Shadow Seed 1: The Misbegotten

by Richard M. Heredia

  { ¹Legos: was a popular line of construction toys manufactured by The Lego Group, based once in Billund, Denmark. The company's flagship product, Lego, consisted of colorful interlocking plastic bricks and an accompanying array of gears, mini-figures and various other parts that could be assembled and/or connected in many ways. }

  { ²“Sandra Dee”: a fictional character in the musical Grease, who was portrayed as straight-laced and naïve. }

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~♦~~~~~~~~~~~~

  ~ Chapter 40 ~

  (Summer – 2018)

  The Cockroach

  It was just after 3:45 in the morning when my mother fucking cellphone rang. By the end first shrill warble, I was thoroughly pissed off. It had been a long night, after all.

  Following Ramona’s straight forward articulation of the unease we’d all been feeling - but not voicing – over who would sleep where and with whom. And, more to quell any further misgivings Tirza may have been experiencing than anything else, it was decided, Ramona and I sleep in my bed. My cousin and Tirza would sleep in the, heretofore, unused bed my parents had provided for Katie.

  It had been an uncomfortable ten minutes following that decision. The rest of us made ready to turn in, knowing we had to get up early to make sure we hid Tirza from the rest of my family. We had a Saturday morning to contend with, which guaranteed the rest of the ensuing day would be just as long and difficult as this last one. For some reason, both my cousin and girlfriend changed from the bed clothes they’d been wearing already. Maybe they had felt they’d soiled them after the intensity of Tirza’s appearance. I couldn’t tell you for sure. Me, I was content with what I’d been wearing, so I didn’t follow suit.

  Katie had put on the pajamas she had worn the night we had fucked our brains out, which made it difficult for me to concentrate. Ramona donned a pretty, form fitting camisole and a matching pair of bikini briefs. I got an impression, the moment I saw her, why she had changed. She wanted to make a point. She was sending a silent message to my ex-girlfriend. She wasn’t going to alter an iota of her routine with me just because Tirza was present. If she wanted to wear sexy lingerie to bed, then, by God, she was going to wear them.

  Tirza had glanced briefly over at my girlfriend’s full breasts and firm, jutting butt, the edge of her mouth raised slightly. The eye on that same side of her face, squinted a fraction of an inch. It was Tirza’s unspoken way of saying, Ok girl, I get it… but you really didn’t have to go that far. It was a look I’d seen a thousand times.

  Nonetheless, that was Ramona, as subtle as a nuke shoved deep up someone’s ass. She’d even gone so far as sticking her hand down the cotton pajama bottoms I was wearing when we had settled underneath the blankets. She had gripped my cock firmly, the tips of her fingers caressing the top of my scrotum. She had leaned close and whispered in my ear, “If you want to make her jealous, now’s the perfect time…”

  I merely removed her hand, gave her a quick kiss and rolled over. I was way too overwrought to stoop to making Tirza jealous, especially after the monumental loss she had experienced earlier that night. It felt… well, it felt cruel.

  Ramona’s giggled, but stayed otherwise silent and snuggled up behind me, her body pressed against the length of mine…

  …That was no less than an hour ago, and now, my fucking cell phone was ringing!

  Since I was sleeping on the left hand side of bed, my customary side when any of my girlfriends stayed the night, I groggily slithered onto my side. I reached for my cell phone that had been charging peacefully - and fucking quietly - upon the nightstand beside the bed. Ramona’s hand fell across my bare back and thumped upon the sheets. She hadn’t so much as twitched, which was typical. She slept like the dead.

  My eyes danced over the digital display of my bedside clock.

  You gotta be kidding me! I raged. 3:45 am! The god damned world better be burning, if some motherfucker’s gonna be calling me at this hour.

  “What???” I asked, my voice dripping with accusation, and was maybe a bit petulant.

  “Hey, Eff, that you?” came the voice on the other side of the connection.

  My mouth gaped so hugely, I heard my jaw crack in my skull.

  JACOB!?! Could it be true!?!

