The Misbegotten

That night, I slept sandwiched between Ramona and Katie, the three of us tangled together like a bunch of puppies. I remember how distracting it was to resist temptation. How I wanted to flip one of those pliant, young teens onto her back, pull aside her pajama bottoms and slide in my hard cock. But, I resisted.

I didn’t get much sleep though, because my aching dick wouldn’t let me. It was difficult. I had legs and arms draped all over me. I had warm pussy rubbing up against both legs. I was almost driven insane. I think, I even dreamed of fucking someone that night, but I’m uncertain.

Let it be suffice to say, I was horny as shit, but couldn’t do anything about it. I didn’t want to offend anyone’s delicate sensibilities. If I had, I’m sure every person in the Loft would’ve heard the sounds of sex.

For some reason, I just didn’t want to deal with whatever issues the act might unearth. Too much else was going on.

Sandy and Tirza had slept on the air mattresses. Since Leda had won the rock-paper-scissors contest, she got Katie’s bed.

Jolene slept in Flavia’s room, but only after her and my brother had about an hour’s worth of making out in his room. When she did leave, poor Johan had to stay, alone to whack-off to thoughts of his girlfriend bouncing on his junk. Or maybe he dreamt of pounding her from behind.

[A deviant thought makes him pause.]

I was always partial to doggy-style. So, I naturally envisioned him choking-the-chicken to such a scenario that night. This is true because I’m a sick, old bastard with a libido of a fourteen-year-old. Though I’m older than dirt, pussy still drives me to do crazy shit – all the time.

Still though, I never knew with any certainty what Johan did to pass the time that particular night.

[He chuckles, though he’s still submerged, deep in fact. He is becoming ever more adroit with the program.]

Of the many kids in the house, my parents only knew that Katie and Jolene were sleeping under their roof. If they had known the truth, I don’t know what they would’ve done, especially my mom. She was deathly afraid I’d knock up some young girl and have to forgo my dreams.

And what fucking dreams were those? I have no idea. Never did either.

Little did she know, back then, my only goal was to pork as many girls as I could before I turned twenty. If she knew the type of life I was living right under nose, she likely would’ve died of a heart attack right on the spot.

What I did know was she was afraid of Ramona, with her curves and her sass, and her street smarts. Ramona wasn’t on the Honor Roll like me. She came from a family that was more dysfunctional than us, so I know my mom harbored some ill-thoughts about her. I knew my mom worried if Ramona and I didn’t work out, she’d try to use a pregnancy to “trap” me.

But those were my mom’s worries. If she had known Ramona as well as I did, she would’ve known my girlfriend wasn’t made that way. That shit was below her.

Thank god she hadn’t known the truth of what I was becoming.

Poor mama. If only you could know how much I miss you. I would do anything to have you back if I could.

So, for the next four days, we were a flurry of activity.

We all woke up early in the mornings, cleaned ourselves up and the Loft. Then the girls – Jolene included – would sneak out.

Sandy would drive them back to their homes. There they’d check in with their parents, get more clothes and other personal supplies. Sandy would come back to pick them up a couple hours later. She’d do it in a cyclical fashion. The first one dropped off was the first one picked up. Thus, everyone had around the same amount of time to get ready. The only real lag was the duration it took for Sandy herself to prepare the coming day.

Each morning, they’d all return with breakfast from some fast food joint in the neighborhood. We did this, so my parents wouldn’t get suspicious over the quantity of food we’d consume if we relied solely on the food stores at my house. We’d eat in the dining room, because it was the only place where we could all eat together.

We’d talk about our plans, refining them, honing our memories of them until we were all sick of the subject. Then, the conversation would descend into some crud topic or another. There’d be lots of laughs and jokes shooting back and forth, before we’d began to drift apart. Each of us would clean this or that part of the mess we had made. This way my mother (or father) wouldn’t suspect there were a lot of kids in the house.

On that first day, we finished by noon. As we paired off into various groupings, Sandy had come up to me. She asked if she and I could take a ride and scope out the different ways we had planned to get to my uncles’ safehouse.

I had thought it was a perfect idea and agreed. We should check things out, make sure we had all the details down pat. The better prepared we were, the greater chance of survival. We would need all the luck we could get if we were going to go up against the NIA Shock-troopers.

We spent the better part of two hours going over the four main routes and the ten or so lesser routes. We went over the many branches and turn-offs from each of the main courses. Within that time, we knew which ways went around a given area and those that could connect us to whole new route altogether. By the time we made it back to the house, we were quite confident. If the shit hit the fan, we’d find a way to get to safety.

The only way we didn’t go was the one through the Regional Park. To do so would mean we’d have to break into the property itself. We decided instead to print out detailed maps from Google Earth and hope for the best. It was, after all, the last ditch, the ace up our sleeve. If we needed to use it, we’d have to be in deep crap anyhow.

At the time, I didn’t want to think about what it would take to make us as desperate as that.

We walked into the house and found my parents had left with my two youngest siblings to do some grocery shopping. After, they planned to take a nice, leisurely walk around the Americana Outdoor Mall in Glendale.

That suited me fine.

Katie and Ramona were practicing their Mutations in the TV Room. My cousin worked intricate tendrils of flame from the palm of her hand.

Beside her, Ramona explained in detail what the girl was doing with her mind.

