Interlude:
I was just thinking about how unbelievably cheap government plastic was back on the planet Gerth, the ancestral home of Felix. Jokes were made by bad-joke-tellers that, “if you wanted to make sure it would break, make sure that it was government-made.” The joke was on the hoo-men as this cheap material was one of the many reasons that the pitiful planet’s economy failed. As for the planet of Gerton, the government has always made sure to use only the strongest materials for public usage. This has been demonstrated by Kevlar, orb resiliency, and lollipop stems. End Interlude: Still holding on to the jogger throughout the drop, via the tackle, and still securing the sucker within the mouth; Felix and the jogger were salvaged from death as the stem held the weight of the impact, and the full force of the final touchdown. After absorbing the vibration, that sturdy government material held true. The two bewildered fall-boys were finally deposited after all of the equilibrium lost its heart and a sound plop was made for each man. Again, it is remarkable that Felix’s jaw could take it. Perhaps the locked smirk from his dental defect played a part? Who knows? Unable to care that this was another near-death experience, the hoo-man and the Gertonion rose to stand for the final showdown. It was back to business for this petty conflict. The winner was going to go home (or what passed for one) with the sandwich (or what passed for one). It was a sandy gorge of old age where the Gertonions made roadways back in the days of wheel-based vehicles. It was a deserted desert floor below the town of Urba and the notice of its populace. Attempting reason before rough-housing, Felix used sophisticated sign language to tell the Gertonion that he wanted the sandwich back. A stern point to the sandwich and back to himself made the message clear to even the poorest linguist. Looking down at the mangled meal, the dark-green skin on the face folded into sorrow as defeat was realized. Conceding the sandwich to the ravished delight of Felix, the hoo-man promptly prepped his taste-buds for the nourishing nutrients when Felix stopped to notice something: children. The jogger had children. They emerged from the mouth of a cave at the far end of the gorge. They were clothed in used clothes that were fast-wearing thin. These three little green boys huddled together to hug their “Pa-Po.” Still being stared at by Felix, the jogger looked back at the hoo-man and shyly shrugged as he remembered some of the hoo-man language that he knew. “I’m… sorry.” Felix knew what it meant. Felix knew what it meant to be sorry all his life. Felix never thought that any Gertonions could ever be as sorry a case as himself. Since his infantile infancy, infinite tradition has taught Felix that only Gertonions were good and the hoo-men were bad. To see the skin color of the superior breed suffering in such a state gave Felix an inner-ache unlike any that he ever felt as he saw his own childhood reflected in the sad eyes of those Gertonion children- ever hungry, never filled… Felix couldn’t stand to look back as the gorge-people gratefully feasted on his sandwich. Felix simply wished to scale back up the cliff to Urba and be done with this whole day. The stomach was the first to dispute with his choice. The mind of Felix also had a few choice lectures on this decision. The disputes of the mind were thus: Why give it them? It was mine. Well, okay, technically the bread was Sleepy’s and the lollipop was the kid’s, but I needed it more. I think. Felix gave the smallest Gertonian child the lollipop. Felix did not believe in germs. What did Felix believe in? For the longest time, it was simply in surviving. The mind’s rebuttal: How does that fit into giving good food away like a… a stoopid hoo-man? Felix did not know. The answer was too deep for the simple Felix. The like of hoo-men are a race most given to foolish sentiments such as helping organisms that are more unfortunate than themselves, even if it goes against hoo-man self-preservation. Perhaps this is another reason that hoo-men failed to thrive on Gerton. The Gertonion economy makes Gerth capitalism look like a care-package. At least, this is what the racist Gertonion social scientists would tell you. With the wheezing, gasping, and tortuous eighty-foot ascent back up the cliff completed, Felix had to rest on the ground as his lungs were over-inflated. Felix found that his hands were bloodily-blistered by the sharp rocks. Breathing was a chore. Down below, Felix could spy on the kids as they enjoyed his sandwich. Felix felt a little better. It’s as if Felix had gone back in time to make his own childhood less terrible. Looking down on those he helped, Felix could have easily fancied himself a hero before them. Felix did not have such fancies. Felix knew that a sandwich, nor a sucker, could cure that family’s problems. This, and his impaling hunger further humbled Felix as he could only see himself as nothing more than a lowly hoo-man who could barley repair his own miseries. This is why he turned away, back to his own troubles… in the form of a large and angry figure standing above him. “Hey! Hoo-man! Did you steal my food again!?” Sleepy was finally awake. As fumbles and stumbles to get up were made, Sleepy seized to strangulate. Before Felix could rev up a good run, Sleepy gripped Felix’s delicate neck into a death vise. Felix always forgot what a hulking-horror of a Gertonion Sleepy really was, because the strong-man would always hide his superior sinews beneath the blankets while often sleeping. Air and light fading, Felix felt as though Sleepy was about to be put Felix to sleep forever. An undignified kick within an undignified place, followed by a sting within Sleepy’s left-eye by the needle-esque precision of Felix’s sharp nose gave the hoo-man a moment to cowardly run away. Huffing it into the vista of ‘Bone Calf’ street, Felix saw that the sun began the dreaded, darkening downturn. Felix knew that it would be night by the time he had escaped Sleepy. Felix can’t seem to run out of bad days. Keep on smirking, hoo-man. One day it will be genuine.
