UnCommon Origins: A Collection of Gods, Monsters, Nature, and Science (UnCommon Anthologies Book 2)

by P. K. Tyler

  Just thinking about it makes me want to push back. Push away what she's trying to tell me. Push her away from me. And yet, something in her tone, her utter stillness, that single-mindedness in her reaches out to me.

  It pulls at me, insisting she's speaking the truth.

  "No," I say again. "I don't believe you."

  My voice is so low I don't think she can hear me. But of course she does.

  "The truth is bigger than what you or me, Fia," she says in a gentle tone.

  I wince. Calling me by my nickname makes it all so personal. As if it is me she's been talking about all along.

  "The world as we know it is going to end," she adds.

  I swear to myself at that.

  The lack of any expression in her voice makes me turn to her. "What do you mean? Like destroyed? All gone?" I ask.

  "Not physically. Earth's vibration is going to change and humans will be forced to Ascend. To upgrade their vibration or die. And it is through you, the Golden Womb, that those who choose can make that shift. A start to populating the world with beings who don't have to hold back their emotions, who choose to who follow their hearts."

  "What the fuck are you going on about?"

  I swear aloud, knowing fully well she hates my using the 'F' word; but, no reaction. There's no change in her expression. It's as if she doesn't care what I think, just that I listen.

  And agree with whatever she's saying.

  And that more than anything shuts me up.

  She's serious about this. Convinced I am this Golden—whatever she thinks I am.

  "So, I am supposed to just be 'impregnated' and give birth to this superior race?" A shiver down my spine. As if, by saying it aloud I'm a step closer to living it.

  "Not just superior." She swirls her palm through the air in that characteristic 'S' shaped gesture she often uses to make a point. "More empathetic, yes."

  Her eyebrows furrow and on her face: confusion. Like she can't understand why I am questioning her. She expects me to fall in with whatever she's saying.

  "And what if I don't want to give birth? Don't want to go through with this?"

  "It's understandable that you feel scared, only natural that the idea of conception make you feel afraid, Golden Womb—”

  I burst out. "I am Fia, remember? Your granddaughter. I was born right in this house, and I am human. HUMAN." My shrill voice echoes around the room, only to be thrown back at me.

  I hear my own resistance. My inability to look beyond my own concerns. Beyond my immediate circle of life. And that maybe she's speaking the truth.

  But I am not ready not for this.

  Not now.

  Not ever.

  "NO!" I shout, shaking my head.

  The blood rushes through my veins, making my heart beat fast. The pulse thunders in my ears.

  I swallow. Take a deep breath.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  Chill Fia. She can't make you do anything you don't want to do. She can't.

  "Thanks, but no thanks." I say, my voice light to show her words are of no importance to me. "I mean, it’s flattering to be chosen for this 'job,' but no, I don’t want it."

  She stands up, arms akimbo. Her features twist as if she's trying to control her emotions.

  When she finally speaks, her voice is calm.

  "You've been shown a destiny. The rest is up to you; the choice is yours."

  Folding her hands in front of her, she bends her head, her pose deferential.

  I swear aloud. It's creeping me out. All this calling me by a strange name, and then this bowing as if I am some kind of holy figure. Some kind of god. Or maybe a monster. I push that thought away. I don’t feel like either. I am just one very confused girl. And I feel human. Too much so.

  I clench my fists by my sides.

  Whatever she's saying can't be true.

  And even if it is, well I do have a choice, right?

  And for now, I choose not to choose.

  "Thanks for sharing and all that, but I have to leave." I say, my voice cold, fierce.

  The sooner I get away from here and get on with my life the better. I make for the door and she doesn't stop me.

  "Not everyone gets to be the mother of a new race." Her voice goes so soft I almost don't catch those words, "If only I could be here to see it."

  And that makes me pause, right at the threshold. I want to leave, to keep going, but I can't. A cold fist twists my heart, hinting that something is about to change.

  If I leave now, I'll regret it forever.

