The Town

1

It was cold and breezy on his walk home from school, the sky overcast, the sun low in the west. Multicolored leaves skittered along the sidewalk, snapping and crackling beneath his tennis shoes. There was the smell of burning wood on the wind. Fireplaces, Adam assumed. A warm, comforting smell that reminded him of movies that took place in big colonial mansions in New England.

He would not have expected the desert to have seasons—Southern California didn’t—but both Scott and Dan had told him that it got pretty darn cold here during the fall and winter, and he could tell that they were right.

He walked down the canyon road, past the high school, intending to cut through the football field and hit his street without having to go through the downtown area. He reached the school and was halfway across the field when he stopped, shifting his books from his right hand to his left. Ahead of him, he could see a group of slutty-looking girls, lighting cigarettes as they walked slowly around the left side of the gym, and he hesitated for a moment. Were these girls part of the pack he and Scott had met up with that night?

He thought of the way the boys who’d chased them had promised to hunt them down and beat the hell out of them.

“I’ll get you, you little shit!”

He still worried about that sometimes. Scott was right, there was no way those assholes could identify them—and as the weeks passed, it became less and less likely that they would—but, still, the possibility existed, and it never hurt to be too careful.

He squinted. The girls were too far away to see clearly, but they could easily be the same ones the two of them had run into that night.

And they were taking exactly the same route he had planned.

He didn’t want to meet up with them, but it was getting late, and rather than backtrack and have to go two streets out of his way in order to get home, he changed his course and made his way toward the right side of the gym rather than the left. There was another exit from the campus by the office, and while it would take him a block out of his way, it was a short block and he thought it safer.

He reached the gym and walked along the right side of the windowless building toward the center of campus. The school grounds were quiet, empty save for himself and the girls, and he could hear the diffused, muted sounds of their voices bouncing off the walls of the other classrooms. He came to the end of the building and started across the open blacktop toward the office. The acoustics changed here, and now he could clearly hear several female voices behind him.

And one of them sounded very familiar.

He stopped, looked back, but the girls were not in front of the gym. They were either still on the other side or had walked out to the street, and he hesitated only a moment before hurrying back and making his way past the closed double doors and along the gym face. The voices were muffled again, but he knew what he’d heard, and he reached the far end and carefully peeked around the corner to make sure.

It was Sasha.

He ducked back behind the wall. She and the other girls were standing next to the school fence, looking out at the street, smoking.

He moved as close as he could to the edge of the building without being seen and stood there, listening.

“Have you ever—you know—done it?” one girl was asking.

Sasha laughed, and though he recognized the sound of his sister’s voice, the cadence of the laugh seemed odd, unfamiliar. “Of course.”

His heart was pounding. He was doing something wrong, eavesdropping on a private conversation like this, and though she was doing something even more wrong, he felt guilty. And frightened. It was his sister standing around that corner, but he was just as afraid—no, more afraid—of being caught by the girls now than he had been before. He didn’t know what Sasha would do if she caught him, but he didn’t want to find out.

“I like ’em long,” Sasha said.

The other girls giggled.

Adam’s heart was pounding. He could not believe this was his sister. If their parents ever found out…

He thought of that time at the restaurant, his birthday, when he’d seen her panties, and as sick as he knew it was, he was suddenly hard. He moved his books down, pressed them against his growing erection.

The light was fading, the afternoon disappearing. He should have been home by now, but he and Scott had stayed late in the library in order to finish a report that was due and they’d forgotten the time.

He wondered what lie Sasha was going to give for her lateness, what she would tell their parents she’d been doing.

“I always make ’em lick me first,” one of the other girls said, between puffs on her cigarette. “Otherwise, I might not get to come at all.” She laughed huskily. “And after they sniff me and taste me down there, they’re usually hard enough that I don’t have to suck them.”

“I like to suck them,” Sasha announced.

“Do you let them come in your mouth?”

“Every time.”

There were squeals and laughter.

Adam was suddenly nervous. He’d heard too much, and he was filled with the absurd certainty that he would be caught, that the girls would decide to walk around the corner to where he was hiding and find him. It made no sense, but it was a feeling that was impossible to shake, and, moving in the shadows, he retreated back along the front of the gym until he reached the far side. Looking over his shoulder to make sure that neither Sasha nor one of her friends was following, he sped across the open center of the campus and past the office, emerging onto the street.

