The Haunted Vagina (8 page)

I point at the black and ask the girl, “What is that?”

“That’s the cancer,” she says.

“Cancer?” I ask.

“It took everyone away,” she says.

The town ends at the top of the hill, but the path continues.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“To dinner,” she says.

There are skeletons walking in the forest, clacking their bones against trees as they move.

“Friendly zephrans,” she says to me.

The skeletons don’t pay attention to us, dancing in the woods like they’re held up by strings.

Fig lives in the mansion at the top of the hill. A blue-violet doll house as big as a ski lodge.

“Everyone else lives there,” she says.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Fig doesn’t live alone in this world as I suspected. There are other people here, living in the mansion.

“All old,” she says. “I can’t play with any of them.”

They are all just as alien as Fig, some of them more so. They are also like three-dimensional cartoon characters. And just like cartoon characters, they are proportioned oddly. Some have large gorilla bodies with tiny little legs. Some are thin with long noodle arms.

She gathers them all to dinner so they can meet me. I sit at the end of the table next to Fig. There are a little over a dozen of them. Many of them couples, and the couples all look similar. The green spiky man and woman look to be married. The yellow long noses look to be a couple, and an even older yellow long-nosed couple sits across from them. Probably their parents. Only one of them looks like Fig. An old woman, sitting next to her, with deep jowls. Probably her mother or grandmother. Everyone is very sluggish and droopy. All of them very old.

I take pictures of them, then introduce myself.

They just look at me for a second when I speak, then look away.

“They don’t understand you,” Fig says. “Only I talk like you.”

The people speak under their breaths, mumbling, I can’t even hear them. Fig speaks to them in their language. It sounds kind of like Chinese.

“I told them you’re my new playmate,” she says.

They all nod at me, talking in loud crackling voices amongst themselves.

After maybe twenty minutes of socializing, we are served by Fig’s relative. Only we aren’t served food, we are served crafts. Some of the people get balls of yarn, some people get puzzles, most of the people get dolls to paint. I get modeling clay.

Fig sticks her tongue out at my clay, like it’s gross.

She’s bouncing in her seat excited to work on painting a skull that chatters its teeth at her.

“I thought we were going to have food?” I ask her.

She doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

We sit here for what seems like three hours before Fig’s mom collects our crafts and takes them away. I tried to make a sculpture of a cowboy boot but it wasn’t turning out so I just made an abstract spiky snake. Fig’s relative looks at it like it’s something pornographic.

All of the people get up out of their chairs and stretch, stepping away from the table. I slip away when they aren’t looking, go out on the porch.

I take pictures of the surroundings. From up here, I can see almost everything. I can see the cliff where I entered this world. It stretches all the way around us. Like we’re in a crater. The entire world is only about twenty square miles.

I need to get back. Stacy’s probably wondering why I’m taking so long.

I try to get a hold of her on the walkie-talkie.

“Stacy, are you there?” I say.

But it’s still static.

“What are you doing?” I hear Fig’s creeky voice behind me.

I turn around, putting the walkie back in my pocket.

“I’m leaving,” I tell her.

“You’re not leaving,” she says.

“I need to get back to Stacy,” I say.

“But we haven’t even played yet,” she says.

“I thought we just did,” I say.

She wiggles her nose at me. “We just had dinner. I said I wanted to play after dinner.”

“Dinner took too long,” I tell her. “I need to go now.”

“But mom said you could play with me forever if I want,” she says.

“Maybe another time,” I say.

I turn and walk away from her.

“NO!” she shrieks at me.

I keep moving.

Once I get down to the black metal houses, I look back. She’s following me, angry-faced, fists-clenched. What a freak. I’m definitely not coming back into this world by myself again.

“Zephrans! Zephrans! Zephrans!” she cries out behind me.

I turn around. She’s facing the woods, looking at the skeletons that we passed earlier. They are coming out of the forest toward her. She turns and looks at me, burning red eyes at me. The skeletons come up behind her and stop moving. They seem to be at her command.

“Bring him back,” she says.

Then the skeletons charge.

I run.

I could shoot the five skeletons chasing me, but it’s easier to just run away. Flying down the hill as fast as I can, I hear clacking noises coming from the buildings I pass. Skeletons are coming out of the forest behind the houses. Up ahead, dozens of skeletal figures stagger down the road toward me. I didn’t notice it before, but the skeletons also look computer-generated. Like they just came out of an episode of
Hercules: The Legendary Journeys
starring Kevin Sorbo.