It was incredible how fast mastery was coming to us all. It was so strange, but genetic aberration was like a walk in the park. Shouldn’t it have been harder?

The two high points for the rest of the day. One, we watched Jolene and Johan make out in the pool after no more than seven minutes of swimming. And two, was me staring at the mirror in the bathroom up in the Loft with a terrified look about my face. I had accidentally broken my shaver against my cheek.

The first event sparked a short, but intense discourse with my step-sister. She had stepped up to me and asked without preamble, “I know you have talked with your brother. I know you told him to use caution with my friend, but she’s still going to let him have sex with her, right?”

I whispered, “Yes.”

She had meandered off melancholy and sullen.

I could only guess at what she was thinking. I found myself caught between duel notions of heartbreak. I couldn’t decide if she was sad about the loss of her friends’ purity or Johan’s. It was confusing to watch.

The second event began with me attempting to shave. I had moved too fast and before I could react, I felt my skin catch underneath the razor sharp blades. I knew, in that moment, I was about to shred my face.

What happened though, shocked me to my core.

Instead of gouging a horrific wound into the side of my face, the shaver caught, tried to bite, but found no purchase. With the sharp thwack! of breaking plastic, I squinted. Only, I saw the head of the triple-bladed Gillette tumble through the air.

For whatever reason, I had tried to catch it in mid-air, but I missed. I cracked my fist into the heavy granite surface of the counter, expecting to feel a jolt of pain along the length of my arm.

I felt nothing, though.

My eyes fell to the polished rock where I chipped it with the knuckles of my hand. Right then, the head of the shaver bounced off the same surface and to the ground, beside my feet.

I stared for a long time into the mirror, trying to understand what had happened. It was the first sign another of my Mutations had begun to manifest. I couldn’t recall the exact moment this change occurred within me. One minute I was normal, in the next, I was heavier, denser. It was as though I’d been born upon another planet altogether, a bigger planet maybe with twice the gravity.

Moreso than being a walking, talking pheromone this newfound power would be the benchmark of my definition. I was an Arch-Andro yes, but I am also a Heavy. I was one of the first to be exact. I just hadn’t figured out what it all meant.

Not much else happened for the rest of the day.

When 6 o’clock rolled around, the girls left.

But unlike before, this time they left on a mission. They took just about five thousand dollars with them. I charged them with buying two sets of clothes for each of us as well as underwear, outerwear, socks and sturdy shoes. Aside from that, they were to find portable camping and survival gear, rope, hunting knives, backpacks, duffle bags, snacks and energy drinks. If the NIA came a’ knocking on my front door, we’d have to be ready to move out within minutes.

We had to ready. We had to, because as the days went on, things were getting worse. We all knew that soon it would be our time to run. We could all feel it building up on our shoulders. We could almost see it over the horizon. It was coming. We all knew it.

Nothing else of note occurred that night. The girls came back about 12:30 am, leaden with mounds of materiel like pack animals in a caravan. At once, we set about organizing what we’d be carrying in case of an emergency.

By 2am, we were all fast asleep. Katie, Ramona and I slept in my bed with Tirza in Katie’s, and Leda and Sandy upon the air mattresses.

Once again, Jolene slept with Flavia downstairs, in her second floor bedroom and poor Johan slept alone.

We were all so tired, we fell asleep and didn’t seem to move until our multiple alarms sounded early the next day. Then, our routine began anew.

Not much else happened during the course of the second or third day either.

But, it was on the evening of the fourth day when Jacob called my cell. He gave me an eighty-seven second update of what was going on with “things”.

It was nothing less than astounding news.

According to him, four more families had been ambushed and slaughtered in the past forty-eight hours. The brutality of the NIA Shock-troopers was escalating to a point that even my uncles were wary of how things might play out in the future.

It didn’t shock any of us all that much, because we could feel something ugly thickening in the air about us. It was putrid and dank, and disgusting. It came from the minds’ of ignorant men. These were sanctimonious officials leading the rest of humanity with their righteous terror. I imagine there had been other times like this, in other faraway lands. The air must've had the same putrid density, where time seemed to drag over-closer toward horror. Places like Nazi Germany, Cambodia at the height of the Khmir Rouge and Darfur in the western Sudan – they were all the same.

We knew it. We could feel the inevitability of it. It was the verge of genocide. We just didn’t know to call it such yet, because it hadn’t quite happened. It would though. It was only a matter of time.

It wasn’t long after that phone call when we pulled out all the guns and clips and rounds my Uncle Roberto had left for us. We spread the arsenal out on the floor of the Loft and sat around it. Even for hardened criminals it was impressive.

There were three 9mm Glock 23’s, four M9 Beretta’s, two M9 Raffic’s (with extended 20 round box magazines), five Smith & Wesson M&P Compact 9mm’s, 2 Colt Delta Elite’s (the 10mm version), two Glock 39’s (.45 cal.), two rare Colt M1911 .45 cal.’s, two Desert Eagle .357 Magnum’s and one whopping Desert Eagle .50 cal.

We must’ve stared at them for five full minutes before we moved. As fast as we could, we began to load them and the many magazines as well.

I don’t have to sit here and tell you, it took us a long time to get everything ready. Yet, we did. We went to sleep feeling a lot better for it too.

If the NIA came calling, we'd make damn sure we blasted as many of them as we could. If they were so determined, how could we be any less?