Shadow Seed 1: The Misbegotten

by Richard M. Heredia

  Then, within half a year, she was deformed and mangled like she’d been in a horrible car wreck. She was so changed and unrecognizable, her own children would run from her in fear, screaming aloud, “mommy is a monster that wants to eat us alive”. A few months after, she disappeared. She’d taken no clothes, no food, not even toiletries. She just left, and since then, none of us had seen her. Yeah, I had heard about Tita.

  “Yeah, my mom told me,” was all I said. I didn’t really want to talk about it. It was hard, because I couldn’t get it out of my mind how pretty Tita had been to me when I was young boy. She used to go out of her way to play with me at family gatherings. Her hair had always been so perfect and matched her eyes to a tee. It seemed like she’d painted it that way. To me, she was my fun cousin, Tita, who always came out of her room when we visited, even when she was a more of a woman than a girl. She always said hi to me and showed me all of the cool things she was into at the time. I had watched my fist Blu-Ray movie with her, one her boyfriend, at the time, had bought for her. To this day, I have no idea what was the movie we had watched, because she kept asking me question after question about my life. She even filled my short responses with tales and experiences of her own.

  I just couldn’t comprehend what had happened to her. I found it real, real hard to envision her as one of those ‘things’ that people on the news called the “violently mutated”. The rest of us referred to them as “trolls’. Now, Tita was one of them. I didn’t want to remember her that way. Trolls were horrid.

  “Truth be told, ‘cuz, what happened to Tita just goes to show you that entire portion of the family is cursed,” he surmised as we gain the third floor and entered the Loft.

  “I don’t know, Jake, that’s kind of a hard judgment to consider. I tend to think they were just uneducated and rash, and shit happened. That’s what came back to bite them in the ass.” I grimaced with new thoughts of old memories. “I mean, no one told Grandpa Juan to go and knock up a fourteen year old girl when he was already married and had kids already. That was a decision he made on his own and for the rest of his life he paid the price for it…” I stopped, because the notion struck me that I might be more like my grandfather than I ever had imagined in the past. Fuck!

  “I guess you’re right, Eff,” he said as we attained the Loft and walked in. Jacob glanced around and, like a hyena on someone else’s kill, he spotted Katie’s belongings on the bed far to the right of the doorway. “Holy fuck, Eff, your parents got Katie up here with you all alone?”

  “Yeah, so?” I replied, trying to act it like it was no big deal. I knew exactly what he was thinking, because it was exactly what I had been thinking the day before. A gorgeous, sexy, tight-assed teenage girl sleeping in the same room as me, when do I get to fuck her?!? “My mom said it would be good for her to be around… how did she put it…? Oh, I remember now, she said, I’d be good influence on her.”

  “Good influence my ass, man, if your mom knew just half of what you’ve done, she’d have kicked your ass out of here so hard, you’d bounce on your ear,” Jacob responded, incensed.

  What he had said, though, was pretty close to the truth. I just made sure that’s all. I went out of way to make sure I never got caught red handed doing something I wasn’t supposed be doing.

  “How can you stand it, ‘cuz?”

  “Stand what?”

  “Sleeping so close to her and not wanting to creep over and at least touch her, man?” His eyes were hooded already. I was sure if he had been alone he would’ve starting beating off right there.

  “That’s because I’m not all perv’ed out over her, you jerk. Besides, you dick, she’s my cousin.”

  There was always a time for some well-placed indignation to stave off the ignorant, especially if you wanted to do precisely what the ignorant wanted, right?

  “Who cares, bro, I would, at least, try and get some…,” he drifted into a thoughtful silence and from the look on his face the thought he had might’ve already tried it with some of our other cousins popped into my head. But who though? Only Melanie was old enough, she was the oldest child of my Uncle Andrew Marquez, which was Jacob’s mother’s brother on my father’s side of the family, but shit, she was fifteen now, so… Of course, he could be talking about one of the older girls from my Grandpa Juan’s first marriage. They were cousins as well, but only by half. Maybe he had gone after one of them? Damn! I thought, all those girls were out in the streets a lot, just like their parents had been before them, no telling how many times those bitches got passed around the neighborhood. Yuck! Jacob’s dick was probably only halfway attached by now. It might have already fallen off, if he had stuck it into one of those Strawberries¹.

