Shadow Seed 1: The Misbegotten (15 page)

Instead, she shook her head and met my eyes across the five feet or so that separated.  “I’ve never cried in front of you, Eff, you’ll think I’m weak or something.”

I was shocked.  “What are you talking about?”

“You and I have always been tough on each other, brutally truthful, never holding back any punches, trying to make the other understand the real world and how it worked.  I don’t think I could handle you telling me how stupid I was for getting into that stolen car with a bunch of losers.  I couldn’t bear hearing how much of a whore I am for getting myself really, really stoned and waking up sticky from sex and not remembering what happened.”  I blinked.  She went on, “I can’t take that right now.  I can’t, because I have become such a waste of blood and bones.  I couldn’t stand you thinking I was a bad person.”  It had come out in a rush.  She looked like a deflating balloon with every word escaping her haunted lips.  Her eyes seemed wild and the tears threatened again.  Her face flushed and she took a shuddering breath to calm herself, and only barely succeeded.

I have to admit, I was a little unprepared for the whole “sticky sex” part, but I set that aside, forcing my mind elsewhere.  This was Katie here, before me, the girl that always challenged me and made me see things I never would’ve noticed on my own.  It didn’t matter that she was a year younger and lived in a backwater state.  She knew more of the world and how it worked, and knew exactly how dangerous a place it could be.  She deserved more out of life than was given to her.  She didn’t deserve her fucked up father and mother that was for sure.  She was Katie, the girl who always had me guessing, never quite sure if she was going to scowl and cuss or smile and flirt.  She had seen twice as much as I had and she was only sixteen years old! 

“Since when have I
ever
passed judgment on you, Kat?  That’s not how we are, you know that.  We’re both fuck-ups.  We do stupid shit all the time.  We take risks and live closer to the edge.  So, of course, when we make a mistake it is going to pale in comparison to the next guy or girl, right?  I mean a straight-A student ditching class and taking the risk of getting a “B” is a big deal to that person.  Whereas, you and I wouldn’t even consider it a risk to begin with - it’s below our radar.

“So what, you ran away from home, you got in a stolen car and the cops, I don’t know, scared you guys and drove you off the road, but it all started with one thing.  That
one
thing set you off and you had to get away, no matter the cost.  That’s what drove the events that happened later.  Just focus on the one thing that drove you, made you react.  That’s the real problem, that’s the real thing you have to deal with, to think about.  All the other shit is just bullshit.  So don’t think about it, it’s not important!”  I moved closer to her and knelt on the floor before her.  “Those other things don’t mean shit, Katie, just learn from what you did and move on.  What else are you going to do?  Waste your time mulling over stupid shit, trying to undo what can’t be undone?  Don’t waste your time.”

She had smiled and let one tear fall from her left eye.  I remember which one because that is the one that usually tears up the fastest when she has cried in front of m
e after that day in 2018.  I didn’t know that then, but the intensity of the moment has sort of burned the image in my brain.  I can see it fall from the rim of her eyelid, cascading slowly down her cheek, to fall free and moisten her dress below.

Just like it was yesterday…

[He is glad.  The program is working flawlessly.]

She and I must
’ve breathed a few times, though, I don’t recall doing so.  Then, she suddenly reached out and rubbed my bald head, squeezing it a few times before she let her hand fall to my shoulder, her fingers scratching ever so slightly at the back of my ear.  It was as though a slew of feeling passed between us.  In a heartbeat, there had been no passage of time since we’d last seen each other.  There was no longer some vast distance between us.  In that moment, our knowing of one another rebooted and our knowledge of one another became complete.

“I was so glad my mother decided I should stay here for a while
, instead of hauling my ass back to Oklahoma.  Now, I know why.  Even when Chad had asked me where I wanted to go and I told him that I wanted to see the ocean.  Deep, deep down inside, I meant I wanted to see you.  Though I didn’t know it at the time, I know it now.  You are my ocean, Estefan - where I can hide all of the horrible things I’ve done.  You stow them away for me and keep them hidden from the rest of the world.  I am so lucky to have someone like you in my life, even though we live far away from each other.  We don’t text or Facebook, or call one another, like we did in the old days.  Still, I know, I can count on you and you will be on my side.  Even if, I’m dead wrong, like I was in this case, you will still defend me.  You consistently show me there’s still honor in the world, even now, even when this world of ours is about to fall apart.”  She sighed hugely, but it was one of fatigue and didn’t harbor any self-loathing or any other negative connotation for that matter.