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We are unable to tell what sort of emotional impact this vertical rump staring out of the can had upon the face of our officer. This is due to the city-warriors of this county being commissioned with uniforms made of Kevlar, battle armor, and a masking helmet. The standard uniform is stark-white with impressionist patterns of that exact shade of yellow that psychologists believe evokes the right amount of fear and respect within every citizen who would encounter the justice department. For Felix, he was too enveloped in his rummaging's for eats to be fearful or respectful.
“Cease, suspect. That is highly illegal.” This was soundly stated, as pre-scripted, by the warrior. The high-school dropout and failed athlete within the uniform even convinced himself that the order was very authoritative. The hoo-man, neck deep in nostril enflaming minerals of unknown origins, believed that these rash words vaguely heard from within the can were those of vengeful victims such as Oskar, Sleepy, Davy’s mom, or… all three. Please recall that Felix does not quite savvy the lingo. Suffice to say, that when someone of any lingo is mad at you, you can easily tell. Savage anger is the universal language after all. With savage desperation to keep fast hold upon his purloined treats, Felix sprang his legs back to the ground and up again. Then there was one turn and thrust of Felix’s upper body (still encased in the protection of the can) into the warrior’s Kevlar stomach, and his stomach into the rest of his body, and the rest of his body into the street. Pain? No pain for Felix as his head was protected by the cushioned trash and the durable can made of good old government plastic. The results were more mixed for the warrior. Pain did not come upon being knocked down. “The perp caught me off-guard,” our warrior would later testify before a jury of his mocking precinct friends. The Kevlar absorbed the impact of this attack. The Kevlar material was made by the same government that made the sturdy trash-can. Not even a bullet could pierce the Kevlar. An orb going forty-four miles-an-hour is another matter. The orb’s passenger slept in and freaked out that morning. Being charged with attempted vehicular homicide upon a warrior in the performance of his duties is never fun. The defense attorney would later argue in the big case that, “My client was informed by the makers of ‘The Orb-On-the-Go’ that it featured motion activated brakes." A good argument, but orbs only have motion activated brakes in the case of other orbs within traffic (not pedestrians). “There’s an idea for next year’s model,” an executive later thought. No one on the scene of this crime cared to ask the hoo-man, as he quickly exited into the park with the trash-can still over his head. He never even bothered to salute. That afternoon, Felix arrived at the top of the hill in the park. It had many tables. He sat at the one that overlooked the trees below the hill to lay out his ill-gotten goods. He pulled the meat off of the bones of the chicken wings and put them between the two slices of bread to make a sandwich. He then gave a toast to his own cleverness with the baby bottle. Felix’s smirk seemed genuine for once. This day did not suck. To better appreciate this, the hoo-man stared at the dancing trees over the hill behind his seat that were being choreographed by the silent wind while thinking of his vaguest of memories. Felix’s ancestors were experts at having bad days, even to this day. They were among the many from the planet ‘Gerth’ to move to this planet, Gerton, searching for economic opportunity after the fall of Gerth’s economy and governments. Opportune economics did not happen for Felix’s family. All they got from the resident Gertonion populace was what the rest of the “hoo-men” got: hate, low-wages, cramped hovels, threats, sickness, more hate, and even some self-hate. All this malice came from an extremely similar culture with the only physical difference being that the Gertonions commonly had a greener skin pigment than that of the typical hoo-man. “We never seem to run out of bad days,” Felix Sr. sobbed/laughed after looking at the blood all over his factory-shirt one night after escaping to the hovel/home from near-death at the hands of a riot-squad firing upon a “Hoo-Man Pride Rally” that he stumbled upon during the stroll home from work. This is the last thing that Felix Jr. can remember his Dad saying in his home language. Felix cannot remember how or why he left his family, nor how he became such a degenerate. Memory is such a tricky thing with hoo-men. Too many drugs that could not affect the superior Gertonions must have gotten into the hoo-man’s inferior system over his time spent on the streets. At least, that’s what the racist Gertonian social scientists would tell you. The trees concluded their dance when Felix turned back to his sandwich. But it was gone. A grey jogging suit with a set of ruffled hair, and dark-green skin was seen running down the hill and out of the park with something in his hands. He stole your sandwich. Run, hoo-man! Don’t forget your milk-bottle! Felix flurried his frail feet down the hill after the jogger. Bottle in one hand, gripped hat within the other, and a sucker still in his mouth promised to make for some hazardous sprinting. Felix