  “Get some what?” came a female voice from behind us and made us both jump out of our skin.

  “Jee-Zuz, Ramona, did you have sneak up on us like that, I nearly shit my pants!” complained Jacob. He walked deeper into the room, then edged his way toward my dresser and placed the marijuana on top of it.

  I smirked Ramona’s way. “I’ll give you one guess.”

  “Shit, I don’t even need one. It is truly all he ever thinks about. You should’ve seen him when I turned fourteen and he and some of his friends came to my birthday party.” I slid my head to the side. I hadn’t heard this story before. She handed me a bag full of warm boxes with the logo of a laughing Buddha stenciled on the outside. Looks like the Chinese food was here!

  She continued, talking in low tones. “That dickweed comes up to me, asking me if I’d had my period yet, which was stupid, because I got my period when I was like eleven. He kept asking me if I’d been broken in or some shit like that. He was creepy as fuck, and kept following me around the entire time.”

  “What made him stop?” I asked, really interested, because as far as I knew, my cousin never took “no” as a rejection. For him, “no” meant the game was merely afoot.

  “I finally agreed to make out with him behind the tool shed.” I raise my eyebrows. This was fucking new to me. She went on, “When we got back there, leaned in toward him… and then kicked him in the cojones as hard as I could. He fell to the ground and was cussing at me. I told him if I ever decided to be with him, he’d hear a gunshot immediately thereafter, because then I’d know, I was insane and had to be put out of my misery.”

  I laughed uncontrollably as Jacob walked back up to us.

  “She telling you about the day we became friends?” he asked with a smile on his face. Jacob might be many things, but he never had a problem smiling or laughing, even if it was directed back at him. He had always been so easy going. When he wasn’t being obnoxious or miring us in undo mortification with one antic or another. Truthfully, bro, I’m proud of what you’ve made of yourself.

  “If that was the same day she kicked you in the ‘nads, then yes, that was exactly what she was telling me about,” I replied matching his grin.

  “She was just playing hard to get, the little hussy,” he countered, then he saw Katie struggling up the stairs with an extra-large pizza and a paper bag full of what had to be the pastramis, and moved passed us to give her some assistance. “Let me help you with that, sweet cheeks,” I heard him say to her.

  Ramona and I just exchanged a look of resignation.

  Over the next few minutes, we set up two card tables and placed them side-by-side, using on old blanket to cover them. Then we pulled four of the many folding chairs my parent’s kept in the attic, which was just through a small door adjacent to the bathroom. Finally, after arranging the food, we sat down to eat.

  To keep Jacob from bothering Katie, we sat with the boys on one side and the girls on the other with Ramona across from me - a socially appropriate placement. The three of us had agreed that we would have to keep up the pretense nothing had changed between us. For as long as it was possible, discovery of our “trio” was not an option.

  { ¹”Strawberries”: An urban colloquialism coined in the late twentieth century, meaning a woman who sells hersel
f for drugs (typically crack cocaine); termed thus, because of the supposed color of her overused vagina, “rubbed red like a strawberry”. }

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~♦~~~~~~~~~~~~

  ~ Chapter 18 ~

  (Summer – 2018)

  Misgivings

  We ate and talked, joked around from almost an hour. We were so stuffed by that time we could barely sit up, let alone talk. Katie and Ramona staggered over to my bed and flopped down on it heavily. I straightened up a bit, putting what we had dirtied into a large bag. I had designated it as “the trash”. Jacob strode over to the weed and picked it up, looking it over speculatively. I knew what he was thinking with no more than a glance.

  “Go ahead, take your cut,” I prompted. “There are some small Ziploc’s stashed in the right hand corner of my top drawer.”

  “Oh yeah, right beside the giant dildo you use every night,” he jibed as he went about separating his “finder’s fee” from the rest of the pot he had purchased for us.