  “Eff? Eff? Is that you?” said my dead cousin into my ear. “Oh God, please be you. Please be you…”

  “Jacob?” I squealed like a newly crowned Prom Queen.

  I felt Ramona stiffen on the bed beside me. Within seconds, she was sitting up, bouncing her ass across the blankets. She moved so close to me, I could feel a large breast pressing against my back.

  One word had awakened her, where a 7.0 earthquake couldn’t, go figure.

  “Estefan?” asked my cousin from beyond the grave.

  “Yeah, man, it’s me,” I replied, though my tone was shrill. It didn’t sound like me at all.

  “How can I be sure that it is you?” he challenged.

  What, Jacob being cautious? Now the whole world was going to explode.

  It came out of my mouth before I consciously thought what to say, “Because, you’re a deeeeck.”

  I heard a massive sigh through the cell. “Oh thank god, it is you! I was hoping the fucking NIA hadn’t snatched you up yet. It’s good to hear your voice.”

  It was one of those rare times when we thinking precisely the same thing. “It’s good to hear you too,” I mumbled barely stifling a sob, choking instead.

  My fucking cousin was alive! My numb-nutted, pain in the ass, dip-shit cousin was ALIVE!!!!!

  I couldn’t believe what was happening. “You fucken cockroach, I thought you were dead!”

  “I thought I was dead too, cuz.” His tone made me frown a little. Was he tired or trying to give the impression he was tired? I couldn’t tell which. Then: “Cockroach? Why do I have to be all that?” A small bit of his former inflection returned.

  “Yeah man, a fucken cockroach, that’s what you are,” I explained. “You could get hit by a ten megaton nuclear bomb and still walk away without a freakin’ scratch! Fuck, Jake, I really thought you were dead.” Some of the emotion I had been feeling earlier crept into my voice, and it quieted Jacob. We typically didn’t talk that way to one another.

  I listened on my end of the line, my breath ragged and harsh.

  “I’m sorry, Estefan that you had to go through all that…” His tone was small and pregnant with regret.

  I stayed quiet for almost a full minute, letting go of all the anguish and torment I had been feeling for most of the night and early morning. I wasn’t completely mad at the dude, but, maybe I was, just a little, I guess. Through no fault of his own, I assure you, but I had mourned the fucker. It had taken a lot out of me.

  “Hey Eff, you remember Aunt Irene?” he asked, the subject caught me by complete surprise.

  Aunt Irene? I hadn’t thought about her in years. She’d been gang raped and murdered by her boyfriend and his friends half a decade ago. Later, she was found stuffed in an oversized cooler under a railroad crossing somewhere in East Los Angeles. Which one, though, I don’t recall. The initial uproar had been muted within weeks by The Uncles, who – even from prison – had the ability to reach out and touch those of us in the real world. They were so good at what they do by the time the funeral was over, the entire situation had been pushed aside and forgotten. Most of the family hardly mentioned her within a year of her grisly demise.

  [He pauses the program and types the following with a vicious smile etched upon his face.]

  A quick note to the reader: If you’re ever bored and have nothing better to do and you find yourself wondering about Angel Free Town. If, for some reason, you find yourself in Preamber Park (used to called Scholl Canyon) just north of the old Pasadena cattle farm. If you happen to take the trail to its end at the waterfall two miles in and you walk behind it. You’ll be standing on the graves of the assholes that violated my Aunt centuries ago. Dig down a bit, take a souvenir – free of charge, courtesy of the Aegis Synod. ;) !


  [He restart the software, chortling to himself.]

  “Eff, you do remember her, right?” implored Jacob, made impatient by my hesitation.

  “Yeah, yeah, man, I remember. Why bring that up at a time like this?” I replied with a question of my own.

  “You remember how she was always trying to find something we’d done wrong, so she could punish us?” went on my cousin.

  The old memories were beginning to flood my mind. “Yeah…” I licked my lips still a little on edge whenever I thought of that mean old bitch. This was despite the fact, I was seventeen at the time and could’ve easily kicked the shit out of her. Some memories from early childhood just stick with you.

  “Do you remember the game we used to play, so she couldn’t figure out what we were talking about?”

