oblong.
Another slap and Nathan heard it cough.
The doctor siphoned the excrement from its mouth and cleaned off its body. He wrapped it in a towel and turned to Jenny, “Congratulations, Mom. It’s a boy.”
Jenny took it into her arms and cried and Nathan felt his own lip quivering at the sight.
Then Jenny handed the baby to Nathan and started pushing again.
“What are you doing?” the doctor asked.
“My other baby is in there!”
“No. Stop pushing, Jenny. There was only one.”
Nathan bundled his son up tight and took a deep breath. The doctor briefly glanced over at him, and Nathan shook his head.
“Please stop pushing, Jenny. You might hemorrhage.”
“No!” she screamed, “Get the fuck down there and deliver my other baby!”
“Nurse!” the doctor yelled.
Nathan stared between her legs as a nurse rushed in.
“Restrain her!”
Jenny started fighting the nurse, screaming and kicking. The doctor held her there and managed to work on her stomach, massaging it until a bloody mass plopped out of her. Nathan cringed as the doctor threw the chunk of afterbirth on a scale and said, “That’s it, Jenny. I’m sorry but there was only one.”
Jenny calmed down suddenly, like the realization finally struck her.
In the middle of the chaos of nurses checking vitals and other nurses administering medicine, Jenny requested that everyone leave her room. The doctor looked again to Nathan, as if to ask why? Nathan just shook his head and was the first to leave. The nurses and doctor quickly finished up weighing the baby, set the IV drip, stitched Jenny back up and turned on the heat lamp where they placed the baby beneath.
Jenny just stared hollowly at the ceiling as each left the room.
When Nathan returned, Jenny had cleaned the blood off the floor and replaced the sheets by herself. She wouldn’t speak to him. She just slept.
* * *
A day later, she was still hospitalized. The nurses were monitoring her condition around the clock. She was treated with antidepressants and all sharp objects were removed from her room.
Nathan had to return to work as Jenny’s mother watched after the baby.
Around noon, Jenny’s mother called the office.
“They’re sending her home today,” she stated, “The drugs have stabilized her depression and she has really come to terms with it all. She’s smiling and joking around. We’re packing right now.”
“Great!” Nathan said, “I’ll meet you at the apartment.”
He arrived at the apartment just as Jenny’s mother was leaving.
Jenny was waiting for him. She gave him a kiss at the front door and hugged him.
“Where’s Daniel?”
“Shhh,” she whispered, “He’s sleeping.”
Nathan smiled.
Jenny smiled back. “And so is Nathan Jr.”
Nathan’s heart skipped a beat. “What?”
“They’re both sleeping!”
Nathan glanced into the nursery to see the familiar sight of two cribs set side by side. He took a deep breath and swallowed hard, fearing that she had somehow stolen another baby on her way out.
Jenny led him by the arm until they entered the nursery. Nathan glanced in on the first crib and saw Daniel curled up and sleeping soundly.
A hollow feeling suddenly pulsed through his gut.
He shifted to look into the other crib.
And
his breath caught.
“Christ!” he managed to say. And he closed his eyes. But that didn’t make the vision go away.
In the middle of the crib, covered in a tiny blue afghan, lay the bloody remains of her placenta.
Nathan backed away after noticing the bloodstains on the baby mattress and how the piece of afterbirth had shriveled and blackened since he had seen it excreted from Jenny’s vagina.
He tripped over the double stroller and crawled out of the nursery. Jenny seemed not to be phased by his actions. She just stared lovingly over the 1-foot liver-like clump of bloody waste that should have been discarded by the nurses in the hospital.
And he suddenly knew why Jenny had asked the nursing staff to leave so suddenly during the clean-up.
* * *
Nathan tried to talk with her, but the first time he did, she was nursing it.
She had even put a diaper on it.
Nathan cringed, watching her tit wiggle across the hard, cold, blood-encrusted piece of afterbirth. Beads of milk trickled against the side of the mass and dropped to the couch.
“That’s a boy, Nathan Jr. Drink Mama’s milk, it’s good for you!”
Nathan felt his stomach turning.
“You haven’t even held Nathan Jr. yet.”
She held the blackened bundle toward Nathan and all he felt was pity and sorrow for her. Had he caused her to become this delusional by knocking her up? Maybe if he would have worn the condom, none of this would have ever happened. He loved Jenny and planned on marrying her someday. But now, she had lost all common sense. Guilt slowly flooded Nathan and his sorrow grew.
Once the tiny cold bundle was in his arms, he gazed down at the surreal scene. He could see tiny vein-like clusters branching from the afterbirth. When he looked at it in a certain direction, it almost resembled a baby. A really fucked up baby, but a baby nonetheless.