Raising the Dead, in Spite of the Natural Order: A Cautionary Tale
Chapter 14
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"So when you say 'angry mob', exactly how angry are we talking about?" I ask, once Iga is finished explaining what she found in town.
"Calling it a 'mob' might be a little premature. There's a lot of rumors and at least one official town meeting about us," she clarifies, "But it's snowballing pretty quick, and I think we're going to have a problem soon."
"I feel like you're not consistent on this, because a minute ago I distinctly remember the phrase 'torches and pitchforks' coming up, Iga," I quirk an eyebrow.
"No, I said 'torch and pitchforks', singular on the torch. Actually, I'm pretty sure it was some guy in the back vaping. You know how thick the vapor looks," she says, "And I'm confident that one of the pitchforks may have been a rake. The other could have been a pitchfork, it was facing down. But he was a janitor, so it could have been a broom."
"This is a very detailed account. They just let you into the town meeting where they talked about us?" I ask.
"Talked about you," she corrects me.
I quirk my eyebrow higher.
"I mean, most people in town don't actually... know that I live or work here, with you," she clears her throat.
"I knew you were bad with men, but I didn't realize you were that socially stunted," I laugh.
"No, I know a lot of people. I just don't, you know, talk about work. Or acknowledge that I know you at all," she averts her eyes.
I blink, "...why exactly is that?"
"Well... look Victoria," she purses her lips, "It's not that I'm ashamed of you, or working for you, or what we do here, but it's just..." she pauses to think, "I'm kind of... afraid of what people might think. If they knew I was involved. Or that I knew you. And how that might reflect on me and my reputation."
Eli tilts his head, "Well that sounds a lot like sha-"
"Hey Eli! So I hear you sexually violated an officer of the law!" she interrupts him, quite suddenly.
"I did not. She was in full consent, thank you," he informs her, tersely, "As you can see from her current behavior, she is quite the willing participant."
"About that... Eve honey, does she have to be doing that right at the moment?" Iga turns to her.
Eve snaps back to the conversation, peeling her attention away from the woman on her knees, face buried between Eve's legs.
"I'm attempting condition her behavior with positive reinforcement," Eve finds the least sexy way to describe getting eaten out, "She took Eli's cock for me, and now I'm giving her what she wanted as a reward. This will help her be more cooperative when we move on to penetrating her ass."
Iga and I share a shrug.
"On the plus side," Iga continues, "It is just you they're talking about. A lot of them don't realize Eli lives here, either."
I open my mouth to ask her why, but she quickly continues, "They think he's my boyfriend."
I narrow my eyes at her.
"Silver lining here, Victoria," she tries to spin it positively, "Is that they wouldn't be after him for coercive sexual assault -and- crimes against humanity. That's at least something."
"Wouldn't evidence for one necessitate evidence for the other?" I point out, "If they find out he's here, they'll find out about Karen, if they find out about Karen, they'll know he's here."
"It's also not relevant, because there was no coercion," Eli reiterates, "She participated with the promise of getting some of Eve, and that promise has clearly been delivered on. All carrot, no stick."
"Well, carrot and drugs," she points at me, as if I had some guilt in that.
"Hey, -I- didn't give her anything!" he protests.
"And there is nothing in that syringe that would make her do something she doesn't want to! Almost certainly, probably," I'll not have them talk about my mysterious drugs of mystery like they know what's in them. No one knows that.
Iga puts her hands up in surrender, "Hey, hey! I'm on your side here. I'm just worried that it may have clouded her judgement and it might not turn out well in a court of law."
"Nothing is ending up in a court," I assure her, "Between my genius and your... ability to help, we'll figure this out."
"Right," Iga nods, then looks over to Karen's head bobbing up and down, "So... what do we take her out back and kill her with a shovel, or...?"
I rub the bridge of my nose, "She can hear you, Iga."
"She seems pretty occupied to me," Iga counters.
We just watch Karen not react for a moment, continuing to be buried in Eve's mound. Guess she is occupied. That and I gave her another does when no one was paying attention, but they don't need to know that.
"No one's killing anyone," Eli reminds us, "Besides, Eve's got her pretty enthralled to the point that I don't think it'll be a problem."
"Back to the matter at hand, if we could?" I announce, "How do they know about Eve, but not you or Eli?"
"So they found Felicia," Iga explains, "and to her credit, it doesn't seem like she -tried- to rat us out. But when she tried to go back to work and couldn't offer a good explanation of where she'd been, on top of the whole 'missing corpses' thing, the police got real suspicious of her. She threw us under the bus to avoid taking the fall for the bodies. Well, threw you under the bus."
"That doesn't explain excluding Eli from the whole story," I shake my head.
"Well I assume it's so that if you go to jail, he'll still be in the clear so she can make a move on him," she suggests.
I grit my teeth, "Okay. And why didn't she mention you?"
"Oh, that's simple," Iga says, pointing up her index finger, "I caught her alone in the bathroom before the town meeting and slipped her fifty bucks to keep her mouth shut about me."
Figures. Doesn't surprise me that bitch would be so ready to abandon the truth for short term personal gain. Though I suppose I can really blame Iga for looking out for her her own self interest.
"So what exactly do they know about Eve?" I ask.
"That she's made out of corpses," Iga puts it quite succinctly, "The words 'monster' and 'abomination' came up a few times, but she didn't include the extra arms thing. Or most of the weird sex stuff. Probably because it would implicate Eli."
"I guess that might make it sound less... wait, 'most of'?" I tilt my head.
"Well yeah, she did kind of paint a picture of you creating Eve to please you sexually, and of you and Eve coercing her into performing sexual acts on the two of you," Iga explains, "Really made you seem like a psychotic lesbian, if I'm being completely honest. The story was only moderately hot, too."
My eye twitches, "I really hate that woman."
Eli places a hand on my shoulder and gently rubs it, "It's okay baby, just take a deep breath. Don't let it get to you. We all know you didn't make Eve for any weird lesbian coercion stuff."
There's a long pause among us, and the only sound in the room is the murmuring and slurping of Karen going down on Eve. My eye twitches again.
"The whole thing did sound pretty ridiculous, the way she said it. So maybe we'll get lucky and the authorities won't take them seriously enough to proceed with an actual investigation," Iga says.
"I think the ship has sailed on the notion that weird stories coming from this house aren't credible," Eli muses, "Since the dolphin incident."
"I'll remind you that I was acquitted, Eli," I grumble at him.
"It'll still validate a lot of people's suspicions," he says.
"I don't think it'll matter. If they don't get a search warrant, that might just increase the chance of this moving from the regular justice system to the angry mob justice system. I don't know about you, I'd prefer not to experience a lynching, if at all possible," Iga says.
"As if they have any chance of getting in here," I snort, "My genius isn't all for peaceful purposes, you know."
The two of them give me a blank stare, and Eli drums his fingers on the hive container for the Homing Hornet Holocaust. We do need to get that tracker off of him, but there's bigger problems right now.
"Shut up," I say, annoyed, "Point is that I have plenty of security devices to deploy that will keep us safe and sound."
"Will any of these security measures not, you know, make everything way worse and possibly kill us all?" Eli snarks.
"Have a little trust in me, baby," I tell him.
"I do have trust in you. I trust you to do something weird and probably unnecessary," he taps on the housing unit for the hornets again.
"No one's dead yet," I wave my hand, dismissively.