by Eric Vall
“No,” I shook my head. “I know Edony well enough to know that she won’t approach us unless she’s absolutely sure. In a way, she and Ortensia were very similar, the Chief Constable didn’t come to the manor until the literal day that she had evidence against us.”
“If it’s not today,” the red-skinned woman muttered. “Then, when? Are we going to live in fear every day for the rest of our lives?”
“Don’t think of it as fear, my dear,” I grinned. “There’s nothing in this world that I can’t protect you from. I’m a scientist, an inventor, an alchemist, a doctor, and more importantly, the man who loves you with every fiber of his being. I will protect you no matter what the Duchess or anyone else throws at us.”
“You promise?” Daisy whispered.
“Of course,” I breathed, “I’ve loved all three of you from the moment you emerged from the machine, and I will continue to love you until the day I die.”
“And we’ll love you until the day we die!” Valerie sang. “Which won’t be for a very, very, very long time, so stay around for a while, alright?”
“Yes, Charles,” Rian echoed. “You are my mate, and you cannot give me lots of strong and resilient offspring if you leave or pass on. We need you here, to be our mate, and to make many, many, many offspring.”
“Dang, Rian,” Valerie giggled. “How many children are you planning to have with Charles?”
“At least ten,” the red-skinned imp-woman uttered.
“T-Ten?” I stammered. “That’s… that’s a lot of children.”
“I will settle for nine,” the imp-woman assured. “Five is where I draw the line, I cannot have less. My parents, as the king and Queen of the impdom, had over four hundred children, I haven’t even met some of my siblings, there were so many of them.”
“Four hundred?” I repeated. “That’s so many! How could they raise each of them? That’s utter insanity.”
“I want four!” Valerie smiled, threw off the tarp, and tilted her head. “A perfect litter of kittens. Two boys and two girls.”
“And you, Daisy?” I asked. “Do you want any children?”
“When I was a bear,” the brunette told us. “I didn’t think I wanted to breed with anyone, all of the male bears were brutes and roughed all of the females up, but now that I’m with a human man, I think I’d like to have just one. There is a chance, if I were to get pregnant, I could have up to five children at once. Bears tend to have litters of one or two, but some of the time, they can have up to four.”
“Four at the same time?” I asked. “That must be painful.”
“But I hope only to have one,” the bear-girl smiled. “One is fine, and then it’ll have everyone else’s babies to play with and be its siblings.”
“How many kids to do you want, Charles?” the feline-woman asked. “How many kids did you dream about having when you were growing up?”
“Well, if I’m honest,” I chuckled. “I never thought about it. You know how our society is, men are nothing more than consorts, servants, and workers. There’s no such thing as a ‘father’ in this society, they’re just cattle that lend out their sperm for breeding purposes, so I never had the chance to think about it. I never even imagined, I didn’t plan on ever becoming a consort, and my family line isn’t pure enough to be a part of a breeding program.”
“Well, now, you’re going to be a father,” Valerie nodded. “Not yet, at least, though, so think about it, alright? How many kids do you want, and when.”
“A bunch,” I snickered. “Don’t worry.”
“When do you think we’ll have children?” Daisy asked. “After all of this has cooled down? Or…”
“I have no idea,” I breathed. “I’d like to think some time in the future, maybe within a few years--”
“A few years?” Valerie cried. “Years? No, no, no, Charles, a few months, how does that sound?”
“My love,” I tittered. “We’re dealing with life-threatening attacks from all sides, we never know when another problem will arise, and I don’t want to bring a child into this world when we’re struggling to survive. Once we’ve figured out all of our problems, maybe even moved hundred of miles away from Edenhart and Edony, maybe then we can have a few children running around.”
“That’s so long,” Rian pouted. “Charles, I demand to have offspring.”
“I like the idea of waiting,” the brunette sighed. “Yes, I’d love to have a child with Charles, but I also like how our lives are now. Even if we’re running away or fighting against danger, I love spending my days with Charles, and creating new sisters. A baby, or babies for each of us would change our dynamic so much, and… I don’t want to give that up right now.”
