Hereditary (A Holloway Pack Mini)

Hereditary

J.A. Belfield

HEREDITARY

Published by J.A.
Belfield

Copyright © 2014 Julie Anne Belfield

Cover design: copyright
© Aimee Laine

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No
part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying,
recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the
prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of
brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and other
non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This book is a work of
fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either
products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, events,
locations, or any other element is entirely coincidental.

For everyone who is a
little bit different:

Being ‘the freak’ is
never easy. Embrace it, people. Embrace it. Because trying to be
someone you’re not is a whole lot harder.

What do you do when you discover
your son isn’t human? How is a person supposed to deal with that
kind of knowledge?

Yet, I am the
only one to blame.

***

I knew next to
nothing about the father of my son, hadn’t seen him since that
first, and only, fateful night. If I screwed up my eyes and
concentrated hard, he appeared handsome enough in my mind’s eye—but
I guess most things did when the memory got collected during a
state of total inebriation.

I didn’t ask
his name, and he never asked mine. He shared a few words of
flattery, told a few jokes, plied me with wine, then carried me
home—literally. Most men in my younger days left a calling card in
the form of a love bite. Not that guy. He had to go one better.
Nine weeks later, I discovered a tiny seed had been implanted
within my womb.

For almost
seven months, I felt like a fool. However, when my son entered the
world? My opinions toward the man who’d helped create him no longer
mattered. In my arms, I held my boy, my firstborn. White-blond
curls framed his porcelain skin and startling blue eyes. He looked
like an angel. I named him Gabe—Gabriel Lewis.

***

Throughout
Gabriel’s life, we did fine, just the two of us. It was no longer
considered a scandal to be labelled a one-parent family, even when
the mother
was
only eighteen. We struggled through the
terrible twos, and the ferocious fours, and the serenity sevens. By
the time Gabe had settled within school, parenting brought joy,
tears, and laughter, as opposed to the initial exasperation, tears,
and tantrums. He’d been a bundle of energy from the day he was
born. School, along with its extra-curricular activities, provided
an outlet for that.

As life went
on, he turned into a gangly pre-teen, and I became a mother adept
at dealing with the onset of hormones.

I’d heard girls
could be a handful. But when my son leapt in the air because he saw
an armpit hair, because his upper lip was slightly more shadowed
than at age eleven, or walked around swinging his hips because his
penis had finally begun to grow? That was some crazy stuff to have
to deal with—especially alone.

Because
developing, he most definitely was. Especially a year on, when he
hit thirteen—boy, did he sprout.

My
five-foot-three couldn’t be considered
that
small for a
woman. When standing beside my thirteen year old son, who towered
over me by more than half a foot, it somehow seemed smaller than it
used to.

At fourteen, he
added another two inches, taking him to an impressive
five-foot-eleven, and it became impossible to look at him without
injury to my neck. Trying to reprimand someone who cast me in
shadow was a joke. Not that I ever needed to. Apart from his
infantile boredom, Gabe caused no worries for me. The hair on my
head bore no grey.

Two years, four
additional inches and pubescent temper later? That’s when it all
changed. Like a switch had been hit, Gabe failed to represent the
son I’d raised and loved.

His smiles
flipped upside down into frowns. His laughter died to make room for
grumbling mutters. And his passivity gave way for aggression to
move in. Not toward me, though—Gabe never treated me with anything
other than respect. His negativity was directed wholly within
himself.

“I hate
hormones,” he’d say on a daily basis. “I’m sick of always feeling
wrong
.”

“Gabe, what do
you mean,
wrong
?” I’d ask.

His fingers
would tug at his hair, greasy since his shower the previous night,
and his eyes would search the heavens for answers. Then he’d look
back to me with a sigh, and say in his deep masculine voice, “Just
wrong, Mum. I don’t feel like
me
.”

Of course, we
tried the doctor. He’d have the answers, right?

“What are the
symptoms?” the doctor asked when Gabe gave him ‘
I feel
wrong
’ as an explanation for the visit.

We’d run
through them: explosive appetite; inability to sit still;
irritation and mood swings; constant perspiration; unrelenting
sexual urges—though Gabe allowed me his perfected glare when I
mentioned that one.

Not to mention
the little details we left off, too. Like, how every hour Gabe’s
stomach would growl like a circus lion until food had been
deposited within; or the afternoon he promised to help with
rearranging the living room and single-handedly lifted the sofa and
carried it the width of the room like it weighted no more than a
bag of peanuts; or the intermittent muscle spasms that started in
his calves three days previous.

It didn’t
matter. With a small shake of his head and a smile teasing the
corners of his lips, the doctor had looked directly at Gabe and
said, “It’s your hormones, son.”

As if we needed
a doctor to tell us
that
.

So, back to not
knowing why my son was being dealt a harsher blow than all his
friends, we just had to deal with it. Which sucked—according to
Gabe.

***

Months passed,
with Gabe trying to keep his angst in check, and with my placations
to assist him along the way. His friends began dwindling, like
they’d had enough of his moods. Even the girls who’d shown an
increasing interest in the teenage wall of muscle grew tired of his
constant snubs and grunted answers.

Only Mia stuck
around, and the girl turned out to be a Godsend.

“She’s not my
girlfriend,” he’d tell me. “It isn’t like that.”

