Sky Tongues

Sky Tongues

Gina Ranalli

Also by Gina Ranalli

Novels

Chemical Gardens

Suicide Girls in the Afterlife

Wall of Kiss

Mother Puncher

Swarm of Flying Eyeballs

Praise the Dead

House of Fallen Trees

Collections

13 Thorns
(with Gus Fink)

Winner of the Wonderland Award

Sky Tongues

Published by Eraserhead Press

205 NE Bryant

Portland, OR 97211

www.eraserheadpress.com

ISBN 1-933929-81-2

Copyright © 2009 by Gina Ranalli. All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

1
   With my tongues folded neatly in my lap, I sit here on my balcony and watch the bright lights of Los Angeles twinkle below me. Sometimes I’m still not sure how I came to be here. Even at the height of my fame, I wasn’t sure. My life has, for the most part, been a gift and though there was a time when I would have protested intensely, I now know that my finger-tongues are a gift as well.
   I want to share the story of my life with you. Some have requested it, but most have not. Either way, here it is. My gift to you, my fans.
2
   My parents, Gall and Maude, met one day when they were in a diner. Both were Mues, of course, he a Skin and she an Outie, but their differences didn’t matter to either of them. My father has always had a thing for Outies, had in fact, dated many of them previously, but my mother was much younger and shy, barely able to look up from the plates of greasy eggs and burgers she would serve to the customers.
   My father ordered a vanilla milk shake as soon as he sat down at the counter and my mom, never having seen a shark Skin before became immediately enamored of him and promptly spilled his shake in his lap. Surprisingly, dad laughed and told her she could make it up to him by agreeing to a date, which she did.
   They continued to date for several months and then she became pregnant. Gall, a very traditional kind of Mue, at first wanted her to have an abortion but when she refused, he promptly moved in with her, despite his own parent’s intense disapproval. It had always been understood that he was to be with a Skin like himself and the rest of his family. And he had always planned to do so, considering the Outie females he was attracted to as merely playtime before settling down.
   But, as we all know, nothing ever goes as planned.
3
   Maude was a very unusual kind of Outie and most had ever seen one quite like her. Most of her veins were outside her body, snaking up and down her skin like so many tangles of wire. She had suffered some abuse while growing up, with other children often attempting to cut one of her veins just to see what would happen and watch her bleed. Obviously, even the slightest nick was a far more dangerous prospect to her than it is to most of us. But somehow she always survives, never having been unlucky enough for someone to get hold of one of her major arteries.
   But despite her uniqueness, her new “in-laws”- in quotations, of course, because different breeds of Mues are forbidden to marry - were still not particularly impressed with her. They welcomed her into their house as their son’s new pseudo-bride but rarely spoke to her and, she always said, only tolerated her because she was carrying their first grandchild. They were deeply disappointed in their son Gall and he himself was not particularly pleased with having his playboy days end so abruptly and at such a young age. He was barely 26.
   And that is how I came to be, the offspring of an Outie and a Skin, thrown together by circumstance rather than love.
   I was in the womb and already my destiny had begun.
4
   By the time I was born, my parents were living in an apartment south of Old Boston and both were working their respective jobs, she, still at the infamous diner and he as a plumber. His pay was far greater than hers and he never let her forget it. Resentment at his ended bachelorhood was always there, lying in wait just beneath the surface, anxious for a chance to spring out and give her a friendly reminder of all that he had sacrificed to marry her and financially support the child he already didn’t want.

