Shadow Seed 1: The Misbegotten (74 page)

(Summer – 2018)

A Tedious Vigil

Over the course of the next week, things began to turn routine and more commonplace around my parents’ house.  So much so, we became evermore careless with how we moved or made noise.  More than once an hour, we had to tell one another to be quieter or to at least pay attention, because if we didn’t my parents
were definitely going to find out there were more kids staying the night, then they thought.  With everything else going on at the time, I really didn’t need my mom (or my step-dad) up in my cheese, hell-bent over the fact I was sleeping with four girls every night.  It wasn’t like we were having wild orgies – though we’d come close the night of my dream – and they wouldn’t have found us in a nasty, naked pile, but they’d still go ballistic.  A seventeen year old boy wasn’t supposed to be sleeping with four girls at once.

Some of the reason was my fault.  I had painstakingly covered my tracks whenever I had done something your typical A-B student wouldn’t do.  Whether it was smoking marijuana or having sex on the fourth floor at school, you know
, the usual bad-kid bull-crap.

Well, I went out of my way to make certain they never found out.  I was careful not to get caught.  I formulated plans before I acted.  I was thorough.  It didn’t stop me from doing some stupid shit, even back then, but I didn’t launch myself headlong into a given situation without some degree of fore-thought.  I guess, even as a teen, I had a fairly decent knowledge of tradecraft and used it whenever and wherever possible.

The downside though, was my parents
truly
believed I was a goody, goody kid – nicely groomed and straight-laced.  The truth would’ve shocked them into next week and probably would’ve brought undo notice to our safe and sane household, notice none of us Mutos needed.  It would’ve meant our deaths.

So, we bitched and groaned at one another during the late night and early morning hours when my parents were home
.  We chastised those one of us that got too noisy or forgetful of the places they shouldn’t go within the house at a certain hour of the day.

Jacob called again on the first day, a Friday, telling me he might not be able to call over the coming weekend, because the overall situation was reaching a critical point.  He explained,  the night before - which would’ve been the night following the slaughter of Jolene’s family - the NIA had struck yet another home, though this one had been in El Sereno and the result had been very different.

Apparently, as he told me, members of two other households had come to the aid of the one being attacked.  The interlopers had been armed and ambushed the Shock Troops as they were about to bust down the front door.  The outcome had been made all the more worse by a persisting rumor that Mutations had been used to augment the defense against the NIA soldiers.  From what he and my uncles were able to find out, there were bodies everywhere and more than three-quarters of them were government agents.  Because of the carnage, the entire neighborhood was termed a threat to Meta-national Security and virtually cordoned off from the rest of the city.  Countering the government’s response, the citizens living there had erected barriers and barricades about their properties’ and had booby-trapped every egress into the area.  Now, an edgy sort of stand-off had ensued with both sides eyeing the other, waiting for the slightest provocation to attack.

Jacob said my uncles had become excited and immediately began to devise methods to smuggle food and water, and heavier weapons, to those trapped in El Sereno.  It was what they were now calling, “one mother-loving, hell of a profit!”  He said, if true war was ever going to erupt between the NIA and
the Mutos, it would begin there, supplied and supported, in part, by our two crazy-assed uncles.

I found it hard to believe, after we had terminated the call, but really couldn’t put it past my uncles.  They weren’t good people.  They
were opportunistic parasites, preying off every situation they could lay their hands on.  To make quick money with the least amount of effort was their motto.  And yet, I didn’t totally disagree with what they were doing either.  People had the right to defend themselves from any threat, and that included the government.  It was the whole “profit” thing that left a sour taste in my mouth.  It just didn’t ring true.

Stupid me though.  Little did I know at the time, I would
adopt my uncles’ way of thinking and take their methods of doing business to heights undreamed of… all the way to the stars.  I became ten thousand percent worse than they ever were.  There are many harsh lessons one must learn before they can be called, Keeper of the Peace.  Rule number one: you gotta be brave enough to enforce it.

There were other factors making us edgy and irritable as well.  The fact the girls and I slept in the same bed didn’t help, because we were teenagers, in the flush of hormones, not quite adults, but old enough to act on adult desires and urges.  Our pact regarding vigilance didn’t stop me from getting erections or any one of the girls from waking wet and moist, especially since we were always touching.  There were times, in the depths of the night, I’d opened my eyes to one of them kissing my neck or fondling errant, midnight wood.  Since I slept without a shirt, my nipples were nibbled or sucked multiple times a night.  I began to wonder if I should sleep with a shirt on, but every time I climbed into that bed with all those girls within minutes the heat would become unbearable and off came the shirt.

Once, I was awakened by female moans that had nothing to do with me.  I turned over to find Ramona and Katie making out, each of them with a hand down the others’ pajama bottoms, making furious circular motions with their fingertips.  My cock swelled so fast, I gasped in pain as blood filled the vessels down there so swiftly it felt like it was being torn from the inside out.  I was about to join them when Leda sat up, hovering over us all, groggily, but firmly pulling us apart.  She mumbled for us to stop, saying we had to stay the course, etc., etc. 
Blah, blah, blah!
I remember thinking, as she physically planted herself between the two other girls, shoving me further away with her foot.  My dick was so hard it ached.  I wanted someone, any of them, to scoot down there and take me in their mouth.  I wouldn’t have lasted that long.  What was the big, fucking deal anyhow?

But they seemed to have gained their composure and fell back asleep.  I stroked my pole a few times frustrated beyond belief.  After a spell, I forced myself to let go of it, to roll to the side and forget all notions of a
quick, but deep blow-job.

