Chapter IV:Break

Break

The World didn’t want to end humanity for want of a reason.Epochs, Trillinia, entire families of plant and animals had come about, lived, prospered and died leaving behind nothing but bones turned to rock. Through all those history from a world of fire and thunder to a green and blue one only the world survived. Then came man and ended everything. However nothing ends in totality.things find a way out. The pile was just like the severed hand or part of Hydroid like a star fish or a jelly fish left on its own to grow back. Even encephalitic brains are smarter than the rest in a world reduced to surviving subsurface. The pile was an anthill of human leftovers. The land around it wished it gone. To be finally free from the infestation that had destroyed most of it. There were recuperating waters evolving fauna and supporting flora.the only unwanted which took without contributing was the pile. The debris, the contaminated snow, the small bud on dead branches everything listened and waited. The ground shifted under the piles weight. There was something that had merged with the land and waters there was no form just a consciousness. Something had survived beyond the pile, a lingering will to live. That something, with the understandable rage of the violated and mutilated, sought only one thing from the Pile and its inhabitants. It lingered in hungry wait, immune to the outside unlike the Pile people having evolved to radiation. It was there all around and it waited.

Sky had been in bed a rag doll fed clothed bathed involuntarily. She was limp flexible to be changed into new fresh clothes, bathed, groomed to perfection.

The workers were literally in awe no one had broken out or tried. There were now two pairs of eyes in constant watch. There was some assurance that when the time comes they could replace the queen with better breeding ones. Now, after what had happened it was simply undeniable that there was a new threat. the assurance might just run away. The hunt for the blue eyed man had yielded nothing. The queen’s productivity both in quality and quantity was dwindling. The collective conscious was in an overdrive it kept alive everyone to the fact that the virgins can and will escape if they are given the chance.

The pile was at it as lowest whatever that was outside that had killed Meg and sad was still out there. The workers still ventured out but in lower numbers simply because it was thought higher number will lead to larger loss. This had limited the food supply to its worse in many winters. The workers stayed indoors tried to move the farms nearer incorporate them into the pile, build walls around them, and build tunnels to reach them. The outside has just evolved better to finish what it had always tried and the pile had to solidify and build to contain it.

While that was going on there was another new crop being raised around the virgin queens? While the collective conscious had at first simply sought to chain all three of them that had however changed at the last bit the pile didn’t have a small enough shackle for them. Then there were the workers that cleaned, groomed the virgin queens they wouldn’t have any of this, their work mustn’t be destroyed by soon to be compost and bone char. For now Air and the third little virgin queen could pace about at their wish without any restrictions. However they were not free. Every pair of eyes watched them every hour. The collective conscious wouldn’t allow another near escape. It could not. The virgin queens remained on their eyes, wherever they were,  whether it was building cells from whatever materials available, whether it was building underwater passages to the subterranean drains to crawl through in near total darkness just a small fire at the end of the long tunnel near the source, whether it was grooming the virgin queens, running from the claws of the Queen while she had to be unchained, cleaned and re-enchained. Every day from day to night from realization to death the workers were glued through the collective consciousness to channel Sky, Air and the unnamed one. They were what they thought when they opened their eyes and when they closed their eyes. It was as if what anyone saw was nothing but them. Everyone was watching. The collective eased a little. Their assurances of future could never escape.

The cramped quarters were more congested with two attendants instead of one, the younger more inward than the older. They could have moved around earlier when Meg was there. That could hardly happen now without bumping into a human appendage. However the conscious were the real bars on their cage. Every eye watched every move every small movement.

Air had waited for Sky to say something. Anything at all. She never imagined Meg to be so important for Sky. Air s nurse mate was outside the door and came in regularly to groom her and she was just glad that what happened to Meg hadn’t happened to her. She dreaded the thought though because she knew what had happened and how they got the supplies. She dreaded the time when her Geiger cranker nursery mate would have to go outside as well.

