by V. K. Ludwig
Stuffed to the seams with a big huge lie, the tiny word slipped from my mouth. “No!”
I didn’t feel bad about it. After all, my plans had changed. I had River now.
“Bathroom,” she said and turned away. “Bottom right cabinet all the way in the back.”
Chapter 17
River
Imperfections
“But everyone keeps telling us they don’t want to fuck. Isn’t that why they drink that water in the first place?” Einar glanced over to Ayanna who hurried back into the cabin without Bry.
“All I can tell you is that she screamed so loud, I don’t believe I’ll have an issue with foxes stealing my winter supplies again,” I said. “Besides, I could sense it. She definitely had an orgasm.”
“You’re not gonna tell Rowan, right?” I dropped the wrench beside me. A muscle twitched in his jaw. Did I even care? If he tied a rope around my neck today, I would die a happy man. But I wanted more. I had to convince Ayanna to stay and marry me.
“Nah. It’s not like you raped her.”
“Huh,” I puffed. “She started it. To be honest with you, I didn’t have the balls for it.”
“Did you ask her if she will marry you?”
“Yeah, that’s the thing. She’s weird about the entire marrying thing, you know. But I have one year to seduce her into staying.”
He chuckled. “Do you believe she could actually get pregnant?”
“I hope so. Maybe a pregnancy would work in my favor.”
My chest turned light at the idea of placing my hands onto Ayanna’s bump. Pictures of a bunch of children peeking down from the loft squirmed through my head. I have to convince her!
“It’s odd, though, don’t you think?” he asked. “All those requirements they have for their databank. Can’t have cancer genes. Can’t be diabetic. No heart issues. No learning differences… and she goes ahead and takes you to bed. Women make little sense, man.”
He put the oil-smeared engine cover back and rubbed his hands on an equally oil-smeared rag. “Make sure you keep a low profile. Especially around Adair, because he is major pissed that Rowan took him off the job and gave it to you instead. And other guys won’t like it either if you fool around with a girl and go unpunished. They might feel cheated and think Rowan set you up for success.”
“Who cheated?” Ayanna walked over to us, her hands fidgeting behind her back.
“River did. He cheated all the other guys in the village and won the ultimate hide and seek tournament.”
Ayanna blinked her eyes while Einar and I bit back our smirks. She gave a quick shrug with her shoulder and frantically pushed some stuff into her backpack. What’s in that rustling bag?
Wide legged, Bry’s stomps thundered towards the cabin under mumbles and curses. She saw us off with nothing but a stiff nod, and Einar shrugged his shoulders before he turned to follow.
“Did I say something wrong?” I asked.
Ayanna clasped her hands in front of her chest. “Hormones, I guess.”
“Hm, yeah.” I handed Ayanna her helmet. “She’s getting pretty close now. I guess I would be slightly nervous too if I were about to push something the size of a melon from my vagina.”
“I see you learned the correct medical term,” she said and pushed the helmet onto her head.
The vibration of the engine bounced my cock around and gave me the shivers. Every single hair on my body burned, raw and abused, after we thrashed against each other for almost an hour last night. A number I was pretty proud of.
With the ATV between our legs, the way to school was nothing but a quick ride down the hill. Ayanna pushed her hands into my jeans and held on to the waistband. A much safer option, and less obvious than her arms slung around my back. We flipped on the lights which buzzed above us as they suckled the juice from the battery bank. Ayanna sneaked into the bathroom with her backpack. By the time she reappeared, most of the kids had arrived. I shrugged it off to the fact she couldn’t squat like she used to back home.
“Hey, buddy.” I kneeled down to Sila’s height. “You seem awfully pale today. Do you have one of your migraines?”
He shook his head and threw himself into a huge hug. “I didn’t sleep so well.”
He rubbed his thin fingers over my back. Nothing warms you more than the genuine hug of a child. My breath bottled up inside my lunges, and the raven-black thoughts at the end of my head quit running their mouth for the trickle of time.