He ran two blocks out of his way just to make sure he wouldn’t be seen.

He thought about Sasha all the way home.

So she’d had sex. She was doing it. He imagined her naked, with her legs spread wide and her most private area open to the world, and he wondered if she was hairy down there.

He desperately wanted to share this with someone, wanted at least to be able to tell Scott what had happened, what he’d heard. And he would have, had it involved anyone other than Sasha. But he could not present his sister like that to other people. He did not know if it was because he wanted to protect her or because he considered anything that involved a member of his family a reflection on himself, but he did not want Scott to discover that Sasha was… the way she was.

Back in California, it would have been hard to imagine Sasha even talking about sex, let alone doing it. She’d been a bitch sometimes, yeah, but she’d also been kind of a goody-goody, and the type of girls she was hanging out with now were the type she and her friends had made fun of then.

But something had happened to her since they’d moved to McGuane. She was even bitchier—if that was possible—but there’d also been a deeper, more fundamental change. A change in the things she liked, the way she acted, the people she hung around with—her entire outlook on life. It was as if she was purposely trying to be exactly the kind of person their parents did not want her to be, as if all of her upbringing had suddenly been tossed out the window.

He was ashamed to say that he liked the new Sasha better.

Adam thought of that quick glimpse up her skirt.

I like ’em long.

He kept his books pressed hard in front of him as he walked.

He got home well before his sister did and explained to his mom why he was late. He’d been expecting a big lecture—she usually freaked out about stuff like this—but apparently she’d lost track of time, too, and she hadn’t really noticed he was not on time until he told her. He took advantage of this rare occurrence, apologized and said it wouldn’t happen again, and quickly ran upstairs.

Sasha’s door was closed, as usual, but he decided to take a chance and tried the knob. Locked. It was what he’d expected, but he was disappointed nonetheless, and he was turning back toward his own bedroom when he saw, on the hall floor next to the hamper that stood beside the bathroom door, what looked like a pair of panties.

Red panties.

Sasha’s panties.

He hurried over and, sure enough, his sister’s underwear had spilled out from the overflowing hamper and was lying wadded up next to the plastic container on the uncarpeted hardwood floor.

He didn’t even think about it but looked quickly around, bent over, scooped the panties up and retreated into his bedroom.

2

The tyranny of a small town.

If he had been a writer, he could have used it as the title of a book. As it was, it would go the way of most ideas and observations, becoming nothing, not even a memory, forgotten after a few moments of consideration.

But it was a valid concept, Gregory thought as he watched a trio of almost identically clad men emerge from the cab of a pickup. All of the men were wearing Wrangler jeans, with a telltale white circle on the right rear pocket, indicating where they kept their cans of chewing tobacco. All had on western shirts. Cowboys. They even walked with a similar swagger, and he watched as they entered the bar, laughing together at some private joke.

He remembered, all during his childhood, wanting to be like everyone else, feeling the pressure to fit in, wishing his parents talked with a Texas twang rather than a Russian accent. There had been a lot of Molokans in town then, and almost as many Mormons, but while there had not been a lot of overt prejudice, he had still felt the desire to blend in, to not be different, to assimilate into Arizona culture.

And things seemed to have gotten worse since then.

He supposed it was because McGuane was becoming more homogeneous, the diversity of its past fading into history as younger Molokans moved away in search of better jobs and better lives. The residents here now seemed somehow less tolerant, even though examples of overt bigotry were much rarer than before.

But conformity was all-important. Yesterday, he’d seen a young woman picking out baby clothes at the store. She’d intended to buy a red jumpsuit with the flags of different nations printed on both the front and the back, but when two of her acquaintances had stopped by and ridiculed her choice, she had instantly put the jumpsuit away and picked one that they liked.

And it was not only such superficial aspects of life as fashion. The tendency toward conformity ran far deeper than that. For example, the bumper stickers that were so ubiquitous in California, trumpeting a driver’s support for a political candidate or cause, were nowhere to be found on McGuane vehicles because no one wanted to call attention to the fact that they might hold views and opinions different from those of their neighbors.