“I can understand that,” I nodded. “And I have to agree with you, I love how it is now, too. Not only that, but Rian just got here, and we’ve yet to know her personality fully.”
“And eventually, once all of this has died down,” Daisy went on. “We can have more sisters, and they can have babies. We could even create something like… a colony, filled with monster-woman, Charles, and our children. Think how wonderful that sounds…”
As our horses climbed up the hill toward my manor, I loosened my grip on the reins, leaned my head back, and stared up at the flickering stars. For a moment, I imagined what it’d be like to be a husband, and a father. As I’d told them, I’d never imagined what it’d be like to be a father, there hadn’t been a ‘father’ in our society for hundreds of years, how would I know how to be one in the first place?
I turned my head, gazed over at Daisy, glanced over my shoulder, and then smiled down at both Rian and Valerie. I may not have known how to be a father, but I was sure that my women would show me what I had to do. I imagined what they’d be like as mothers, holding our children to their breasts, and smiling up at me. Yes… now that was a sight I would like to see, and my heart swelled painfully in my chest. I resolved myself that was the future that I wanted, the future that I would fight and kill for, and if anyone dared to stand in my way, I would destroy them with the ferocity of a wild animal.
“We’ll have babies soon,” I said. “As soon as we have a safe world for them.”
Chapter Five
I felt such relief to have all of that out of the way, we’d finally gotten Ortensia disposed of, stolen all the evidence against us, and made it back home in one piece. Once I pulled into the drive, I reigned in the horses, guided the wagon back into the stable, and then hopped down from the driver’s seat.
“Finally, home!” A.B. cried. “Someone, anyone, take me back to my jar, I want to be back in my comfy, spacious jar! I’m never venturing out into the big, wide world with any of you again!”
“You’re the one who begged to come along,” I chuckled. “You’re not going to ask again?”
“No!” the brain muttered. “Well… maybe a few more times, but never on missions like that! Maybe take me for a stroll through the park… or down by a lake, not through that craziness!”
“I hear you, I hear you,” I snickered. “Fine, we’ll never take you out when we need to sneak around and steal things.”
“Alright,” A.B. sighed. “Charles, I may need another cleansing after this, I can feel the human world gunk all over my pores, crinkles, and my brain stem.”
“Fine,” I snorted. “Though the air outside didn’t even touch you, you’re completely enclosed in the apparatus. I’ll cleanse you tomorrow morning, do you think you can stand to stay in your jar for one more night.”
“Yes, that’ll be fine,” the brain sighed. “I may not have touched the filthy human air, but I felt it touch the glass of the apparatus, and now I feel… icky.”
“Well, don’t say I never did anything for you,” I chuckled. “You asked to build you ‘something like a backpack with a glass window for you to see out,’ and I did precisely that. Are you not grateful? What would happen if I built you all of those tunnels and tubes, and then you hated them just like you did with this?”
“It wasn’t that dangerous,” Valerie chimed in. “We’ve done a lot worse without you there.”
“Yeah,” I breathed. “Valerie once killed a man with her bare hands, you should’ve seen it, A.B.--”
“I’m not listening!” the brain cried.
“She actually bit into him, tore him to absolute shreds,” I nodded. “Blood was everywhere, we had to bring her home, and give her a bath immediately because it looked like we’d dumped an entire bucket of blood over her head.”
“I’m not hearing this!” A.B. sang. “Lalala! Nope, not listening!”
“Alright, alright,” I smiled. “I’ll stop there, so next time we bring you out, don’t complain about it being dangerous or scary.”
“Fiiiine,” the brain whined. “I only wanted to go out and do something fun, ride in the back of the wagon, looking at all of the pretty girls strolling down the street, smell the lilacs billowing in the summer sun… you know, all that good stuff.”
“Where’d you get all of that?” I asked. “Was that a memory from your past life?”
“Huh…” A.B. whispered. “I didn’t think of it like that… Maybe it was a memory, sometimes I get flashes of things, maybe they are from my past life, and I don’t recognize it because I’ve been a brain for so long.”