“Did Ewan come home late last night?” I asked.
He nodded into my chest.
“And he was loud and woke you up again?”
“I would say he bumped into the table and fell. I didn’t get up to check. He yells at me when I get up to.” He pulled his head out of my chest. “But he always says sorry in the morning.”
Thickness spread across my throat. I have to bring this up to Rowan. Ewan wasn’t a bad guy. Just a bit derailed… ever since his wife passed away, taking his unborn child right with her.
“Go grab a book from the shelf and we will sit down and read it together,” I said and pointed at the wall of brown, purple and red spines.
His eyes grew wide. “But I don’t read well.”
“Oh buddy,” I laughed. “Neither do I. We’ll help each other out here, ok?”
He chose Alice in Wonderland for what must have been the millionth time. We pushed our backs against the warm wall and skipped to the Tigger bookmark we had left behind months ago.
Ayanna’s secretive looks stumbled across us from time to time, but they sparked beams of energy inside me just the same as if she had stared. I wanted her to see me. See us. Her dad might not have deserved the title, but I did! I would read a bedtime story to our child each night, while she took a long, lazy shower. Damn! Every piece of my body craved her more than it craved water. Whenever her eyeballs touched us, my voice picked up a notch, inching the words across the room. Together, Silas and I stammered through an entire chapter before we called it quits, pride filled. I had to convince her that I was made for this husband and father stuff.
After Silas ran off to the math shelf, I walked over to Ayanna who stood by the sink. I fumbled with the faucet, and the water bubbled and gulped down the drain.
I swung my hip against her sides ever so slightly. “Did you consider what I told you in the morning?”
She tucked in her upper lip, leaned away and gripped her fingers to the counter. Why is she so tense? I mean, I got the entire idea of marriage was kinda foreign to her, but still… She gave herself to me last night!
“River,” she whispered. “I need to —”
“Ah!” I placed my hand on her mouth. I got it. She needed time to think this all through. That’s ok. I waited twenty-eight years for this, I could wait a little longer. What we had was unique, and I knew she would come begging for more tonight. Gosh, I hoped she would come begging for more!
“I got you,” I whispered and took my hand off her mouth before the kids would notice. “Promise me to have an open mind to all this.”
“It’s not that, River, I wanted to —”
“Sh… you don’t have to explain yourself. I get this is fast and all. I didn’t expect this to happen either. But it did, and now we can figure it out together like two strangers on a different planet.”
“You’re not listening.” Her eyes looked down, and her complexion turned feverish. She crossed her arms in a huddle around her stomach. What’s going on here? My heart raced. Pleads and begs filled my head so fast, I feared my skull might crack in two.
She bore her blood-rimmed eyes into me. “When you read to Silas —”
“Miss Ayanna!” a shriek hollered from around the corner. At lightning speed, turmoil ransacked the classroom and children screamed their high-pitched screams which shook me to the core. Footsteps shuffled a tango of chaos, and the adrenaline-filled air poked into my nostrils. Silas!
Smeared in white foam, the darkly oiled floorboards rumbled underneath the jerks of Sila
s’ pale body. His arms and legs sprung up and lumbered back down, like lifeless limbs sparked by electric shocks. Uncontrolled, his head pulled back, and the bubbly drool threatened to dribble straight into his nostrils.
“Get out! Out!” I jumped to his side and threw myself on my knees. “Ayanna! Get the chairs and tables out of his way. Clay, pick up those scissors. Everyone back up.”
Struggling against the stiffness that had overtaken his body, I guided his head to the side and wiped the froth from his face. Then, I gently rolled him on his side, crouched over him, and contained his jerks in a swaddle between chest and arms.
Ayanna’s fingers touched her parted lips. “Is he dying?”
“Not on my watch,” I said. “Call Rowan and tell him to get a car up her to pick him up. We need to get him to the clinic as soon as the seizure stopped. I don’t believe they ever lasted longer than a few minutes with him.”