Was that going to happen to his kids? Had he uprooted them for nothing, merely exchanging the pressures of being hip and trendy for the pressures of conforming to the dictates of small-minded small-town rednecks?

The thought depressed him.

He sighed, staring at the door of the bar where the cowboys had walked in. He wondered what was wrong with him. He’d felt out of sorts lately, vaguely dissatisfied, though there was nothing he could put his finger on.

He’d spent the better part of the afternoon wandering around, doing nothing. He could have gone home and asked Julia to come with him, but he wanted to be alone, and he passed from shop to shop, stopping in at the mining museum, walking over to the chamber of commerce, peering down at the pit, sitting for a spell on a bench in the park. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but whatever it was, he didn’t find it.

He walked back up the street to the café. Or the coffeehouse, as it had been unofficially rechristened. The sign outside, the menus inside, and all of the ads still read “Mocha Joe’s Café,” but their new patrons had attempted to bestow big-city sophistication upon themselves, and nearly all of them now referred to the place as “the coffeehouse.”

Wynona, the teenager working behind the counter, nodded at him as he walked in. “Hey, Gregory.”

“Hey,” he said.

It must be later than he thought. Wynona didn’t get off school until three, didn’t start her shift until three-thirty. He looked up at the clock above the counter.

Four-ten.

He’d been out wandering, wasting the day, since just after noon.

But was he really “wasting” his day? Would anything else he might have done been any more worthwhile?

No.

He looked toward the small stage, saw Tad Pearson, a local would-be folksinger, pulling the cover off one of the microphones and starting to set up for tonight’s performance.

Was he glad they’d moved? Was he happy here? Gregory was not sure. He was glad he’d quit his old job, and he certainly had plenty of things to keep him busy, plenty with which to occupy his time, but if he were to be totally honest with himself, the life of unending joy that he’d always thought would be his if he ever came into a large amount of money had not really materialized.

The shine on his Bill Graham Jr. dream had also faded. He had indeed contacted some nationally known touring acts, but McGuane was so far away from any major center of population, that unless Mocha Joe’s was willing to fork over big bucks, it would be too cost-prohibitive for any of the acts to play here.

So he was stuck with local bands and local musicians, and since he’d seen just about all of them now, even a few from as far away as Wilcox and Safford, he thought he could safely say that he wasn’t going to be discovering the next Beatles or even the next Hootie and the Blow-fish. There was still his plan to feature poetry, to try and find some legitimate cowboy poets to read their work, but even his hopes for success there had been considerably muted.

Odd emerged from Paul’s office, carrying a section of sawed-off board and a toolbox so heavy it weighted him to the right. Odd always cheered him up, and he smiled as the old man twisted his body and walked sideways, grunting his complaints, in order to make it past the counter.

“You could’ve just taken it out the back,” Gregory said. “It’d be a lot easier.”

Odd looked up at him. “I’ve had about enough suggestions for one day. My truck’s out front, and that’s where I’m going.”

Gregory met Wynona’s eyes, and she shrugged, moving to the opposite end of the counter.

Gregory laughed. “You’re a bitter old buzzard, aren’t you?”

The old man sighed, put down his toolbox. He put the wood on top of it and wiped the sweat from his face with both hands. “I suppose I am,” he admitted. “But you try working in that unair-conditioned little office for three hours and see if it don’t make you crabby as hell.”

“Where’s Paul?”

“Took off early today. Said he had some personal business to take care of. I think he’s coming back tonight, though. Why?”

“Nothing. I was just wondering.” He walked over, picked up the wood from the top of the toolbox. “What kind of ‘personal business’?”

Odd shrugged. “Not my place to wonder.”

Gregory nodded, and the two of them walked through the café and outside to Odd’s dented old pickup.

“You hangin’ around for the show?” Odd asked.

Gregory shook his head. “I just thought I’d stop by for a second, see what’s happening before heading home.”

The old man looked back toward the open door of the cafe then leaned in closer. “Between you and me, I don’t think that Pearson boy’s got much of a future in show biz.”

“I’d have to go along with you there.”