“I wonder if society was the same when A.B. was alive,” Daisy pondered. “Where men and women equal then or were they the way they are now?”
“Well, A.B. has been in the jar for roughly fifteen years from what I could surmise,” I stated. “But who knows? His form was so shrunken and degraded that he could’ve been a lot older than that. Not only that, you have to take in the average lifespan of a human, I’m not sure at what age he died, from his brain size, I know that he was over the age of twenty-five but other than that… there’s nothing else I can use to determine it. Not unless I took him out of his jar and dissected him, but if I did that, we wouldn’t have A.B. around anymore.”
“Do you remember anything else?” Rian asked. “Something that doesn’t seem like a memory, but a passing thought of regular human life?”
“One of the things I remember…” A.B. murmured. “I used to work in an office, or something like that, there were a lot of filing cabinets where we’d put paperwork. The thing that stands out the most is there was a gorgeous woman who’d often come in, give us envelopes or stacks of paper, and I was utterly enamored with her. I wouldn’t say I was in love with her, I didn’t know her, but she was so beautiful that it made my heart ache. There certainly was something holding me back, maybe it was societal constraints or something along those lines, but I knew that we couldn’t be together. I think it had to do with something like social standing? I was a poor man, or at least, that’s what I remember, and she was certainly an aristocrat from the way she dressed.”
“Do you remember what she looked like?” Valerie sighed.
“She always wore blues and whites,” the brain stated. “Those were her house colors, I believe. She had the silkiest red hair I’d ever seen, it almost reminded me of the same color as Ortensia’s, but a little lighter. She had huge doe eyes, emerald green, and whenever I’d help her at the front desk, she’d look at me so kindly. But not with pity or disdain, like a lot of the aristocrats did, but with a sweet kindness that I hadn’t really encountered while working there.”
“Well, there’s a clue right there,” I chuckled.
“What do you mean?” A.B. asked.
“Well, women didn’t start taking on ‘house colors’ until after powers started popping up in powerful families,” I told them. “A lot of people believe that powers started popping up here and there rapidly, but a lot of them are wrong. The first recorded cases were only two in the whole country within the same year, it took almost fifty years for more than ten women to have them in the same country. So, they started adopting ‘house colors’ within the last one hundred to two hundred years ago or so. From the way you speak about her, she treated you with some respect, or maybe she was a harlot, we will never know.”
“Sometimes, I wonder about her,” A.B. murmured. “If she’s still out there with those wide, dazzling eyes or if she’s passed on to the next world. I’d like to know… but I don’t remember her name, only her face and the way she treated me.”
“I’d love to dig a little deeper into this,” Daisy urged. “I want to know more about A.B.’s past, where he came from, and how he got to be in the state he is now.”
“I like to believe that I was a swashbuckling vagabond that had to be taken out,” the brain laughed. “And then they kept my brain on display as a sign that they’d taken me out.”
“Or it could be darker,” I exhaled. “You could’ve been sold off to a Mistress, one that was a scientist or a doctor, and she could’ve extracted your brain to study.”
“How dare you?” A.B. chuckled. “Let me enjoy my fantasies.”
“Or you simply died,” Rian offered. “And they extracted your brain to study? We can’t know unless, as Daisy said, we dig into it more.”
“I think we should do that,” I agreed. “But not right now, it’s late, we’ve had a long night, and from looking into each of your eyes, I know you’re tired and ready for bed.”
“It’s been a long day,” Rian stretched. “And a very long night, I want nothing more than to fall into bed, and not come out until it’s late afternoon.”
“You can do that,” I smiled. “But I can’t, I have a lot to do tomorrow, not only that, but our dear brainy friend requested a cleansing, and we all know how long that takes.”
I rested my hand in the middle of Daisy’s back, smiled to Valerie, and then grabbed Rian by the hand. First, we dropped A.B. off in his jar, which we’d left in the kitchen, and then headed back upstairs. All four of us undressed in the dim light of my bedroom, slid under the covers, and snuggled up together in a warm tangle of arms and legs. I’m not sure what time I started to drift off, but the sounds of my women’s heavy, even breathing lulled me to sleep.
