THE WEEK OF THE COMET
or How I Became Teratosexual
*
Chapter III
==============
"If you like ramen noodles so much, you're gonna love college."
In the end I still don't know how much they understand us. When I talk to Gary, he understands, but I wonder if all he sees isn't just some cavewoman going 'HABUABUABUAH.'
Nevertheless I chewed the fat the whole ride to Yellow Forest and it's a fond memory, and you're gonna ask:
Ester, did you sing a song at some point?
Of course we did, fuck you.
The little shit woke me up at 6am. Gnawing my feet and my hair. He was hungry.
He ate. I didn't know what I was gonna do with all these packets of seasoning powder.
If only eating was the only thing he did. I thought I could leave him in front of
Peppa Pig
, just ten minutes, just a shower. When I came back I found the fridge open, my laptop had blue screened of death, all the dirt from my potted plants was spilled on the floor, and the couch was on fire.
Anyway. My hair smelled like smoke but anyway. He was eating on the passenger seat and I was talking.
I did some thinking out loud. Planned my day out. One-hour drive. One-hour walk to the temple. It's (
Fuuuck, kill meee
) 6:48am, so I could be back for lunch. Left me two hours for--I blushed--feeding Big Pinkie.
I talked about Olivia.
Relationships between futanari are either all-out war or sisterhood, there's no middle ground. We have such an unhinged sex drive we have to bond over it if we don't want to resent each other like people after a bad breakup.
Obviously I left out the sex drive part; I told Gary how one night she cried on my shoulder because she was homesick.
Luv this fut'.
I mentioned her because my walk down to the car this morning should have been covert and uneventful, with no one around to notice Jigglypuff in my backpack, but no no no no no, of course we intersected with Miss Olivia Baker. Of course she liked to jog on Sunday morning. She looked like a fucking fitness video from the nineties.
"Hey, Ester, what's up?"
"Oh my God, Livia, what are the odds?"
"You're up early, what the fuck?"
"Haha. I didn't sleep," I lied.
"Oh, I see."
wink wink
I threw the backpack into the car. It squeaked but I was already fastening my seatbelt, slamming the door, starting the engine, saying, "Seeya." Yes, all at the same time.
She watched me leave in a plume of dust.
And here we were, me talking to Gary. About exam week; about how anchovies are my favorite pizza topping; how my great-great-uncle died squashed under a grand piano, like a cartoon character; how they had recently discovered another Antikythera mechanism off the coasts of Ireland. Also apologizing to him in some way, because I was just a kid like him and I couldn't take care of him. Especially if he kept trying to set my apartment on fire, or kept lovebiting my hand every time I changed gear. (They drive sticks in Capparosæ.)
The only time I didn't bombard him with my blabbing was when I flipped through the radio channels for a good song and heard the news that the king was in the hospital.
Apparently Leupold VI had had a stroke. Political leaders all over the world were sending their support. Except for the Prime Minister of Latvaria, who died last week.
Anyway, after that, we sang, Gary and I, and you haven't truly lived until you've had a kid slime peep along with you to Mariah Carey.
* * * * * *
8am on a Sunday morning, the parking lot was deserted.
It was already seventeen degrees out here, not a cloud in sight, it was going to be a nice day.
Celsius. Yeah.
I perched Gary on my shoulder, set my GPS, and ten minutes later I was cursing at the pair of sneakers I had to wear since some doucher had kicked my hiking boots into a lake.
I see you on campus I deck you!
The long walk to the temple was a long talk. Again interrupted once:
We heard a low hum, which got me looking around and then looking up. To the point that I almost started to believe, for a second, that some kind of giant hornet was flying over us. And then there it was, hovering right ahead. A drone.
Not the kind you can buy on Amazon. Definitely military.
It locked on us, for like five seconds, before steering away.
I said us but Gary crawled out from under my jacket after it was gone, I'm pretty sure he had hidden in time.
