The Haunted Vagina (10 page)

The orgasm ripples through my entire body, like ocean waves under my skin. My testicles crack open and release two raw eggs that goo up and out of my shaft into Fig. She closes her eyes and leans back as the yolks sink deep inside of her.

As the yolks pop, she lets out a sigh and curls her head deep into my shoulder, tears dripping down her cheek, pooling on my neck.

I wake up after a short snooze. Fig’s cinnamon hair in my face, her drool on my chest. We’re hardly able to both fit on the kid’s bed, but we’re so twisted around each other that neither of us are in danger of falling off. I un-pretzel myself and slip out of the room, through the chainmail curtains onto the balcony. The warmth of the bright pink sky glazes my face.

This place isn’t a ghost world, just a beaten down lonely world. It must have been around for centuries, getting passed from host to host, mother to daughter, generation after generation. I can’t even begin to imagine how this place was even created. Perhaps it was created by some kind of cosmic accident. Perhaps it was bio-engineered by some kind of Asian Frankenstein. Or perhaps it’s some sort of evolutionary mutation. Perhaps, a long time ago, in Asia, where Stacy was born, there was a village that had too many people but not enough food. Perhaps this situation went on for so long that evolution had to step in and do something about it. Perhaps a few mutant females were born, each containing fertile worlds inside of them. Worlds that many of the villagers could move into. Worlds where its occupants wouldn’t need food or water. Worlds that could sustain several villages. All that would be needed is to feed and protect the female hosts of the worlds.

I look out to the blackened houses down the road. Fig called it “the cancer.” Perhaps Stacy’s mother had a disease that spread through her body, destroying her insides as well as the world within her. Perhaps she passed the world onto Stacy and gave birth to her before the cancer could destroy the entire world. Perhaps her mother died of the disease before she had the chance to tell Stacy about the secret place hidden in her belly. When she was adopted by her American parents and brought to California, Stacy was forever cut off from the truth. That is, if anyone still knows the truth.

I’m pretty sure that the world was created so long ago that nobody really knows the truth anymore. Even the inhabitants of this world. After so many generations, the truth has probably been twisted, turned into myth. These people have been detached from the outside world for so long that they probably doubt it even exists. They probably know as much about it as we know of Heaven.

“I’m going to miss them,” Fig says, stepping onto the balcony behind me.

She’s looking at the sky. I think she’s talking about the clouds. She had names for all of them. She talks about them as if they were real people.

“They were my friends,” she says, a tear on her cheek.

I wrap my arms around her. I don’t know why. It’s ridiculous that she’s crying over the loss of some clouds, but in a way I guess it’s kind of cute.

“You’re here, though,” she says. “You’re better.”

I wipe her cheek with my thumb. It makes a sound like a windshield wiper.

“You love me back,” she says.

I freeze at the word
love
and step away from her. “I never said I love you. We hardly know each other.”

“But you changed for me,” she says, petting my slimy horns, touching my skin. “You’re mine.”

“I didn’t want to change,” I say. “It just happened.”

“It happened because you belong to me.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Fig and I get married, eventually.

I’m in love with her now. Maybe even more than I ever loved Stacy. Her crackling voice drives me wild. Her big cartoon eyes entrap me for hours.

“It was written,” Fig’s mom says, in her language, watching us as we move into the south wing of the mansion together. A long abandoned section that we are fixing into our home.

My mother-in-law’s language is Thai, or some kind of language that has evolved from Thai. I’ve been trying to learn it, but it’ll take time before I can speak fluently. Fig tries to teach it to me but her attention rarely stays focused on one project long enough to accomplish anything. I’m not sure where she learned English. At first, I thought she picked it up from Stacy when they were kids, but I have found some books written in English on some of the shelves in the mansion. Somebody who migrated to this world must have known the English language at some point. Maybe Fig’s father or an uncle.

It’s difficult to get straight answers out of Fig sometimes. She’s definitely an odd one, but I love her so much. I love everything about her.

This is the way Fig wakes me up in the morning:

First, she goes outside for a walk. Once she comes back, she has a basket filled with something to give me. Usually a type of flower or a bundle of rocks or snails. She’ll put them on the blanket in some kind of design. It’s always the same design, but I don’t know what it means. It’s some Thai symbol, but I believe it means love. After that she rubs the red tip of her nose against the red tip of my nose until I wake up and give her a kiss.

If anybody would have done these things to me in the outside world, even Stacy, I would have been annoyed. But with Fig, they make me happy. She’s so cute.

But I think the reason I’m in love with her, the reason I think she’s so cute, is because of what she’s done to me.

The people of this world are all born with unique DNA. They are born a species of one. Sometimes they match their parents, like Fig, but usually they are born completely alien from all others. When a female is within the vicinity of a male she releases super-charged pheromones that alter the man’s DNA to match her own. He will mutate into the male counterpart of her species. Then they become a species of two.