discovered the severity of this hazardry as he flipped forward down to his face at the hill’s bottom. Thankfully Felix landed, not on his face, but on the protruding stem of the loli. The pops’ stem suspended the upside-down-hoo-man into a well-balanced pause of his forward-mid-fall. Felix was dangling for a few seconds, motionless. This farce of physics could be tolerated no longer and Felix finally, and forcefully, floundered forward with a somersault on to his back as destined. Seriously kids, don’t run with suckers in your mouth. Felix is lucky that the sucker did not get impaled straight down his throat. Still further, can you imagine the locking strength that a jaw needs to hold on to that stem during such a suspension of gravity multiplied, or added, to Felix’s own weight? It’s all just so astounding. Like a child who never grew up, Felix did not stop to reflect on this and readjusted himself as he continued on running with that sucker in his mouth. How a day can change. What was once a gentle walk down ‘Bone Calf’ street in the morning was reversed into a mad dash back up it during the afternoon. Its contestants included: a blurry pair of jogging-sneakers rapidly thumping its feet with a sandwich in tow, followed by a more anxious blur. This blurry pair of loafers was clumsily running with a figuratively declining gauge of hope in tow. Sensing that the hoo-man was upon him, the sandwich thief made a strange turn to shake the chase. Leaping and lunging atop an overturned garbage-can, the jogger propelled his frame on to the top of one of the orbs within the neighboring street traffic, followed by frantic Felix. The chase continued from orb-to-orb on down the line as the orb-dwellers were aroused by the mysterious thumps that were followed by fretting steps on their roofs. So the dash dwindled on as Felix rushed after the jogger upon each orb’s roof, slipping and stumbling all the while. The shimmering sun’s focus on this drama created a reflective glare off of the porcelain roofs of the orbs. Stumbles, slips, shiny roofs, and shotty shoes were the factors that climaxed into another mishap for Felix, another fall. The irritating imbalance of Felix’s life, as well as his posture, flicked him into on-rushing traffic. Felix clung his anatomy back to the surface of the orb before traffic could claim the hoo-man’s light-hearted life. Unable to clutch properly to the orb with a bottle in one hand, Felix flung his dank drink into the window of the orb over in the other lane: Davy’s orb. Davy’s Mother was fed up with this slow traffic jam. It had barley moved since that morning. Although she knew that flying an orb was illegal outside of the flyway, she had to get to work before two. So she decided to chance it. She swore that she saw that the warriors were preoccupied with an accident a few lanes back. She caught word from a taxi-orb-driver that, “some idiot-officer jumped into traffic.” Perhaps they wouldn’t be noticed. Seizing the manual controls, she reversed the orb’s gravity and hovered to Flyway Eighty-Two. During the ascent, Davy found the bottle by the window. Quickly concluding that this was a poor substitute for his lollipop that was stolen by the, “stoopid hoo-man,” the formula was flung from the window of the floating apartment into the Urba town center that was being overlooked by the orb’s increased height. At that moment, a familiar café customer of incalculable complaints was crooning over his coffee. Urba town center had many restaurants, shops, and other varieties of public services. Oskar Kancker was the sorest dread of all these establishments. Kancker complains (on average) all the time. A middle class child who was spoiled by his parents growing into an adult with upper class ambitions was bound to treat the working class staff of the café as no more than simpleton servants. It was bad enough that the hoo-man ruined his best suit and made him lose his coffee. But Kancker’s efforts for a new cup were being foiled too. Kancker was frustrated with the carelessness of these employees. To think that they did not get him the cream he wanted, though he didn’t actually ask for it. Still, he was here every Tuesday and they should know his order very intimately. Except for the fact that it was actually Wednesday and the staff was not so loyal to their occupations as to re-sight typical customer orders to themselves before bed every night. Methinks that this whiner needs to get back on mommy’s milk. Enter the falling breast bottle. “Waiter! You forgot the cream for my coffee.” The bottle landed in the nearby street. The waiter, wishing to justify himself and his tip, replied, “Are you sure, sir? I thought I gave you some.” A passing orb rolled over the bottle, releasing a stellar stream of milk into the cup of the distracted Kancker. Turning back to his cup so as to pick it up and prove the reckless waiter wrong, Kancker was embarrassed to find the familiar light-brown hue that signaled cream within a coffee. Like a dog finding that he can’t catch his own tail, Kancker barked to the waiter a dignified, “Never mind.” A sip and a swift repulsion of matriarchal liquid resulted in the waiter being called back once more. “You better just gimme a new one. This cream you gave me is nasty.” Orbs are only allowed to fly if they are proceeding off of the flyway, an entrance ramp into the open air of traffic. Flights can be made throughout Gerton on to an exit that leads to a different county, port, or even off-planet. Orbers must remember to stay within the designated lanes of traffic while doing this. As Felix pile-drove the full-force of his being into the jogger over the edge of Flyway Eighty-Two, an eighty foot drop was their greeting. No Urba laws were broken, as