As 37-year-old, unconscious Camilla continued reliving her memories from between five and six years before the aquarium incident, she was appalled to note Eros' psychic involvement in the slow but sure disintegration of her marriage with Cameron.
The boy, twelve and going on thirteen, was already quite adept with the powers of Nigrovum that he was born with: after all, he was half Camilla, half Nigrovum, so he was a natural born psychic.
Eros would scan Cameron's mind for all of his feelings of self-hate and despair over Camilla's cheating on him; then the boy would simply use Nigrovum to expand those feelings a touch beyond what the microscopic ovoid aliens in Cameron's blood were already expanding. So subtle was this extra expansion that neither Cameron nor Camilla had been aware that Eros was doing it.
The boy would also scan his mother's mind for all her guilt feelings about sleeping around behind Cameron's back, and subtly expand them in the same way, so as to ensure she'd never have the moral strength to confront her husband with her slutty ways. Indeed, this would ensure that she and Cameron would be increasingly non-communicative over the next year or two, and the end of their marriage would thus be inevitable.
Camilla, 32 at the time, fully understood how shameful it was that she'd been more comforting to Alain than to her own husband, both of them low in self-esteem, but the younger man far more appealing to her. She hadn't slept with Alain since their time in the hotel, but she wasn't having sex with Cameron either.
Though her desire to have sex with her husband was moribund to say the least, the latency period that Camilla had psychically imposed on Eros was gone, now that he was entering adolescence. One afternoon in mid-June, he was standing outside his school, waiting for his mother to pick him up and drive him home. Three young men--grade twelve students about to graduate from a nearby high school--were also waiting nearby for Camilla, since they were as fascinated with Eros' hot 'Goth-looking' mom as he was.
"I wonder what his mom's wearing today?" one of those older boys said, deliberately audible enough for Eros to hear. "Black spandex and high heels? I hope so."
"Me, too," said another of the three boys. "She is so fuckable."
Eros, who with his unusually large size could easily have beaten the three boys in a fight even without psychic powers, just silently ignored them as best he could, since out of his love for his mom he wanted to respect her wish not to fight.
"Why won't he fight?" the third boy asked. "He's a giant for his age, but such a wuss. I don't get it."
"He's a gentle giant, and a mama's boy," said the first boy.
"I'll bet he wants his mom, too," said the second boy. "How could he not? I'll bet he wants to say to her, 'Mommy! I've been good. Can I sleep with you tonight...please?" The other boys laughed, while Eros tried desperately to control his anger. The second boy continued his mockery. "'Mommy, I've eaten all my vegetables. I've finished my homework. I cleaned my bedroom. See? I've been good. Can I, Mommy? Please, please, Mommy. Please!'" All three boys now had red faces from laughing so much.
Eros, no longer able to contain himself, rushed over to the first and second boys, grabbed them by the necks, picked them up, and shoved them hard against the brick wall by the front door of the school. Now the boys' faces were red, almost purple, from his squeezing of their necks. His black eyes looked hatefully into each boy's eyes alternately; the third boy backed off in fear.
Camilla, in a tight red dress, high heels, and heavy makeup, came quickly to the scene after getting out of her car. "Eros, let them go!" she shouted. "Let them go!"
"But Mom, they were insulting you!" he said, looking back at her. The boys tried punching him in the gut, but he used Nigrovum to make his gut feel as if it were made of brick; so the only pain felt was in the boys' fists.
"I don't care what they were saying about me, or you," she said, now standing behind Eros. "Nice boys don't fight. Let them go."
"But Mom, I was just--"
"Mommy likes nice boys, not bad ones."
"Oh, please don't call yourself that here at school. It embarrasses me."
"Let them go!" she shouted angrily. He did, and the two boys fell to the ground, coughing for breath. "Come on, sweetie. Let's go home." She, coming up only to Eros' shoulders in height, nonetheless took him by the hand as if he were a toddler, and they went to her car.
"Yeah, go with Mommy, Eros!" the third boy taunted.
"Just ignore them, sweetie," she said softly to her son.
"Go on, have at her!" the third boy shouted. "You know you want to, Oedipus!"
"It's not worth it, baby," she said to Eros, though it was getting harder for her to control her anger, since the memory of schoolboys taunting her as a child was never far from her mind.
"Hey, Ms. Fox!" the first boy, now having finally regained his breath, shouted. "You look so fine in that dress."
"Do a striptease for us sometime," the second boy, also no logger gasping for breath, shouted. "We're all eighteen years old. What do you say?"
"Nah!" shouted the third boy. "She's probably ugly under her clothes, with a smelly cunt, too!" The boys all laughed loudly.
Camilla, exploding with rage, used Nigrovum to visualize the last speaker suddenly having a huge aneurysm, which ruptured, in his brain. The young man staggered, then fell to the ground, instantly comatose. The other two boys knelt down to see what was wrong, then they looked back up at her: before she got in her car, she looked at both men with threatening eyes.
