The Father stood by the hospital bed like a frozen Charlotte, early one humid summer morning, trying to console the pregnant Mother. “Breathe Mother, in and out, breathe, honk shoo honk shoo, breathe.”
“I am breathing, not snoring!” she snapped, “s-s-something feels wrong Father! It doesn’t feel like no baby. AHHHHH”.
“Don’t worry Mother, It will be a healthy baby boy, if he says so. If he says so, it will surely be a boy, sometimes, Mother, sometimes there’s a certainty in things of this kind – from sources of this sort you see – that’s like the certainty that streams from God himself – like the certainty I say, like it cause he’s no God you see, just a doctor, but you can be certain about some things” stammered the Father.
In the same moment a baby was born, or what was assumed to be a baby, but what came out of the mother’s legs that morning in the hospital was simply an oblong, off-white egg, about the size one would imagine an ostrich’s egg to be if anyone in the delivery room had a reference for what an ostrich egg looked like.
“It’s a dinosaur Mother!” the Father said, clapping his hands together one time, to signify that he’d figured it out, at the same time the nurses quickly took the swaddled egg out of the room to run some additional tests and avoid the embarrassment of the mother realizing she had in fact just laid an egg.
“Stop!” the Mother said between tears. The pregnancy lasted nine months, all the vitals and ultrasounds came out regular. “He’s supposed to be a baby boy!” she sobbed.
The parents were left in the delivery room alone, waiting for their egg to return. The mother sat on the bed weeping and secretly wishing the doctors would return empty handed.
The father stood off to the side and just kept repeating “I don’t care what the baby is, as long as it’s healthy,” truthfully the more it sat with him the bigger he began to feel, and the more excited he got to tell all his friends that he had a baby egg, “he’s a special gift from God!”
The nurses returned and they had the egg in a box lined with straw, like the kind you’d see with baby chicks. When they passed the egg back to his mother the woman gasped, and hung her body in shame.
Through all the tears and noise the doctors explained that they had no idea what had happened, or what to do, but they suggested they take a trip to Tractor Supply Co. on the way home and buy a couple of heat lamps. They also made the parents promise to keep them updated on any growth.
“Sure thing Doc!” the Father said, now towering over the doctor, slamming his hand into the doctor’s back and jamming a cigar into his mouth, lighting the doctor’s cigar with the already burning end of his.
“You can’t smoke in here,” said the nurse.
“Aw phewy! It ain’t hurting no baby” the Father laughed as he grabbed up all his things in one single effortless movement, in both arms, including his wife and the box with the egg, “You keep me updated if anyone comes in here giving birth to a litter of kittens” he left the room laughing and blowing smoke everywhere.
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His mother wanted to keep him a secret, but his father had other plans. Which made the mother cry, in fact she cried all the time. That’s all she could do for months, for months that eventually turned into years, and the tears eventually turned into screams. That’s how her life played out, incessant tears that eventually turned to incessant shouting which eventually morphed into a ceaseless silence that lasted the rest of her life.
The father was affected differently. He had a new sense of life injected in him like testosterone 2.0 straight into his veins. He felt large.
When they got home from the hospital they stuck the egg in a box full of clothes with a heat lamp on it and waited. Meanwhile the father built an elaborate terrarium in the garage with a large baby pool for his boy (or whatever it was) to eventually enjoy. “Why not build it, who knows we might need it” he’d say.
The box with the egg sat in the basement for approximately 60 days before hatching. The mother cried, calling him a little miracle, because when he emerged he didn’t make a mess.
He just popped right out, arms, legs, body, from all accounts a healthy baby boy with two sad green eyes and a snout of a nose.
No goo or slime, just a regular baby was all that remained in the box.
The mother never spoke of the egg incident ever again. She just continued on.
The fathers friends came to visit the new boy with gifts and food. When they got bored of the little baby they’d go out in the garage and marvel at the multistory terrarium the father built in the garage.
“Looks like you ain’t got a use for this work no more huh, daddy-o,” they’d say, making fun of him. “Cant even get into cars now, no where to put ‘em.”
The father would just shrug it off, feeling ashamed and small.
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In the subsequent months, the father began to really shrink. It was inconspicuous at first. The mother thought perhaps he was just slouching a bit more than usual, perhaps an attention seeking ploy.
