Shadow Seed 1: The Misbegotten (69 page)

(Summer – 2018)

Group Session

Why had she walked away?  Had she forgot we were supposed to stay together?  What was wrong with her?  Didn’t she know
these were perilous times?

Where the fuck had Tirza gone?

I saw her then, but it wasn’t Tirza.

It was Lisa!

Holy shit, I had just seen Lisa.  It had to be her.  I recognized the distinct shape of her head, her shoulder-length, light brown hair, big curls and all – all of it was her.  It had to be her.  I strained my neck to get a better view through the throng of people surrounding me, but I could only make out the very top of her cranium as she shifted back and forth upon her unwieldy gait.  I was compelled.  I couldn’t resist.  I had to reach her, at any cost.  I had to get Lisa!

Yet, something about the thought struck a dissonant cord within me, one I couldn’t quite place…

Then, she disappeared.

I pushed forward through the melee of what I assumed was rush-hour congestion, not entirely sure of where I was.  It wasn’t familiar.  People were everywhere, packing the place nearly wall-to-wall.  I chanced a glance here, a look there, surmising I was in some sort of train station or bus station.  It was an old one too boot, but where I was, wasn’t important, not in that instant, when I was so close to finding Tirza’s lost sister.

Only Lisa was important.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Lisa’s brown locks bounce down one of the tunnel-like passages, leading to the buses (or possibly a train), but I ignored the details and began to twist and turn through the mob.  I bumped into every third person and seem to lose a step for every two that I t
ook, but I have no choice.  I have to get to Lisa before she is lost to us all once again.  I redoubled my efforts, using my arms and hands to snake around bodies and mid-sections - both thin and heavy alike, uncaring if I was groping anyone inappropriately.  I could care less if some fat broad took offense to an errant finger or palm.  I
had
to reach Lisa!

I was no more than a foot or two from the threshold of the tunnel, my eyes darting over a huge Arrival/Departure Board, glimmering with myriad of colored letters when she spoke:

“Estefan, is that you?” was the female voice, from behind, over my left shoulder.

I stopped, startled into rigidity.  She was one person I hadn’t thought about in years, and yet…

“Julie, is that you?” I asked, turning to see an older version of the girl I had dated in ninth grade.  She looked the same only more filled out, her hips flared, and her breasts full with teenage ripeness.  She was wearing a red evening grown and heels that seemed to dance with flame, her neckline plunging almost the entire way to her navel.  Her hair was coiffed, almost sculpted, piled high atop her head.

I was as stunned by her appearance, almost as
much as I’d been over the fact she stood before me.  She was the last person I had expected to see in a crowded train station (or bus station…).  Yet… why was she dressed for Cinderella’s Ball?  Everything about us was so dingy and dirty.  Why would she risk damaging a gown as beautiful as the one she was wearing?  It must’ve cost thousands of dollars…

“Of course, it is me, you dope,” she began with a coy curl on her lips, gazing at me through her eyelashes.  “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”  This was not the self-conscious, unsteady Julie that I knew from the past.

I stammered.  “Y-yes, it has.”

“Where you going in such a hurry?” she wondered aloud.  “Haven’t you come to miss me?  Don’t you want to spend some time together, so we can catch-up?”

It was as though I had been hit with a bolt of electricity.  Lisa!  Sonofabitch, I had to find Lisa.  I was wasting time!

I felt my face cloud.  “I have to go, Julie.  I don’t have time right now to ‘catch-up’.” I finished the sentence, but was no longer looking at her.  I was bobbing my head up and down, back and forth like some gigantic Meerkat
.  I probably looked ridiculous.  I didn’t give a shit.  I had to find Tirza’s autistic baby sister before the NIA caught wind she had escaped their clutches.

Something felt strange about the thought
, as if I had known some hidden truth about the situation, but could no longer recall exactly what it had been.

“No!” exclaimed Julie with such
force it brought me up short.  “You come with me, Effy!”