they had no orbs to illegally fly in. Felix should have consulted, instead, with the laws of physics before taking this action. So down the shrieking food thieves went, until all of the space between the air and ground was spent. Broken bones would be their reception, not broken laws. Tune in next week to read the heart-rending account of their landing. Beware any tricky hoo-men that you may meet out there, like Felix. A great hope for a nicer day flickered on and off in the heart of our man: Felix. To the citizens of his dwelling place, he is insultingly referred to as: “the hoo-man.” If only Felix could understand this insult. For you see, Felix is of foreign ancestry that is not oft-tolerated in the conservative town of Urba. Also, Felix never bothered to learn the local language. Sometimes he understands what is said to him, but not in the case of being derided as a, “hoo-man.” The good news is that translations have been kindly provided for the reader’s convenience.
As we see this flickering heart of hope timidly trot his frail feet in child-sized strides down the crusty sidewalk off of the corner of ‘Bone Calf” street and Flyway Eighty-Two, the brilliantly bright light of the freshly arrived sun gives us the best view of the hoo-man’s features. The first thing that you may catch while seeing Felix is that he is freakishly skinny. This might explain the drapes dragging from the legs of those oversized blue-jeans along with the beige belt that is so tightly wrapped that some new holes for the belt’s metal prick had to be pocked open. With the belt’s length stretched out, it becomes a quasi-tail as it swirls around Felix’s left side. Speaking of pricks, Felix could poke someone’s eye out with his nose if he wished to. In fact, he nearly did once during a scuffle over some free samples at the super-market. Nice times. Trickling out of the sides of his baseball cap with the bill torn off, Felix’s hair is revealed to be an unholy brown shag-rug of horror that we don’t care to explore further. Felix also has glazed blue eyes that are haggard, but glistening with the hope of having a decent day. Felix could also use a shave. Felix has never had the masculine capacity to grow a beard. Only patches of facial hair can be sprouted by him. One way to elaborate on the mouth would be to say that it is: “A smug smile that is continually content or in the process of some mischief.” In the case of Felix, only half of that last description was really true. The real reason he always seems to be smirking in succession from the left to the right side of his cheek is that Felix has developed a slight dental defect over the years. Felix’s jaw is constantly locking up from one side of his mouth to the other, producing the smirk. So Felix the hoo-man must meet all of his troubles with a smile (no matter how great the dismay of his day). If you think Felix looks like a downer, wait until you get a load of his life. Let it suffice to say that Felix is of the pauper-variety. Highlight reels for him include: sleeping in porter-potties (that explains the smell), mornings spent foraging food out of dumpsters (that explains the other smell), and afternoons spent surviving (that explains our story). Behind Felix was a black back-sack. Inside was simply a half-eaten spicy chicken wing retrieved from either the afore-mentioned dumpster, or possibly the porter-potty. It was only a little brown from age. The morning of food foraging was off to a tough start. Thankfully, Felix is a scrounger for scrapes without ethical conflicts. If a mommy with a baby carriage came hurriedly past Felix and the baby of the said carriage were to drop the bottle by accident as mommy performed her habit of looking skyward while passing by minorities in the street, then at that moment, Felix would have no issue with punctually taking the bottle and dubbing its milk as: something that will wash that chicken wing down nicely. So it would happen, and so it did. The silent glee performed upon this acquisition was a wonder to behold. Felix then considered, a quick swig before lunch? Why not? The theories behind the dissatisfied stream of white foam that sprang from the milk thief’s mouth are as follows: either the milk was expired or not originally from a cow. Be that as it may, the compromise that, a drink is still a drink, followed soon afterwards and he continued drinking it. As Felix was making his monotonous way down ‘Bone Calf” street, he tried to gather up some more goodies. Felix spied something that would wash the chicken wing down even better than the milk. A white collar grump named Oskar Kancker stopped to tie his shoe by the edge of a sign warning against littering. He placed his coffee down next to him to do this task. Felix attempted to casually swoop in to take this drink just as the shoe was finished being tied. So at that moment, our grump turned to see the bum grabbing his coffee. So a tug-of-war for the hot caffeine was initiated. Unfortunately, Felix grabbed the part of the cup not thermally protected by the little cardboard ring. So the tramp immediately released it in agony. This release caused the overwhelming spurt of a steaming shower streaming into Oskar’s face, reddening it to match his devilish fury. Felix made off before he could see how grumpy Oskar could really be when deprived of his morning coffee. Thankfully, Oskar was late for work so he couldn’t be bothered with the vagrant. But he had time to curse the hoo-man. My over-lord/publisher would not allow profanity. So I am unable translate the cursing for your pleasure, damn it. Felix did not despair. He found victory on his next prospect when he swiped two bread slices from a fellow drifter, laid out under a tree behind a bush. “Sleepy,” as