  “You mean ‘the Op –‘,” I began, but Jacob cut me off.

  “Yes! That one…,” he blurted loudly. Then, he paused and seemed to take a deep breath, or maybe it was interference from a gust of wind. I couldn’t discern which. “We’re gonna play that now.”

  My brow furled. Jacob was asking if I still remembered “the Opposite Game”, a game we played years ago. We would say exactly the opposite of what we really meant, in order to fool our mean aunt. That way she’d have no clue what we were saying to one another. It had worked like a charm back then…

  …Then, it all came together.

  It made sense. I slapped my palm against my forehead at my own thick headedness.

  From behind, Ramona whispered, “What’s going on, Eff?”

  I reached behind me and gave her thigh a quick squeeze – a gesture we used between one another, signaling the other to be quiet for the moment. She sat back a little, concern clearly written on her face. Though we sat in the semi-darkness of my room, I could see her clearly. Jacob’s resurrection had heightened all of my senses it seemed.

  Jacob knew how easy it was to tap cell phone calls, and, because of that, he wanted to talk in code. This told me the NIA was still after him, probably close on his heels. But it told me something else also. He had information – intelligence vital enough for him to risk the call in the first place.

  “First off, dude, are you ok? I mean are you in a safe place?” I had to ask, I had to know he was safe for the time being.

  “Hell no!” he said at once, but he had put too much emphasis upon each word. Anyone who’d spent a significant amount of time with the kid would’ve known, he was lying. He was already playing the game. “I’m fucking stuck here at Uncle Pablo’s scared as shit, man. You know how unorganized his stupid-ass is. Even if he did believe what I’ve been telling him, he’d still be fumbling around the house, trying to figure out what the fuck to do. Instead, the fucken bastard is passed out drunk on the damned couch. Can you believe that, shit?”

  As I think about it now, all these years later, I cannot help but shake my head at Jacob’s prowess with misdirection. Even back then, when we were nothing but frightened teenagers, he was a master at it. It was a mere five sentences, spoken to me in the middle of that night, during the summer of 2018. Five sentences, and yet they spoke volumes to anyone who’d grown up in our misbegotten family.

  First of all, Jacob wasn’t scared, not in the least. Second, Uncle Pablo was dead and had been so for a decade and a half. He’d been killed in prison because he’d had a big mouth that needed to be shut. At least, that’s what was told to us kids whenever one of us got the courage to ask about the disappearance of our wild, skinny uncle, who seemed perpetually drunk, but always had a smile for each and every one of us. This told me, Jacob was somewhere safe, possibly even secure. The fact he’d mentioned something about disorganization and sloth, gave over to a third line of thought. He was somewhere where shit was tight, where things were happening. I might’ve been left guessing, if he hadn’t mentioned something about “not being believed”. By the rule of our childhood game, I knew his story had been taken seriously, as the truth. When I put that together with the other things he’d said in code - efficiency, action and security - I knew exactly where he was holed up.

  He was with The Uncles – Juan and Roberto Marquez. They had both been paroled in 2008 when the “so-called” housing crisis had crippled the economy and the federal government could no longer fully fund the vast prison system. They had released many career felons back into society. How a twice convicted, drug-trafficker and rapist (Uncle Juan) and a self-confessed murderer (Uncle Roberto) managed to eke their way out of jail, none of us ever knew. From what was said in the streets way back then, the two of them had always been connected and that was enough. If that were to be believed, then the prospect of two career criminals, beating the broken system that existed back then, didn’t sound all that farfetched. Actually, it seemed more typical to me than anything else.

  Thus, I sat there on my bed with my girlfriend, who was anxiously awaiting some sort of news. I let it all sink in, and for the first time in days, I began to see a light at the end of the tunnel. It might be a small light, but it was illuminant nonetheless.

  “What’da’ya think you’ll do?” I asked just to keep the conversation flowing, so that any unwarranted ears wouldn’t suspect. We didn’t want to give the impression we meant anything else. Those spying ears needed to take what we were saying at face value.