Inside her cell Sky lay still remembering the bloated meat Balloons words. She didn’t quite feel using the word queen because somehow in her limited uneducated view of the world the Balloon was not the queen. Neither was she. there was no Queen. The word meant nothing. It was not what they had been led to believe from the very day they had the ability to understand. It was just a word, a story, all drama and nothing else. Like everything in this cage of hers. She was held down to the ground naked under the gaze of the entire pile. this was her reality. Nothing escaped their combined gaze. First there was only Meg but she had known Meg since before she knew anything and that was kind of ok then. she was ignorant of most things just like Air is. Now things were intolerable the new Tadpole and the one behind the door they were often joined by a third. Unremarkable frog head in her tattered cloak.Maddening, infernal cranking away at those Geiger’s. The constant whee……………. that resonated inside her cranium nerves like a constant irritation. An itch you could never scratch at.

“Doesn’t matter. This is not real. This is not how. Your Dad had survived he is out there?”

That was what the manacled Balloon told her. She kept on reminding herself that she was a progeny of a man who had not been held back by the walls. The walls will not hold her back. The blue eyed man was out there. Her father. She didn’t really understand the entire concept of a father. This much she did. the worker s or her jailers, the Balloon had referred to them as the parasite, could not hold him back. they could not possibly hold her down.

Then how? How was she to keep from going to become the new balloon? She had one last contact at least. All her childhood she had heard the scream of the so called Queen, in agony of births and anger. It was incomprehensible thunder till the day she met her and now she could tell the words in the screams apart.

It had been loud gibberish till she had met her but Sky could decipher words now. It was not easy. The words had to pass through walls and a corridor and her speech was not very coherent. It was more like the gravelly grunt of some massive animal rather than a voice in itself. She remembered a very recent announcement.

“That’s it motherfuckers……you are all dead ……………………………you hear me I am the last piece of flesh you get to colonise in ……there wont be no more……. they are not gonna stay ………………………………………………………….”

Chapter III:The Queen

The queen

Sky woke up with a throbbing head, disoriented.  Was that a scream she heard? It was not light yet.  She saw another fish face look down at her. The wrong fish face. She was reeling, spun around in a vortex then thrown by the force of its sudden abrupt stop.

“Who are you?”

“efffffff…” Jeff was even worse at speech then Meg. she had even lesser of a frontal lobe anyway. She said her name as a slowly deflating balloon might have. a long whish of air expanding out of a small orifice.

Now this was a genuine first time. The workers lack the foresight to expect a reaction of virgin queen, they don’t have too much of a brain to do so. Sky had already leapt from her bed on to Jeff who was five years younger and underfed.

“Where’s Meg”

Jeff blinked twice,  shut her eyes. Only then she could force the words out it was too much for her quarter of a brain.

“…edd  Meeeg… ied…”

“no…”

It was something Sky had dreamt. From nowhere the dream was coming back to her. it was not the collective consciences’. it was a real dream. She had been kept insulated from everything. Fed, well clothed, near a warm fire, minimum contact with the outside. She would never know of the collective conscious she couldn’t.

She had forgot the dream as soon as she had opened her eyes expecting reality to assure her. In the dream, she could recollect her fish head friend from the nursery running in what looked like a snow storm. something was chasing her.

She had already pinned down Jeff. She grabed the gieger motioned the device threateningly over the human tadpole in rags which immediately cringed. She ran out . The cold hit her like a slap she felt it in all its chilling glory. She ignored it and tried to head to the door.

She didn’t go far. all the remaining workers still inside the pile got together in their own pile and blocked the door. The mass of malformed bodies, unrecognizable features and tattered clothes that scarcely covered the last two now stood as a human wall between Sky and the large door made of bit and pieces of salvaged wreckage.

