That tug was joined by another, more virile one from his right side. It felt like the way he imagined a baby kicking from inside you, that sudden, solid bump coming from the wrong side out. His eyes went wide as he realized that the Womb was reacting to what he was feeling.
He closed his eyes and started to think ‘happy thoughts’ to try and balance himself out again. He thought of Mike, Cathy and Sara and how the four of them used to have fun together late at night at the Factory before all of the Black Womb crap had started.
He remembered the way Sara had looked at him from across the pool tables, speaking volumes with her eyes. Some people spoke with their hands, some with their whole bodies... Sara Johnson talked with her eyes. One look this way or that could convey the ultimate in sadness, happiness, confusion, disbelief, or any one of a hundred other things. He remembered the way they had looked out of the balcony the night she died, right before they’d almost had their first kiss. She’d looked at him as though he was the only person in the room, and for once he’d felt like it, too. It made his lips quiver, even now.
The way Mike and Cathy would spend all night making-out when the four of them went out on Fridays, making it incredibly awkward for him and Sara if they were sitting on the other side of a booth. He remembered the way each of them had looked in the hospital, with stitches and bandages on to keep their insides from spilling out onto their outsides.
Because of him.
Wincing, he started to feel like he was choking, or drowning on his own blood as the black ooze worked its way up into his throat. The Womb hadn’t slowed down, it had pounded harder and harder as every thought of every friend he’d ever had led to something horrible. Some terrible thing that he himself had done. The pain was twisting and grinding within the womb organ and becoming his power, the way food was turned into energy in a normal person.
For a moment, his entire world turned black as the darkness shrouded his eyes through the veins in his corneas. Then everything was illuminated with light and he could see not only the normal dim blue that he had a moment ago, but also the infrared and ultraviolet portions of the spectrum. He tried to fight it, clutching his fingers into his scalp and trying to push away the thoughts that were running through his head. He imagined the blackness turning in on itself, being crumpled into a little ball and hurled back into the depths of his bowels, willing it not to pop out into the open air.
Suddenly, as quickly as it had come over him, it recessed back to whatever hell inside him that it had come from. The blackness in his eyes faded to grey before disappearing completely and his throat was clear again.
He opened his eyes and let out a sigh of relief, then noticed the half-plate of food still in front of him. He snarled at it, picking it up and bringing it over to the trash compactor and scraped it in.
He placed the plate in the dishwasher before leaving the kitchen and heading up the stairs two at a time, casting his gaze down and away from the portraits on the wall as he did. He opened the door to his room and closed it behind him, turning each lock along the frame and then giving the door one last tug just to be sure.
His eyelids felt heavy again as he sat on the edge of the bed and started to peel off his clothes. He took off his shirt and looked down himself.
There was a long, thin line over where his appendix should have been and the Womb now was, a tiny scar on an otherwise smooth surface. Engen’s scientists had given it to him while the Womb was out of him, the only one it couldn’t repair quite right. He ran his finger along the bumps of it, feeling the bizarre folds of skin just beneath the surface. The scar Alpha put there will always be on my torso, but the cuts Genblade inflicted haven’t even closed yet, he thought, glancing down at the picture of Sara in her prom dress. They haven’t even started.
Suddenly he felt too tired to even finish undressing. He lay down on his bed and closed his eyes, his head barely even touching the pillow before he was out. Just before he lost consciousness completely, he felt that telltale kick in his right side, as if something were trying to get out through the scar he’d just touched.
The rusted metal door of The Factory slammed behind her, letting out one final gust of warm air before the cool fall night surrounded her. She barely even heard it. Roxanne had walked this stretch of unpaved parking lot so many times in the past few years that she did it on autopilot now, not even conscious of her own dazed movements as she allowed herself to slip into her everyday routine.
Her fingers slid up her jeans, finding a malformed lump just below her hips. She fiddled with it, bouncing it in the cup of her palm. The keys inside clinked and jingled against one another, the sharp ridges of her surfboard-shaped key chain digging into the smooth flesh of her leg.
She let out a long sigh, running her nails through her hair and across her scalp as she took out the buckle that had held it up for at least the last twelve hours. It might have been longer than that, but she