I stared at her in disbelief.  Who was this girl?  It was like she
was possessed.  This wasn’t the Julie Mirlini had dated when I was a freshmen.  This was someone else entirely.

“Julie, I can’t stay, I have to go.  There is someone I
have
to find,” I explained.  I took a couple of steps away, walking down the tunnel, peering through the multitude, hoping to catch a glimpse of Lisa.  I couldn’t see one fucking hair on her head.  There were too many people.

I felt someone grab me by the forearm and pull hard, almost to the point of yanking.  I had to spin on my left heel to keep from falling.  Momentarily, I was dragged in the opposite direction I had been striding.  My eyes widened with shock to see Julie’s face no more than an inch from mine, her eyes blazing, her brow steeped with a feverish intensity.

“I have something for you, Estefan,” she said sweetly, though none of the saccharine came anywhere near the icy chill of her orbs.  “Something I’ve been waiting to give you for a very long time…”  She fell silent as if someone had slowly turned down the volume of her voice – a gradual reduction of sound, so profound, I could barely hear the roaring of the horde about us.

I felt righteous indignation rise within my chest.  I slowly grasped the wrist of the hand that held me, and squeezed.  “Let me go.”  My voice was level, the real me was being driven deep within.  The boy that had watched his mother being beaten by his father frothed to the surface.  He was a different sort of person.  He was unfeeling, direct… decisive…

I squeezed harder and Julie squealed, letting go of me.  She tried frantically to rend her wrist from my grip. “You’re hurting me, Estefan!  You fucker!  You are hurting me,” she accused.

I let go, and immediately turned to see if I could find Lisa.

I saw nothing of her.

She was gone.

At my side, Julie began to cry.  “I just wanted to make love to you, you savage!” she screamed of a sudden, through the emotion of her weeping.  It was wracking and made her heave continuously for a while.  Then, “Why was I never good enough for you?”

I fought my outrage.  I stepped away from her and half-walked, half-ran down the concourse of the tunnel. 
Fuck you, Julie!  You were the one that left me for the blonde hair and blue eyes of Brad Covington,
I raged, but otherwise stayed quiet.  My mind was focused on more important things…

…Like finding Lisa before the NIA…

Why was that thought so disconcerting?  I couldn’t quite place it within the scheme of things.  I couldn’t make the square peg fit into the round hole.  What the fuck was going on?

Fuck it!  Fuck it!  Fuck it!  It didn’t matter, I had to find Lisa.

I left Julie weeping in my wake and shoved and pushed my way further down the tunnel, which was beginning to look more like a throughway leading to yet another part of the station – whatever sort it may have been.  I could see, at its’ terminus, there was some sort of chamber beyond.  It was filled with more light and seemed a wide expanse of space.  I bowled my way through the crowd.  My indignation rising, my frustration making my neck feel hot and sweaty.

Fuck!  I had to find Lisa before… everything went bad…

Was that the correct way to term it?  Was I describing it in the right manner?  Was I?  Why did it feel wrong to me?

I stepped into her so hard, I nearly knocked her on her ass, which would’ve hurt like a bitch because the ground was solid concrete.

“Ooof!” she blurted as the air was painfully expelled from her lungs.

I tired frantically to hold her by the elbows, so I could keep her from hitting the ground and breaking something vital.  “Shit, I am so sorry,” I squawked like a goose, trying to get a descent hold of her before she spilt to the hard ground.  I felt my nails bite through the flesh of the back of her arms.  In that moment, I found purchase and arrested her fall, though I cringed at the cost. 
This isn’t going to be good,
I thought as I brought her to her feet with every attempt to be as gentle as possible.  I felt horrible.  I had just bum-rushed a girl!  Shit!  I felt so stupid it seemed like I shrank before her as she slowly gained her bearings.  She absently clutched at her triceps where I had gouged both of her arms, and stood more steadily upon her feet.