“Let me out” Sky commanded with all her might. Meg was alive, she had to be. Sky will find her. The worker pile, which seemed hardly human in the flickering bonfire in the middle courtyard remained impervious. It took a full two minutes for Sky to realize the absurdity of it. she could as easily have talked to the walls and expected more. There was no way to dodge them. she stepped to the right they steeped top the right, she stepped to the left they stepped to the left, perfect insane synchronized harmony Sky felt her own desperation wail up inside her. The only companion next to Air. She felt herself tremble she could tear them all. She lunged in mad rage. punched, kicked, pinched and all other expressions of rage she could manage. The wall simply absorbed with utmost nonchalance all her assaults and simply moved away blocking the door to the outside.

She turned back. it was not worth tackling the wall of workers. There had to be a second way. there were four doors. Jeff stood outside her door there was another fish face guarding what was obviously the door to Air’s room, there was another room for the new virgin queen then there were the other two doors left. There was one with a crowd of balding globs of fat tumbling out of a large crack in the wall the drone chamber then there was the largest door in the pile covered by large leather curtain. That Door was not guarded. Sky sprinted in an instant. there was not much of a choice.

As she passed on to the other side of the curtain she realized where she was. she braked her sprint tried to turn on her heel tripped  and fell flat on her face. The impact cause a tiny explosion inside her cranium her vision had blurred and stars popped in front of her retina. She was in the long dreaded Queens chamber. It was her room. She turned on her knees and rushed to crawl out.

“Wait”

The voice was a thunderclap startling Sky and forcing her to freeze where she lay. Her head was still recovering so when see turned slowly and cautiously she saw multiple gaint white spiders dangling from a web. She rose unsteadily and took her time to balance herself the different spiders converged into one and she could see that the Spider was one. A huge bulbous glob of fat set upright on a birthing chair. She was just  not fat  it was like she was formed entirely of adipose,  a oversized rubenesque monster brought to life. Better still a human pumped full and going to burst any time now. She had no neck huge sausages of leg and arms. Her hair was unkept and unclean. Her face was just as devoid of any features as the rest of her just glob and glob growing out of it. It was as if looking into the face of something subsurface with just a hint of a nose a full fleshy cheek, dangling huge lips. Her eyes almost protruded out like they were going to pop out of her eye socket from all the pressure within. There were wires running into her from various bottles kept fastidiously clean She was entirely covered by a white cloth gone yellow from continuously getting dirty and then cleaned again. Her feet had been manacled to the birthing chair. Right under the support that kept her leg permanently stretched out maximum raised above her hips and suspeneded by two ’Y”   shaped supports in the air. She might have been slimmer or more human she first sat there. However her features have grown but the manacles steel made in a time when humans knew how to mold metal hasn’t .The whole manacle stayed there while the flesh grew all around. At the interfaces where it cut from the constant rubbing the skin has ulcerated into ugly red blotches. Sky felt a wave of sympathy after the initial disgust she lingered over the manacles.

“Humm honey it haarts when I moveeee …………………you not one of them assholes…… which one are you”

“Sky”

“Come closer”

Sky involuntarily walked up to her felt the balloon with talon at its end raise her face.

“You got his eyes That’s why? what a fate I am sorry. He was something coming through them an all never saw his face but his eyes. Look at me now don’t be me”

The eyes brighetend held her gaze in an unmoving stare and then the Queen whispered

“Run Away?”

The workers were peeking from behind the curtain. Not one of them dared go inside.

“Stand back you monsters, stay back”

She literally bared her teeth. Her cheeks ballooned with rage and turned red. The white of her pupils went red with rage.

“Run…………………………but outside”

“Doesn’t matter this is not real this is not how? Your Dad had survived he is out there?”

Her face lighted up with the recollection she smiled a broad toothy smile. Her bleeding gums yellow mishappen teeth glistened in the flame light.

“He chose me he did”

“Find Meg??” Sky interrupted.

“What who...Meg?”

The workers had been trying to smuggle themselves through  the two inch gap that separated the leather curtain and the floor where there was the shadow. With her last exclamation, the searching tentacles from the shadows have retracted back.

“Who ………..Meg?”

