“All right,” she said, fear shivering just beneath her words. “I’ll play your game. Then later, you can play mine.”
The door was locked when she gripped the knob. She expected some electrical charge to sweep through her at touching it, but there was nothing. Just an old doorknob on an old door in an old house. Was Mother Crow trying to second-guess her now? She had the urge to step back and think this through because this was mind against mind now and she could not afford to make any mistakes.
Bullshit. That’s exactly what she expects you to do.
Ramona took a few obligatory steps back, trying to appear unsure and filled with anxiety, which wasn’t too hard because that’s exactly how she felt. Then she stepped forward and the door was not locked. She threw it open and smelled a warm, meaty reek that reminded her of thawing pork. She panned around with the flashlight, taking in a large bedroom that lacked everything save a metal bed frame tucked in the corner.
“Soo-Lee?” she said.
Something cracked open in the air at that moment and she heard it, though probably only in her mind. She saw an image of an egg cracking open and some furry thing pulling itself out. It was symbolism of some sort and she recognized it as such.
The light picked out a slumped form against the far wall.
“Shit,” she muttered, her breath catching in her throat.
At first, she could not say that it was Soo-Lee up against the dirty brick wall. She saw a naked female form, long-legged, a sweep of lustrous black hair hanging over her face. The hair, if nothing else, triggered recognition because she had known very few women outside of fashion magazines that had such beautiful hair. Soo-Lee was dead, of course. She looked deflated, bony and wraith-like as if the skeleton inside her had become more pronounced in death. Her pale skin was speckled with blood. It was even clotted in her hair. And that wasn’t too surprising because it looked as if a bomb had gone off inside her, tearing her open from crotch to belly in a dark gash. She sat in a pool of blood. It was splashed up the wall behind her. It even dripped from the ceiling.
Ramona turned away, trying to keep her stomach down.
In a flash that made her head fill with sharp blades of pain, she knew what had happened and she saw it in all its grisly detail. She had to lean up against the doorjamb so she did not pitch straight over.
It came out of her, she thought numbly. What she carried, the seed that was planted in her and blossomed, it came out of her… no, it chewed its way out of her and she was awake through it all. At least, until the shock and trauma and agony made her pass out.
Ramona leaned there, what was in the room reaching out to her, striking her in waves of formless black evil. She could barely catch her breath.
(THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS TO CITY SLUTS)
In her head, it echoed and echoed. The pain was unbearable, each word like a razor dragged across her gray matter, slitting her open and making her bleed. “Please,” she heard herself say.
(THEY COME TO STOKES, OUR PERFECT TOWN, AND SPREAD THEIR DISEASE WITH THEIR FILTHY CONTAMINATED DIRTY PARTS)
Ramona was down on her knees now. It felt like each word landed with physical force, with impact. Her head felt like it was a bag being worked by a fighter. Boom-boom, bang-bang. She was fighting to stay conscious, but Mother Crow was winning. And who was she to stand up against something that could cheat death and re-create an entire town from smoking black ash and gutted ruin?
(THE DIRTY CHINK, TWO-DOLLAR GOOK WHORE, ASKING FOR IT)
“No, no, no, no,” Ramona moaned. “Oh please, please, no more…”
(BEGGING FOR IT, JUST BEGGING FOR IT, AND SHE GOT IT)
“Shut up!”
(SHE SCREAMED WHEN HE IMPALED HER, WHEN HE RUPTURED THE FOREIGN CUNT AND MADE HER BLEED LIKE HER KIND ALWAYS BLEED IN THE END! SHE SQUEALED AND CRIED OUT AND HE KEPT RAMMING, SPLITTING HER OPEN AND MAKING THE HOT RED FOULNESS WITHIN HER RUN BETWEEN HER LEGS!!!)
Ramona felt anger rising in her and it canceled out the fear and made the pain subside. And she knew it was her only true weapon, the only weapon anyone had in the conformist, meat-grinder, police state of Stokes: free will. Mother Crow could not abide it. She did not like men who thought they were her better and she did not like loose-tongued women who thought they were her equal. People needed to know their place and she had no civility with those that didn’t. Questionable morals or independent thinking were enough to get you ejected from the prison camp of Stokes in the old days and now such things were enough to condemn you. And the judge, jury, and executioner were one in the same: a bitter, frustrated, sour-souled, acid-tongued old spinster that no man had ever touched. So since she did not have a man to run and belittle and control with an iron fist, she forced her affections on the town and ran the people like cattle.
“FUCK YOU!” Ramona screamed at her. “FUCK YOU, YOU VICIOUS, FRIGID OLD TWAT! FUCK YOU AND FUCK STOKES!”
The house shook and Ramona thought it would come down around her such was the pure wrath of Mother Crow. Nothing hurt worse than the truth. Nothing could possibly cut deeper. And no wound bled as much or refused to be cauterized. There was thunder in the streets and the stench of roasted flesh and burning hair. It cycled through the house in a hot, gagging stink.
When it was gone, Ramona stood there with the light on Soo-Lee while Mother Crow’s hate and rage made the town tremble outside the walls of the house. Soo-Lee was like an old pipe that had burst and gushed blood in an ensanguined flood. A dear person with a dear, understanding heart and her death was made ugly and brutal by the old hag.
Ramona would make that evil bitch pay for it.
There were no two ways about that.
It was at that moment that she heard something under the bed frame. A sort of scratching sound like the claws of a rat. But it was no rat. She put the light over there and saw glittering black eyes like those of a Raggedy Ann doll staring out at her.
“So there you are,” she said in a beaten voice.
It shifted under there, a darkly evil pygmy-like form that the light could not adequately reveal and maybe that was a good thing. Illumination gleamed off its shoe-button eyes and teeth. Its claws ticked against the floor. Ramona stepped closer to the bed frame, not wanting to see it… but something in her almost demanding that she look upon it like some freak in a sideshow jar. The terror building in her was almost enough to make her faint dead away.
“Show yourself,” she said, her voice sounding determined yet almost weak.
The thing rustled there in the shadows. It made a wet sucking sort of sound. “Eeee, eeee, eeee,” it said with a shrill little voice that went right up her spine. It sounded like a stepped-upon mouse.
She kicked the bed and it scampered away, faster than her light seemed to be able to track it. It ran across Soo-Lee’s corpse and splashed through her blood, its nails ticking along like those of a cat that could not retract its claws. The light caught sight of its toothsome grin and a shiny, bulb-like, embryonic sort of head with trailing hair on one side that looked like seaweed.
It thinks you’re playing with it, Ramona thought.
The very idea was twisted and horrible, yet she was almost certain of it. Maybe Mother Crow had thought it all into being, the rape and the pregnancy and the birth, but now that it was alive, it really was alive and had a child’s sense of play.