She was about five foot five, the top of her head at the level of my eyes with dark, long and straight hair, so long, it appeared to
touch the top of her butt.  It was her eyes that enthralled me, even then, during such a confusing, if not raucous moment in time.  They were the purest lime-green orbs I had ever seen…

No, this wasn
’t true.  I had seen eyes like that before.

Reyna had eyes like that.  Reyna had eyes that could stop a man within the span of a heartbeat.  Reyna had…

I felt like a reed before a hurricane.  I was gazing upon Reyna Munoz (no relation to Jolene, but a Munoz nonetheless).  This was the girl I had been messing around with a year ago when Katie had come for the summer and had nearly put her moist mouth around the tip of my cock.  Reyna Munoz – she’d been my secret booty-call, my deviant little something-something on the side, who liked to be fucked up the ass, while I worked her clit.  The very same Reyna, who would’ve denied I existed when the sun came up.  In the light, she would have to face the truth of what she really had become, what she liked for me to do to her.  She was here in the station wearing butt-hugging jogging shorts and a bustier made of the same material used in the making of wetsuits, complete with an over-sized zipper bisecting her luscious c-cup-sized tits.  I was surprised to see she wore nothing else.  She was barefoot!  And, of course, my dick throbbed with anticipation.

{
I’ve told you all many a time; I am a sucker for feet, so deal with it.}

“W-what - ?” was all I managed before she finished my thought.

“What’re you doing here, Eff?”  Her brow was knitted as though I had been the one intruding, or had unveiled another of her aberrant habits.

Hey, bitch, I’m not the one walking around a train station barefoot,
I thought, but said something different, just not as snide.  “I could say the same thing to you,” was my counter.

The furls on her forehead unwrinkled as she considered what I had said, the brows of her eyes rising.  “I was looking for someone,” she said smugly, and with what I guess was an attempt at being secretive, but I didn’t bite.

Her words had washed my mind of any interest in her the moment they had left her lips. 
That’s right, dammit!  I’m supposed to be looking for Lisa.  Fuck! 
A step passed her, craning my neck to see if I could catch sight of the happy-go-lucky tween, but I couldn’t see shit through the legions of commuters about me.  There were plenty of women and girls with curly, light-brown hair.  None, though, had a head shaped like Lisa or possessed her awkward gait.  With those two traits visible, I could track her anywhere.

They were missing.  Lisa was gone!  Shit! 
Maybe if I ran, I could catch up to her…

I felt small, delicate fingers encircle my bicep and tug slightly.  I turned to look into Reyna’s
bottomless, almost-emerald eyes and forgot what I had been thinking about a second ago.

“Maybe I was looking for you…,” she murmured like a brook over pebbles, tilting her head to the side – her hallmark alluring gesture.

Oh god, I don’t have time for this,
I seethed internally.  “Reyna, you haven’t been looking for me for a long, long time now.”

“I know, so maybe it was time I started again
, don’t you think…? It’s been such a long time.”  She clutched my wrist with her other hand, applying pressure, so I might take a step closer, if I were so inclined.

I wasn’t.

“What about your perfect boyfriend?  Where’s he?” I demanded a little more forcefully than I had intended.  That bastard had been a pain in my ass for years.  He was continually the reason why Reyna would never date me openly.  He was the cause behind my misery when I had wanted her to be my girl exclusively.  Always, she had said no.  He was her boyfriend.  He was the one her mother and father approved of, and that was final.

Yet, time and gain, she had scurried from her bedroom at night, using the same tree so many other girls had used, to climb into my bedroom on the second floor, and later the Loft.  Every time, she would attack me in my sleep, rip down my pajama bottoms and gag on my cock before I knew what the fuck was happening.  Every time, she would fuck me until I was sore, allowing me to do the dirtiest things we could think of until the sun began to lighten the eastern sky.  It was the most debauched sex I would ever have, downright gross in some instances.  Like a switch,
she would change the instant she began putting on her nightclothes.  She would mutter I wasn’t allowed to call her or go over her parents’ house, giving this excuse or that – always stating it was for the better.  Her rationale being, since she gave me ALL of her body at night, it should be enough.