as she squeezes the baby out. Her claws cut into his wrist at the pain but she does not whimper. Franklin can tell she doesn’t want to appear weak in front of him.
Her vaginal lips separate with ease in their softened state. They stretch out. Just a few inches at first, but the opening soon stretches to be a foot wide, then two feet. Franklin looks down to see something brown emerging. It isn’t shaped like a baby.
“What is that?” Franklin cries.
Jujy just looks at him with an angry face.
“That’s not a baby!” he says.
Jujy squeezes his hand tightly, slicing through his wrist. As his blood trickles down her blue and white arm, she tells him, “It’s an egg. The baby is inside.”
Once the midsection of the egg passes through the opening, her vaginal muscles squirt the rest of it out onto the doggy bed in one push. Then Jujy plops down on the mattress and sighs. She wraps her legs around the egg and has Franklin wrap his arms around her body. She lies her head on his shoulder and closes her eyes. Franklin isn’t sure how such a large thing could have come out of Jujy. He also isn’t sure how a chocolate egg could have endured inside of her without melting.
As she breathes deeply against his shoulder, Franklin examines the egg. It is like a giant Cadbury creme egg. He isn’t sure if it is his imagination or not, but the egg seems to be pulsing. Somewhere, deep inside, is their child —A mutant offspring between himself and the candy woman who killed his siblings. Franklin doesn’t know if Heaven exists. But if it does, he hopes that his brother and sisters aren’t watching him right now.
After Jujy awakes from her nap, she goes into the kitchen and returns with a box of art supplies. A wide scary smile stretches across her face as she says, “I’ve been excited to do this ever since I was a kid.”
“What?” Franklin asks.
“Now we get to decorate the egg,” she says as she takes out brushes and containers of paint.
“Why decorate it?”
“It’s tradition,” she says.
For hours, Jujy decorates their child’s egg like an enormous Easter egg. Her face is lit up like a child’s as she paints pink and white swirls around the top. Franklin paints blue polka dots on top of the white swirls.
“Normally only submissives decorate the eggs,” Jujy says. “But I don’t see why you get to have all the fun without me.”
Franklin shrugs. He doesn’t paint very much of the egg because his hand is shaking. It is from withdrawal. Even though she is sitting right next to him with her legs spread apart, her intoxicating pheromones aren’t affecting him. Perhaps the act of giving birth has neutralized their effects. Perhaps her body is no longer producing the drug because she no longer needs to mate.
After they are finished with the egg, Jujy leans back and smiles at her craftsmanship.
“Beautiful,” she says.
Franklin feels things crawling inside of his chest. He’s not sure if there are ants still alive under the candy coating or if puss is dripping out of the infected wounds. He presses his hand against his chest and pushes hard on the candy, hoping to kill any ants that might be alive in there. The pressure against the itchy wounds is painful yet strangely satisfying.
“I’m hungry,” Jujy says. “Want to eat?”
Franklin shakes his head, but she disregards his response and pulls herself onto her feet. He sits there against the egg, holding his wounds. He needs to get back to the surface as soon as possible. If only he could get Jujy to show him the exit.
“Can we go on a walk today?” Franklin asks her.
“No,” she says. “You can’t go on walks anymore.”
“Why not?” he asks.
“We’re now in the incubation period of our coupling,” she says. “You have to stay here and keep the egg warm.”
“Keep the egg warm?”
“You are the submissive,” she says. “It is your job to sit on the egg and keep it warm until it is ready to hatch.”
Franklin looks at the large egg. He isn’t sure how he can sit on it without it breaking.
“Do it now,” she says. “Wrap your body around it while I make your food.”
Franklin sits on the mattress with the egg between his legs. As he wraps his arm around the egg, the marshmallow puppy licks at the side of it.
“Like this?” Franklin asks.
Jujy pulls the puppy away from the egg and picks it up into her arms. “Yes.”
Then she breaks the puppy’s neck.
Franklin’s jaw drops at her. “What did you do that for?”
“I’m making your food,” she says.
“You’re going to cook your dog?”
“It’ll be easier this way,” she says. “I don’t have to go hunting for you now.”
“But he was your pet,” he says. “I thought you loved Circus Peanut?”
“I needed to get rid of it anyway,” she says. “It’s not good to keep animals in the house during the incubation period. They try to eat the egg.”
Franklin just stares at her in shock as she walks to the kitchen, skinning her pet’s marshmallow hide with her bare teeth.
For the next couple of days, Franklin sits on the egg for Jujy. She doesn’t go on hunts during these days. She just watches him as he keeps her egg warm. When it is time for bed, she leaves him on the doggy mattress to sleep against the decorated shell. He’s not even allowed to leave to go to the bathroom. She just holds a candy dish under his buttocks and tells him to defecate in there.
The feeling in many parts of his body has disappeared. His flesh beneath the candy coating has become so rotten it’s black. He needs Jujy to leave the house so that he can sneak Troy back to the surface and get himself to a hospital. But she doesn’t seem like she is going to go on another hunt any day soon. He wonders what would happen if he told her the truth. He wonders if she would let him go if she knew about his condition.
“I have something to tell you,” Franklin says to Jujy.
When Jujy looks him in the eyes, she can tell how serious it is. She crawls across the floor to Franklin and presses her body against the other side of the egg.
“I have been waiting for you to tell me this.” Jujy puts Franklin’s hands into hers, staring at him across the egg. “I have to tell you that I feel completely the same way.”
“The same way?” Franklin says.
“Even though you are a human we can still have an emotional bonding,” she says. “We can still be soul mates.”
Franklin doesn’t know what to say to her.
“Go on,” she says. “Tell me.”
“Tell you what?” Franklin says.
“Weren’t you going to tell me that you submit your soul to me?” Her face becomes confused.
“No, I was going to ask . . .”
Jujy bares her teeth at him and scratches her claws along the top of his false hand. “I want you to submit your soul.”
“Submit my soul?”
“Yes,” she says. “I’ve been waiting every day for you to tell me this.”
“I don’t understand.”
Jujy groans at his ignorance. “A dominant shows a mate she loves him by capturing him and chaining him to her bedpost. The submissive usually does not love the dominant at first. It takes time for him to grow to love her.