They surround me in the road. I take the safety off my pistol and charge into them, firing point blank at their skulls when they get too close. Bones explode into baking soda as I dart through.

More of them come out of the woods, dozens of them, from all directions. They close in on me. I run out of ammunition and take the hunting knife from my ankle. I stab at one of the skeletons and the knife gets stuck inside of its nose hole.

As I’m trying to pull it out, skeletons grab my arms, wrap around my back, seize my legs. The knife falls out of my hand and I’m picked up off the ground. Clacking noises all around me as they raise me over their heads.

Their rubbery bones cut off the circulation in my elbows as they bring me back to Fig.

“Take him to the mine,” she says. “Nobody will hear him there.”

She leads the skeletal crew into the forest, carrying me for what seems like a mile. I struggle to free myself, but there’s too many of them. I’m taken down into a field of orange flowers, stripped naked. Then they throw me down a mine shaft.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I’m not too hurt when I fall. The ground is blubbery and I bounce off like a trampoline. I’m about thirty feet down. There’s no way to get back up. It’s more like a well than a mineshaft.

Fig looks down at me from the circle of sky.

“You’re not going anywhere,” she says, her voice more scratchy than squeaky now.

“I need to go home,” I tell her. “I don’t belong here.”

“You have to play with me forever,” she says.

“I need to get back to Stacy,” I tell her.

“She’ll forget about you,” she says. “Like she forgot about me.”

“But I love her!”

She stares down at me for awhile. Then she leaves.

I wait for hours. She doesn’t come back. I’m trapped. Just standing here, under the light from above.

There’s not a night time or day time in this world. It’s always in-between. Like dawn or dusk, without a sun in the sky.

I sit down. The ground is wet and fleshy. I rub my hand on it. It is warm.

It’s Stacy’s flesh. I must be at the bottom of their world, where the earth meets her body. What the hell am I going to do? What if I never get out of here? What if I never see Stacy again?

I lie on my belly and embrace the fleshy ground, to get closer to my love. My cheeks become wet with tears, or maybe it’s just sweat rising out of the skin below me. I drift into sleep, absorbing the sound of Stacy’s heartbeat vibrating through my entire body.

Time passes. It seems like weeks.

My skin is changing. It’s becoming rubbery. The redness of my fingertips has spread down to my wrists. My chest and feet are also red. Slimy balls are growing out of the sides of my head. I’m becoming like Fig.

I haven’t eaten anything since my last energy bar but I haven’t been hungry or thirsty at all. I should have died of thirst by now. I believe my new skin is absorbing nutrients from the atmosphere. Stacy’s body must feed this world in the way it would feed a baby in its womb. People don’t need to eat or drink here.

I’ve taken to talking to the ground as if it is Stacy. I tell her how happy I am to still be with her, even though we can’t see each other. I’m sure she feels the same way, comforting her lonely nights by knowing that I am still inside her, thinking about her.

After my voice starts to get scratchy, I just speak to her in my head.

I awake to a cracking sound coming from the back of my head. Then a tearing sound down my spine as if my flesh is being unzipped from my neck to my pelvis. I’m unable to move as my body opens up. My bones and muscles separate. A skeleton crawls out of me.

I leap away, kicking at the creature scurrying across the sweaty ground. My body is lighter. I feel my back. The wound is already healing. But my insides . . . hollow. My bones have become animated and detached themselves from my body.

The skeleton squats down in front of me, examining my face, touching its own face with bloody fingers. It looks as confused as I am, wondering what it is doing outside of me. It doesn’t have a brain or any vital organs. I’m not sure how it’s able to function or think. I’m not sure how I’m able to function or move without any bones . . .

But I am able to move. My body feels almost weightless. My fingers curl around my wrist like rubber snakes. My head is softer without a skull, but it still feels as if something is in there guarding my brain. A thin layer of cartilage maybe. It feels firm but flexible, like a dolphin’s back.

The skeleton claws at my wormy toes like a kitten.

“No,” I tell the skeleton.

It clacks its teeth at me.

“Bad skeleton,” I say.

The skeleton wags its pelvic bone like a tail.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN