20So. Yeah. Holy crap. I uploaded something! Woo! It's been a full year and then some since I last uploaded. Since then I moved twice and suffered not writers block but full on writers constipation with this story. It was all there, I still wanted to write. But I just couldn't bring myself to. I could not motivate myself to type through the chaos for a bit but things have calmed down.
I haven't had chance to filter this through My husband yet. He's been a busy man and I've just wanted to get this done and post it up for quite some time. I'm sort of giving you guys the semi-raw material at the moment. I may make minor changes to his chapter within a few days if he sees something I missed. I ran it through a spell check and did a quick read through once it was done so while it might not be perfect it shouldn't been horrid either. There is a lot going on with Erik in this chapter because it basically ended up being all the things I forgot to do in the last chapter. It's sort of a combination of things that I should have done in the last chapter and everything I wanted squared away before everything I have planned for the next chapter. It's an inbetweeny that turned into a full blown installment. Here you go loves. Enjoy.
Oh. And to clarify. Erik's dad made all his mountains of cash as a career criminal, it's not centric to the story so I'm not going to laser focus on it... But his should have died in prison, not in his Mercedes at drive thru.
By the time we reached my mother's estate it was late in the evening. The quack cloners had prescribed anti-anxiety medication that I openly refused to take. I wanted nothing to do with the medication. I'd never needed such garbage before my untimely death, why would I need it now? I certainly wasn't anxious, just growing steadily angrier that my family had gone through with this. Alex certainly should have been the voice of reason to prevent it. She'd venomously fought the notion that we might one day be killed and reborn like this. Alex protested it ever since she was a teenager.
On some level I was angry with her for failing to stop mom from doing it, but mostly I was furious that my mother held no question and no wonder at all about just what I was. In her mind this whole nightmare was just an "I told you so" moment. She didn't consider that this body was not the boy she'd given birth too and that his sense of self could very simply be a result of the memories which had been implanted. It did not occur to Lydia that what her daughter believed might be true. Eric died and you can't bring back the dead, not really anyway. The idea of all of that did not sit well with me either. I knew myself as Eric, I had total recall of his life, I had this sense of self but was it even real? Was it all just artifice? Honestly, if anything were to give me an anxiety attack it would be the thought of that shit.
Our mother pushed the glass of water into my hands again as I leaned on the counter in the kitchen where I'd grown up and then she shook the little orange pill bottle at me for the fourth time before placing it on the counter with a none too amused frown. "You do as I say and you take the pill. I know you, you're like your father -god rest his soul- and he was just as stubborn. He never listened and if he had he wouldn't be six feet under. Do your mother a favor for once and just take care of yourself. I'm not asking a lot. Please."
I did feel guilty, she had a way of doing that. Maybe all mothers do. Being told I was like my father stung though, I didn't like that one bit but I had after all made an ass of myself all day. Much like he would.
I took the pill that night, but I genuinely forgot all about them by morning.
Days passed, then a week and I slept so little. The first night I spent in the pool house was just fine because I was entirely drained of all will or energy to move and think. I fell asleep quickly and did not recall dreaming. It was the second night and those following which brought with them the unpleasant visions of twisted figures and glistening teeth which shone in the inky blackness. Nightmares soon transformed into fully fledged night terrors. I lay paralyzed in my bed, aware that I was dreaming and unable to stop it. Monsters, slick obsidian monsters that crept in shadows and lunged violently. Horror. Absolute horror. This was the first time this body experienced real sleep and with this I tried to justify these horrible nights that I had never experienced a single time in my life before... You know. Dying.
I was exhausted again. I felt like I was only coasting through the day communicating through guttural noises and miming interactions with my mother and sister without intellectually participating at all. Mom seemed thrilled not to be fighting and to being quite frank so was I. I don't think I could stand to argue with her feeling like this. Alexis though? She was no fool and not content to take another blank stared "mhm" or "what?".
"Erik seriously. Whats up with you, you look like the walking dead." She stood with her hands on her hips like Peter Pan. I always found that funny about her until I'd catch myself doing it.
"I'm fine sis. It's okay, I'm just. I dunno. Sort of tired?" I tried to down play it, mom was overbearing but my sister did the silent worrying accompanied by scrutinizing stares which in turn made me worry too.
"So you're not sleeping." It was a statement, not a question. I felt myself chew on my lower lip out of habit. There was no point in lying, she'd know, the lip chew already gave it away that I was tempted to.
"Okay fine. Yeah. I don't think I've even managed to get a uninterrupted four hours in the last three days... Actually, I can't remember whether I slept at all last night or not."
Her lips pressed together and the left corner of her mouth pulled into her signature grimace of concern. "Sooo. Something's waking you up at night? Is it the koi pond behind the pool house? Why don't you sleep in your old room in the main house. Maybe you'll be more comfortable?"
