“Where were you before this?” the older son asks. He’s tall, muscled, with ringlets of thick dark hair hanging above his blue eyes. Dee, who’s about his age, keeps staring at him. I can’t blame her—the guy looks like Adonis.
“Another bunker,” I say. “Nothing like this, though. Our water supply was compromised, so we left.”
“Your bunker?”
Dee shakes her head. “No. A friend’s. Ticklers got him.”
“I’m sorry,” the father says. “Same thing happened to my wife—to their mother—when they first showed up. Happened to every woman we knew.” He narrows his eyes at Dee. “Why didn’t it happen to you?”
“I was careful.” “So was my wife.”
Dee shrugs. “I’m sorry. Truth is, I don’t know why I’m less susceptible than other women.” She elbows me. “Maybe because I’m the man in our relationship.”
The men laugh. I don’t. Adonis, whose eyes keep darting to my wife’s breasts, finds it particularly funny.
Dee slaps my leg. “Lighten up, Jimmy. Just a joke.”
Adonis looks to his father. “Can we celebrate with a bit of wine?”
“Fine idea. Get the 2009 Zin.”
Dee chuckles. “Seriously, wine? What else do you have, steak and caviar?”
“Lobster, too,” Adonis says. “Freeze-dried, of course, but still excellent when rehydrated.” He turns to his father. “Can we bend our rations a bit today?”
“For guests, of course.”
Adonis strides from the room.
“What do you know about the ticklers?” I ask the father when Adonis returns with caviar and wine, which he pours to the brim of everyone’s glasses.
The father empties half his glass in a single pull, smacks his lips. “Doubt anyone knows much—they sprang up too fast. But one rumor is that the spores were dormant in permafrost, then emerged as it thawed.”
“I’d heard that, but don’t you think we’d have found evidence in the fossil record? I don’t know, maybe like T. rexes with plants growing out their asses?”
“We’ve talked about this,” Dee cuts in, a bit impatiently. “Less than one in ten thousand species even makes it into the fossil record. And plants don’t preserve well.”
“Father,” Adonis says, holding up his empty glass. “Can I get another bottle?”
The man nods.
“They could have been helped along, too,” the younger son says.
“How do you mean?”
“I mean they could have been made in a lab. Father says it wouldn’t be the first time.”
The dad nods, stroking his beard. “Like HIV.”
I feel my eyebrows climbing against my effort to keep a straight face.
The father notices. “You don’t believe me? AIDS was Big Pharma’s dream business model. Lifelong, dependent customers.”
“Well I’m not sure killing 99.9% of your customers is such a good business plan.”
His eyes flash as he leans forward. “I didn’t say this was Big Pharma. Could’ve been military, too. If they could orchestrate 9/11, you can’t put this past them.”
I close my eyes, try to be a polite guest and say nothing at this fucking idiocy, but the wine’s in my head and Adonis is back in the room staring at my wife’s breasts. “What’s next, we faked the moon landings?”
“There are some things that don’t add up,” Adonis says. His frown melts into that million-dollar smile. “But really, we shouldn’t argue with guests. Why don’t we play a game?”
“Good idea,” I say, exhaling a breath I didn’t know I was holding. “What’d you have in mind?”
“You guys like cards?”
“Sure. What’s the game?”
Adonis looks my wife up and down. “Strip poker.”
“I’m not sure that’s an appropriate joke,” I say after a moment. Adonis links his fingers behind his head, leans back in his chair, smiles. “Who said I was joking?”
“What is this, high school?”
“No,” the father cuts in. “This is our home. And the game is house’s choice.”
“Dee, I think it’s time to go.”
She locks eyes with Adonis. “What are the stakes?”
“Dee, this is weird! Let’s get out of here.”
The father furrows his brow. “Don’t be a poor guest. We opened our home to you. Just oblige us with a little entertainment.”
“Yes, thank you for the food, but we’re going.” I stand up. “Now, Dee.”
