The Woman on the Beast

by Macie Holloway

  Nobody moved.

  “I said BOW!”

  The people quickly dropped down in fear as others managed to run out the double doors.

  “Thank you ALL for showing up today for her crowning. I KNEW you wouldn’t let us down.”

  He took off his book bag and pulled out the crown of thorns he’d ordered long before eBay shut down.

  He placed it on her head and pressed down until bright red blood streamed down the swastika and between the engraved three sixes.

  “Queen Mystery, receive your crown!”

  As he tapped lightly tapped her forehead, her limp head fell back against the chair and her mouth fell open to reveal her pink mutilated nub of a tongue.

  The crowd let out a horrified grasp as the gruesome scene, but Lord Vader wasn’t finished.

  He pulled out a tiny bottle of perfume and poured it down her open throat.

  The people were unaware of what was in the perfume bottle until he struck a match and lightly thumped it in the gaping hole of her mouth.

  Finally her zombie-like eyes opened wide and she nearly sat straight up as flames shot out of her mouth and consumed her body, causing it to convulse in seizures and let out one last contorted gurgling sound that was surprisingly much louder than Atticus had expected.

  It was her death cry.

  As her boney, bloody mutilated body suddenly exploded in flames, at least half of her loyal followers fainted from the horror of the gruesome site.

  More than half of the United Nations Soldiers ran for dear life, but there were still some that stayed frozen with terror. Surely, they wanted to run, too, but more than likely their rich leaders had threatened to kill their families if they didn’t do all the dirty work.

  As destiny’s last remaining layer of flesh melted off her bones, the Dark Lord scanned the remaining crowd to see that not a single soul in Sterling Heights had refused the mark of the beast.

  He didn’t know why, but he wasn’t surprised that every single person had sold out their silly beloved Jesus for a beef jerky and a juice box.

  His haunting laughter filled the auditorium.

  SURPRISE ENDING SPERM RACE

  Fortunately Haiku arrived two days prior to Daphne’s call, completely reversing her death as if it had never happened.

  Sam was no obstetrician. That was for sure.

  Haiku let out a sigh of relief as the drone landed in his private parking lot.

  “Tell Sam to come and see me again sometime.”

  “You’re a whore, Clara,” Haiku joked.

  “Just like your girlfriend.”

  He was gonna kill Sam before he had a chance to kill Daphne again.

  Thank God for time travel.

  He rushed in through the sliding back doors and pressed the code on the metal shelter door. It beeped and opened. He quickly shut it and followed the screams.

  “Dammit, Sam! You couldn’t even stick her with an I.V.? Now we know it’s not yours!”

  Haiku opened up the large metal cabinet and pulled out the epidural supplies that he would have never entrusted to Sam.

  He stuck her with and I.V. and hit the Pitocin pump.

  “Sit up on the bed, Daphne. Roll forward touching your elbows to your knees and hold perfectly still.”

  She moaned in agony but obeyed.

  Every ounce of color drained from Sam’s face as Haiku quickly and precisely stuck Daphne’s spine with the largest needle he’d ever seen.

  “Dude, can you do EVERYTHING?”

  “You see those bumpy things, Sam? That’s the spinal column. The spine is under there, but don’t YOU ever go near anyone’s spine, O.K. Blondie?”

  Sam stumbled backwards in fear.

  Daphne lay back, suddenly giggling.

  “No, Daphne. Don’t lay all the way back. Stay propped up. The epidural needs to paralyze you from the legs down, not put you in an irreversible coma.”

  She sat up, still giggling.

  “I don’t feel a thing anymore! My sweetie! I’m so glad you’re here!”

  Haiku looked down his nose at his castrated brother.

  That’s what you get for climbing all up in my favorite drone, Blondie. A kick in the male ego nuts.

  Haiku’s eyes scanned over Daphne’s gigantic belly, calculating, predicting …

  “This baby must be as big as a 10lb bass!”

  “Oh, Lord! I’m scared now!”

  “It’s O.K., Daphne, Daddy is here, angel,” he crooned as he cut his eyes at Sam while sterilizing his surgical instruments.