Felix uncreatively calls him, always snores his mornings away. Sleepy always has his head buried in blankets, but rarely buried in food because of varlets like Felix who steal off with his eats as if they were drive-thru purchases. The formal salute, that is a constant of Felix’s gestures, was made to his dormant victim of theft. Sleepy was not even awakened by the morning traffic picking up out of the fake fields of grass behind him. The orbs wavered out of the designated holding-units embedded deep within the soil. They rose out of the grassy ground as the sun rose too, both into the defined brightness of mid-morning. The nice thing about these particular orbs is that they are of the latest model. Instead of just acting as a domicile and vehicle, the newest “Orb-On-the-Go” design for the year 4018 can also transport the dweller to work using an automatic drive that is pre-programmed to be in perfect sync with traffic laws, city lanes, and it even has motion activated brakes for any orbs that interfere with the traffic sync. Felix knows to get out of the way so as to avoid the home-sized spheres as they slide out of their residentially parked holding hulls. They rolled into the road. At the convenience of the passengers/occupants, their interior was articulated so as to remain perfectly level as the exterior shell of the orb rotates in motion. As the morning traffic cuddled together for the shuffle toward daily tasks, Felix turned slightly from his park-ward trudge. Felix saw the orbs marching in the opposite procession of his direction toward the inner-city in which the jobs of the Urba-nite working/middle classes were to be found. Felix got the inkling that here was another opportunity for food-stuffs. It was time to put on the sad homeless-man-face. This was hard because of the uncontrollable smirk. The smirk did not make it hard, but impossible. No matter how doleful his eyes, meek his brow, or pathetic his whimpering; Felix could get nothing out of the commuters. Most were not at their windows, anyway. Typical orb-riders use the automatic drive to allow time for dressing, cleaning, and for some sluggards: sleeping. Some do not even awaken until the orb has been parked just outside of the un-punched-time-clock for well over an hour after a shift has begun, which is found to be a most mortifying way to start the morning. Felix had a vague understanding of these distractions upon seeing the many orbs with their curtains still up within their windows. One set of orb windows was wide open. A curious child, still clad in the pajamas of yester-night, curiously gaped his freckled head out to meet the strange hoo-man. Something was in the boy’s mouth- a toothbrush? No, it was a red lollipop (possibly cherry- Felix’s favorite flavor). JACKPOT. All Felix had to do was get closer as the child prattled on. “Hi, I’m Davy. You smell funny. What’s your name? I’m Davy. Mommy sez not to talk to strangers, especially if they has a funny color like yours. And-” A sharp call of inquiry by mommy beckoned a sharp turn of the head by Davy. After a brief recap on the, “silly hoo-man,” mommy quickly appeared in the flash of a tightened robe to hurl half-rehearsed protection over the child from the possible kidnapper. But it was too late. Felix made off with the lollipop during the frazzle. With a lick and another salute to his victims, Felix realized that it was watermelon flavored, not cherry. Sadly, these gains-worthy activities are also technically illicit within the eyes of the law. That would explain the warrior of justice standing over Felix’s deep burrowing's through a trash-can just outside of the park entrance. Seems our man Felix is in quite a pickle, eh? Well, he is actually in a trash can with his mouth gnawing on a half-eaten pickle that he found therein. But you get the idea. Join me next week to see how Felix escapes the long arm of the law. One thing is for sure, he isn't going to get by with his not-so-good looks. The baby cried all day after birth. For the first hour, baby Brenda droned out a steady tempo. Her frail flesh felt cold in this world outside of the timeless warmth of the womb.
Ollie settled out of his anxiety when he heard the hospital's lullaby chime over the intercom. Somehow he knew it was Miranda’s and he settled into pride. It felt good to feel his heart swell after feeling it drum to an even steadier tempo all day. He got the official news when the door to the solidarity of his waiting room cooed open. It was time to meet Brenda. He looked into the glass to see her among the garden of other sprouted newborns. Brenda was pointed out. Ollie’s firstborn was just under the window, at the head center of the rows behind her. Ollie could not take his eyes off of her, nor could he remove his great grin. Brenda was curled in slumber. She's had a busy day, Ollie thought. Ollie’s smile twitched with sudden mourn as Brenda began to rock about and squeak awake with the first of many cries that Ollie was to be a witness to. Ollie frowned at the sound. He knew that he was going to have to get used to it. Lasting less than a minute, the wails shrank to soft whimpers until the child descended back to sleep. Ollie looked on at his baby as he re-asserted his smile over her existence for an uncounted period. A nurse came to tell him that his wife was ready to see him. As he made his way to her, Ollie could hear even greater expounds of crying come alive at the moment of his exit. He wasn't sure if the cry came from Brenda or some other child. Either way, this caused him to silently grieve leaving her if only for a little while. Miranda seemed to have drifted off to sleep too when Ollie went to see her. She probably drifted off to the low-lit hum of her heart monitor. The dim