"You know what, Gary? Ever since we had this comet up there, people around the world see UFOs everywhere. More than usual, I mean. So now I guess we have the answer: it's drones they see."
I walked on, reconsidered what I had just said.
And thus I added, "Unless there are drones
because
there are UFOs out there."
Moving onward, ever deeper into the woods, I observed the silence becoming inescapable, the flowers getting scarcer, and my nervousness growing. I talked till the end. Until Gary hopped down my shoulder and walked ahead of me, calling out for his...tribe?
There was the clearing a few hundred yards away, I could see the blue sky filtering. It was a matter of minutes now. In five minutes I would ditch the kid and get my dick sucked. But that's not what happened.
I saw the slime creature in that tree spring down to the ground when it saw me, and I saw all the other slimes emerge from the underbrush, dozens of them, relatively far in the distance and yet striking in their vivid colors, pink, green, but also blue, purple, orange; but, most striking, they were all turning toward me. Like they had been interrupted. Doing what? Searching for Gary.
And I saw him run toward one slime, red, his mom, who had come out of nowhere, real close, who was running too now. Fast. Right at me. And I saw Big Red pounce, saw her land right before my face, as I was toppling over, screaming, kicking, wide-eyed to see she had burst into a steep nightmare of spikes, fangs, talons and bone-crushing suffocation, and I knew then, in that split-second I knew. They weren't pets. They weren't toys. They weren't my little friends. They were real. It was fucking real and I'd better not forget it. Or actually I had forgotten it and I was going to pay. But in the same split-second, I saw Gary intervene before the jelly teeth could turn me to mush. In a few peeps he explained everything and Big Red shrank back to her expressionless, round form, still and quiet.
Me, I was the opposite, a jolting, wheezing wreck, butt on the ground, one twitch away from pissing myself (which wouldn't be pretty since I have two bladders) and I was for the first time of my life tasting the fear of death. Or, more adequately put, the realization of my own mortality. Something that's not supposed to happen when you're twenty, and you think life is short but at the same time you're gonna live forever and never change and get a tattoo and you don't know about compound interest.
Without a sign of either gratefulness or anger, the mother turned around and rolled away, toward the clearing, quickly followed by Gary.
I whispered a meek, "Bye."
Gary looked back at me and chirped.
I sat there. Watched them going away.
Who was I to think I could barge in here and into their lives?
Every slime was heading back to the clearing now. Those passing me by did it rather indifferently, but some gave me a nudge, as if telling me 'Hey, thanks for taking care of the kid.'
I got up, on wobbly legs.
They were coming from every direction. A hundred. Rough estimate. After my scare, that number rolled off me. I was on another planet. In another dimension. And how are we supposed to react to that, uh?
I searched among the pink slimes. And eventually I spotted who I was looking for.
I said in a sleepy voice, "Yo, Pinkie!"
I had recognized her from her gold flakes. Don't ask me how I did from such a distance.
Oh and yeah, by then I had subconsciously established they were all females.
"Dude, I almost shit myself."
She leaped at me, changed shape in the air, turning into some kind of blanket that wrapped around my neck and shoulders like a rapid bearhug. She spun around me, dropped back to the ground and back into the march.
I saw Big Red and Gary going down the stairs leading underneath the temple. So, yes, they had something to do with this place. And there
was
a way through the rubble...
From where I was standing the altar was shielding it from my view.
The procession was picking up speed. More and more were disappearing down that passage. So I started running cause I realized I was going to be left behind.
I entered the temple just in time to see the few laggards going through the airtight wall of boulders like ghosts. The stone was porous enough and those creatures liquid enough that they could flow through.
Alright, I had my answer.
And now, what was I supposed to do? Knock? Blow the fucking thing with dynamite?
No. I sat at the top of the stairs and ate the snacks I had brought--originally to recover from all the unbridled oral sex with Big Pinkie and her friends.
I kept staring at that goddamn door, feeling like an idiot.