“You two on a team,” the father presses, gesturing for me to sit down. “If you get us naked, you can leave.”
“I don’t care to see any of you naked. We’re leaving.”
“What if we lose?” Dee asks.
“Your husband leaves, and you stay with us.”
I grab Dee’s arm. “Let’s go!”
She shrugs me off.
“Dee? What…”
She bites her lip and peers at Adonis.
He winks at her, turns to me. “She can’t help it,” he says, a stupid fucking grin on his pretty-boy face. “It’s only natural for a woman to want a strong man. A man who can provide. And who can provide better than us? Certainly not someone who can’t even keep his water clean.”
My jaw clenched tight, I grab Dee by the arm and pull her from her chair.
From the corner of my eye I see a blur of speed from the father. When I look over, I’m staring down the barrel of his pistol. “Sit the fuck down and play.”
I swallow and sit, so wired I barely feel the magma flaring in my ass.
“Can I get another bottle of wine?” Adonis asks, pointing at the empty glasses.
“We’re past our ration,” the father says. He waves his pistol at me. “But anything to calm this little meerkat.”
“What would the lady like?” Adonis asks.
“Can I see what you have?”
“Of course. Come with me.” He takes Dee by the arm and leads her away as the young son fetches the deck.
I want a clear head for the game, but I’m so on edge that when Dee and Adonis come back and pour wine, I empty my glass in one draught.
“House game is heads-up Texas Hold ’Em,” Adonis says. He pulls off his shirt, throws it on the table. “Blinds are one article of clothing posted prior to each hand.” His muscled chest is hairless. A dog tag necklace hangs just above his washboard abs. His brother and father remove their shirts. Dee swallows a mouthful of wine and starts taking off hers.
“Dee! It’s any article of clothing—you can start with a shoe!” She rolls her eyes and puts her boot on the table next to mine.
I draw high card. My deal. I shuffle and give two cards to the men, face-down, and two to us, then take a look at our hole cards. Queen, 9.
“We check,” Adonis says.
“I bet two more articles.”
The father grins. “Ah, the little meerkat’s gonna make it interesting!”
“We call,” Adonis says, starting to slur his words as he tops off everyone’s glasses. The men all take off their boots. Dee and I remove our remaining boots, plus one sock for me. Dee, who doesn’t wear any, puts her necklace on the table.
I flop three community cards: 9, Ace, 6.
“We check,” Adonis says, staring at Dee with a feral glint in his eyes.
“I bet three articles.”
“Oh this is so exciting!” Adonis says, clapping his hands. “We call!”
The men take off their socks and pants so they’re just sitting in their underwear. Except for Adonis, who evidently goes commando and judging from the grin on his face as he leans back and spreads his legs, thinks it’s the funniest thing in the world. I avert my eyes, but even from the corner of my vision it looks like a baby’s arm reaching over the edge of his chair. Dee pulls off her bracelet, shirt, and pants, then stares at Adonis’s member as he ogles her breasts.
“Dee, what the fuck?”
She looks away, but doesn’t say anything. I remove clothing until I’m just
in my underwear. Dee wears a silver Claddagh ring with a huge diamond, the band I gave her when I asked her to marry me. Aside from the ring, just a lacy black bra with matching panties. My favorites.
I flip the turn card. 4.
“We check,” Adonis says.
I’ve got no idea what they have, so I check and flip the final community card. Jack.
The father takes another peek at their cards. “What do you think, boys, we’re in this far, should we go balls deep?”
Adonis grins. “We’re all in.”
I stare at the cards on the table: 9, Ace, 6, 4, Jack. We’ve got a pair of nines.
“Can I get another bottle?” Dee asks, looking at me. “It’ll help with his paralysis by analysis.”
The men laugh.
I turn to my wife. “Why are you doing this, Dee? What is it, his fucking shredded abs? This isn’t you!”
She ignores me and sashays to the wine room with the younger brother, swaying her hips for Adonis and his father, their eyes glued to her panties.
