The Misbegotten

It was the thump! that awoke me from my slumber. It wasn’t a hallow bump in the night. It wasn’t random. In fact, it was loud enough to have shaken the windows next to my bed. The sound originated from the other side of the house, on the ground floor.

I sat up, or tried to at least. But a sizeable piece of Sandy’s upper body pinned me to the bed. Gently, I lifted her shoulder just enough so I could slide from underneath her. I came erect, sitting on the edge of the bed, my ears straining to hear anything.

For ten seconds, I heard nothing.

It was after that I heard it – a faint cross between a cackle and a squawk. When my ears detected it a second time, I realized there was a touch of a screech to it as well. It hadn’t come from a throat though. It was a low tone, discrete. I wouldn’t have heard it if I hadn’t been listening as intent as I had.

It came again, a short while later, but from a different direction this time.

I turned my head and found myself looking out one of the windows nearest my bed. This one faced the back of the house.

One more time, I heard it, from the side of the house.

The more I heard it, the more I was certain it was electronic in nature. I couldn’t place it, but it did not sound like it issued from anything living.

I stood, methodic, not wanting to make noise. I glanced over at the digital clock on the nightstand.

4:55 am.

I crept toward the windows at the back of the house, hearing the strange sound with greater frequency than before. More and more tones were springing up all around the property.

All the windows were open. It was yet another clear, warm summer night. I could see the balcony on the second floor, overlooking the large, wooden structure that kept the patio under shade. Beyond the cover of the wood, I could see the waters of the swimming pool and the Hot Tub shimmering in the pre-dawn night. There was no moon, maybe it had sunk below the horizon already. Only the stars twinkled down through the veil of the heavens. There was little wind. The only sounds I could hear, other than the strange electronic warbles, were the far away thumps coming from El Sereno.

It was much bigger battle now, having spread east to the verges of Alhambra, Granada Park and across Interstate 10. The northern vestiges of Monterey Park too were under siege. The NIA was rooting out the original Muto strongholds. Only, they were seeing new ones pop up along the outer borders of Muto-held territory. In some cases, non-Muto populations were now joining the fray. The whole situation was a powder keg ready to explode.

I pulled the curtain a few more inches to the side, so I could see more of the backyard. I did so with agonizing patience. I didn’t want undo movement to attract the eye, should there be eyes watching the house.

I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. The yard looked just as we’d left it hours earlier. My mother had called us in to get cleaned up and help her with dinner. We had cleaned up the lawn surrounding the concrete of the pool and Hot Tub. Everything was as we left it clear of toys, rafts, etc. There was nothing out of the ordinary to see.

At the back of the property was the stout, double-sided wooden fence. It surrounded the huge two-acre plot my parents owned along three sides. It was ten feet tall and thick, held up by sturdy four-by-four inch posts, driven deep into the ground at four foot intervals.

Between the fence and the lawn was a thin two to three foot strip of land, following the edge of the yard as well. It was a long, but thin garden of varying flowering plants, hedge brushes and vines. Despite the summer heat, it was still in perfect condition thanks to the gardener who came every Wednesday. It too looked as it should, a pristine plot of earth, manicured as usual.

Something caught and held by vision.

I froze, leaning forward, trying to make it out. I wanted to do without leaning out of the window itself. So, I stayed in the shadows. I blinked a few times and rubbed at my eyes to clear my sight. I squinted through the dark, holding my breath, making myself as steady as I could manage.

Then, I realized what I was seeing – a red light. It was a tiny, glowing crimson light, dipping in and out of sight at the back of the yard. It was in the foliage, in the narrow garden.

I shifted my body to the side jam of the window. Still, I was hearing those weird electronic warbles, more of them in fact, chirping at a greater rate. Two more of those ghost-like, red pinpricks of light came into view. They were toward the back of the yard as well, but alongside the southern section of fence.

I moved to the window next to the one I’d been looking out. I went to my right, closer to the nightstand where I kept my digital clock/radio/MP3 player, a lamp and my cell phone. I always kept it there, charging throughout the night. I glanced around the Loft, furtive, birdlike before peering out this new window.

Everyone was still sleeping, no one had moved.

Then, I saw them - four more oddly suspended lights. Again red! These were in the plants in a long row on the northern face of the fence. I was so confounded; I didn’t know what to do. When I gazed back at the back of the fence, from my new vantage, three additional lights came into view. They were like of flock of hellish fireflies infesting the backyard.

Something… or someone… had surrounded the back yard in its entirety.

On four separate tendrils, from four unknown recesses in my brain, thoughts began to coalesce into one. I felt my scalp prickle with terror. Oh god, no!

As I dove for my cell phone, Ramona sat up, throwing the smaller girls from her body.