“What do people like him do it for? Get up there and humiliate themselves like that? You know his buddies at the title company are bound to be talking.”

“Some people just feel the need to express themselves, I guess.”

“Well, I express myself in the shower. And it’s not gonna go any further’n that.”

Gregory laughed.

Odd walked around to the driver’s side of the pickup. “I guess I’m off,” he said.

“I’m heading home, too. Want to give me a lift?”

“Sure. Hop in.”

“Just a sec.” Gregory hurried back into the café, told Wynona he was going home and told her to ask Paul to call him if he came in.

The teenager nodded. “Will do.”

He went back outside, got in the truck, and had barely closed the door before Odd was speeding up the road.

“You’re supposed to take me home,” Gregory pointed out.

The old man grinned. “I know a shortcut.”

Sure enough, it was a shortcut, and not nearly as hair-raising a route as Gregory had feared. Odd drove down the drive, swung the pickup around, and left him off right in front of his door.

“You want to come in?” Gregory asked.

Odd shook his head. “Lurlene’ll have supper made already. She gets pretty riled if I’m even half a second late. I’ll take a rain check on that.”

“Why don’t you two both come by sometime?”

Odd nodded. “I’d like that. You never did have no housewarming party or nothing. We could get a few people together, see if we can’t get ’em to bring gifts.” He paused. “Only, I doubt they’d be too expensive. You’re the lottery winner after all.”

“Maybe I’ll buy the gifts. Bribe people to come.”

Odd grinned. “There you go. You can count me and Lurlene in.”

Gregory slammed the cab door. “Later.”

He could not tell if Odd bade him any form of good-bye; the pickup took off so fast that he instinctively jumped back so his feet wouldn’t get run over by the right rear tire. He saw a hand poke out of the driver’s window and wave, a silhouette in the dust.

In the kitchen, Julia and his mother were talking about planting flowers. In Russian. They’d all been speaking a lot more Russian since they’d arrived here, and he was not really sure why. Regression on his part, he assumed. A combination of living with his mother again and being back in the town where he’d grown up. But he wasn’t sure about Julia. Was she doing it for his mother’s sake, merely to be polite, or was she trying to keep in practice in order to… what? Maintain her heritage? It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense, and he decided to let it slide and not worry about it.

He gave Julia a quick, perfunctory kiss, got a glass of water, and, ascertaining that the conversation was not yet over and that neither of them wanted him involved in it, retreated into the living room.

He sat down, turned on the television and flipped through channels until he found a tabloid news show. Setting the remote down on the coffee table, he kicked off his shoes and settled in on the couch to watch. The features were ostensibly human interest stories and were delivered in upbeat cheerleader tones by the pert female anchor, but they all involved murder, betrayal, and the worst sorts of human activity. A man tracked his ex-wife across country to a small town, where he attempted to run her down with a car: she leaped out of the way to safety while he crashed into a tree and was killed. A woman went from being a high-priced lawyer to being a high-priced call girl and was killed by a john on the same day she had written to her mother that she was quitting the prostitution business. A ten-year-old girl who had her arms chopped off by the father who’d molested her since she was three had learned to paint pictures with her feet.

Halfway through the show, his mother came into the living room, sat down in her recliner and watched the rest of the program with him. In the kitchen, he heard the rattle of pots and pans as Julia started dinner.

The tabloid show ended, and a promo for the upcoming news came on: a Phoenix youngster was missing and police had found a body buried in the desert that might be his.

Gregory turned toward his mother, speaking in Russian. “Makes you wonder sometimes about the goodness of man, doesn’t it?”

“People,” she reminded him, “are a combination of the dust of the earth and the breath of God. God created man from the dust, but He breathed life into him. That’s why people may be base and animalistic in many ways, but they still desire and keep reaching for the spiritual and godly.” She smiled at him. “I liked the girl painting with her toes.”

Gregory smiled back. Sometimes his mother surprised him.

He underestimated her, he thought. Her ideas were nowhere near as simple, knee-jerk, and one-dimensional as he sometimes believed them to be, and he should know by now that despite the strict doctrine and rigid culture, most Molokans were at heart good, decent, moral people. They were also intelligent spiritually minded individuals who gave a hell of a lot more thought to metaphysical and philosophical matters than he ever did. Despite his college education.