“You man enough to call?” Adonis slurs.
Dee comes back in with his younger brother, pours wine. The men drink and watch me mull the probabilities.
I meet Adonis’s smirking gaze. “Yeah, I call.” I flip our cards.
The men stare at the board, expressionless. Adonis flips one of their hole cards. Six. I shift in my chair. Our nines still win.
He flips the other. Ace of diamonds.
I jump out of my chair. “Bullshit! Why didn’t you bet at the start if you had an Ace!”
The father levels his pistol at my face. “It’s called slow play, little meerkat. Now a bet is a bet. Both of you, please make good.”
Dee unclasps her bra, holds it between her fingers for a moment, lets it drop to her feet. When she steps out of her panties, Adonis licks his lips like a fucking snake.
“This is horseshit!”
“Sons, please help the man pay his debt.”
They leap from their chairs, slam me into the wall, and then they’re on top of me. Adonis pins me down, his cartoon dick flopping over my face while his younger brother tears my boxers past my kicking feet.
“That’s the weapon you were talking about? It’s a pea-shooter!”
The men laugh as they drag me up the stairs.
I look down at Dee just before they pull me through the hatch. “Are you fucking serious, Dee? After all we’ve been through, you’re going to let them do this?”
“A bet is a bet,” the father says.
Dee grabs his forearm. “He didn’t bet his life, though. At least give him back his suit.”
The father strokes his beard, narrows his eyes at me. “That is true. You’ll get your suit. But if you ever come back here, it’ll be the last thing you do.”
Dee stays behind as the brothers drag me, kicking and screaming, up to the first floor. When they throw my hazmat suit at me, I’m smart enough to stop struggling and don it before they shove me out the blast door and onto their manicured fucking lawn.
I run down the street, waving goodbye with one finger. Each step feels like a lightning bolt striking up my ass. When I’m out of sight I loop back around and sit in the bushes across the street. The imprint from where Dee and I sat together in the weeds is still there.
When Dee walks out the blast door two days later, I sprint to the porch and throw my arms around her. We go back inside, through the sterilization chamber, and down the stairs. The younger brother is dead, Adonis and the father not far behind. All three are naked.
Ticklers sprout from the father’s cock like the fronds atop a palm tree. I stand above him, grasp the plants, and pull. They don’t break free, but I do draw some pathetic whimpers from the bastard. “These things root so fast!”
He struggles weakly. I slap his hands away, step on his stomach, pull harder. The ticklers break free by tearing his dick in half lengthwise. “Haha! Splitcock! I saw that at Burning Man!” Blood spurts through his fingers as he clutches his double dick in a futile attempt to slow the last bit of life flowing out of him. I hop over his pooling blood and make my way to Dee, squatting beneath the table. “You’re going to love this,” she says over the father’s dying sobs.
I crouch beside her to see face cards of each suit taped beneath the table where Adonis sat.
I shake my head, stride over to the pretty boy. A tickler sprouts from his ridiculous pecker. “Don’t be silly, wrap your willy! That’s what I do. And never, ever go for open mouth kisses.” I wink. “You never know what someone might be carrying!”
He blinks in pain, his breath coming in wheezes around the little jungle growing from his mouth. I sit on his chest, flick the ticklers, and whisper in his ear, “Are these from making out with my little Typhoid Mary, or did you go in for the clam dinner?” He whines like a sick puppy. “You’re a dirty boy, Adonis. But look, you have a pipe cleaner in your throat! Let’s see if this helps.”
I place one foot across his neck, grab the plants in his mouth, and pull. The ticklers tear free with a pop, followed by gurgling screams and bloody vomit.
“Yuck.” I toss the plants to the floor. “How was the safe room?” I ask Dee over Adonis’s wet wails.
“Bulletproof.” She nods to the steel floor door, now pocked with indentations.
Dee and I carry the men outside, one by one, and dump them in an overgrown yard down the street to fertilize the weeds beside a rotting Chihuahua. I think. Could have been a terrier. Hard to tell at this point.