I grabbed for the smart device, ripping the charging cord from the bottom of it.

“What is it, babe?” she whispered, hoarse with sleep.

I ignored her, swiping across the Gorilla Glass, initiating the phone from sleep mode. I didn’t bother entering my “swipe” code to access the applications. I didn’t need to do that to find what I was looking for, and it didn’t take long to find it either. Right there, in the upper right corner, in the notification bar, I saw it. It was that small icon depicting the type of connection my phone was set to acquire. There as another one showing my signal strength. Both of them had red “X’s” over them, screaming at me!

Someone had cut off my phone from both the network and the local hotspot. The fact they'd disabled my parents’ wireless router downstairs in the Library gave me the willies.

They were both jammed!

“…Also, if there is ever a time where all your cell phones don’t work, he said to run…”

Jacob’s final warning resounded in my head like the toll of mission bells. There were hundreds of them, all different sizes and sounds.

Oh no, no, no, no, nononono! Fuck!

I ran to the opposite of the Loft, toward the front of the house, coming to stand between the air mattresses. One was empty, upon the other Flavia was sleeping soundlessly.

Jolene and Johan were still sleeping in Katie’s bed, since Tirza decided she was going to sleep with the rest of us.

I stared out the window nearest to Katie’s bed.

Behind me, I heard Ramona waking the girls with hushed tones.

On Katie’s bed Jolene stirred and turned over, rolling out of Johan’s grasp.

I saw them. They were beyond the front lawn on the other side of the driveway, gathered in the street. There seemed to be an entire fleet of black sedans, SUV’s and other wicked looking tactical vehicles. A few even had huge .50 cal. guns mounted on top.

Others appeared to have high velocity water cannons attached. These provided less lethal options for suppressing a large group of people.

From all the way back to the sidewalk, down the entire pathway to the main entry of the house, were scores of those floating, infrared lights.

Only now, I could make out they were attachments to a pair of goggles. They were the battery light indicators of night vision goggles. Shit!

Dark, uniformed figures, booted and armed to the teeth, were wearing these high-powered glasses. Every now and again one of these figures would touch something at his throat. That strange, low-pitched squeal would sound. It was the engaging squawk of their communicators I had heard earlier, and it could only mean one thing.

Northern Intercontinental Alliance Shock-troopers!

They were coming to kill my family!

I dropped to my knees and shook Katie’s bed. “You guys, wake-up! Hurry!” I was whispering, but my voice strangled with intensity.

Jolene rolled over to me about to say something.

“Don’t make a sound!” I warned bringing my forefinger to my lips.

She froze.

“Wake up my brother and sister. Tell them to get on their shoes, their backpacks and get their guns. We got to leave now!” I left her trembling in my wake as I re-crossed the large room. The other girls were standing now, side by side, nervous, hands wringing, teeth biting nails. I could hear Jolene was following my orders. “Get your shit, ladies, the fucken NIA is on our god damned doorstep!” I rasped and began to throw on my shoes.

I saw Tirza reach for her clothes, ones she had laid out to change into in the morning.

“Teezee, forget your clothes. We don’t have the time. Just get on your shoes and backpack and arm yourself. This could get nasty quick!”

She nodded like a doe caught in the headlights of an oncoming car.

“Hurry!” I demanded.

They were blurs of motion in the wink of an eye.

Three seconds after, I heard, and then felt, a concussion from below. BLAMM! Something big had just exploded at the front of the house.

It made us all stop and stare at each other for a second.

Then, a massive billow of flame and smoke erupted up along that side of the house. It bathed us in its’ furious light in an instant.

“Come one, hurry!” I yelled, no longer attempting quiet.

I had just flipped the safety off my .50 cal. Desert Eagle with my thumb when the staccato racket of gunfire sounded in my ears. I paused.

That had come from inside the fucking house!

Frantic now, I retraced how we’d arranged who would sleep where before went to bed. All we big kids were to sleep in the Loft. My mom and the two little ones were to sleep in the Master Suite she shared with my step-dad. Pop was to keep a loose “watch” from the TV room, where he had no doubt fallen asleep hours earlier.

Comprehension hit me like a thunderbolt.

“Daaaaaad! Noooooo! Daaaaaad, wake-up! Wake-up! Wake-up!” I screamed like a frantic old lady, on and on, unable to stop.

Just like I didn’t realize it was me yelling for my step-dad, neither did I realize I was no longer in the same place. I was streaking across the Loft for the door. I did not hear at least three of the girls yell for me to wait.

I would later come to understand that in the flush of pure emotional impetus my Mutation could change me. This was the one making me denser, not the horny one. This increase of mass could sometimes occur all by itself. In most instances, it was exponential to the emotions I felt. Since this was a matter of life or death, you can well imagine what it did to my person.