I shook my head and tiredly massaged circles into my temples as she spoke. Somehow needing to really explain this in detail only doubled the weight of my fatigue. "No. No no no. Seriously, I'm much more comfortable in the pool house. It's got everything I need. Bed, toilet, TV. I'm fine with that, the bull frog and the odd splash isn't going to wake me up. I sleep over the drone of Carrigan's engines, remember?" I paused and wrung my hands together before sitting at the dining room table. Alex sat too and with a moment of hesitation reached out to still my hands.
"Tell me what's going on." She demanded in the softest tone possible. Her concern would not accept another half admission.
I could only sigh and spill it before she sought the help of organic sleep aids. "I'm having these dreams. They wake me up, but I can't move. I can't stop it. I can't even yell for help. Once they're over I can't go back to bed. I just keep seeing... Teeth. I see fucking teeth every time I close my eyes Alex. I don't even want to turn off the light anymore."
She looked on with a steadily intensifying sympathetic frown. "Okay. I want you to try not to watch any TV before bed. You're brain isn't used to it. And I'm going to start checking on you okay? I'm going to set my watch to wake up so I can poke my head in around midnight."
"Alex, I don't want you losing sleep over this too!"
"Nothing ever stopped you from robbing me of sleep before. Remember butthead, when we were little you used to wake me up in the middle of the night to battle the monster in your closet." She popped me in the middle of the forehead with her palm and I rolled my eyes at her.
There was only that short moment before her worry returned. "Are you sure you're up to meeting Jackie tonight? You can hang back and get some rest if you need to."
"And miss the opportunity to embarrass you in front of your new boyfriend? Not a chance."
"Fiancée." She corrected.
"Not until I know for sure that I won't have to kill him one day." I declared and she rolled her eyes back at me.
Dinner was planned and mom seemed enthusiastic to see one of her children making an effort to marry. We went out to an old favorite restaurant of mum's which of course meant over the top and this Jackson character met us there. I was sort of expecting Alex's type to be more... No, less. I had pictured Jack as this dorky little hipster approaching his forties just like Alex. The guy arrived on a vintage motorcycle wearing a cut-off and leather chaps. Needless to say the dinner went swell. Jack needed to borrow a jacket at the door, I spent the whole evening staring at the six inch long braid of hair that hung off the dude's chin while mom pretended to be nice and Alexis just fawned at this... Whatever he was. I couldn't even figure out what group or chapter he was from, his patches were nothing I'd ever seen on the road before.
I have nothing against bikers. I know many, some are friends but I have everything against any biker -including the ones I know- dating my sister. Pardon me, but I'm a brother who wants to at least be capable of scaring a potential suitor in the event that he screwed up with my sister. In this case I'd probably be bent into a pretzel by this mountain of meat if I tried.
That night as we waved him goodbye in the parking lot I didn't say anything. I don't think I knew where to start. That looked for all the world like the kind of people dad kept close. Why in the world after everything we had seen would Alex want to be near that element in such an intimate way? Hmm. I just couldn't get my sleep deprived brain around it, much less talk about it. So I crawled into the pool house at the first opportunity.
Alex did indeed check in that night but I only realized this after I came to. I can't really describe what I saw. I felt more than I saw. I felt pain. Insurmountable pain and anger. It also felt like I was being mauled by a rabid dog and I felt rabid too. Worse were the few images that filtered through the chaos. Slithering bodies of horrible shapes circling, writhing like a carpet of swarming ants the size of lions. Yet all that fear only came back to anger. The fury filled me up and burst the seams at my eyes where it spilled out in hot tears which stung at my check bones with their salt. I couldn't control the emotion. It was not me. It couldn't be me. I was being thrown about although I lay in that bed still as stone. I flailed, I screamed, all without really moving or making a noise. Teeth. I saw teeth again and then the agony exploded out of my right side. I swear that I felt blood pouring out of me and soaking the sheets.
The strangest thing was that my eyes were wide open and I could see the ceiling over head with the stucco textures but the imagery kept playing across my vision as if my eye balls were theater projectors. I felt pride and vindictive amusement overwhelm my gut fear of it all. New sensations came as if I was falling, no... Leaping off the edge of a building with arms outstretched toward one of the slithering beasts which haunted my nightmares. Elation of victory overwhelmed me for the briefest of times. I felt like laughing, cackling until my lungs burst and my sides burned, then the fear rushed back to crush me as if in a vacuum at the bottom of the ocean. The night terror had finally broken.
I realized that I was shaking like a leaf in the wind and swallowing failed breaths as Alex held me up into a sitting position. She was running her finger nails through the soaked strands on my head. My sister shooshed me soothingly and her voice shook with her own panic. I wasn't paralyzed anymore, but I couldn't make any meaningful effort toward moving either because I couldn't control the tremors that rolled through my sore body. I'd been tensed like a rock of a man in that bed as the dream played out, just laying there sweating and hyperventilating while Alex frantically struggled to pull me out of the attack.