of the room only lighted by these devices and the morning cracks through the unopened curtains probably didn't help with keeping her awake either. Sleep did not rob her of being able to sense her husband's two left feet waddle in. “Good morning,” she cheerfully exhaled with something like a yawn. He held on to a new grin and knelt to her side to take her hand pinned under the caress of her pillow. He rubbed it under the smooth cushion, mostly to warm his hands. It was cold that morning and no one had turned up the AC. Miranda awakened further as she whispered her curiosity to Ollie. “Boy? Girl?” “Girl,” he replied. Miranda lifted her other hand from the blanket to form a fist of victory to match her gritted teeth crunched together in triumph. “Yes,” she happily hissed out for her win. They sat and chatted on about Brenda’s adorable features cross-matched by each other's as Miranda grew more awake. When she switched a nearby lamp on, she saw that Ollie’s brow fell solemn. “What's wrong?” He hoisted up a smirk that she knew to be fake. “Oh, you know… just thinking on all of those sleepless nights and dirty diapers coming soon to an apartment near you.” He huffed this out with a series of faker laughs. Miranda leaned in and wrapped her hand about his resting on the bed’s rail. “No,” she demanded, “I mean: what are you really worried about?” He drew a heavy sigh. “I just,” he gulped, “I thought we were ready for a baby after my promotion. I can't believe profits got so low that they had to lay me off almost a month after we found out you were pregnant. I don't- It hasn't been easy with me begging for scraps from unemployment, searching for a new job, and with you on maternity leave to top it off… not that I blame you. It’s just, I don't know how we can afford-” “Hey,” she broke in with tender mercy to surpass his stressed rant. She rubbed her hand on his cheek. “We'll get by. Don't go nuts on me now.” A serene beat passed. Then the doors slammed open. “Mr. Williams,” intensely cried the entering nurse, “the doctor needs to see you right now.” The nurse's voice choked higher with every word, as if on the verge of panic. “What is it?” asked Miranda in surpassing terror. “What's happened to my baby?” Miranda kicked in a motion to almost get up. Ollie patted her arm to settle her down. He found that touching her arm somehow calmed his own tangled nerves. “It’s like you said: don't worry.” Ollie then searched for a relaxing joke between his haggard frown and fake smile. “The doc probably just wants to discuss the bill.” With that, Ollie darted from Miranda’s clinging grasp on his arms before he allowed himself time to see if she believed his feign from worry. Ollie joined the doctor by the window. The troubled father looked about for his child in the room. She had been moved from her spot. “Where is she? What's going on, Dr. Hanford?” The doctor stood solid with her arms folded over her survey of the glass, only shaking her head in abject confusion. “I don't know. Honest to God, I don't know.” Ollie was starting to really feel a burden in his stomach after hearing this. He hesitated to even ask, “What do you mean?” Dr. Hanford gathered breath to coldly give the cold facts. “At first we thought it was a tumor.” Ollie felt stabbed. “What?” “Since we've seen it on your wife's x-rays, we checked it thrice over. There were no signs of any malignant cells found.” With that statement, Ollie’s eye followed the angle of Hanford’s to the side of the newborn’s room. At the tilt of the room’s far end, he could see a club of confused nurses fitting a toddler into a stretcher that was bigger than a newborn's crib. Ollie traded surprise with Hanford during a brief look. “That is Brenda,” said the doctor. “Hair, eyes, chromosomes, every layer of her genes points to being her. But she seems to have-” “Grown,” finished Ollie, “she's grown that much in only a day?” He looked further upon Brenda who began to cry as resolutely as she did minutes ago while the nurses combined forces to soothe the baby. Ollie brought out the big questions weighing on his throat. “How? What does this mean?” Dr. Hanford descended her head in a lurch of despair over the tightening fold of her arms. “I told you: I don't know. Honest to God…” Ollie looked on helplessly as the doctor advised on how to proceed. “Don't disclose any of this to Miranda. The shock would be too much in her vulnerable condition.” Ollie indignantly barked out, “So you want me to lie to her?” Dr. Hanford unfolded her arms to straighten them down into an akimbo pair of fists. “I'm not prepared to have an untrained individual explain this phenomenon when I can't even explain it.” She lowered the tempo of her snap to more coolly explain, “I'm going to call in some experts, do some research, more tests… I won't promise we'll find an answer, but…” She fell short of a resolution she could reach. Ollie wiped his hands together to warm the chill still about the building. “Any theories at all? Not for her, but for me?” Hanford shook her head with her hands landing in her pockets. “Only from what I can see. Her cells are aging at unheard of rates.” A fear pierced Ollie’s mind “Will her mind advance too, or-” “We don't know. We're not even sure if the development will even have a stopping point.” Ollie felt that the conversation was done and walked off. He gave out a statement accompanied by his rubbing arms. “If you get the chance, have someone turn up the heat in this place. Might help with her condition, not freezing and all…” Dr. Hanford peered back into the room. With a bolt she sprang in. She knew that the call to the experts was going to have to wait. Her clamor into the room startled a chorus of braying infants. Hanford herded her way among the aghast