  Turning around, I walk back and sink down next to her on the love seat. When I grip her hands, they are cold. I rub them, trying to transfer some of my warmth to her.

  "Of course you'll be here, Sofia,” I say, forcing those words thru lips carved of stone. "You’re going to be alive to see your great grand kids."

  I start at my own words.

  She grips my hands back, stares into my eyes. Those silver-grey eyes shine with clarity, like a sheet of glass. So clear I see myself in them.

  "Of course," she agrees.

  2

  A month later

  Perhaps, it is the casket and imagining her dead body inside that finally breaks me. A body which does not exist anymore, literally, for the very day after our conversation she had begun to disappear. It had begun with holes appearing in her hands, creeping up her legs, eating into her back and stomach and finally her face. As if, once she'd revealed who I was and my task in this world, she'd lost her will to live. Maybe she'd felt the call of whichever dimension she came from, but she deteriorated, rapidly.

  By the time she died, there wasn't much left of her, really. Much like a soldier having gone to war and returning in a casket; there she is now. Hair, nails, a few bones—it all fit into a tiny jar.

  I sit in her little cottage; the one she left me along with this black box. Trapped below the surface, a rainbow of colors, loosened by our conversation, mesh into a tempest

  I turn the tiny key in the lock, flipping open the lid of the box to see a note. Paper frayed with age, the handwriting a firm slash across it. A name—Krishna. Also a phone number and address. In Bombay.

  The paper smells old. Like parchment. But, below that, a hint of sun, dust, and something I can't quite place. Like saffron or a hint of cinnamon. On the other side of the note is Sofia's more familiar handwriting. "Go find him, Fia. And when you do, don't look back. Follow your instinct."

  Instinct. Ha! Easy for you to say, Sofia, now that you are gone. Couldn’t you have also left me a way out?

  No, all she’d done was point out that I had a choice.

  A choice on which depended the fate of the human race, apparently. My head spins just thinking about it, and the note drops from my hand into the box.

  I shut the lid and keep it aside. Jumping to my feet, I pace back, forth, back in front of the ancient sofa.

  I look around the house where Sofia lived since she arrived as a bride at twenty.

  And now, she's left the place to me. Along with this cryptic note.

  The sum total of her possessions and she's left it to me.

  Not to her children, but to me.

  Which means she actually believed everything she told me earlier.

  I swear to myself, running my fingers through my hair. Why hadn't I insisted she tell me more about me being the... the... I can't bring myself to say it. It just feels so weird, almost obscene to think of myself as a womb.

  My eyes fall upon her picture on the mantelpiece. She looks as I always remember her. Serious, as if she has a lot on her mind. I'd never bothered to ask her about herself.

  It hadn't been 'til our very last conversation that I glimpsed a hint of the woman behind the façade. A woman who may not have even been human.

  And now she's left me with this note that's calling to me, begging me to follow it and find out about my own path.

  Purple-black rage shivers up my spine.

  Why
, why, why hadn't she told me more before leaving me alone? WHY? The anger splashes over me and I smash the picture against the fireplace.

  Looking at the shattered pieces, my fury fades away just as quickly. I owe this much to her, to see through what she started.

  3

  A few weeks later

  Before leaving London, I'd called the phone number scrawled on the note only to get a voice mail. A man's voice asking the caller to leave a message, and I had hung up.

  Just hearing that voice had made it all so real. Had brought home the insanity of the trip I was about to embark on.

  And now as the sound of traffic slams against the window of the ancient vehicle, I swear at my foolishness. Should have left a message. Should have told them I was coming.

  Will someone even be home?

  Or have I made this trip all for nothing?

  Seated in what passes for air-conditioning, I grip my backpack and look out the window, a four-lane-wide traffic of vehicles and, beyond that, to the blue-green of the Arabian Sea.

  Sofia had grown up in Bombay, but I never thought I’d ever visit. Never felt a connection to her home country. And now I am here to find my future. To find out if this person, this Krishna she's directed me to, can tell me more about her revelation.