  “I have no choice, Eff. I have to leave and ride things out someplace else. You know Uncle Pablo, he won’t do shit. I’m fucked one way or another with these fucking NIA assholes crawling up my bunghole.”

  Which meant – he was going to stay put, our uncles were up to something and that, for the time being, he had shaken free of the government Shock Troopers.

  “I don’t think I’ll be able to see you anytime soon,” he went on as I continued to translate. What he really meant in my head. “So, if anything happens, you’re most likely on your own for now, Estefan.”

  Translation: “See you soon and we’re going to have help – a lot of it.”

  “Are things still bad on the streets?” I asked, trying to get a feel for what he knew, since I had been cooped up in my house for the past few days.

  “Naw.”

  This was an emphatic “yes”.

  “How’s the neighborhood holding up?” I continued.

  “It’s pretty good, now that you mention it. Everyone seems to have weathered this sporadic, ill-planned storm without much loss.”

  I felt my eyes roll back in my head as the true import of his words was realized across my consciousness. The raid by the NIA had been horrific, systematic, and left many dead in its wake. I wondered just how many had died just because something, from the heavens, had fallen upon them and changed them forever more. They had no choice in the matter, something they couldn’t taste or smell, entirely invisible to them, was changing them. True, they would transform into beings unlike any other to walk the earth, but fuck, did they deserve to die? Did I or Katie or Ramona deserve to be slaughtered?

  “I think I’m going to go now, Eff. I have a lot of things I still have to figure out. I will try and contact you in a few weeks,” muttered my cousin. Like I said, he was a master at disguising the fact he was lying through his teeth. He’d just told me a plan was already in place and he would be getting back to me soon. Maybe The Uncles had a way to get all of us out of Dodge and somewhere safe, before we ended shot through the head. Maybe… it was a faint hope, but it was something. It was a hell of a lot more than I had when I’d fallen asleep an hour earlier.

  “Ok, Jake… good luck,” was all I could think of to say.

  “Thanks, cuz, I’m going to need every last bit of it.” He even sounded on edge, just that tab bit frightened, giving total credence to what he was saying. The opposite, of course, meant he was confident with what was going on - whatever it was. He was trying to placate my nerves.

  He cut the line. My cell phone went dead in my ear. My cousin Jacob was alive and quite well, or so it would seem.

  I took the smart device from my head and gla
nced over at Ramona. I was startled to see both Katie and Tirza sitting on the bed beyond my girlfriend. All three of them gazed through the semi-darkness with hope and anxiety mixing their expressions.

  “Well?” prompted Ramona, seeing my surprise over the presence of the other girls. She couldn’t wait any longer. She wanted an explanation of the phone call.

  I let my eyes meet hers and couldn’t help the smile. I felt it spread across my face, broad and boyish with glee. “Jacob’s alive!” I said as quiet as I could manage, though I wanted to exclaim into the night. Even then, my voice was somewhat loud in the confines of the Loft.

  “You are shitting me?” asked Katie over Ramona’s shoulder.

  I just smiled like a clown, my head on a swivel – the ubiquitous negative.

  Tirza’s eyes never left my face. From across the bed, I could tell she was glad for me.

  Ramona leaned back, using one arm to support her. “Leave it to, Jacob, to get out of the shit without a single skidmark on his tighty-whiteys,” she murmured, shaking her head not unlike I’d just done a few minutes before.

  “He got away… even after being shot at like a thousand times, the motherfucken cockroach got away,” I repeated, still amazed by my cousins ability to worm his way out of seemingly hopeless situations.

  All three of the girls chuckled quietly.

  “Did he say anything else?” wondered Katie aloud, crawling across the bed on all fours, coming closer to me and my girlfriend.

  Tirza stayed where she was. She gathered her legs underneath her, sitting cross-legged at the edge of the foot of the bed, her hands in her lap, fingers twiddling.

  “Yeah, he did,” I began, and then explained the details of our childhood game. “So, by sticking the rules of the game, Jacob was able to tell me in code, he was safe. He was with our uncles Juan and Roberto, and they are working on a plan that might be able to help us all. And, that’s the most important thing of all.”