  For the first time, Sam didn’t mind the kick in the nuts to his ego. Even he knew he wasn’t C-section material.

  “We’ll have this gigantic Japanese warrior child out in no time, and you’ll be back to gymnastics next week. Now hold still.”

  He stopped the Pitocin and stuck a heart rate monitor on her finger as he turned on the monitor for the baby.

  What he heard gave him goose bumps.

  “Daphne, there are two heart beats. You have twins.”

  Her eyes widened with fear.

  “Two strapping blonde boys!”

  “SHUT UP, SAM!” Daphne and Haiku shouted in unison.

  He cowered back into the corner.

  “Sam, get off your ass,” Haiku ordered. “Put on some latex gloves, and fetch me the incubation cart - the one with the sterile blankets folded on top. After you put your gloves on, unfold the blankets and lay them out in the cart.”

  Sam followed orders as the sounds of two extremely different cries rose up from out of Daphne’s belly.

  Haiku quickly cut the chords and set them in the cart side by side.

  “Watch them while I put her back together, Sam. I didn’t think to get two carts.”

  Sam was horrified. He was expecting them to come out clean and nice like the movies.

  “Why are they covered in blood?”

  “SHUT UP, SAM,” Daphne and Haiku shouted in unison again.

  Haiku was precisely placing her organs back in their original locations as quickly as possible to prevent infection. The longer she was open to air, the higher her risk of infection.

  He was sewing her back up in seconds as the babies made the cutest little noises from their mutual crib.

  Daphne’s heart felt as big as her belly had.

  “Awww. Hurry, Haiku. I want to hold my babies.”

  Sam was narrowing his eyes and trying to use his X-ray vision to see through the bloody afterbirth.

  Haiku tossed his latex gloves onto his surgeon’s table and gave Sam a swift elbow to the gut as he rolled the cart of cooing babies straight away from him.

  That’s for talking to Clara, you ASS.

  Sam was on the verge of fainting already and in no condition to fight back.

  He just stood back and watched Haiku the Hero show him up yet again.

  They will probably be two little Japanese boys that look just like him.

  But they were not. In fact, to everyone’s astonishment, all three of them had been correct in their gut feelings.

  One was a girl as Daphne had predicted.

  The girl was clearly Haiku’s.

  One was a boy, and as Sam had predicted, was as blonde and blue eyed as him.

  “How is this possible?” Sam couldn’t believe his eyes.

  Daphne and Haiku rolled their eyes.

  Typical blonde.

  “Fraternal twins are when a woman has two eggs in two different sacs. Think of the sacs as little houses. So my sperm visited one house and your sperm visited the other,” explained Haiku.

  “Ohhhhh.” A light bulb finally went off in Sam’s head. “So how do we know which sperm made it first?”

  Daphne and Haiku rolled their eyes again, both secretly hoping the little blonde boy didn’t inherit his father’s I.Q.

  “I know,” joked Haiku, “when they get old enough, just ask THEM who made it to the finish line first.”

  Daphne laughed as Haiku put a clean baby in each arm carefully, o
ne at a time.

  Normally, Sam would have rubbed it in that HE had the boy, but one look at that little girl gave him chills down his own spinal column.

  She had a head full of black hair and slanted eyes that were as pale blue as a white wolf’s.

  Because Haiku’s father had blue eyes in addition to Daphne having blue eyes, the recessive blue eyed genetics from both sides teamed up to make a pale white Japanese girl with eyes the color of the sky fringed in thick black magnificent lashes.

  “Wow!”

  Even Haiku had not imagined anything so incredible.

  “My baby girl is BAD ASS!”

  Sam and Daphne shook their heads.

  There had been Japanese girls with blue eyes, but none of the three had ever seen a Japanese girl with eyes so pale blue they were nearly white. In the other arm, a little fat tan boy with a blonde Mohawk had big wide sparkling blue eyes the color of blue jeans. He was cooing louder than the much quieter little girl.

  “He’s Sam’s alright,” Daphne joked with joy.

  It was the happiest day of her life.