When I hit the door of the Loft, I did so with such force; I went through it. I found myself atop the landing of the stairs leading down to the second floor. I stood in a pile of wood chips and splinters.

I didn’t take the time to assess what I’d done. I had no time to take notice. I swept down the stairs, so fast; it was amazing I didn’t fall. But, I did crack each step as I barreled down to the floor below.

My mother already flung open the door of the Master Suite. My two youngest siblings – standing on either side – were each clutching a leg of her pajama bottoms.

I had made it two-thirds down the nineteen steps leading up to the Loft. I was about to call out to her, to scream at her to go back into her bedroom. But, I got distracted by a bright, halogen light.

It fastened beneath some sort of black object, tapering at one end. Holding it tight against a flexing shoulder was one of the same dark figures I’d seen in the front yard. He had just attained the landing of the extra-wide staircase coming up from the first floor. The angle of his body swept from his left to right.

For a moment, I could tell he didn’t see my mom standing there in the doorway to her bedroom.

In that split second, although to me it seemed a lifetime, I realized my mom had something in her hand. It was dark, metallic – ballistic.

She saw the trooper at the same time he saw her, but she had seen his light long before he was able to shine it upon her. She had the jump on him.

I can remember this with such detail, because, as I said before, everything was moving at a snail’s pace.

I saw her right hand began to raise, her right leg beginning to take a half-step forward. She bent at the knee, her left hand coming up to cup the bottom of her right, like instructors taught her.

After my biological father had threatened to break into our old house and beat the shit out of her, she’d bought some protection. She was remembering her training. She was shifting into a shooters’ stance.

It was then I understood, it was her six-round, .38 Special she held in her hands. My mind exploded. I shrieked, “NOOOOOO!!!!”

The light under the sub-machine gun of the trooper blinded her for no more than a millisecond.

She fired.

Her bullet took him in his Kevlar helmet, but not where it could do any damage. It hit him right where the hinge of his goggles met the metal of his domed head-covering. It ricocheted harmlessly into the wall, dividing the hallway from Flavia’s room.

His goggles ripped to one side, straps cutting him. It took him a second and a half to refocus his eyes. He was no longer peering through the concave, magnified display. He was gazing with his own orbs now and it took his brain just a tiny amount of time to adjust.

It wasn’t a long duration of time by any means, but it was long enough for me to raise the hand cannon I was carrying. I sighted down the length of the barrel.

We were both trained shooters. For me it was a periodic thing, an exciting adventure I went on every once and a while. For him, it was a way of life. He trained with his weapon every god damned day!

And because of it, he was faster.

I had just applied pressure to the trigger of my gun, when the mussel of his Heckler and Koch MP6 blazed. Yellow flashes, faster than my eyes could register, hurt my brain. I was flying down the stairs. I was almost certain at one point I was airborne. I can’t say for sure though.

But, the sight before me has untold clarity. It's burned into the center of my psyche. I can’t fucking escape it! Though, I have been trying to do just that for more years than I care to remember.

Lucia, to me, had always been the most beatific child I had ever had the pleasure to know. And trust me, I’ve known and cared for many, many children in my lifetime. Yet, to this day, I say Lucia held the cake. She was downright and disgustingly adorable. Her squarish head and light brown, super-fine straight hair, her rose colored lips and full cheeks made it so.

I have long wondered what she would’ve looked like if she matured. Her body having grown into womanhood, but I can never seem to finish the thought. I am plagued the events of my past and my mind won’t let me.

I know now, I am a bad person. I’ve done horrible things and have been a business man in the most debased sort of businesses. I know, in my heart, the day I changed. I know the instant when I decided either let the world continue to fuck me or I'd fuck it myself. It was that day. It was because of what happened.

The trooper’s second, third and fifth bullets took Lucia, right in the head. It popped like a melon.

His first took my mother’s knee cap. So devastating, it severed her leg.

His fourth, sixth and seventh bullets hit Martín in the shoulder and chest.

They shredded my wild, fun-loving little brother to pieces. They reduced my cherubic, precious baby sister to hamburger.

As my youngest siblings flew back by the violence of the trooper’s bullets, my mother began to fall.

He unloaded his clip into her body as I fired. The tremendous punch of my .50 caliber round took him in the shoulder and cleaved his arm clean from his body.

That is where I don’t remember much and things get a little foggy.

I remember I was still running, but I don’t recall throwing my gun aside.

I know for a fact, I collided with something bigger and bulkier than me, but I have no details to convey. I have an impression, though it is vague, of smashing through the double-paned, sliding glass doors. They led onto the second floor balcony. I remember the pushing. I can almost remember there was something with a descent amount of bulk before me.