nurses to affirm if the sight she saw from the window was mad imagination. It wasn’t. Brenda had already tripled in size by the time the doctor came in. They looked on at the cringing event performed by the young bundle. Brenda squirmed her limbs, hips, head, and chest about to the sync of her throat squealing higher and higher with each bubbling surplus of mass morphing her body, growing it at an ungodly speed. The toddler turned into a little girl before them. A full bush of hair streamed out of her scalp like trees clawing at the soil for sun. Still she cried by the time this transformation ended. Hanford met a larger child once inside, wailing into the cushion of her hair with a louder and deeper voice groveling away. She seemed eight years old at this point. The team was so frightened that only one nurse noticed the cause of the tears. “Get those pajamas off of her. They're cutting off her oxygen.” The doctor inhaled a heavy agreement and began focusing on caring for the child before understanding her symptoms. “Someone get her a gown… and something to clean her up with.” Ollie didn't think to have a plan for what he was to tell his wife by the time he entered her room. Miranda sat up in her bed. “What is it, Ollie? Is Brenda okay?” Ollie wiped the cold sweat from his head before stepping into the light of Miranda’s lamp. It seemed that somebody had turned up the temp already. Must have needed an extra few minutes to go up. He sat in a seat by the light when satisfied that he didn't look like he'd seen such a terrifying sight. “Answer me,” Miranda screamed in a choked whisper. Ollie had to retrieve his breath. He forgot to cover his heavy sighs. “Everything's fine,” he said after swallowing spit to refresh himself. “Fine? Really? You’re going to feed me that? That's exactly what people say when everything isn't fine.” “Miranda-” “Tell me what happened to Brenda. You don't get to act wary of having her and then tell me to ignore her health. Now what's-” “I don't know,” he harshly interrupted with vulnerable indignation. “The doctor doesn't know. She tells me not to tell you, then you tell me to tell you… And… And…” He buried his face into his wrenched hands to scoop away the grime of his tears. “I can't bring myself to describe it. She's fine now, really. But… She's growing.” “Growing?” “Her body is growing faster than her mind… And…” Before he could dare a look into her face, a scream shrieked down the hall. “What was that?” This time, Dr. Hanford herself came barreling into the room. “You both need to see this,” she said with a tone that seemed to seek affirmation of the unbelievable. “I'll get a wheelchair for you, Mrs. Williams.” Miranda was not left long to comprehend what was going on when a team of nurses converged in to help her into a wheelchair being brought in. Miranda made constant recoils each time the maturity of her daughter's body expanded with a crackling exclamation of agony punching through the glass. The body of the teenager developing on the adult-sized stretcher before them retained a newborn's state of mind that painfully moaned on. All of the nurses available on the floor fought to keep the tantrum of her arms from flying off of the bed’s rails. In Miranda’s ritual over the course of seeing this, she plugged her hand over mouth. It caught hot tears from blood-shot eyes into the crevices of her fingers over her mouth. Dr. Hanford had to approach her for questioning. She gulped at the thought of engaging this in strict protocol. “Mrs. Williams… Miranda… I need to ask you some questions. Have you come in contact with any strange chemicals that might have caused-” Miranda’s plugging hand about her mouth broke off like a dam to a spurt vomit croaking out. From there, she descended to sickening sounds from gags to sobs. Ollie shared in his own iterations of these gag reflexes, minus the vomit, while facing away from the pair of unbearable sights, but he sorrowed at being unable to escape the sounds. Dr. Hanford had a nurse at the desk around the corner hand over some tissues, and a glove to wield them under. The doctor used the softest voice of comfort that she could manage in telling Miranda that it was going to be okay. Ollie brought his head back around to see this, perhaps to take in those calming assurances. In the other room, their child weighed on into adulthood within the hell of her over-developing body that shook in a manic frenzy. Dr. Hanford offered them the chance to return to their room while she went to make some calls to the experts. The couple denied this offer with their eyes still fixed on their daughter. They were not going to leave her side. The doctor issued a nurse to wait on them while she went to her office to get the contacts. Dr. Hanford wasn't sure which burden was the worst during those hours in her office: explaining the patient’s symptoms through picture-messages in her e-mails, finding that the colleagues that she contacted were just as dumbfounded as she was, or simply being away from Brenda when any new development could occur. While at her calls and emails, she smoldered under the heat of the rising AC along with the rising and falling of the sun outside of her window during all the day. All of the answers came back the same: no definitive theories could be made. On that note, some of the physicians did suggest that the child's body be subjected to testing so that future abnormalities of birth could be corrected once research was done. The first of these replies bound a shadow of weight around Hanford’s neck. The ethics that she was taught in medical school now seemed empty upon hearing this sudden obligation. The shroud on her tightened as she wondered how she could break this to Ollie and Miranda. When her