Sky couldn’t find a word it was not as if she could say friend.

“She is a asshole now isn’t it? a parasite that keeps you alive so that you can breed more parasites. Listen Bitch wake the fuck up they want you on this chair giving birth to more Parasites”

“Bitch dumb mother fucking bitch” Sky saw the giant globe of eyes moist and then perspire and then finally condense into a tear which glistened by the burning torch lights.

She inhaled then inhaled in and gave of a long sigh. Wiped her eyes and her face. Then she moved her face away.

“Take the Bitch away” she whispered.

The shadows beneath the curtain grew sprouted hands and legs and bore down on Sky.

“Pleaseeeeeeeeeeeeeee………………………………..”

Sky for the first time in her years found tears wailing up like an overflowing faucet. She felt her knees buckle and finally give way.She curled up in a fetal position where she stood realizing the futility of it all and started to cry. The workers formed a ring around her but didn’t touch her. they feared contaminating her.

At length Jeff came crawling back hugged her and then slowly carried her back to  her virgin queen cell. She half crawled and was half pulled all the way while wailing like a lost siren. When she was back Jeff carefully deposited her on the Queen Virgin bed. Her clothes were dusty she ran the Gieger cranking it as fast her small hands could crank fortunately the green eye didn’t turn red. She immediately changed all her clothes. Sky by now had lost all her will and was easily malleable. She had her clothes changed, washed with water scrubbed with a rough cloth, dried and made ready for sleep with the resistance of an inanimate toy. Of a stone deity without a will of its own. Her eyes continued to leak rivulets of tears.

Finally, she was tucked into her cozy bed. she had by now felt the streams from her eyes lessen. She could at least have stopped crying and recover some of her composure. She slept of a bit, it was easy somehow. Then at last she blinked not to give away that she had been awake for at least ten minutes. She expected and found jeff sprawled in the corner cranking but with her eyes open watching  her intently. She was tiered she was not able to crank the Geiger fast and she did yawn. From her half closed eyeing peeping no greater than a small unrecognizable orifice in the flickering flame light of the fire place, she observed that Jeff was putting all the energy her tiny body could master into watching her. The workers had not expected today’s event and mostly weren’t prepared enough. Now they would be. sure enough something stirred in the shadows beyond the open door with a curtain of tattered rubber and leather. The heavy drapes didn’t stir with the wind but Sky felt the density of the shadows change between the inch gap between the patchwork drape and the floor. Obviously, there was a guard outside.

She waited. Jeff yawned again. Her cranking had grown achingly slower. She shook her head twice to shrug off the overpowering fatigue and warm inviting heat from the fire. The  overpowering collective conscious dictated that she had to be awake. Workers spoke without speaking and the conversation was chaotic confusion. Only there was one unanimity. the virgin queens there last alternative could try and get away. She fought but progressively felt her hands collapsing from all the chore, her eye lids felt like bricks. She didn’t realize when the giegers slipped from her small misshapen claw hands and she slouched half leaning on the wall. She was sleeping but with her eyes wide open.

Sky had waited. She felt Air scratching at the wall preparing there telecommunication line, probing for undetectable weaknesses. She had waited eagerly for so long. Finaly.Sky had to be sure she could no longer depend on the complicity of the former jailer. She bit her lip ,shit she had to be focused.

“I am sorry for Meg”It was Air.

“I want to get out “Sky did her best ventriloquist act trying to not move her lips Jeff had her eyes on her though they spoke in a whisper which wont be heard over the crackling flames of the fire.

“You cant”

“There has to be a way. they cant just keep me here forever even Meg is gone. She is not dead she might be just wounded”

“There has to be a way “Sky Agreed.

She was allowed that last few minutes of talk through the wall then it was thickly plastered cutting her off from Air forever. Sky didn’t protest she lay there weeping howling and then when the sun had risen she laid like a doll not speaking or moving. She stayed like that until winter came, passed over the pile and then ended.