Less than ten minutes later, a vehicle stuttered up the incline. Oriel and I heaved Silas’ exhausted body onto the back seats. Legs in first, we took extra time to guide his sweat-covered head. Ayanna quickly dismissed the children and jumped on the passenger seat. Together, we took the boy to the clinic which lay only a few steps away from the longhouse. Mud-caked like most other buildings, the thirty solar panels gleamed atop the otherwise red clay roof. Inside, red tape formed arrows on the stained vinyl floors, guiding us along the hallway. Hazel waited at the corner of the abandoned reception area, her bleached hair in a high bun and hands hidden inside her pockets.
“First room to the right,” she said and followed behind us.
Silas lay cradled in my arms, thin red veins woven across his fair skin. His lips, tinted purple around the edges, parted slightly to let in flat waves of air. I placed him on the bed, and Hazel gave hooked him up to tubes and monitors, which beeped and buzzed in the background of my foggy brain.
Hazel glanced over the projection of his file. “He’s getting them quite frequently now. Even with the medication from the Districts, there’s not much more I can do.”
“Aren’t there any alternative methods to help him cope?” I asked.
“Sure there are.” Hazel turned off the hologram and placed a damp rag onto Silas’ forehead. “But they are all buried underneath sticks, stones, and bones.”
“What does that mean?” Ayanna asked. She picked up her chair, carried it over to Silas’ bed and sat to hold his hand. Her thumb stroked over his palm in a monotone pattern.
I sighed. “She means the special needs school out West. It’s like what? Three hours from here?”
“Four.”
“Sounds about right,” I said. “Assuming the old highway is still passable that leads into the city. Last time I ventured that far out, a huge sinkhole swallowed a huge chunk. That was at least two years ago.”
Hazel made a serious face. “Do you understand what special needs mean?”
She shook her head and turned to look at me, her eyelids heavy from what she had seen today. Was that a punch in the face for her? Seeing how a less-than-perfect child struggled through life, haunted by a demon that couldn’t touch anyone in the Districts?
“The school taught children with disabilities,” I said. “Those with physical limitations or mental issues. And maybe even seizures like Silas. I mean… we don’t really know. We think the building might have an interesting bounty in books about all sorts of stuff.”
“I see.” She turned her head back to Silas. “Why don’t you go there, if you believe the clan would benefit from it?”
“Just go there?” Hazel spat the question through gritted teeth. “I hate to bring it to you, honey, but you don’t just go there and stroll through it. The larger the city, the more likely you are to meet others. And others take what they need even if it’s the warm jacket from your cold body. Not that you would understand any of that, of course.”
My chair flung back, leaving one more dent on the beaten-up wall behind me. “Stop it!”
I stared at Ayanna who squeezed Silas’ hand firmer and tucked the blanket underneath his sides. A ball of anger formed inside my stomach. Ayanna wasn’t at fault here!
Hazel threw her hands up. “Whatever. You have fifteen more minutes with him, then I will need you —”
“How is he doing?”
We all turned towards the door where Adair leaned against the frame. Puffed out chest, hands in his pockets as if he had no care in the world. Fucking jerk. How could he stand like that in front of me? Did he think I forgot Ayanna’s drowning eyes that day?
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I asked.
“Chill out man,” he said. “I came to see my sister. Last time I checked, it wasn’t illegal to visit family members.”
I stepped up to him, suppressed anger tingling my knuckles. “Step outside with me for a second, will you?”
A condescending smirk washed over his face. “Gosh, River. If I had known you’re gonna challenge me for a duel today, I would have put my nice pants on.”
“Hey!” Hazel shouted. “Please remember no surgery on cloudy days. Ok? I’m already hooked to the back-up batteries.”
“I simply need to talk,” I said as we stepped outside, and I closed the door behind us.
We stepped around the corner, and I took a wide stance. So did he. Strutting our feathers like two cocks in a hen house, I put my most serious face on.