She told him to stand up straight, but realized on a rainy afternoon in the fall that his balding head only reached the tip of her nose. This was not how she remembered him at all, she was sure that when they’d met he towered over her.
As the boy grew into a boy (walking, talking, eating, shitting) the father was shrinking.
He was almost the size of a number two Ticonderoga pencil before he brought the alligator home, claiming he needed to get some use out of his tank in the garage.
The alligator was the first, but as the Father’s size grew back he brought more and more reptiles into the home. Growing so large that the house could hardly contain the size of his body let alone all the aquariums and tanks needed to house the creatures.
The house smelled like shit, white dusty snake shit, like vinegar that burned the eyes. It was all right because no one came over anymore, and the family adjusted to it, except the Boy could still smell it.
Every closet and every room was lined with terrariums full of snakes and lizards, with heat lamps buzzing. The constant buzz was another thing the family learned to tune out, except the boy still heard it.
The Fathers pride and joy was in the garage in a large above ground baby pool, terrarium.
The Gator.
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It would sleep all day, only waking when the boy would come in in the mornings and evenings to throw chicken gizzards and intestines into the water. The entrails came from donations by the local grocery store or road kill picked up off the highway during family drives.
Everything went to the alligator and the Father got bigger.
Years went by like this, the Father consuming size through the mouth of the gator in the garage. If anyone would bring up anything the father would change subject to the alligator.
He’d even leave the garage door open so passersbys could see the gator and ask him questions, which only added to his growth.
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By the time the boy reached the age of twelve the house could no longer contain the body of the Father. His legs straddled the living room and kitchen, one leg going out the back door the other exiting the front. He could see people walking by through the upstairs windows.
“How’s the kid doing?” neighbors would yell up to the Father as they walked their dogs and children around.
“As healthy as ever! “ He’d chuckle and gesticulate his hands towards the open garage door, “See for yourself.” pointing to the gator.
At night the Boy would walk through the neighborhood. Getting some fresh air. It was better to walk at night. There were no dogs or parents or children around to see him. He would dream about becoming blank and disappearing.
During the day the boy would be in the garage. It was the only room left in the house not entirely full of reptiles or body. He often found himself spending whole days with the alligator, asking deep philosophical questions or just poking it in the head with the end of a wooden broom.
The Gator would hiss and he’d understand.
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It wasn’t until his 16th birthday that the boy started eating the raw chicken gizzards too.
At first they tasted gross, too chewy, but he got used to it.
Over the next few months he would often share meals with the alligator. Swapping his hamburger helper dishes and frozen lasagnes with the intestines and bits of frozen rat.
The boy had really grown to despise this creature. Who was both his only friend and the figure of all his suffering.
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By his eighteenth birthday the boy would be arrested for murder. The family did not know this was a possibility. After two years of eating rotten meat the boy’s brain succumbed to an empire of worms, whispering in his ears in the night, invading his boyish dreams with an incessant chanting of “Alligator boy, Alligator boy, Alligator boy…”
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When the Boy was seventeen he started to become blank. He was not physically blank, but mentally, forgetting where parts of his body were, having constant seizures that erased him like an etch a sketch.
The Mother and Father continued their normal activities oblivious to the disintegration of the boy’s mental state.
The Alligator understood, they saw the patterns in the boy’s behavior, they were able to diagnose the situation at hand, an obvious case of generalized anxiety disorder with a heavy pour of Cysticercosis.
They’d hiss long mesmerizing, poetic hisses, watching the boy sway, putting his body weight on his left foot, then the right foot, wondering where the boy’s mind went during those long one way conversations.
The Boy was thinking a lot of real nasty shit, real nasty things, god awful things, things about people and how they are, but if you asked the Alligator they’d swear the boy used to think about nice things. He’d dream about things like becoming an astronaut, dream about flying away from humanity and people. Finding refuge in the galactic junkyard known as the Kuiper belt, finding home with the other interstellar detritus.
But those were all distant thoughts now.
So far away now that in that moment as the boy tried to locate them he fell forward into the baby pool, and on top of the alligator who despite it’s deep empathy and relationship to the boy caved into it’s primal instinct and bit the Boy, immediately spinning like a whirling dervish, tearing off a chunk of the boys thigh muscle.