We walk home hand-in-hand, and pause on our manicured lawn. “They weren’t such bad hosts after all,” I say, looking up at our new fortress.
Dee puts her arm around me, rests her head on my shoulder. “Best place we’ve found yet.”
I squeeze my wife tight to my side. “Yeah. It’ll be nice to finally put down some roots.”
When not writing on dead trees, Christoph Weber works with live ones, as a certified climbing arborist. Before that he was a firefighter on US federal hotshot crews, and before that, an interpreter in China. “Taking Root” was his recurring nightmare. Now, it’s yours.
A winner of the 2016 Writers of the Future Award, Christoph’s work has appeared in Nature, Poetry Quarterly, and other venues. He’s now finishing The Hangman, his novel about a bee-less future in which de-extincted Neanderthals are enslaved to pollinate crops for modern humans. Though this arrangement may be reversed, if one clever Neanderthal has his way...
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THE BLISS POINT by Wrath James White
WRATH JAMES WHITE
“Some of you are not going to like what I have to say.” James paced back and forth behind the pulpit, possessed by an abundance of energy and enthusiasm, a religious fervor that filled his eyes with fire and his every motion with manic vitality. He was filled with the spirit, the Holy Spirit.
“You’ll call me a blasphemer, a pervert. Say I am promoting sin. And I agree with you on the latter. I am promoting sin. Sin for the glory of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ! But I cannot agree with you on the former. I am no pervert. Obeying our natural instincts and desires is not perversion. But denying them... that is the perversion.”
There were stifled gasps from the newcomers in the crowd. First- timers found their way to the small but enthusiast church for all reasons. Topping most lists was Reverend Doctor James Watson’s acceptance of those who felt unwelcomed and didn’t fit in traditional church settings. Those with alternative lifestyles, homosexuals, the promiscuous, those who questioned, and those who didn’t believe in turning the other cheek.
Today, there were quite a few new faces. James recognized less than half the congregation, but he knew better than to be overly optimistic. Few of them would remain for the entire sermon. Not when they found out the true message of his religion. As a psychologist specializing in alternative sexuality, James spent years counseling men and women wrac
ked with guilt over how they were wired, battling desperately to change, to conform to what the world considered normal. Homosexuals trying to turn straight. Sadists and masochists struggling to live vanilla lives. Transvestites and transexuals, adult babies, human puppies and kittens, every deviation imaginable from what religion and society had arbitrarily judged normal. Many of them had been shunned by their families and churches, and wanted desperately to find a place where they could be accepted, so James had given them that. He had opened his home to them and welcomed them in.
When word of his doctrine of acceptance spread, his study group quickly outgrew his one bedroom apartment. So, he’d rented space in what was a swinger’s club in the evenings, and, with the help of a couple dozen volunteers, he’d transformed it into a real church by day. And it was no accident that the church was built in a sex club. Many of his congregants were swingers who’d stumbled in surprised to find it open during the day, expecting an orgy, and then stayed for the sermon, enthralled by James’s words of salvation—just as he had hoped. Now, they returned every Sunday. They weren’t the ones who stormed out of his little parish, accusing him of heresy. It was the walk-ins, spill-over from other congregations in the neighborhood who came in without a clue. He had learned long ago to use their outrage as a teaching moment for his flock.
James held up the Bible, closing his eyes and bowing his head as he continued. “I know my words contradict everything you’ve learned in church, but it isn’t counter to this book.” He knocked on the Bible with his free hand. “It is all in line with Jesus’s teachings. That’s right. You have been told to avoid sin, to deny your animal instincts, the very urges and impulses authored by the creator. But I say that you know the creator by his creations, by his works. And when you look at those animals so programmed that they cannot disobey their instincts, what do you see?”
His regulars smiled knowingly. One of them called out: “Sin!”
James grinned and pointed to the voluptuous middle aged woman in the front wearing a dress through which her black lace panties, bra, and garter were visible.
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