Except, he’d
sit on the settee, grouching about whatever was on the TV, or
anything else he could find to grouch about, and she’d lift her
feet to his lap, give him an order to, ‘Massage’, and within
moments of rubbing at her toes, he’d snap out of whatever dark
place he’d descended to—like the mere contact between the pair of
them was enough.

I’d never seen
two youngsters as close knit—so it came as no surprise that Mia was
there when Gabe suffered his first …
episode
.

Sunday
afternoons had always been a lazy day in our household: breakfast
in bed, staying in our pyjamas until time to prepare dinner, making
the effort to get washed and clothed whilst the joint was in the
oven, chased by an afternoon of food and loafing.

The Sunday it
happened was no exception—well, until lunchtime, anyway.

Mia arrived
about eleven-thirty—just in time to help peel the carrots—and the
morning rolled along in its usual merry way. Camaraderie was
present as vegetables were tossed into pans, as lamb was basted in
its juices, and custard spread over the trifle base. Gabe and Mia
had been laughing and joking when I stepped out to claim the
bathroom first.

On emerging
from washing and brushing my teeth, I paused on the landing.
“Bathroom’s free,” I called down to Gabe.

“’Kay.
Coming.”

As he reached
the bottom of the stairs, ‘it’ happened.

His unbearable
cry of pain gave the first alert. Followed by the folding of his
body, as he dropped to his knees—the tautening of every muscle
visible around his boxers and vest. During which he lifted his head
and stared up at me with terror-filled eyes.

At first I
remained still, frowning down at him, wondering how on earth he’d
gone from upright and smiling to screaming and writhing on all
fours—my brain not quite caught up with the switch. Either that or
willing him to quit fooling around and go back to bouncing up the
stairs like he should have been.

Except he
didn’t, and, slamming back to earth, I raced down the stairs.

At the bottom,
I almost collided with Mia, as she shot in from the living room. My
hands steadied her as I checked she was okay. When her fingers
pressed to her lips and her eyes widened, I followed her gaze.

“Mum?” Gabe’s
hoarse voice arrived thick with fear, uncertainty, and pain.

I dropped to my
knees. With one hand reaching to wipe the sweat painting his
straining face, my other rested on his shoulder to comfort, as I
peered up at Mia.

Standing near
the doorway, as though afraid to come closer, she stared wide-eyed
at Gabe, and her finger made a slow, upward journey to point, at
the same time as movement hit my hand.

I turned back,
my gaze landing on the source, and panic hit my chest with enough
force to steal my breath.

Gabe’s flesh
bubbled beneath my palm. Not like a blister bubbled, but like those
irritating bubbles one gets whilst decorating and the wallpaper
just won’t go flat. I know because I tried pressing it
flat—smoothing it flat—anything so that what I could see wouldn’t
be there anymore, whilst
shit, shit, shit, shit, shit
raced
through my head at the toughness of the muscle I could feel
beneath.

“Mum?” His face
lifted again, jaw rigid, eyes screwed to narrow slits.

A lump bloomed
on his other shoulder, hard and knobbly and sliding around.

My mouth opened
and closed. My brain blasting out a series of w
hat do I do, what
do I do?
overlapped with a rambling of
ohmygodohmyfuckinggod
. Because, really—what
the hell
was I supposed to do?

More swellings
appeared across his body, a couple even tugging at the skin of his
face.

His fingers
clawed at the pile of the carpet, their scraping sound making my
eye twitch, my teeth buzz.

“Shelley?”
Mia’s first word held shrill panic.

Gabe pleaded
with me, and his gasped, “
Mum
?” throbbed through my
mind.

Mia urged me
again, her high-pitched, “
Shelley
?” screeching through my
eardrums.

Still, I didn’t
move, almost frozen—my mind along with my body.

I just glanced
between the slitted gaze of my son and the startled one of the
frightened girl.

Both of them
stared back, their desperation for me to know what to do evident in
the high shine of their eyes.

But I didn’t
know
! I didn’t bloody know. I needed to think, but it was so
hard when my child seemed to be in some kind of danger, was in
evident pain—impossible to compose rational thought.

“The phone,” I
managed.

Mia’s focus
didn’t waver.

“Get me the
phone,” I said. “Now, Mia!”

She left the
room like a bolting animal. On her return, she carried the
phone.

Taking it from
her, my thumb aimed for the ‘9’. As I hit it for the second time, a
strangled cry flew from Gabe’s lips.

His back bowed,
his head snapped back—both movements almost too fast to follow.

Before my mind
had time to register the change to his condition, he’d face-planted
the floor, arms splayed, his eyes squeezed tight as panted breaths
heaved from his chest.

Deep dread
slacked every muscle in my body; the phone dropped from my fingers.
“Gabe?”

No response. He
still breathed, though—the proof whistled past his teeth.

“Gabe, come on,
answer me—answer me, damn it, say something,
please
.”

A long, low
groan responded, seeming to echo for seconds within his chest.

Mia’s knee
nudged mine as she sank to the carpet beside me. Her glossy gaze
met mine for a moment, before we both reached out to tap Gabe’s
shoulder, gently shaking him, murmuring his name—as though united
in the plea for his wellbeing, or like we believed it’d take more
than just the one of us to bring him round.

For seconds, I
didn’t believe he’d wake up, I thought I’d lost him, that the
breaths lifting his chest didn’t mean a damn thing—until he rolled
with exaggerated slowness to flop onto his back.