  “So, Daddies, get to naming.”

  “Minori Mizudori Makanura.”

  Daphne and Sam eagerly awaited the English interpretation.

  “Beautiful pale blue harbor.”

  “Wow, Haiku. That is a gorgeous name. I LOVE it. Now Sam, it’s your turn.

  “Ailbe Laoch Brunson.”

  “That sounds nice, Sam. What does it mean?”

  “White Warrior.”

  Daphne laughed. “O.K. Sounds a little racist, but cool.”

  “What’s so racist about being a warrior?”

  “Nothing, Sam,” Daphne and Haiku replied in unison once again.

  They’d had enough of explaining.

  Haiku could not take his eyes off his breathtakingly beautiful baby girl.

  “Minori is going to kick Ailbe’s ass.”

  Sam had no defense on that one and he knew it.

  “Minori is going to kick every man’s ass.”

  DARTH VADER RIDES A BIKE

  Haiku gave Sam and Daphne strict instructions to stay below until he investigated the conditions of the community.

  “WHAT IN THE HELL?”

  Not too many things had ever shocked Haiku, especially twice in one day.

  But to his great astonishment, Darth Vader was riding a blue bicycle through an obstacle course of walking dead zombies with 666 burned into their foreheads.

  He was merrily weaving in and out as if they were orange cones instead of scrawny skeletons with sunken cheekbones and lifeless eyes.

  Their flesh was practicing melting off their bones. They must have been starving for months.

  “Ugh!”

  For the first time in his life, the warrior Haiku nearly lost his vomit as he continued to survey the damage.

  There were piles of rotting corpses littered about the streets, all dead or dying, and all with 666 branded across their foreheads. They were swarmed in flies. He could literally smell the stench of the rotting flesh through the window.

  Every other one was hemorrhaging blood from every orifice in a fevered fit of seizures before freezing up with cold wide-open dead eyes.

  The 666 was a bloody raised scarred that had clearly been burnt on with a cattle brander.

  Meanwhile, a very chubby Dark Lord was merrily whistling as he weaved in and out of the piles of zombie corpses.

  “I’ll be damned. An overweight Darth Vader on a bicycle ushered in the Apocalypse right down the road from me.”

  Haiku’s first instinct was to shove his stupid helmet up his fat ass, but he didn’t know if there were any others.

  Where you headed, you fat fucker?

  It turned out chubby wasn’t headed anywhere. He was actually riding around in circles and enjoying his handiwork.

  Finally he rode up and away into the sun setting over Sterling Height’s Bridge.

  Haiku crept out the front door, and quickly followed him, weaving in and out to the undulating shadows provided by the trees.

  The Dark Lord rode his bike into a Kudzu jungle abyss.

  “Damn.”

  Didn’t see that coming either.

  It was no wonder he’d gone unnoticed. The douche bags of Sterling Heights would have never looked twice at a nerd on a bike in a Darth Vader Halloween costume.

  I gotta hand it to you; you’re a smart fucker, but still a dead one.

  Haiku watched him skip up the stairs and into the back door of a dilapidated Victorian house that was so covered in vines, the original color could no longer be detected.

  As the screen door shut behind him, Haiku crept up and peered inside.

  Darth Vader was sitting on the floor, Indian-style, flipping through an album of old baseball cards.

  What in the Hell am I looking at?

  Within seconds, Haiku flung open the door and made a dive for the Dark Lord.

  Atticus reached for his gun, but was overpowered and pinned to the ground within’ seconds.

  Hacker to hacker.

  He’d finally found the other Ghost in the Darkness, and he was going to pay.

  Haiku wrenched off his mask and got the third biggest surprise of his life.

  It was a kid! A little red-headed, freckled faced fat kid that looked about 12.

  Even Haiku’s narrow eyes widened with wonder to behold the face of a mere boy hiding beneath the mask.

  He had truly NEVER been so horrified.

  “WHAT THE FUCK? YOU’RE JUST A LITTLE KID! WHY WOULD YOU DO SOMETHING LIKE THIS? WHY? TELL ME, YOU FAT LITTLE FUCK! WHY?”