  I was about to head over to my bed and lay down next to Ramona, when my cell phone chirped on the nightstand. This made me stop in my tracks immediately and frown. Why in the fuck is she calling me? I asked myself, having recognized the special ringtone I had designating when it was Tirza who was calling. Still a little bothered by her, so I wanted to know right away it was her on the line. Ramona rolled over on the bed. Before I could so much as take a step, she grabbed the phone and swiped at its surface in one deft move, her entire face darkening. I realized she’d seen the Caller ID and the accompanying picture. She knew it was my ex-girlfriend. Double-fuck!

  “You’ve reached Estefan’s cell, how can I help you?” she said into the handset tersely, and listened for less than a second. “Why the fuck should you care if I answer his cell phone or not. You’re out of his life, remember.”

  Everyone else in the room perked up at that. The others all turned in her direction.

  Ramona was nodding now. “Yeah, he’s here, but if you want to talk to him, you’re gonna have to tell my why first. Otherwise, I’m going to click on your ass.”

  I took a few steps toward her. Her hand flashed outward, demanding I stop where I was. If she hadn’t made such a significant sacrifice a short time ago and hadn’t shown me a whole different side of her, I would’ve ignored her gesture and snatched the phone from her. Instead, I stopped near Katie’s head and waited. I felt Katie tug on my arm, silently asking me what was going on. I just raised my eyebrows and shrugged I had no idea. Katie frowned, but continued to hold onto me.

  “You gotta be kidding me, outside, right now? Come one, Tirza, why in the hell would he want to do that in the first place? I mean, you weren’t particularly nice when you broke up with him. How do you know he’ll want to lift a finger to help you?”

  That, by itself, shook me. Tirza wanted my help? When I heard that, I knew something bad had happened. I knew Tirza. I knew her like the back of my hand. She was such a stubborn bitch, the only way she would even consider asking me for help meant, whatever the fuck was going on, it was bad - really, really bad. I gently disengaged myself from Katie and walked the rest of the way to Ramona’s side, and placed my hand out, asking for the phone. She looked at my hand and then covered the mouthpiece with her hand.

  “Steve,” she began, speaking my name in English, which wasn’t a good sign, “she is out front and wants to talk to you.”

  “In front of my house, really?” I asked incredulously.

  “Yes, and she says it’s urgent,” she replied. Then sort of let her defenses drop for as moment. I could see she was fighting an internal battle between the old and the new Ramona. I was more than a little happy that my new girlfriend won out. “She is saying her sister is missing…”

  “What!?!” I exclaimed, horrified.

  “She says she hasn’t been home for more than two days…”

  Now, I know for a fact that Ramona had given me more details, but I can honestly tell you, I never heard them. My mind just jumped back into itself recalling Lisa, Tirza’s fourteen-year-old sister. She’s a sweet, caring, little girl, who was severely autistic and had the mental capacity of a seven-year-old. I felt my heart sink to my knees. I knew, after forty-eight hours, the pliant, eager-to-please teenage girl had most likely been abducted, raped repeatedly and left for dead along some lonely road… or chopped up… placed in a trash bag and buried somewhere. I shook with fear at the grisly thoughts, pushing them from my mind, though I knew, in my heart, the chance of finding her alive was so remote, playing a craps table in Vegas had better odds. I knew in my heart that cheerful, ornery little girl was beyond our reach now. I knew in my mind, this terrible, cold world had reached out touched her. She was dead. I could feel it down deep in the pit of my stomach. I wanted to do nothing more than vomit.

  I don’t remember leaving the Loft. I don’t recall running down the flights of stairs to reach the ground floor (though both Ramona and Katie told me later I had done so). I don’t recall the warm sun on my face as I rushed through the front door of my parent’s house, rushing toward the small Honda Hybrid-electric car Tirza’s mother drove. I really couldn’t comprehend it was me that rushed around the car, coming toward Tirza’s rolled-down passenger window, seeing her eyes as wide as my own, pure dread in the very pit of her soul.