“What happened that day? She came back crying like a waterfall.”
He shrugged. “What day?”
“Don’t act stupid. It doesn’t suit you. You understand damn well what I mean.”
Leaning his shoulder against the wall, he stared at me as if to consider his choice of words. After a long, drawn-out sigh, he finally talked.
“Look, I might not have been my charming self, but she creeped me out.”
I huffed.
“No, hear me out man,” he said. “Listen! She knew stuff about me.”
“No kidding,” I joked. “Of course she did. The council checked all our files before they sent her here.”
“I mean, shit that isn’t any of her business.” He scratched the top of his head where his head hung in a loose bun. “Like my genetic details. And she hinted at my IQ. Databank shit, River.”
Databank shit. Why would she…? No. This made little sense. He was pissed because I got to be her guard instead of him. Damn! How much I wanted to tell him about the things Ayanna and I did with each other last night. How I licked her nipples, pushed inside her wet cave… and how her tight pussy fucked me to the best release I’ve ever had in my life. There was no more going back to my lame fist after this.
“As far as I’m concerned, you’re a fucking liar. I won’t ever leave you alone with her again. If you as much as breathe in her direction, I’ll tie you up and hang you upside down by your balls.”
“She’s up to something. You just don’t see it because she’s messing with your brain, and —”
I shook my head and dismissed his unspoken words with the wave of my hand. Up to something… Huh, yeah right.
Chapter 18
No more trouble
Ayanna
I have to! The gash of disregard is only deep for as long as you have the energy to pretend. My sources were entirely depleted, and as empty as a well in the Midwest.
“Open databank,” I mumbled into the dark room.
His symphony of stutters and hesitancy got stuck in my head like a terrible song that wouldn’t quit blasting. He strung vowels to consonants the way second-graders do. My mind drowned underneath the suspicions. What would I find once I opened his file?
“Search for keywords: River. Clan of the Woodlands.”
The holographic earth almost spun in reverse that day. Minutes dragged into frames of a lifetime right in front of my eyes. Every day his strong hands had leaped between my legs. Each time I shrunk back, whipped by fear he would find out about the changes in my body. Seconds later, punished by my lust which paced my core like a caged anima
l.
I wanted to take in the musky scent of his skin, and the unrelenting force of how his arousal pressed against my stomach. After five days, his leaps stopped, scolded by my refusal and banned by my doubts. What if there was something wrong with him? I couldn’t live seeing my child lose all control over his body. Like an empty capsule where the soul had been driven out by things out of everyone’s power.
“No entries found.”
River wasn’t even in the databank. Why not? Terror gushed through my spine. It has to be a mistake. He is strong, healthy and capable and… but the way he read to Silas. My thoughts bounced back and forth. This isn’t a big deal. No, wait. This is terrible. I had to confront him. What exactly excluded him from the Newgenics program? What if I was pregnant already, and I had doomed my child?
I opened the bathroom door like a thief and snuck out. A whiff of wet smoke inched itself through the gaps between the logs. I had to hurry and get this done before River came back. A nasty shadow of doubts and fear crept up my legs and wrapped me in so tightly, I could barely place one step before another. I climbed upstairs, my hands bloodless and cold. I rummaged through the bedding and pulled the little computer out. The poke was painless that day. And then, I waited.
My leg jerked a nervous beat, and I fidgeted the end of a feather from the down blanket. With each millisecond, a flame of joy grew taller from the depth of my chest. Why did my body betray me once more? This wasn’t something to be thrilled about. I grabbed the water bottle next to my bed and gulped it down. The glass edge clinked against my incisors when the machine blurted it out. “Blood work completed. Next ovulation: four days.”
The distorted voice extinguished whichever flames the water didn’t drown. This was good news, right? So why did I feel like a cold cup of coffee, waiting to be replaced by a new brew? Now I could speak to River and see what all this is about. After all, I owed my unborn child to make an educated decision. The sudden draft coming from the door startled me.