We could hardly speak, we were too frightened. Alex twice over insisted a visit to a hospital. I said no, vanity -beleive it or not- took hold at about the same time I was flushing the half digested dinner I'd had earlier down the toilet after retching it all back up. I didn't want to be told I was crazy.
She did get a compromise. I went with her to the main house that night and took up residence in my old room again. It was while she was helping me gather my crap and bring it in that we found the forgotten bottle of anti-anxiety medication.
"Well. I never put much stock in it but maybe this could be my problem." I said sheepishly as she presented the bottle to me with a tired, mildly disappointed frown. She was always a stickler for adhering to doctors instructions and chided me for not.
I slept a little more that night, but truly only as a result of total and complete physical exhaustion.
-about six hours later-
I sat on the stony patio early the next morning by the koi pond behind the pool house for a long time. It was nice to have that time to myself to nurse a mug of coffee and not think about the night before. At least I was trying not to think about it. It was hard to fathom and it just scared the hell out of me. Was I going nuts? What if I ended up too loony to fly my ship? I couldn't lose my job, I loved it too much. I loved space, I loved traveling and seeing so much. Hell I'd even miss my helm android Chet. I was musing on the android and his artificial personality when Alexis nearly scared me out of my skin.
She yelped too and drew her hand away from my shoulder as I tried -and failed- to save my coffee. She laughed a little to brush off the start. "Ohh ho, sorry little brother. I just wanted to check on you."
I grinned up at her cheekily with my eyes mashed shut. "Not a baby. Don't need to be babysat."
"Well it looks to me like you still need a bib. You spilled that coffee all down your shirt." She pointed out as she sat.
"That's your fault darling, glad it was cold anyway. How was your sleep?" I said as I started pulling the soiled shirt off and pulling back on the sweatshirt draped over another wrought iron seat.
She just shrugged. "What about you?"
I could only shake my head. I did sleep after all the horror and it was -thank god- dreamless but I still felt like I'd been run over by a truck. It had felt so real and I checked myself twice earlier to look for the wounds I'd surely have if the pain of it was in fact real. Not a scratch was found. We needed another topic to talk about. So we settled on idle chit chat about the cloned birds mom released onto the property when we were kids. A bunch of generations later our old neighborhood still had birds. They didn't migrate. There was a force shield over the entire community and it was climate controlled to feel like late spring all year. I wondered if it made the birds nuts.
Eventually we ended up standing side by side watching the fat old koi in that bubbling pond swallow feed tossed in for them just like old times.
The business of meeting her fiancée the night before was still an awkward topic but I had my curiosities toward the rough looking man. Never pegged my sister to troll for men at biker bars. "So uh... I read somewhere that most women marry their fathers so to speak. Jackie aint' anything like dad or his old pals right?"
I watched as her expression twisted into horror, then she laughed a little. "No way! I mean..." She paused again to cringe and giggle. "...God no. Jack looks like a rough knuckled hoodlum but he's really a big dork. The good kind of dorky." She closed her eyes, waved her hands in the air and shook her head. "He's just growing out his beard and hair so that- Oh man this sounds sooo nerdy... Look. DON'T you fucking laugh okay? He's growing out that ratty goatee thing so his klingon gettup for Comic-Con looks legit."
I didn't laugh. I died right there on the spot and practically rolled around in the grass howling and carrying on like a hyena. That explained the patches on his vest that I couldn't identify, those stupid badges that the actors on the Starship Enterprise wore. Good god it all made sense now! So he wasn't some biker after all, just a diehard star trek nerd who took cosplay way too seriously. I was kicked at the ribs playfully and prodded with her toes as she muttered curses at me to shut up. "No shit? So what, do you dress up as princess Leia?"
She scoffed at me and corrected right away. "That's Star Wars you twat." It only rekindled my amusement. In the end we both ended up in the grass laughing at each other. It was the first time in many years that I had been here at home and happy about it.
-Soft Cries-
The young ones had sparred with one another then their elders and had received all the knowledge that we could supply them. They were as ready as Hard Center and I could make them but they could only fully understand our enemies once they've tasted their blood and felt the void left by fallen sisters. The tussles here made their limbs strong and the snapping of their jaws quick yet I had my doubts. They did not grow in stages like my other warrior sisters and I. The battle for our rightful territory would have to be the proving ground for these young ones. All Mother had instructed us all to wait. The time was not right so we were stuck putting the new warriors to use lining stony walls with tunnel flesh and placing cradles. The nest maid work was a bore and they hated it but it was better than letting them meander about stirring up conflict with one another.