I
’d looked up at her, directly into those hazel eyes, and saw again how she looked haggard, pinched by exhaustion.  “You need some rest before we eat dinner,” I mentioned, watching as her shoulders slumped.  She let her spine curve, letting her body go completely limp.

“Yeah,” was all she said.

“You wanna nap here or over there in your new bed?  It’s entirely new, you know, my mom bought you some new sheets and a whole new comforter set,” I explained, glancing over at the floral blankets my mother had purchased for the girl.

She never even looked at the other bed.  “Here, where I can smell you,” she replied as she scooted herself further onto the bed, grabbed one of my pillows and turned on her side still watching me through a squint.

“You want me to read to you?  You know how that always makes you go to sleep in like ten minutes,” I offered, knowing, for some reason, the monotonous tones of someone reading aloud always drove her to her dreams faster than any pill or quantity of liquor. 

“That would be perfect,” she mumbled, unmoving.

I stood up and retrieved the school shit I had strewn about the floor.  I placed it all on my desk, and then pulled the book I was reading from my backpack.  I turned back toward the bed, book in hand. I stopped in my tracks.

Katie had fallen into the sleep of the dead.

~~~~~~~~~~~~♦~~~~~~~~~~~~

(Summer – 2018)

Gaining a Ward

             
It was much later that evening, after dinner, after we all helped my mother clean up the kitchen that events from all around the world washed over us.  We were all sitting before the 52-inch plasma, watching the latest news as it flashed on screen from both the Intra-national and North American news networks.  We listened, once again, of the growing threat of the strange sickness now befalling thousands in nearly every country on earth.  It was a sickness that killed some and grossly deformed others.  At the same time, with yet another group – those multitudes with a specific genetic marker – it was changing them – mutating them into something else.  They were emerging from this illness greatly altered, forever different among humanity.  They – these mutated – wielded abilities beyond anyone’s wildest imagination.

What this alteration (or change) was specifically, the heads of the over-arching NIA governing body
of governments weren’t saying.  There was only one message they wanted to make sure all of its’ representative citizens understood.  They were making damn certain we knew
and believed
that this third group, this changed group, was dangerous.  This third group had to be quarantined from the rest of the populace upon detection, with immediate and forced segregation, otherwise we were all doomed…

That was the message, in a nutshell, blaring over and over.  We all heard
it the first night Katie stayed with us.  Hour after hour, until my step-father had finally stood and said it reminded him of old Germany during the second Great War, where resentment had led to suspicion and suspicion to prejudice and prejudice to genocide.  Decades later, before anyone realized what had happened, six million innocents lay murdered in ovens or gassed en masse in vast death chambers.  More were worked to death or merely left to starve.  He had ranted and raved the world, even with so much progress, was heading down the same path.  He told us then, the unifying government of the Northern Alliance was just using this as an excuse.  He said, they were ignorant and cowards, and would do anything to safe guard their power.  He espoused prophetically that the Northern Intercontinental Alliance would be the downfall of the United States as we knew it.  He said way back then, this would be the undoing of the old world and the harbinger of a new, even more dangerous one.  In the end, we would all suffer.

I wish I knew back then, sitting next to Katie and my mother, how right he had been…

Instead, though, I shook my head at him with a smile on my face, glancing over at Katie who was sitting next to me, staring at my father as if he were a lunatic.  Her expression made my smile broaden, because I knew, in her parents’ household, no one spoke of worldly issues.  Seeing my step-father stand before his overstuffed chair exclaiming this and that about the world, must’ve been so foreign to her, there was ample reason to believe it probably struck her dumb.

On the other hand, I wish I had known then he was correct, irrevocably right.  I wish I had known what we were watching this night were the vestiges of things to come, of gripping fear, of paralyzing self-righteousness and indifference.  It would lead, as my step-father had said, to genocide, but sort unseen before.  For the first time in human history,