  The car turns off onto a side road, and suddenly we've left the traffic behind.

  We draw up outside a bungalow and, all too soon, I'm standing in front of the door. The ringing of the doorbell bounces off the walls inside.

  I wait.

  Wait 'til it echoes through the corridors and fades away.

  Silence.

  I ring again. Then, stop and wait.

  Just as I raise my fist to knock on the door, it's flung open. I look into a pair of jet black eyes set in a nut-brown face with a shaggy, grey-flecked beard. He's dressed in a pair of cotton trousers and a flowing, long, white shirt, over which he wears an apron. There's a dish-cloth flung over his shoulder.

  "What?" he barks.

  "K... Krish... Krishna?" My voice emerges all shaky and I clear my throat, trying again. Even as I say it I know it's not him.

  "I am here to see Krishna." I say, my voice firm this time.

  "Krishna?" The man looks at me, brow furrowed.

  A sudden tiredness overwhelms me and I sway slightly, dropping the bottle of water clutched in my hand. I bend down to pick it up and straighten to see that his face has gone carefully blank.

  He steps aside, beckoning for me to follow.

  Hitching my backpack over my shoulder, I follow him through a corridor to a room at the end of the passage. He indicates I should go in, shutting the door behind me.

  I blink at the silhouette by the window.

  "Krishna?" I ask, my voice thready.

  He doesn't reply. Doesn't even acknowledge me, just stands there, back to me, staring out. The evening sunshine slides through the old-fashioned grills in the window, revealing dark-brown highlights in his hair.

  When he doesn't move, I take a step forward, then another, ‘til I reach the centre of the room. After the heat of the city, the room seems calm, welcoming, even cool.

  I shiver and the hair on my arms stands on edge. The silence in the room grows. It fills the space inside my head and I have to say something just so I can hear my own voice, make sure I am really here, half a world away from everything I know.

  "Krishna?" I ask again, raising my voice, so it echoes around the room. I wince at that, but at least it gets a response.

  He turns. The light at his back casts his face in shadow. I squint and just about make out high cheekbones, a thin upper lip, the shadow of a beard on his broad, square jaw.

  "Kris," he says, his voice rumbling over my shoulders. "You must be Sofia?"

  He takes one step. A second. And a third.

  I subconsciously count the steps with him. When he steps out of the sunlight to stand in front of me, I have to tilt my head back to look at him.

  "Sorry to barge in like this," I say, wringing my fingers together in front of me.

  He doesn't reply. But his forehead furrows. Dark eyebrows slash over silver-green eyes.

  Sofia's coloring was similar. They are not related; they don't look like each other at all. Just the coloring. Light eyes. Dark skin. And something in the way they stand and move. Almost glide. As if they belong to a different species. One that is not quite human.

  His eyes sweep over my body before they settle on my features. He's studying my face, trying to place me.

  "You don't know me," I say quickly. "Sofia, my grandmother, she..." I swallow. I'd never known Sofia that well and yet now, when she's gone, her words are all I can think about. Dropping my backpack to the floor, I rummage inside. Then, straightening, hand the note to him. "She left me this."

  He scans the note and his lips tighten. His skin pales under that blue-black coloring. He's almost as dark me. As dark as her. A gust of wind blows in through the window, bringing the smell of vehicle fumes and dust from the road below. But mixed in with them is a whisper of honeyed-musk and I just know that's him. His scent.

  I feel an internal tug as if he's physically reached out and touched me, and a twinge in my womb takes me by surprise. It's as if a cord has latched onto me and he's pulling me closer. I want to reach out and touch him.

  No!

  I push back against it but that tug only grows stronger, churning my insides. I shut my eyes, my breath coming out in small puffs. My head whirls trying to resist the pull. What is this? Do I know him? But it's the first time I am meeting him. Surely, I'd have known if I had seen him before?

  He catches me staring and my cheeks grow warm.