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By the summer the boy turned 18 the Father had grown so large the local news came to do reports on him, “The Ten-Story Man,” is what they called him not only because of his immense size, but because if you ever spoke to him you wouldn’t be able to get away before hearing at least ten stories.
The morning of the boy’s eighteenth birthday the Father and Mother got together and joyously packed all the boy’s things and drove him to the town over and gave him his birthday present, adulthood.
They unceremoniously left him in a parking lot of a cheap motel with a hundred dollars and the orders to never come back.
“We’re turning your room into a gila monster habitat for our new Youtube channel!” the Father laughed.
“Don’t do any drugs or drink any alcohol” the Mother screamed out the passenger side window as the car sped away.
The boy began limping away, his torn thigh muscles still never fully healed, at first it wasn’t that bad but after a few hours the pain became more and more severe until he could no longer stand up right, that’s when the boy began to crawl. Leaving the highway that he was on, he crawled under the guard rails and into the woods, the petrichor smelled sweet and gave him a sensation of nostalgia, the damp leaves and sodden forest floor felt good on his hands. So good, the boy took his shirt off, already drenched in sweat, and laid his belly in the mud. He followed a small crick in the forest the rest of the day and into the evening, until the crick merged with a large pond, surrounded by violently green hills of grass and the occasional sand pit.
The body now covered in leaves and mud squirmed its way into the pond, feeling relaxed. The Boy drifted away in the water, leaving a mutated, cut up body to float in the moonlit water. With the Boy gone the body could finally think, and all it could think about was sustenance, raw, bloody, alive if possible.
Off in the distance was a small subdivision of suburban homes with a cul-de-sac that jutted out onto the fairway, The Eyes could make out golden bursts, against the dark green backdrop of blurry trees.
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The Head fell forward against the wall to know if it was still there, and there it was stuck to the glass of a window like a neck stuck to shoulders and shoulders stuck to a body, the parts becoming evident of a whole. The Eyes gazed through the glassy lens, an extension of the mind. Perceiving the space, a dislocated limb, like another part of the body’s identity. Inside this glassy appendage:
Five people sit at a table, happy
They are all individually married
They have discourse
They believe in their work
They are figments of their own realities
They don’t know they don’t exist
They don’t believe in themselves
The Eye begins to spasm, all this seeing., all this relentless taking in. The Hand slammed into the window, the diner guests’ eyes widened in fright. The Hand, now a fist, crashed hard, successfully disconnecting the body from the glass. Blood oozed thick from the shards, unwilling to part, stuck in the knuckles. No pain.
The Body lunged forward, shards of jagged teeth lining the inner part of the mouth and throat. Its first victim, outstretched his hands, in an attempt to slow down the impact, both limbs as if gnawed away dropped to his sides, red, white and chunks of flesh. Bone dancing off the man’s nubs. The Claw, now steady.
The Body started off again, heavy and hot, with tremors and flushes of anger assailing the Throat and Stomach. If the Body could comprehend language the Body would’ve known this as nausea, but no one inhabited the Body now, and the streets were empty. The Body turned to the right and plunged into a luminous haze at the far end of a noisome alleyway between sheets of pure ice block and intermittent flashes of light.
Only reacting to life when there’s something to react to.
Knowing his eyes are open, because of the tears that pour from them unceasingly.
He knew, right then he was seated. His eyes were open, because the body (of whom knows nothing) is still breathing. Not that he’s out of breath, but that he is, as it were, too alive, living too many lives at once, as if he were breathing for too many creatures.
A muffled voice penetrated the Ears, “Get on the ground NOW! Hands behind your back”
Gunshots fired in the distance, the sound muffled by the blood clogging the Ears.
And then finally silence.
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The following morning when the Father found out what his Boy had done he was the size of a neutrino, and the Mother was silent.
And in the garage the Gator, through immaculate conception, birthed a crying, baby boy into the murky water of a baby pool in a suburban home inhabited by a will-o’-the-wisp and a ribonucleic acid.
The alligator finding themself alone left the garage and strolled through the living room with the baby boy securely in her mouth, promising to themself that they wouldn’t make the same mistakes again. Promising that he won’t be just another scared little boy in a house full of snakes.
END.