My concerns doubled as it became obvious that these much too young warriors had as little self control as a crawler looking for a host. They wanted carnage and nothing else. Smooth face was outright terrified of them after her last encounter with Swift Bite. These overgrown wrigglers needed constant supervision! I hardly had the time for this nonsense. Hard Center chided me for abhorring their excess bloodlust, citing weakness which elicited a demonstration of my dominance and a show of her anger. I'd spent days in close proximity to her without the purpose of a battle with the potential mothers to unify us. It was the last moment moment I could possibly stand to be in the presence of Hard Center, so we circled. The young warriors howled with renewed excitement, crying out for bloodshed.
This test of wills and strength was long overdue, Hard Center needed to be reminded why it is I who lead all battles and carried out All Mother's will.
We snarled out agitation, bodies tense, limbs strong, we were fierce titans among the fodder of future warriors. Hard Center made the first move as expected and I too engaged. Our bodies came together with the sound of thunder, we rolled only briefly before separating and uniting once more in a flurry of wild howls and perfect form. We leaped, mirroring one another as if only reflections dancing in flawless synchrony. Blood already poured in steaming pools unto the unfinished stone of the cavern as we circled again, searching for a moment of weakness, a falter, any indication of the opportune second to strike again. We found none in one another. Instead the flaw was in the impatience of a youngster who inched far too close. It was finally Hard Center who broke from our dance, goring the child upon her tail and turning her head to hiss at the fool before flinging away our younger sister with merely a flick of that fifth limb. The body flew into me shrieking in surprise pain and confusion as we both tumbled far down into the barer cavern tunnels.
When Hard Center caught up with the flailing mass of chitin rolling down into the depths of the earth I witnessed her greet the scene from my hidden high position. I could taste victory. She'd paused to observe the only obvious animate creature within that cave chamber which was the bloodied young warrior dazedly struggling to stand long enough to slink away. It was a grievous mistake on Hard Center's part. I returned to the fray from above, throwing my outstretched limbs around her body upon impact. She wroth, I wroth. She screamed, I screamed. She fell, I fell. But then the blood sprayed.
Hard Center had lost her right talon to my grinning maul of razors. It twitched violently on the floor still clenching and releasing its grip again and again.
This terribly short struggle for domination was over. Hard center was simply unwilling to submit to that truth. She broke free to turn again and face me with dribble running down her chin onto the floor in long threads because her jaw was broken and she could not hold it closed. This injury was not intentional nor was my painfully dislocated shoulder but I could still snap my jaws shut around her throat if I had a mind to do so and she could not do the same to me, therefore she has lost. To further the dispute would serve no one. We should tend to our wounds and accept the match as it ended.
In a cry of rage and desperation my sister flung the vicious point of her tail forward. The move was a last effort and easy to slip around. My teeth were faster than she and closed around that fifth limb at the hilt of her natural blade of bone and exoskeleton. I could take this off and rid her of her this vital weapon but this would destroy Hard Center and she would become next to worthless as a warrior. She had another hand, she she did not have a spare tail. So I pulled back with all of my body and she shrilled out her protest as she was hauled her back into the hospitable corridors furnished with tunnel flesh so recently by our little bunch of students. At the threshold of our damp organic realm I swung my entire mass around and flung her into the crowd of youngsters with a hiss. I was done with this. It was over and I howled in victory, but the noise I made was only a formality. All mother agreed that it was settled and made it clear that no more infighting would be tolerated from this point on despite Hard Center's protest. She was forced to slither away sulking.
Slowly the corridor cleared. Those crowded to watch dispersed to continue their assigned duties. I shifted and stretched to relocate the injured joint. It may take some time to repair itself.
I might have been content to find a place to rest and monitor goings on with my minds eye from a distance but my thoughts were interrupted. I was being attacked but not from any individual or force outside of my body. I was alone. The assault came from within me. I could not cry out in shock because I was frozen, collapsed onto a pile of my own useless shivering limbs as the event ran its course. I saw strange surroundings over lay my true whereabouts. It was all in my mind, all in my mind. No one else's. It was not of the hive. It penetrated without my consent and overwhelmed all of my senses. I was helpless, at the mercy of the hallucination. Was it a hallucination? Maddness? It felt real but I couldn't tell. Maybe it was a memory because it felt familiar? Straight lines like the dwellings of the potential mothers. A mind screaming when the voice could not. Fear. Darkness. Then more fear. And finally a sister. Her face was ugly, hideous, bulbous bulging things in her face that opened and closed rapidly as she cooed soothing noises. But this wasn't happening to me. I realized that I was only eavesdropping upon another mind. I had not a bloody clue whose at first as it would take a moment to register over the shock.
It all slipped away as quickly as it began, and I was still alone. I knew that mind, a knew that voice. I did. Try desperately as I might, I could not find the voice again, I could not reach her mind. I could not reach mama.