  "You okay?" He asks, and the concern in his voice sends a shudder down my back.

  I don’t want to stay. Don't want to know who he is, what he means to me. She was right. Sofia was right. The churning swells, twisting my gut, making me nauseated. The sickness rushes over me and world goes dark.

  4

  The ceiling fan swirls slowly, cutting through the heavy air in the room. I am flat on my back on a bed. I run my palms over the uneven surface of sheets. Rough cotton sheets. And turn my head to see him—Kris—stretched out on the far side, one arm flung out as if reaching out to me.

  A shudder runs down my spine. All I can think is: Get away. Get away from here, before he tells you who you are and what your 'real' purpose in life is. Before he seals your fate forever. I slide out of bed, my bare feet hitting the floor.

  I’m not wearing my jeans. Did he take them off?

  I look around. Walking over to the table, I pull my jeans off the chair in front of it. I slip one leg into them, then I see it.

  There, framed on the table, is a print. A painting. Forgetting to pull on the other leg, I lean closer. Closer still, 'til my chest is almost parallel to the table. No, I wasn't mistaken. It actually is a close-up of the vagina and stomach of a naked woman, lying on a bed with legs spread.

  Below the black curls, the folds of the skin bulge on either side of a slit. A slit that is not a slit but much, much juicier and much more erotic than the actual lips of the vagina which crowns it.

  "L'Origine du Monde."

  "Oh! What?" I turn around, forgetting I haven't pulled on my trousers completely and almost trip.

  "The Origin of the World," he translates.

  "Yes, of course, I know," I say, half angry with myself at being so surprised. “A painting by Gustave Courbet, the French artist,” I add, pulling the other leg of my pants up and zipping my jeans. "I was just surprised to see it here, is all."

  "Gustave was wise, wasn't he? He knew the origins of all of us started between a woman's legs. The most sacred of spaces."

  A ripple runs down my back and lodges at the base of my spine when he says that. And a sudden tug in my belly has my eyes darting from the picture to him. Is he making a pass at me? But his eyes are focussed on the picture, his features almost respectful, worshipful even.

  As if sensing my gaze, his
eyes swivel to mine. He runs them over my trouser clad legs.

  "Going somewhere?" He frowns.

  "Yeah. To my hotel. I haven't even checked in yet." I run my hands through my hair, my bare feet braced against the tiled floor.

  "At this time of the night?" he asks.

  Those eyes glitter in the dark room, now lit only by the fluorescent streetlight that throws a dirty-white gleam over the floor.

  "So, call me a cab," I shrug.

  "You're exhausted." His concern sounds genuine.

  When I don't reply, he slides across my side of the bed, then stands up in one fluid motion. I am struck again by how he moves. As if his joints are particularly well oiled. As if there is less friction between him and the world than for most people.

  Whatever had pulled at me and made me sick seems to have quietened. My insides feel fragile, though, as if they've been yanked awake. As if ... as if my womb is coming alive. A shivering starts somewhere inside. I hug my arms round myself but that doesn't help.

  Picking up a glass of water next to the bed, he takes a step towards me.

  And it's as if he's stepped within the circumference of where that invisible cord clicks into place and there it is again, that slight tug at my belly.

  No, no. I can't wait for whatever it was that made me nauseated earlier to start up again, not now, not when I am just beginning to feel human again. I thrust out a trembling hand in his direction and he stops.

  "You okay?" His voice is soft as if trying to soothe a scared animal. And suddenly I've had enough.

  "No, I am not okay," I say. "Who are you? Why am I here?"

  "Ah! You have a lot of questions, I know. Do you want to talk now or wait ‘til the morning, when you have given your body a chance to recover some more?"

  Is he serious?

  "Now, of course. Let's talk right now," I say.

  He makes to move forward and I thrust out my hand, "Don’t, don’t come near me. Not 'til I figure out what you're doing to me."

  "You mean this?" He points to that invisible cord that binds us as if he can see it.