DEADLIER THAN THE MALE?

DEADLIER THAN THE MALE?

“Let us take, for example, the species, Scorpiones (scorpioun in the Greek, scorpionem (nominative scorpio) in the Latin. In many types of this species, often mistaken for insects, the female, once impregnated, will kill and eat the male. Scorpiones are closely related to spiders under the banner of Arachnida, having eight legs compared to the six legs of an insect and, indeed, many species of spiders follow this same Sexual Cannibalism of the male; the black widow being, possibly, the most infamous. However, though the female scorpiones will provide unfertilised eggs for their offspring to feed on, these are never enough and the new born will resort to eating the mother; a practise known as Matriphagy. There is nothing the mother can do except look on helplessly as she is slowly devoured over a period of up to ten days for she will have been totally paralysed by her offspring’s stinging venom, Chlorotoxin. A clear indication of Mother Nature balancing things out, I suggest, for, either way, there is no benefit to being either a female or a male of the Scorpiones species; their fate is the same”.

Excerpt from Origin of the Species by Dr. Basil Cromane, BSc. Chief Arachnologist, Sharma Biodiversity Laboratory, University of Oklahoma

“I’m afraid you could be in for a shock, ma’am...”

“You don’t think I’ve already suffered a shock?”

Doctor Janssen looked across his desk at Dot Bean who returned his stare sternly.. He was trying his best to prepare this woman for the sight of her husband who had disappeared 24 years earlier but her belligerence was not making it easy.

“Well, for one thing, he seems to have lost the power of speech...”

“Roy Bean weren’t never much of a talker”.

“He also seems to have a total memory loss. Not just unable to recall people or places but certain cognitive functions, also. For example, he is unable to tie a knot in his tie...”

“My Roy never wore a tie in his life, not even on the day we got married”.

“Or to tie his shoelaces”.

Quickly losing patience, Dot snapped.

“I need to see him. Where did they find him, anyways?”

“Well, he was found at the back of a gas station just outside Albuquerque. I should advise you that when they found him, he was naked and eating a rabbit...”

“Always was partial to a bit o’ rabbit. Preferred it to chicken, any day”.

“Raw!”

This last remark pierced through the stoic armour that Dot had wrapped around herself ever since her husband had disappeared more than two decades previously. She looked up sharply.

“Look, I want to see him. I need to know it’s really him...and I’m the only person who’ll know”.

There was no sense arguing, so the doctor led Dot to a window and drew back a curtain.

“He cannot see you but you should prepare yourself, ma’am...”

Dot Bean stared in. Despite her immense strong will, she was unable to disguise the stagger of her body as she looked in on her long lost husband.

“He’s...he’s...”

“Yes, I’ve been trying to warn you, Mrs. Bean. We can’t explain it but, to all intents and purposes, your husband, Roy Bean...well, it appears that he has not aged a day in twenty four years”.

Though the doctor had wanted to run more tests, Dot had been adamant; she was taking her Roy home. She hoped that the familiar surroundings would trigger a reaction but she was unable to elicit a single response as they drove home and, once in the house, nothing seemed to be of interest.

She helped him undress for bed and, as she sighted his naked torso, Dot could not help but become aroused at sight of her husband’s taut body, though she noticed the size of his coccyx, protruding larger than she recalled.

She led him, still naked, into the bedroom and into their double bed, the one in which she had slept alone all these years. Then she returned to the bathroom and shut the door.

Looking at herself in the mirror, she realised with regret that she had begun to let herself go; the grey streaks in her hair, the facial creases. Though her figure was still lithe, she felt that Roy would never again find her attractive. Nevertheless, feeling foolish, she removed her own clothing and tiptoed back to the bedroom. Here goes, she thought as she eased herself into the bed and started to stroke the thigh of her husband, inching closer to his groin and, finally, cupping her hand over his penis. As she felt him stir and become hard, turning to climb on top of her, she let out a cry of ecstasy; a feeling of pleasure she’d thought she would never experience again.

“Oh my God! Oh, Roy, you’re home”.

The following morning, it was as if nothing had occurred between them and Dot fixed him his favourite breakfast of grits, bacon and eggs and watched as he sniffed at the food and pushed it away but, sighting the packet of raw bacon on the counter, fell upon it ravenously.

“What the hell?”

She pulled the packet from his hands and was shocked at the look of pure fury he gave her.

“What in tarnation has happened to you? Where did you go, all these years, to pick up such disgusting habits?”

Roy stared back at her malevolently.

Feeling slightly fearful, she handed back the packet of bacon and he stuffed it into his mouth. Maybe, she reasoned, this is how he has survived, eating scraps, raw scraps. Okay, if this is what he wants, then fine. It obviously hasn’t done him any harm; let him eat uncooked meat if that’s what it takes to please him.

Their days settled into a steady routine as, Roy would accompany her in the pick up around the ranch, doing nothing, content to sit in the sun and watch, his face becoming tanned again, as she did all the work the same as she had for all the years he’d been away.

At night, she would feed Roy his uncooked meat, apart from sex, the only time that he came alive. One evening, she sampled a bit herself but spat it out, disgusted. In bed, their lovemaking was brief and carnal but oh so satisfying.

Six weeks or so had passed when she suddenly felt a strange compulsion to join her husband in the eating of raw flesh; this time, finding it satisfyingly good.

When the early morning vomiting started, she knew, she could be pregnant and ordered a pregnancy test to be delivered with her next grocery delivery. The test confirmed her fears. She was almost 50 years old and it didn’t seem right somehow. Her life, the solitary life she had known for all these years was, suddenly, taking a strange and alien turn.