the issue didn’t involve religion or race or creed, even ethnic background, for that matter.  No, this would be the wholesale slaughter of every man, woman and child who, by chance, developed a mutated string in their genetic code.  This was a war on DNA and it was about to be waged across the globe.  It was a war that would gravely injure my family and many, many people I loved dearly; people I would avenge in the most gruesome of ways, methods that were unholy as some would say.

{He feels the need to make a point.]

I mentioned this before, and I don’t mean to come across as redundant, but I’m not a good person; it is my contention now, you are beginning to understand the truth of this statement in regards to me.  There is still time to recuse yourself from my madness.  All you need do, my reader, is stop reading…  If not, you can’t say I didn’t warn you.

[His sentiment made, he continues.]

So it was, that night, after the news ended and the late night shows began, Katie stood up.  She stretched and stated that she was tired.  She walked over to my mother and gave her a tight hug, reiterating her thanks and appreciation for allowing her to stay for the summer.  There was true gratitude in her whispered tones.

My mother just held the girls cheeks with both hands and told her she was always welcome in our home.  My gracious mommy even told her she loved her like a daughter.  Katie’s eyes had misted over at that.

My father took it upon himself to move over to them and embraced Katie a few second later, telling her much the same.  She dipped her head and thanked him too.  Then, she made for the stairs.

It was a school night, so all of my other brother and sisters were already asleep in their beds.  It was only the four of us
still awake at the time.  For me, I typically stayed awake with my parents until just after midnight and then stumbled off to be myself.  So, I really had no intention of leaving the TV at the moment.  But, when I glanced in the direction Katie had gone, I was surprised to find she hadn’t gone up the stairs like I had initially thought.  In fact, she had stopped a few steps above the landing where the stairs began.  She was just out of sight from my parents, and was motioning for me to follow her.

I made to get up, but then she put her finger to her lips and waved me off with her other hand.  I stopped.  I immediately understood what she wanted to do.  She wanted me to come up after her, only not now.  She wanted me to follow her in a few minutes.  That way my parents wouldn’t
suspect I was actually following her.  This told me two things simultaneously.  One, she had no intention of sleeping just yet and two; there was something else she wanted to do or say.  Like always, when she did things like this and became all mysterious - I got excited.

I winked and nodded imperceptively at her.

She resumed her trek up the two flights of stairs to the Loft.  The pads of her bare feet quietly thudded against the hard wood of the stairs as she went.  I waited through two more segments of the show we were watching to pass.  Then, I leaned over to my mother, told her I was tired and was going to call it a night.  I gave her a quick peck on the cheek.

She glanced down at me and whispered, because my father was engrossed in the show, “Goodnight, I love you.”

I stood and waved my hands at my father.  “Dad, I’m out, see you tomorrow.” 

He waved back without taking his eyes from the TV.  Then, as an afterthought, “Hey, kid, is it ok if you miss school tomorrow?”

Flabbergasted by the question, I looked at my mother for more of an explanation, who was gazing back at me.

“We don’t think Katie should be by herself tomorrow,” she said, picking up where my step-father had left off.  “Since it’s already the end of the school year and tomorrow is your last full day, we felt you should stay here with her and… well, make sure she stays out of trouble.  You can take her with you to school the following day, which is a minimum day
, if I recall correctly.”  I nodded, my mother continued, “From then on, it’s summer vacation, so her being alone won’t that much of a problem.  Is that ok with you, Effy?  Do you understand?”

I was a little perturbed by the suggestion, because I was looking forward to spending a full day of bullshit time with
my girlfriend, my friends and my cousin, but the thought of having Katie to myself for the day kinda grew on me the longer I thought about it.  After a short spell, I nodded.  “Yeah, that’ll be fine, I guess.”

“Good, so that’s settled,” said my father with his ringing intonation of finality and turned back toward the TV.