I woke the next morning sullen and withdrawn, the need to release was almost as bad as the pending doom that seemed to drape over us all like an invisible blanket of lead.  It wore us down by the minute, pulled at our shoulders, made our backs bow.  Add the sexual dissatisfaction to the mix and things cou
ld’ve gone nuclear in seconds.  The tension was so thick, I could almost taste it.  A little pussy would’ve helped big-time, but in the end, we stayed cool.  We stayed just far enough away from each other to endure the nights, but it was hell – for all of us.

Of course, there were some things, other things, to keep us occupied whilst we waited for something, anything, to happen.  Saturday afternoon, during our usual midday swim, I found Ramona staring intently at Flavia.  I kept asking her what the matter was, but she kept pushing aside my questions.  Deflecting them by saying she would tell me later.  Finally, when my step-sister emerged from the pool and walked by us, Ramona reached out and grabbed Flavia by the wrist.  My step-sister had stopped at once, peering into my girlfriend’s eyes for nearly a minute.  The cords in my step-sister’s neck straining more and more with each passing second.  When Ramona had finally let go, she said Flavia’s vision would be “special” too.  She couldn’t define it
more than that, but there would be no denying it.  Flavia’s eyes were not going to be normal for long.  Being the practical girl she was, Flavia shrugged and said, “thank you.”

I could only squint at them as if I’d tasted something sour. 
Girls could be so fucking weird at times.

Other aspects of “hardness” developed, during those few days as well, having nothing to do with my reproductive organ.  With every twelve-hour interval, both Tirza and I grew harder.  Now, I’m not referring to anything sexual or even sexual in nature.  I mean precisely what I am saying – we grew harder.  I knew my first encounter with this physiological change within me had occurred while I was attempting to shave.  I had shattered the shaver when I should’ve flayed my cheek, but this was somewhat different.  I was becoming denser as if the billions and billions of molecules in my body were realigning, as if they moved closer together, making space for more mass to inject itself into my body.  As a consequence, I was getting heavier and made the floor and my bed creak loudly whenever stepped or moved about.  This was true of Tirza as well.

We didn’t
feel
any different or lose equilibrium or anything along those lines.  We just had to be more careful of what grabbed or bumped into, for one tiny, inadvertent knock of my hand against the drywall in my bathroom had left the impression of my knuckles behind.  I had stood there shocked, because it had been such an innocuous movement, and yet the result was ten, maybe fifteen, times beyond what it should’ve been.

By the end of the third day, needles could no longer penetrate our skin and both Tirza and I were over sixty percent heavier than we had weighed seventy-two hours prior.  We both became hyper-aware of our surroundings, because we didn’t want to hurt anyone unnecessarily.  It still didn’t stop the others from taking pot-shots at us now and again just to test whether or not we’d feel their punches more than they did – usually, they felt it more.  My ex-girlfriend and I began to joke about all the sore knuckles we had given
them without so much as lifting a finger.

By the end of the fourth day – Monday
, the 18
th
- our little community rouse began to unravel as well - the angst amongst our parents began to reach levels so high, real fear was beginning to take over.  The first to crumble before the onslaught was Sandy’s mother, who called her mid-afternoon and told her she couldn’t stay the night at Leda’s.  When Sandy protested, her mother would have none of it and said she expected Sandy to be home when she got home from work at 6:30 pm.  Sandy shrugged at the phone and said to no one, “I’m sorry to disappoint…”

The second was Ramona’s mother, Maria, and she wasn’t as diplomatic.  Her and my girlfriend went back and forth for a few minutes until her mom had enough.  Maria had yelled at Ramona then, promising if she didn’t come home that night, she would report her as a runaway.  Ramona threw the phone on my bed in anger, skulking where she stood, facing out one of the back windows of the Loft.  She was so annoyed
, she was on the verge of tears.

When Leda made to go to her, I
stopped her.  It was always better to leave Ramona be when she was about to cry, the slightest miscalculation could set her off screaming in the other direction.  Instead, I wrapped Leda in my embrace and held her for a few moments, letting her know I understood what she was trying to do, even if my girlfriend couldn’t.  She had turned her head and laid it against my chest and stayed there for a while.

We all knew Ramona would now be a runaway.

When my mom got home on Friday, the seventh day of our tedious wait, she settled little Lucia with a fresh Sippy-cup of juice before the TV in her room and came directly to the Loft.  With only a cursory knock, she stepped into the large room, her face registering mild shock at the sight of the girls, the air mattresses, all the blankets and the general untidiness of the room.  She had frowned, and probably would’ve rounded on me with a stern remark upon her tongue when she saw Flavia and Jolene as well as Johan and Martín sitting on my bed with the rest of us, while we watched the local news station.

I had extricated myself from the group and met her half way, apologizing for the mess, but she really wasn’t looking at me anymore.  Her eyes were festooned to the LCD screen depicting story after story of Muto infestations, terrorist upris
ings that seemed to never end.

When I said I was sorry for the mess for a second time, she just waved me to her, worry and uncertainty in her expression.  I went to my mother and she gave me a firm hug.  The
n, she did an amazing thing.  She whispered in my ear that it was okay if any of my friends wished to stay over.  As far as she was concerned, she didn’t want anyone on the streets once the sun went down.  I lied a white lie, saying that only Jolene and Tirza would be staying.  I just couldn’t see her having to accept the
real
number of people who’d be – and had been – staying for nearly two weeks now.

When I motioned to Tirza, her eyes nearly popped out of her head in confusion.  I knew she was fighting to comprehend how Ramona would allow Tirza to be
within one hundred feet of me.

But, my mother, being the great woman of tact that she was, merely pursed her lips and said under her breath, “I’ll wait to hear you explain
that
one later, young man.  Until then, be good.”  Her eyes were direct and bore into mine.  Like always, she was telling – and not particularly subtle, I might add – to keep my hands to myself and my junk in my pants.