  Haiku was screaming now.

  Atticus’s dishwater green eyes filled with fresh tears.

  “BECAUSE THEY KILLED MY MOM AND DAD! THAT’S WHY!” he screamed back angrily.

  “WHO? WHO DID?”

  “ALL OF THEM!”

  Keeping the Dark Lord pinned, Haiku felt sick to his stomach.

  He actually understood what the kid meant.

  He knew it was a cold world for a red-headed stepchild nobody wanted.

  “I’m sorry they killed your parents, kid.”

  For the first time in his life, Haiku the fearless warrior had to look away from his enemy.

  His heart sank to his queasy stomach as he sliced the boy clean across his thick pasty neck.

  Haiku immediately covered the dying boy’s hemorrhaging head with his beloved Darth Vader mask.

  He just couldn’t stomach it.

  Never in his wildest imagination did he think he’d have to kill a kid.

  A NEW EARTH AWAITS

  In 1947, Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd of the United States Navy flew directly to the North Pole and claimed he saw an opening at the top. Some believe that instead of going over the pole, his plane actually entered the Inner Earth as he claimed.

  Admiral Byrd indicated in his reports that the Earth contained a mini earth inside. He claimed the core of the earth was hollow, contained a central sun, and even an atmosphere that supported life.

  Admiral Byrd claimed that the poles of the Earth were convex and not concave. He said ships and planes could have floated or flown into the entrances at the poles, but they were constantly guarded by military and even commercial pilots were warned to steer clear of the no-fly zone.

  The United States Government had never permitted planes fly over the poles after Admiral Byrd’s discovery.

  As quickly as the media reported it, a covert international government conspiracy destroyed every copy of the newspaper and even the plates at the printing press.

  They quickly set up military posts to guard both poles and denied anyone exploration from that point on. Admiral Byrd’s son, who had accompanied him on his journeys, was mysteriously found dead in a warehouse with no explanation later in his life.

  In addition to suppressing the media coverage, the government discredited the admiral saying his claims were false, but Haiku knew the Admiral’s reports were true, because he’d gone there and ha
d a look for himself.

  Now he radioed in his aircraft carriers that had been patiently staked out in the middle of the ocean carrying 500-large capacity Boeing Jets and 500 Hummingbird Drones. In addition he had 500 empty cruise ships were waiting to pull into port all over the world as soon as Haiku said the word.

  The other countries were too busy bombing to even notice the millions of people flooding into the entrances of the North and South Poles.

  Using satellite technology through his computer, Haiku scanned the surface of the earth to find safe and uninfected ports and ushered in the ships accordingly.

  As the millions of orphans surfaced from below the ground to load the ships and planes their laughter and shouts could be heard for miles.

  The sunlight illuminated their happy faces as they raced up the ramps of the ships and planes, followed by very proud and satisfied ninjas.

  “So, where are we all going, Haiku?”

  With a baby on either hip, Daphne wasn’t in the mood for any more surprises.

  “I’ll tell you if you’ll let me hold Minori.”

  “No way. This is my girl.”

  “You didn’t make her alone.”

  She sighed with frustration as she finally handed over the blue-eyed Japanese baby girl to her overjoyed father.

  A woman already aboard the ship called out over the rail, “Haiku!”

  “And just who the Hell is she?”

  “That’s my sister, Daphne. Remember, my mother was a whore? I problem have a thousand more half sisters coming behind us.”

  Daphne took a moment to process his comment.

  “Wow. I never thought about it that way. You probably do. Now, TELL ME WHERE we’re GOING!”

  He looked into his daughter’s eyes as the blue harbor sparkled all around her and the laughter of children filled the air with a joyful noise.

  Minori smiled.

  “WHERE?” Daphne’s demands startled him back to reality.

  “To the center of the earth. President Matthews is already there waiting. Hope you like moonshine and barbeque.”

  Of course she did, and so she was one of the first to arrive. Haiku, however, did not arrive to safety until a month had passed and all shipments of people had been safely ushered to inner earth.