The next thing I can unearth, from this age-old mind, is hitting the cast-iron railing surrounding to outermost edges of that balcony. I know they bent, because I can still hear the metal screeching as it stretched and snapped and twisted. I can see it as plain as day. I have a cloudy notion; I had been carrying someone in my grasp the entire time. When I hit the railing, he was between me and the metal. My legs were pinning his in place, but his upper body had only one option. The problem was it could go places the lower part of him couldn’t.

I heard a thunderous snap, and the man in the uniform bent into the shape of a backward “L” before my eyes. I ruined his spine with the sheer velocity I unleashed upon him. Combined with the increased mass within my body, he snapped like a twig.

I felt something tickling me along my entire left side. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why someone would be fucking tickling me at a time like this.

The impression was wrong though.

I swiveled at the waist and saw another trooper coming through the shattered sliding glass door. The muzzle of his sub-machine gun danced with light. It did not register in my mind. I was more focused on the tactical, Kevlar helmet he was wearing. I kept wondering why it was getting bigger, as if it were growing like some fantastic organism.

And why was he still tickling my stomach?

The last word had just left my awareness when I realized the helmet was gone and so was the trooper. Where’d he go? I asked myself, confused and, for what seemed like a few seconds, I stood there. Until I saw a boot at my feet and looked down to stare at it.

It was the trooper or most of him. His head was missing and so was the helmet.

Where had it gone?

There was blood everywhere, huge swaths it drenching the balcony, the outer wall of the house, me too.

“Estefan, we have to leave!” screamed Flavia, pulling my arm, forcing me to gaze into her eyes and not the bloodbath around us. She was yanking me for all she was worth. “Come one, there are more of them coming!” She was in a frenzy, her face was puffy from weeping. Her nails were biting into my arm, but I felt no pain.

I stepped over the feet of the dead trooper and back into the house. I ran past the balustrades surrounding the stairs, leading down to the first floor.

I had only taken one step past the railings when my entire back riddled with pinpricks. It was three, maybe four, times as many as before, but I didn’t dare turn this time.

Rather, I pulled Flavia closer to me. I was effective in shielding her from the barrage of bullets pelting the center-mass of my body.

I looked ahead, down the main hallway of the second floor. I could see the others running in the same direction my step-sister had wanted me to go. The passage was nothing but bobbing heads. They disappeared one after the other around as they followed the hall, turning left. They were running toward Johan’s bedroom.

“YOU MOTHERFUKCERS ARE KILLING MY FAMILY!”

It was so loud. It stopped me cold. I moved my head in the direction of the monstrous bellow, and found Katie standing on the third step from the bottom of staircase.

At least, it looked like my cousin, and yet, it did not.

She was still wearing the loose-fitting tank top and matching, butt-hugging shorts she had worn to bed. Her feet she encased in her best pair of sneakers. Her backpack was still slung over both shoulders. In her right hand, she still clutched the 9mm Glock 23 I had given her to protect herself. That was where the resemblance stopped.

It was her eyes that were different now. Gone was the pearly-white surrounding the hazel irises I had loved to look into for most of my life. They were bright, illuminant, so much so, it was painful to gaze upon them. There seemed to be no eyeballs in the sockets. Instead, there was some roiling, seething quagmire of searing magma made of the purest white I had ever seen. But that was not all, her lips had changed as well. No longer were they thin or pink. Rather, they were swollen and beat-red, glowing as if flame burned beneath the skin. The inside of her mouth swam with fire as well. She was awesome to look upon, but fierce and gruesome as well. The muscles in her neck strained with tension, her jaw rigid with fury. Her face was a mask of pure, unadulterated hatred. It was a cast upon that lovely visage that was shocking to see.

I saw the harsh flashlights the troopers had attached under the barrels of their weapons train on my beloved Katie. I knew they had seen her and were aiming for her.

“Nooooo!” I screamed as I heard the first gun fire, then I heard another… and another.

No, not my Katie too! was all I could think as I felt despair suck the life out of my heart and waited for her to be shredded right before my eyes.

But that didn’t happen.

I watched her mouth began to move. The thundering voice I had heard moments before wailed anew, “DDDDIIIIEEEEEE!” With the elongation of that word she uttered, came the fire.

This wasn’t the sort of fire you’d see in the fireplace or at a campground. This wasn’t a raging industrial fire, infused with chemicals, dancing with human-like form. This wasn’t a jet fuel fire or a rockets’ fire either. This was greater, more intense and infinitely more powerful. The only way I can describe its rightful character to you is to write, it was the stuff at the center of a star.

Yes, this is what I saw that morning - The Stuff of Stars.