I was grateful to have them, all of them, and I wasn’t sure if I’d been able to finish the job if it’d been just me. Valerie, Daisy, and Rian were so special to me, and I thanked the universe for every day granted with them. It was all thanks to science, my handmade metal machine, and my own brilliance.
I awoke to the soft sounds of pattering feet, so I sat up in bed, glanced around, and noticed that Daisy had left the bed. Both Rian and Valerie were still sound asleep, snuggled up together in a tight ball, and the blonde rested her head on the imp-woman’s shoulder. I smiled to myself, wriggled out of bed, changed into a clean set of clothes, and snuck out of the room. I followed the sounds of the bear-girl rustling around downstairs, and found her in the kitchen behind the counter.
I leaned against the doorframe into the large room, smiled to myself, and then watched as Daisy began preparing breakfast for all of us. The brunette worked diligently; first grabbing heavy, ceramic mixing bowls from inside of the cupboards, and then grabbed the eggs. The brunette cracked them into the bowl, poured in a small amount of milk, spices, and then beat them together with a whisk. She turned her back to me, hurriedly placed kindling underneath the burners of the stove, lit it, and then blew into the tiny space.
Daisy grabbed a cast iron skillet from its place hanging on the wall, placed it on the burner, and then flicked in a pad of butter. She then poured in the egg mixture, grabbed a metal turner, and then stared down at the sizzling mixture.
“You’re up early today, Charles Rayburn,” the brunette smiled over her shoulder. “It’s only polite to announce yourself when you enter a room.”
“Am I not allowed to admire you while you do daily tasks?” I asked. “But yes, next time, I’ll announce my presence, I hope I didn’t scare you.”
“Not at all,” the bear-girl giggled. “I heard
you get out of bed and then come down the stairs.”
“Ah, I see,” I nodded. “I should’ve known.”
“Why don’t you sit down?” the bear-girl asked. “Breakfast will be ready in a minute, it won’t be as big of a spread as a few days ago, but it’ll be enough to fill all of us up until lunch time.”
I nodded, smiled, and then stepped into the room toward the small kitchen table. I pulled out a chair, slid into it, rested my elbow on the grain of the table, and then leaned my chin into the palm. Daisy flurried around the room, lit another one of the burners, grabbed another skillet, added butter, and then placed slices of thick bacon into the sizzling pan.
“You know you don’t have to do all of this,” I grunted. “I can cook for myself, I’ve been doing it for a very long time.”
“I know that, Charles,” the bear-girl grinned. “But I also know if left to your own devices, you’d be eating the bare minimum, maybe bowls of plain rice, or cold-cut sandwiches. Not only that, but I like cooking for you and my sisters. It’s nice to know that I’m a part of this family, and that I have a purpose, maybe it’s just cooking and picking up after everyone, but I enjoy doing my part.”
“But I’m saying that you don’t have to,” I smiled. “I wouldn’t mind cooking or cleaning for all of you, I love you all so much, and I want to show my appreciation.”
“Don’t you think I feel the same way?” the brunette giggled. “Not only that, but it would take a whole team to clean up after Valerie, that girl makes so many messes and just leaves them for someone else to find. I don’t mind it, but I know that you’re busy down in the laboratory, so I pick up after them for you.”
“I do what now?” the feline-woman yawned, stepped into the room, stretched her arms over her head, and then skipped to the table.
“Leave messes around the house,” I chuckled. “I found a bunch of ripped paper in a drawer just a few days ago, what were you doing with it?”
“I like to rip it up, lay on the floor, and then toss it up into the air,” the feline-woman admitted. “It reminds me of flower petals falling from the trees. There was one big flowering tree in that big courtyard in town, I’d sleep underneath it in the summer, and then I’d wake up to a shower of pink petals. They smelled nice, and were so pretty as they showered down. I like to remember that, so I repeated it with the torn-up paper. They didn’t smell as nice and weren’t as pretty, but I had fun.”