I believe the pheromones also release chemicals into the male’s brain that act as aphrodisiacs. Because every time Fig and I are together now I can’t help but jump all over her. It’s more than the usual horniness I would get in the outside world. It is some kind of deep uncontrollable urge to mate with the only female of my species. Sometimes these feelings make it frustrating to be around Fig. Other times, they make me happy, euphoric. They make me love life, love myself, and they especially make me love Fig more than anything.

Fig is pregnant, her belly stretched out like a water balloon. She smiles, squinting the bridge of her nose at me, as I put new logs on the fire to keep her warm.

My skeleton is curled up on a rug next to her rocking chair. Fig pets the back of its skull. Its chattering teeth like a kitten’s purr.

I dig through old crates, looking for interesting scraps for dinner tomorrow. In one of the crates in the back, I find the sculpture I made the day I met Fig and her family. I also find Stacy’s digital camera, and the walkie-talkie.

The walkie still has batteries. I wonder if Stacy still has the other one. For weeks after she became impregnated, I tried contacting her on this. But there was always static. The tunnel to this world has been shut off, so I couldn’t get anything through to her at all.

Just out of curiosity, I take the walkie to the roof, sneak away from Fig while she’s basking in the warmth of the fire with her eyes closed. The snores of the old mutant people fill the house. I’m careful not to wake them.

Outside, the sky is clear of clouds. I can see the outline of the baby’s arm up there, waving down at me from the heavens.

“Stacy?” I speak into the walkie.

The baby’s arm jerks in the sky.

I repeat
Stacy, are you there?
a few times. Just enjoying the landscape, breathing in the fresh air, not expecting anybody to answer.

But somebody does answer. It is distant at first. Hard to make out. But it gets clearer.

“Steve . . .” the voice says.

It’s Stacy. Her voice almost seems alien to me now. As my voice must sound alien to her.

“I’m still here,” I tell her.

There is a pause.

“Steve, is that really you? You sound so strange . . .”

I can hear her crying.

“I miss you so much,” she says.

“I miss you, too,” I tell her.

“I think about you every night,” she says. “I’ve kept batteries in the walkie-talkie just in case you ever wanted to reach me. I never gave up hope for you.”

Yeah, that’s why she fucked some guy only a few weeks after I went missing . . .

“How’s the father of your child?” I ask her.

She pauses.

“I don’t know,” she says. “It was just some guy I met at a bar. I was so upset. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

I sit down in a wicker chair.

“How’s your lover?” she asks, almost annoyed.

“Fig?” I ask. “She’s doing fine. We’re pregnant. She should be due any day now. Same as you, I believe.”

“She was my imaginary friend, wasn’t she?” she asks. “From when I was a kid?”

“Yeah,” I say.

“She was so lonely,” she says. “Her cries always calling out to me, begging me to send her somebody to love. She was always so sad and angry. But then, after you went inside me, there wasn’t crying anymore. There was singing. She was happy. She was in love.”

My lips squeak as they rub against the receiver.

“I knew it,” she says. “I knew, when you didn’t come back, you two had fallen in love and you decided to stay with her. Hearing her happy voice day after day made me so jealous. Then it pissed me off. I hated you for what you did to me. I fucked the first guy I could find, hoping I would drown you two in his cum. I thought I did, too. Her voice stopped coming out of me. My vagina was silent. I felt horrible. I thought I killed you. I would have sent somebody in to see if you were okay, but it doesn’t stretch anymore. I was hoping you were still alive in there. Inside of me.”

“Yeah,” I tell her. “But the world isn’t inside of you anymore. It is inside of your baby.”

“I want to see you again, Steve,” she says. “I don’t care how long it takes. Maybe you can come out of my daughter when she grows up. You can be with me again.”

“I’m not exactly human anymore, Stacy,” I say. “I don’t think I can return to that world.”

“Then I’ll come to you . . .”

“Stacy,” I say. “I loved you more than the whole world, but I’ve got a responsibility here. I’ve got people that need me. I’ve already moved on.”

“I know . . .” she says.

“I’m married and have a child coming,” I say.

“I know,” she says. “But . . .”

She pauses.

“Are you happy?” she asks.

“Yes,” I tell her. “I’m very happy.”

“I just want you to be happy,” she tells me.

“I am,” I say.

She cries into the walkie.

“Stacy?” I say.

“Yeah?”

“I’ll always be with you . . .”

She continues crying and then the walkie cuts out. I think she turned it off or maybe threw it across the room.

That’s another thing I always hated about Stacy. She’d always cut me off in the middle of a conversation for the sake of being dramatic.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Carlton Mellick III
is one of the leading authors in the new
Bizarro
genre uprising. Since 2001, his surreal counterculture novels have drawn an international cult following despite the fact that they have been shunned by most libraries and corporate bookstores. He lives in Portland, OR, the bizarro fiction mecca.