“… okay, mate?”
Troy jumped, caught his brother’s eye. “What?”
“I said, are you okay, mate? You look ill.”
“I’m… I don’t know…”
“Can’t you just be happy for me or something? Why are you always the bloody weird one, Troy?”
Troy stood, knocking over his chair. He was lightheaded, his entire right side and arm burned with an intensity that made him grit his teeth. Despite the air-con he was hot as hell.
His father stood, brow furrowed. “What’s happening, son? Take the top off, you’re overheating. Here, let me help.”
The rest of the family stilled, all celebration drained away.
“Fucken hell, Troy, pick your moment!” Simon said.
“Wait, don’t be mean,” their mother said. “Troy?”
He heard that unearthly siren, like the one he’d dreamed. He felt the pounding wind and rain, the storm as the sky split red and purple. He couldn’t breathe. The vastness cajoled him.
“My egg!”
“Your what?” Rose asked.
“I have to go!”
His mother reached for him, her eyes wide. “Troy, what’s happening. Let me call the doctor.”
He pushed past her and headed for the door. “No, I’m fine. Really. Maybe the fall affected me more than I realised.” The fall. Everyone in The Gulp dreams of the fall. Whose voice was that in his head? A scratchy old woman’s tone. “I just need to go home. I’m sorry. Congrats, Si. Well done, mate. Laura.”
“The fuck?” Simon said, scowling.
Troy half-ran, half-fell along the hallway and pulled open the front door.
“Let me drive you, son,” his dad said, hurrying along behind.
“No, I want the walk. The fresh air.”
“It’s a scorcher out there, the car has AC–”
“I’m fine! Thanks though. I’ll see you soon. Sorry!” He pulled the door closed and strode off along the path towards the street. As soon as he knew he was heading back to his egg, his head cleared a little.
The front door opened again, his family crammed in it, looking out.
“Troy?” his mother called.
“Honestly, I’m fine,” he shouted, without looking back. “I’m really sorry. I’ll call you later.”
He turned onto the footpath and walked as quickly as he could without breaking into a run. He needed to be home, simple as that.
Standing back in front of his tank half an hour later, he stared in wonder. The egg had grown again, almost filling the tank. The fish and plants had become a part of it, multi-coloured appendages to the mass. The finger-like growths all around its edge had also begun to blur together, making a thick skirt that rippled softly in the current.
Troy tore away his clothes, left them piled on the floor, and lifted his family from the water. He held it tight against his chest, both arms wrapped around it. It was so hot, and so heavy. Orgasmic waves of satisfaction pulsed through him. He sank to the floor under the weight of it, nestled one end into his lap as he sat cross-legged. Hugging it tightly, he rocked gently, murmuring words of love, promises of protection, soft gasps at the pleasurable sensations it sent through him.
Time passed, hours or even days he didn’t know. Or care. His phone rang repeatedly, but he ignored it. Eventually it stopped. He assumed the battery had quit. On several occasions, he heard banging on his door. People called his name. He recognised his mother’s voice, then his father, more stern. A female voice at one point that might have been Rose, might have been Cindy.
The skirt of clear flesh around the egg spread over his shoulders and merged into his skin. The thickening, purple, blistered flesh of his arms and chest spread to cover his whole upper body, burning with a delicious, insatiable itch. He felt it creep up his neck, spread across his face where he kept his cheek pressed to his beloved.
His vision began to blur, everything tinged purple. His bones grew, spreading up and outward. Over time irrelevant, his spine arched back, his ribs flowered open. His legs shifted and reformed beneath him as his face tipped back. The egg was heavier than ever, more than a metre across, maybe almost as deep, nestled in the cradle of his reforming flesh.
There was purpose to his transformation, he knew. It was the next stage his family required. First the water, now this. Next? It didn’t matter, he would do whatever it needed. He would be whatever it needed. He exulted in the twisting of his flesh and bones. His arms had merged with it and with each other, wrapped protectively around. His torso had become a basket of blistered, purple flesh atop the thick short stumps of his legs. His head and neck had swollen and become one, pressing out somewhere from the edge of the new entity he had evolved into. Purple sheened his vision, a sound of distant waves constantly filled his ears.
Something called to him, some presence beyond normal hearing. An urge irresistible. On stocky limbs he shifted awkwardly towards the door of his flat and heard them gathered on the other side. He realised he had known they were coming. Or the egg knew, which was the same thing really. They knocked, and he tried to tell them he had no hands to open the door. Instead his voice was a thick slurry of noise, his tongue five times its normal size twisted up inside his contorted face, letting out only strangled coughs and barks. He leaned, tipped one purpled eye towards the door as the knocking became pounding.
“Yeeessssstthhhh,” he called, as loudly as he could. “YEEESSSSTTHHHH!”
The door burst inwards, the lock splitting from the wooden frame.
Four people stood there, all pale as chalk. An incredibly old man, a young woman in her late teens, a middle-aged woman in jeans and a red jumper, long hair tied back, and a middle-aged man who had kicked in the door.
“It’s time,” all four said together in voices that resonated with vibrations he felt right through his new self. A fungal aroma hung around them.
“Tiiimme,” Troy slurred, staggering on his crooked legs, the swollen, blistered bulk of his egg-cradle body ungainly on top.
“For so many months we bided our time,” the four said as one. “Prepared. Waiting. We knew you were coming.”
They helped him through the door and supported him down the stairs, out into the night air. It was hot, redolent with scents of night jasmine and the sea. The egg buzzed and trembled in the nest of his flesh.
“Whhheerrre?” Troy managed to say as they surrounded him and hurried along the footpath.
“A place is arranged,” they said in unison. “Not far. The re-emergence is imminent. The return is upon us.”
“Yeessss,” Troy slurred as he trundled between them. “I ffeeeeelll itttt. Sssoooonnnn.”
In Clooney’s, Carter leaned on the bar talking to Chrissy. He didn’t often come into the pub, but now and then he liked to get a taste of life down in town. And it was his pub, after all, named after his great-grandfather Clooney P. Carter. A colonial settler, Clooney had built the place by hand, so the story went, and though he named it The Gulpepper Inn, everyone then called it Clooney’s, and the habit had stuck. He suspected few people knew that story any more. Time marched on.
Chrissy said something, but Carter shivered, then looked up, instantly forgetting whatever she’d been talking about.
“You okay?” Chrissy asked.
“Something’s changed.”
“Changed?”
“The energies around us just rippled.”