“We’ll let you two sleep in, ok?  I’m going to leave some money on the counter, so you can order take-out or something like that, sound good?”  My mother was patting my forearm, her way of telling me to pay attention.  “Just keep her around the house, at least for tomorrow, so she can get her feet on some solid ground.  She needs to catch her breath and get centered and do… all the other good shit they say nowadays.  Do you think you can manage that?”  She gave me one of her sardonic smiles.

I returned it.  “Not a problem.”

“Good, well good night, then,” she added, and then moved closer to my father, who had dropped on the couch.  She snuggled against the side of him and began watching TV with her head resting upon his shoulder.

I shrugged my shoulders and made for the stairs.

When I reached the Loft, I really didn’t know what to expect, since I had spent a little longer with my parents than I had anticipated.  Katie had only the small table lamp on, the one next to my bed on the nightstand.  She had changed into her pajama’s, a cotton top, colored light blue with buttons up the front and a matching pair of comfy looking, baggy shorts.  She was propped up against the headboard of the bed, looking through magazine she must’ve brought with her on her little foray into the wrong side of the law.  Her Galaxy VII cell was next her on the bed.  She had opened the windows wide to let in the warm summer breeze.  It made her shoulder length hair play lazily about her head every time it flowed into the large room.

She looked up at me, over the edge of her magazine, her gaze direct.  “Took you long enough,” she bitched.

Good to know at least some of the old Katie had returned.

“Ah, I had to work out some logistics involving you with my parents.  That delayed me a few minutes, so blow it out your ass, little miss impatient,” I countered as I walked to my dresser and began rummaging for something to sleep in.

“Logistics?  What do you mean?” asked Katie, putting down the magazine and picking up her cell, which she promptly began tapping.

“It seems as though you and I are going to have the entire day together tomorrow at the request of my parents,” I replied as I settled on some loose shorts and a wife-beater.  I closed the drawer with my ass when I was done.

“You’re not going to school tomorrow?” she inquired still focused on her phone.

“No, I am to stay here with you and hold the fort.”

She snorted derisively.  “More like keep me prisoner,” she mouthed around a sneer.

I never said Katie was stupid.

“Yeah, well, at least for a day until you ‘get your feet on solid ground’ or some shit like that.”  I smiled.  “Then the day after tomorrow, I’m to take you to school with me, and introduce you to all my friends,” my tone was dripping with sarcasm.  I walked into the bathroom built directly opposite the door leading into the Loft.  It was placed directly in between our two sleeping areas, giving some degree of separation to the two sides.

I began to change my clothes.  Katie didn
’t respond, so I continued on in silence, thinking she was still busy with her phone.

“So, what are we going to do tomorrow?” she asked suddenly, but not from
the bed like I expected, rather from the doorway to the bathroom itself.

I nearly jumped a mile into the air.  I was barely pulling up my shorts, fully aware that she had been looking at my ass before she had said anything.  “Jeez, Kat, you scared the shit out of me!”

“Why, because I caught you with your tight, little butt hanging out?” came her coy question.

Oh yeah, Katie was quickly recovering from her ordeal.

“No, because I didn’t expect you to suddenly turn into a Peeping Tom or a Peeping… Oh, whatever the fuck you call the female version of the same thing!”  I tried to keep the exasperation out of my voice, but failed.

“Ah, just admit it, you
’re embarrassed, get it em-bare-assed,” she retorted, making fun of me, laughing.  “Besides, you shouldn’t have left the door halfway open.” Her challenging tone was back as well.

“Well, then, next time you walk into the bathroom and we’re having a conversation, and you leave the door half way open
, so you can hear, I will walk in on you and stare at your ass for a few seconds before I say anything.”

There take that!

“Be careful, Eff, you might like what you see…,” she trailed off and left the threshold of the bathroom.

I must’ve looked like an idiot, standing there with my mouth hanging open like a retard. 
Bitch!

I emerged from the bathroom to find her talking on her phone, and felt my ire creep up a few notches. 
What the fuck, I thought she wanted to talk or something?
  Unsure of what to do, I lounged on my bed, listening to her soft voice, speaking in low, measure tones.  I let the length of the day seep into me, slowed my breathing, deciding to wait and see what she wanted to do after she got off the phone.

Had she really leaned forward to taste my cock?
  I closed my eyes and dreamt how it would’ve felt.

~~~~~~~~~~~~♦~~~~~~~~~~~~