  All I do remember is seeing Lisa giggling and jumping up and down on the sidewalk in front of her house, when Tirza and I had kissed for the first time. She had been spying us the whole time. She had been so happy at her successful attempt in catching us doing the “shame, shame, shame”. I can still see her rubbing her right forefinger over her left, saying over and over, “Thame, thame, thame! Teezee kiss Effy! Thame! Thame! Thame! Day gonna make a bebe, nowhoo!” She had said the last word, “now”, like a wolf howling at the moon.

  At first, I had been embarrassed and a little more than mad. But, when I got home that night, I realized she hadn’t been making fun of us. Rather, she’d been happy for us and was celebrating a new chapter in her sister’s life. I realized then that Lisa Cardenas was a lot smarter than people were willing to accept. She had understood her older sister was growing into a whole new world and she was thankful to have witnessed it.

  Things might have withered and died between me and Tirza, but I still cared for Lisa very much. She was the sweetest, most sincere soul that I had ever met. She was always quick to laugh and joke, or give you a hug when you felt uncomfortable or uneasy. Even though, she had difficulties, she could still somehow managed to talk your ears off or spend hours showing you what she had seen on TV or read in a magazine. Whether it was a picture or a drawing, she could sit for hours and tell you about every single detail she had seen with her eyes. I had liked her. She had liked me…

  I spoke before I knew what I was saying. “Teezee, how in the hell did you guys lose sight of Lisa!?!” I remember being demanding, outrageously so. My voice so adamant, I must’ve looked like a Neanderthal to Tirza and her mom. In my mind, though, there was no time for preamble or bullshit.

  Tirza face should’ve hardened and turned to ice at the ridiculous accusation, but it didn’t. All I could see was the pain in her eyes, the strain in her small face. She looked like she’d been walking upon a tightrope for hours with no rest in sight.

  Tess Cardenas, Tirza’s mother, didn’t even turn to look in our direction. Her head appeared to have a mind of its own. She scanned the immediately area around her car. She appeared certain, at any second, Lisa was going to walk from behind some random bush or around any of the two score trees, surrounding us on either side of the street. I had seen that look on her face before, I knew it for what it was. It scared me to death. It told me all I needed to know about the severity of what had happened.

  It was a mother’s hope, the thing she would hold on until the very end, a tangible thread of optimism, beholden of strength, of fortification of the will. It would force her get up in the morning to forge on. It would be with her until she found out, one way or another. In that brief
second before Tirza answered me, I prayed that Tess would get her daughter back safe and sound. The loss of Lisa would devastate her.

  “W-we don’t k-k-know what happened, Estefan. My mom dropped her off at school, saw her walk into the yard. She thinks she even saw her teacher’s aide come up to Lisa and take her to her classroom,” she began through tears that had never stopped falling. Her face was swollen and pink, her nose was dark red, looked on the verge of severe chapping. Her hair was matted and stuck to her forehead like she had been running. She had sweated completely through it and left it to dry more than once. Tirza was one of those perfectly proportioned girls - nice, shapely breasts, rounded hips that ended in a full, firm butt. She was fit and trim, like any other athletic girl her age, except she was small, almost miniature. She was, most likely, the smallest girl that attended our school. She stood only four foot nine without shoes, barely weighting ninety pounds, and that was soaking wet. She had straight, light brown hair about a broad face (for her size, when compared to anyone else it was incredibly small). She had smooth cheeks and a squarish, though delicate chin. She had large oval, dark browns eyes, beneath thick eyebrows and a small angled nose that seemed to protrude slightly at the end where a bulbous tip formed there. When she smiled, a deep dimple appeared only on the right side of her face and enhanced her overall charm.

  She was nowhere in the mood for smiling at the moment. She sat slouched upon the bucket seat of her mother’s car, dressed in a simple blue tank top and a short jean skirt that showed her shapely legs and knees.

  Tess was no more than an inch taller than her daughter, but had the body of a middle aged woman. Her hips had broadened due to childbirth, her big tits drooping slightly, her face wide and round, though, at that moment, her puffy cheeks had shrunk to jowls that could have rivaled Winston Churchill’s¹ very own. Her dark brown hair had been dyed a lighter color and highlighted blonde on that day. She was still wearing the bright pink smock and matching polyester slacks she wore every day to the nail salon where she worked in Toluca Lake just off the 134 freeway.