indecision was at its heaviest, an army of screams broke into the walls of her office. She sprinted out to the hall where the screams tore even sharper through her ears. Hanford nearly overshot rounding a corner to find that the parents were savagely trying to push their way into the room of newborns. Ollie jabbed the handles of Miranda’s wheelchair, threatening to use it as a battering ram for entry. One could see the animalistic desperation in the narrow of his pupils. “Let us in,” he growled in a barking mantra. “She's dying,” bellowed Miranda with an explosive sob. Likewise, Miranda kept flinging her arms about to cast the guarding nurses away. These nurses kept looking behind to glimpse the screamer’s highest leader: Brenda blasting her sore voice of a grown woman blabbering incoherent whines when she wasn't firing off greater pitched shrieks of terror. When Dr. Hanford came on to the scene, the nurses saw her as a protector and calmed down. The parents saw her as an advocate for admittance and calmed down as well. “Brenda has aged even more,” hoarsely stated Ollie. “I don't know how much longer she can last.” Emboldened by this statement, Miranda wound her wheels away to break the breach. Dr. Hanford swept in to break up the fight. “Let them in.” She looked at the faces of the parents. The stress of this day aged them at an equally torturous, if less extreme, intensity in conjunction with Brenda’s aging. Hanford turned back to her staff. “Let them, but keep them at a distance while I examine the patient.” Dr. Hanford then went in to face Brenda. Brenda’s body aged exponentially since she left. Brenda appeared to be middle-aged. Already, fat and wrinkle growth had skyrocketed. Her tufts of hair began to fade into being somewhat grey. The child rocked her head from side-to-side in the nest of graying hair only to shout on for solace from its itchy strands. Nurses continued to hush the patient as they brushed the strands from her eyes. Hanford saw more signs of rapid aging during each blink. The evening wore on into night. Brenda’s skin stretched out to its last. Her hair bloomed in full. Now all that was left was for the skin to wither into thin strips over shriveling bones. Her hair began to crinkle in color to look like one of the descending clouds covering the night sky. The child groaned on in the elderly body. Dr. Hanford brought a breast pump in to let Miranda be able to feed Brenda, if only once. The room was cleared and the window was draped for this small mercy. Miranda pet Brenda’s hand, which recoiled at first, but then it settled when the touch of mother suddenly struck Brenda as unspeakably familiar and comfortable. The old eyes darted to the end of the fitted tube in wonderment of the mute-sense within her. The oncoming sustenance passing into Brenda’s mouth startled her for a minute. The shock soon passed into the only serenity that could be found in that long day… the care of a mother… For the mother herself… she leaped from her view of the caressed hand to dive her view into the eyes of her baby falling away every second closer to oblivion. Miranda looked back to when little Brenda was born. Miranda had just survived one of the most elongated surges of pain in her life when Brenda was whisked to her arms for their first scene of bonding. Brenda was so fresh and new to see, to smell, to hear, to touch. Brenda made a low grunt. Then she had to be taken for examination and later put into the observation room with the other infants. Miranda was sad that she never got to see her daughter’s eyes opened. Miranda knew that she would eventually. Miranda feared that this was never to come to pass when the news of the child’s developing sickness came. So she took this moment to take those eyes in with as much revered remembrance as she could accumulate to her mind between the suctioning clicks of the pump. Those eyes stared on at her through the methodical clicks. Miranda’s own eyes softened for tears of joy when she knew that she could never forget them even after a single glance. As a recreational artist, Miranda would go on to recreate the models of the pupils over a thousand times beyond within every two pages of the future sketch book that she would buy. Miranda waved her hand into Brenda’s forehead as if searching for a fever. Miranda then mingled her fingers into the intricacies of Brenda’s fading hair. Brenda shifted her white-wetted lips from the nozzle to make more low grunts. Miranda could tell that Brenda was finished and called the nurses back in. The parents, the nurses, and the doctor continued to carry on their vigil through the night. Brenda’s twilight years became more evident to them all. Her voice tightened to a minuscule and raspy quiver. Among the saddened faces, a silent agreement was made to peacefully accept the coming passing. Their tears rose up in protest. The disputes of these tears were acknowledged, but made moot by the unchangeable circumstances. Time marches on. So time marched on. Dr. Hanford resolved to put off approaching Ollie and Miranda about testing. Surely the research would help another family going through a similar situation, but the parents had no right to be forced into thinking about that business for the time. Hanford put it off for the moment when the impossible balance of mourning and accepting the loss was at its least painful… hopefully in a few days. This was a doctor’s job after all, to alleviate pain. Thus she recounted the day that was like a lifetime to herself as the building’s temperature no longer seemed too hot nor too cold while also watching mother and father wrapped into each other over their daughter when her crying finally stopped for the day. |
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