The hospital had called several times, wanting Roy to come in for more tests but Dot had said that he was still adjusting. Roy’s only living relative, his older brother, Max, had also been phoning and requesting time with his brother but he, too, received the same answer.

One afternoon, as Dot was disposing of garbage in the burn barrel she kept back of the barn, having left Roy sitting vacantly inside, she thought she heard a truck pull up outside. Walking around, she saw that it was Max’s pick up. Damn, she thought, as she ran to her own truck to fetch a rifle. Inside the barn she found Max on top of Roy on the ground.

“Tell me or I swear to God, I am gonna beat the living daylights out o’you. Where have you been all this time? How come you ain’t changed none? You had surgery or what?”

“Let him up, Max. I told you he needed time. You have no right to be here”.

“No right? He’s my goddamn brother. I have every right. What in hell is going on here, anyway?”

“Let him up, I tell you. I won’t ask again”.

Max turned towards his sister in law and spat. Dot fired, hitting him in the shoulder and Max reeled back in shock, blood splattering onto Roy’s face. Dot watched, horrified, as Roy licked his lips, looked at the wound in Max’s shoulder and, with a burst of supernatural strength, sank his teeth into the area where the blood was spurting from. Max let out a blood curdling scream and tried to fend his brother off with his one good arm but Roy’s blood lust was up and he was tearing chunks out of Max’s torso. As Dot looked on, she could feel her own primal urges taking over her body and she drew closer and closer before, dropping her rifle, she joined the feast, fighting her husband for the juiciest morsels.

Afterwards, Roy crawled away into a corner, sated and exhausted. Dot, slowly recovering her senses, realised the enormity of what had just happened but she felt no disgust for she had actually enjoyed the depravity of her actions. It had felt normal.

Now though, her cannibalistic urge satisfied, her brain working overtime, she realised that they had crossed a line and tracks had to be covered.

She cleaned up the mess that had been made, burnt her and Roy’s bloodstained clothing along with the remnants of Max’s. Then, tethering two horses to the rear of Max’s chevy, she drove with Roy far out onto the part of the ranch where Roy’s own abandoned truck had been found, years before.

As they prepared to ride the horses back, she stared in astonishment as Roy, reacting strangely to being back in this place, began to “talk” but in a guttural language that made no sense. As he did so, he stared up into the sky and circled on all fours, round and round, his butt high in the air. She tried desperately to coax him onto a horse to no avail so, ever resourceful, she picked up a large rock and hit him over the head, then, she used all of her remaining strength to hoist his unconscious body across the saddle of his horse. She cursed him for causing her this trouble and, in that moment, she realised that she actually hated this version of Roy, hated what she had become.

That night, as he slept beside her, obliviously, she thought things through carefully. To her mind, something strange had obviously happened to her husband all those years before. It sounded so fantastical to her but she now believed that her husband had been abducted by aliens. There had been hundreds of sightings of spacecraft out in the desert over the years and this ranch was only a 3 hour drive from Roswell, after all. Somehow, incredibly, he had retained his youthful looks. That desire for bloody meat had crossed a sacrosanct boundary, today and, now, she knew, only human flesh would suffice; for him, for her, for the baby. Her being impregnated was how this forbidden urge had been transferred to her. She wasn’t eating to satisfy her own needs; she was being compelled by the baby that was growing within her. Her former husband was no more. Instead, this thing that lay beside her now was some sort of extra-terrestrial inhabiting her husband’s body. The way he had reacted today, the strange speech, his crawling on all fours; Dot felt real fear.

Just then, she felt him stir beside her and raise himself up, preparing to mount her but she pushed him away.

“No more, you hear?”.

The thought of coupling with this thing now repulsed her. She leapt from the bed and, looking back at him, saw the rage in his eyes. She felt maternal fear for her baby and ran from the house, grabbing her rifle as she did so. If anything happened to her, the baby would perish. He had been returned for one reason only: to propagate and only she knew that he had been successful.

Her gun propped on a bale of hay, she watched, knowing that, sooner or later, he would come. His lust for sex or human flesh-or both -would bring him her way.

She heard the shuffling of his footsteps as the barn door creaked open, the brightness of the moonlight illuminating him perfectly as she fired; once, then twice to be certain. As he lay in the doorway, she approached. He was still naked and she felt her mouth watering, her unnatural lusts rising to the fore as she lunged at the dead body and began to feast.

As she lay back, sated, her human consciousness returning, she realised with a start, that, if he wasn’t human, then that meant that this organism that gestated inside her was, also, non-human. It wasn’t a baby, it was another thing, and she had no idea what the gestation period would be. She could be due to give birth at any time. Her human clarity urged her to do something to prevent this creature from being born. She staggered back to the house in search of her carving knife; she had to kill herself. As if the multicellular organism inside her knew her thoughts, it began to stir and she was seized with terrible cramps, her brain becoming flooded with maternal contradictory instructions; it was her duty to protect this creature; she was a mother not a murderer. Dot collapsed on the kitchen floor in dreadful agony, tortured by indecision.

As she opened her eyes, the rest of her body immobilised, she felt, rather than saw, the creature that she had given birth to feasting on the blood, mucus and uterine tissue from her vaginal discharge. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she stared aghast at the black shiny head of the monstrous being that was her offspring. Sensing her recovery, its head bobbed up and the eyes opened; two black orbs set against the white sclera. Its mouth dripping, it opened its fangs in a grimace before slithering across the kitchen floor on its eight legs, glistening in the moonlight, the sharpened point, with which it had paralysed her, overarching and menacing, taking one last look back at its mother before crawling out of the door. Dot, paralysed and unable to move, thought back on her husband’s coccyx; not a tail but a sting. Resigned to her fate, she thought:

“You’ll be back. I know you’ll be back for more. And Momma’s gonna be right here waiting”.