   
But still, there I was, little Sky, born healthy on June the 5
^th
. Adding insult to injury, however, I was not a Skin as Gall was. Instead, I was an Outie like my mother. My condition though, was even more unusual than hers. Instead of something run-of-the-mill, like a spine on the outside of my back or a partially exposed brain, I had tongues for fingers. Four longish thin ones, somewhat snaky and serpentine, while my thumbs were more like regular tongues, shorter and thicker. The tongue in my mouth was exactly as it should have been, thank the gods. I also was born with two fat tongues on each foot, instead of big toes, which, as you might guess, made shoes difficult to shop for. But that was the least of my problems. I still had to grow up with a resentful father who didn’t want me and made no bones about it. He was the one who began calling me Sky Tongues, a nickname which stuck all through my growing up years.
   Maude, on the other hand, adored me when I was first born. She took me everywhere she went, showed me off to strangers and often brought me to visit my grandparents, who also, for some mysterious reason, adored me as well.
   The first few years of my childhood were mostly full of bliss. I have very few memories of my father during this time, but the ones I do have are scary ones. He was loud and always angry, his shark skin glistening and shiny, his black eyes full of fire.
   My mother did her best to shield me from his temper and disgust at having had an Outie. As I said, she adored me, and I her. Unfortunately though, those days were altogether too short.
5
   I was six when my brother Zion was born. And Zion was, to my father’s relief, a Skin like himself, not to mention a male, which was infinitely better than what I was: neither male
nor
female. I was a hermaphrodite, born with both sex organs, and that had been yet one more reason for Gall to hate me. He disliked Hermies even more than he disliked most Mues. Even more than he disliked the Norm Mues, which, for some reason, he hated worst of all.
   But Zion was neither of those things. His Skin was beautiful Dolphin, a gorgeous shade of gray rarely found except maybe among the Splits, which we all know may as well be fake. He was all boy and proved to be smart as well, lovable in every sense of the word.
   Now, my father was happy (unless his eyes fell on me, which they all too often did) and then so was my mother. Pleased she’d finally given him something he wanted, she focused all her attention of her new child, all but forgetting the previous one.
6
   It was at this time that I began my schooling. Instead of being sent to an all Outies school, however, I was sent to a much cheaper school for Norms-those supposed unfortunates possessing “normal birth defects”. And a Norm I most definitely was not.
   School was hell for me. Just learning how to hold a pencil between my tongues proved to be a difficult task that took far longer for me than it did the other children. No pun intended, of course, but I did indeed stick out like a sore thumb. My classmates were the most common variety of Norms. There were many with barely any deformities at all, such as having an extra limb or an extra eye. Several hunchbacks graced my presence as well as a few doubleheads.
   But none were as odd as I with my tongues and as such, I was teased unmercifully. I was called Froggy by most because my tongue fingers were so strangely long. I was told to go back to my lily pad and catch flies. More often than not, I was asked to hop.
   It was all very unoriginal taunting, as children are usually unoriginal beings, but sadly, many of the teachers I encountered also held a latent contempt for me. They, like the children, were Norms, with nothing more than an occasional nose on a cheek or lumpy knobs instead of hair.
   Completely and utterly miserable, I shut myself off from my surroundings, preferring the company of my own brain, even at home. There was nowhere for me to turn except into my imagination and that is where I went, where I found solace and a place where I fit in.
7

   I took an interest in art at a young age due to my discomfort among the rest of the human race. My first inclination was music, but obviously playing an instrument was out of the question and my parents refused to pay for lessons, using the excuse that they were saving up to send Zion to the very best Skin school in the state.
   Next, I tried my hand at painting, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I had to take odd jobs around the neighborhood to get the money for paint. I babysat, mowed an occasional lawn, cleaned the occasional house, all so I could afford the cheapest non-toxic acrylic paint I could find. I didn’t need to buy canvases or even paper, for I found that collecting discarded cardboard or pieces of wood suited me just fine.
   In the beginning, I used brushes to paint my expressionistic abstracts but holding them was never my strong suit. I preferred to paint with just my tongues, even though the paint tasted horrible. I loved the whole process of spreading color around where there had previously been none and it enabled me live happily inside myself for hours on end.
   But as Zion grew older, the time I had to myself steadily decreased. I was now given the majority of the household chores and sometimes I think my father delighted in watching me work. Dust rags often made me physically ill due to the chemicals sprayed on them and I was made to vacuum the same rug over and over until he was satisfied. And some days he was never satisfied. More than once he made me get down on my knees and pick microscopic bits of lint off the carpets with my bare tongues. This was disgusting and obviously a cruel enjoyment for him but any displeasure on my part was promptly greeted with a beating and more chores still.
   I would rake or shovel, depending on the season, do laundry for the whole family, wash dishes by tongue every morning before school and then again when I got home and then
again
before bed. My tongues became dry and chapped, cracking and bleeding, sprouting blisters and sores but none of that mattered to Gall. He would watch me struggle to hold a broom, a little smile of amusement on his face.
   This went on for years, while my mother happily ignored it. All of her attention was now taken up by Zion and his new verbal demands. I mourned the loss of my mother and looked on with envy as she polished his skin and attended to his every whim.
   Before long,
I
was attending to his every whim as well. Zion’s room needed to be cleaned, his sheets changed, his toys repaired. He disliked the way I folded his clothes and so I received a beating my father, a lecture from my mother and instructions from my six year old brother on how he preferred to have his socks stacked and color coordinated.
   Boiling with black rage, I learned to hate them all and hating them, as it turned out, became my salvation.

8
   Entering my teen years turned out to be a fresh kind of hell. As most teenagers find themselves suddenly curious about the opposite sex, I was intensely curious about both sexes. I had both sets of sex organs, after all, born with what they call a
clock
between my legs. Neither clit nor cock, but both. One and the same. Considered either an extremely large clit or an extremely small cock, depending on who was asked.   Regardless, though, my clock was awakening to new sensations and late at night I would lie awake in my bed thinking about a girl or a boy, whichever had caught my fancy that day, while feeling my clock swell beneath my pajamas. Eventually, I was brave enough to sneak a hand down there, stroking my clock with increasing intensity, pinching and pulling it between my thumb and index tongues. The resulting orgasms sent me over the moon and instead of painting, masturbation became my one greatest skill.
   Other kids too, mostly boys, took a new interest in my tongues as well. For the most part, I looked more female than male and so it was mainly boys who were looking at me in a new light.
   In front of others, I was still the freak Outie, but when I was alone in the library or spotted walking home, boys would corner me and say obscene things about my tongues. They would make me offers, usually money, but sometimes other things if they had no money. They would beg me to step into the woods with them; it would only take a minute. I received untold amounts of promises, confessions of love and occasionally a threat.
   I ignore them all. These were the same kids who had for years tormented me about being an Outie rather than a Norm and they continued to do so every day at school. The only thing that had changed was their own libidos and they way they acted towards me in private.
   But I knew I was my own best lover and I wasn’t about to share the glory of my multiple massaging tongues. That was only for me,
my
clock. It was the one thing that was truly mine and no amount of cajoling would change my mind on the matter.
9
   And then I met Midgard.
   He was the one Norm that I found myself attracted to when I entered junior high school. He was the most handsome Norm in the entire school and everyone agreed, even him. His deformity was his extra long arms, which hung well past his knees, and his claw-like hands, one with only three fingers, the other with four. I suspected his feet were deformed as well, but I never saw them. His face, however, was perfect. Even more handsome than that of the best looking non-Mues. Midgard, I was sure, would grow up to be a movie star. He was completely and utterly beautiful and I was in love with him.
   Midgard and I sat next to each other in science class. He and his friends called me Froggy, among other insults. “Half-girl” particularly stung. I pretended to hate him as much as I hated everyone else but he knew it was an act. I could see it in his crystal blue eyes.
   On one occasion, I caught him gazing at my tongues when we were supposed to be taking a test and I smiled at him. There was a second when I thought he’d return the smile but instead, he shouted, “Don’t look at me, Froggy!”
   I was mortified, hung my head and tried to concentrate on listing the different kinds of clouds.
   The next day in the library, I was in a secluded area searching for a president’s biography for a book report and then there was Midgard standing beside me. He brushed his body against mine without saying a word. His face was intensely serious and for some reason I bent low and grasped his hand in my tongues. He shook himself free in what could have been disgust but when I straightened up again, he kissed me, shoving his tongue into my mouth in a way that only a twelve year old could. It was a clumsy, messy kiss but I returned it lustfully, closing my eyes, filled with bliss.
   The kiss was painfully brief and the instant it was over, Midgard disappeared down an aisle and proceeded to ignore me.
   Back in science class it was business as usual. He hurled an extra amount of insults my way, making the entire class hysterical with laughter until the teacher put an end to it and told us to open our books to page 111.