Xander had heard rumours that before The Factory had been here there had been urban legends about that stone and how it had been the seat of the Devil before men had moved to Coral Beach. Now it was just ‘the old sitting stone’, as Cathy had childishly named it once.
Sometimes he’d end up there on his nights out as Black Womb. He’d wake up covered in blood and vomit and semen with his head propped up against the stone, unable to catch his breath. He’d wondered more than once if somehow the Womb could sense his connection to this place, or if it was just some random coincidence like everything else seemed to be.
Xander smirked, a memory tickling at the back of his mind. Even when he was here after a transformation, it always came to him, and he couldn’t help but smile.
Cathy shifted slightly. The stone beneath her was rough like sandpaper, but it was the only place for her to sit. Squirming uncomfortably, she cursed Xander for making her come out here for no reason she could discern other than his need to be outside on a warm day. She glared menacingly at the back of his head as he walked around aimlessly, his shoes kicking up dirt and dust. She was only burning the hole into his head for a moment when her gaze shifted and a smile spread across her lips. “Oh, look Xander.” she said, scooting to the edge of the stone.
“What?” Xander said, grinning as he turned on his heels to see her. Her long auburn hair tumbling over her shoulders. Mike, Sara and Julie had gone inside for some drinks and left the two of them alone on the stone. Mike and Cathy had just started going out a few months ago. Independence day, actually, and Xander had spent the next few months joking that that had been the day that Mike had lost his independence. But he always said it with a smile on his face.
“A squirrel,” she replied, her lower lip pouting slightly at the cute sight.
“What?” Xander repeated, a puzzled and skeptical look passing over his face. He thought this would be another of her childish ‘made you look’ gags, but turned his head anyway. Sure enough, there it was, a little baby squirrel, no more than a few weeks old. “Oh.”
“Oh my gawd, he is the cutest thing,” she said in a whiney voice, like a child that wanted a toy she knew she could never have. She turned and hit him on the chest suddenly, so excited that she blurted all her words out at once. “Let’s name it!”
“Okaaaaay,” Xander sighed, pretending to be too mature for her antics. “How about ‘squirrel’?”
She tisked and gave him a little slap on the arm. “No! A real name.”
“It’s a squirrel, Cat. That’s why it doesn’t have a real name. If your brain’s the size of a pea, you don’t get a name. It’s in the Bible.”
“Then why do you get one?” she shot, brow furrowed angrily. “You’re just saying that because you can’t think of a name anyway.”
Xander rolled his eyes, taking a single step forward cautiously until they were shoulder to shoulder. “How about Alvin?”
“It’s cliché.”
“So is Cathy.”
She shot him a look. “Besides, Alvin was a chipmunk.”
Xander opened his mouth to respond, then closed it and nodded.
As suddenly as before, she turned and backhanded him across the chest.
“Ow,” he winced, though she didn’t notice.
“Let’s name him Bob,” she blurted.
“Bob the squirrel,” Xander stated bluntly, raising an eyebrow at her.
“Yes. Bob the squirrel,” she smiled at him with her big brown eyes and ruby red lips. She knew he was way too uptight to actually get the joke there, which just made it that much more funny. The squirrel gazed up at them, and in the blink of an eye was down on all fours, examining them. “Oh, you little cutie. Come here, Bob.”
“He could have rabies,” Xander said in caution, gently grabbing Cathy’s shoulder to keep her from getting closer.
“Ew. I didn’t know squirrels could carry scabies,” she said, crinkling her nose as she recoiled from it a little.
Xander burst in laughter, frightening the little animal, although it didn’t run.
“What?” Cathy smiled.
He kept laughing, turning his face away from her as he tried to stop.
“What?” she demanded again, pinching his sides to get the answer.
“I said rabies, not scabies,” he said, laughing through the words.
“Oh,” she said quietly, her face losing all expression for a moment as she filed that away. She shrugged, stepping in close to Bob again. “I don’t care about that.”
Smiling warmly and making little clucking sounds with her tongue, she reached her hand out slowly and tried to pet him on the head. It looked up at her with large, black eyes as though it were trying to figure her out just as much as she was it. It inched closer to her, its nose twitching and whiskers turning this way and that until finally it turned and bolted back into the woods as quickly as it had appeared. “Oh,” she said sadly, as if she’d just lost her best friend. “Bye Bob.”
He choked back a laugh at her expense.
She slapped him lightly again, tisking.
That seemed to only