He might not believe the same things as the churchgoers, but it was wrong of him to dismiss their beliefs as somehow intellectually inferior to his own.

His mother looked around the room, as if to make sure Julia and the kids were not nearby, then got out of her chair and came over to the couch, sitting next to him. “I’ve been having dreams,” she said.

Gregory said nothing. He knew where this was leading. Throughout his childhood, his mother had foisted her supposedly prophetic dreams upon them, always insisting on the inevitability of their outcomes. She wasn’t revered like Vera Afonin, but her dreams were still accorded respect in the church, and that had given her far too much confidence at home. His father, he knew, had invented scenarios similar to her dreams in order to get her off his back, and Gregory had long since learned to do the same. There was no statute of limitation on prophecy—it was what kept fortune-tellers and psychics in business—and he knew that if his mother predicted some sort of disaster for him, she would be on pins and needles until something bad actually occurred. It could be a year later and completely dissimilar to the event in her dream, but if something happened to him, she would claim credit for it. She could dream about him cracking his head open, and if he injured his toe playing football six months later, she would pull an I-told-you-so and rest secure in the knowledge that she had successfully predicted it.

This time, she told of dreaming about the Molokan cemetery and seeing him crawling up the ridge from the mine below, dreaming about him being trapped in the banya and unable to escape, dreaming about him being attacked by the shadow of a dwarf.

It was slightly unnerving, the sheer number of nightmares she’d had recently that involved him, but he still didn’t put any stock in their veracity, and he tried to think of some way to put her mind at ease.

“I don’t think any of those things are going to happen,” he said in Russian.

“No,” she admitted. “But they mean that something bad will happen to you. I worry.”

He looked into her eyes. She’d grown so old, he thought. She had not regained her former sprightliness after the minister’s death, and she looked weak to him, frail. He found himself wondering how much time she had left.

He tried to push the thought out of his mind.

She met his gaze. “Just be careful,” she told him.

He smiled, patted her hand. “Don’t worry, Mother. I will.”

3

Saturday morning, they let Gregory’s mother take care of the kids and met Paul and Deanna at the Country Kitchen for breakfast. They could have gone to the café, but both Gregory and Paul said they’d been spending far too much time in that place and were getting sick of it, so they took a break and went out for a real meal instead of Mocha Joe’s bagels and coffee.

Paul and Deanna were already at the restaurant, and they waved the two of them over as soon as she and Gregory stepped through the door. The Country Kitchen smelled richly of bacon and sausage and buttermilk waffles, and to Julia there seemed something good and wholesome about that. Eateries in California were so trendy and health-conscious these days that far too many of them had the bland scent of a refrigerator filled with fresh fruit. It was heartening somehow to smell these old-fashioned breakfasts, and in a weird way she suddenly understood why Gregory had wanted to move back here.

They greeted their friends, sat down, ordered.

Gregory and Deanna were still a little wary of each other, both of them acting more polite than either of them did normally, and Julia had to smile at that. All these years later, those teenage dynamics were still in place, and the patterns of behavior that had been laid down in childhood had not changed one whit.

Julia wondered if she would act the same way if she encountered some old acquaintance from her high school days. She had not attended her ten-year reunion, but her twentieth was coming up and she was halfway considering going to it. There weren’t a whole lot of people she was interested in seeing, but there were a few, and she figured she was successful enough and had kept herself up well enough that she could lord it over a few former rivals.

But would she still feel intimidated by the girls who had intimidated her back then? Would she still feel close to the girls who had been close to her?

She looked at Gregory and Deanna and wondered.

After breakfast the four of them walked off their calories. They paired off oddly—she and Paul were in the front, Gregory and Deanna behind them. Paul seemed to know quite a lot about the town’s history and heritage, as well as its architecture, and he pointed out the boardinghouse that had once been a house of prostitution and the bookstore and thrift shop that shared what had been a Masonic temple. He knew who used to live where, and he told stories of land grabs and claim jumpers, cuckolds and adulterers as they walked up and down the winding, narrow streets.

Julia was curious about the Molokans, wanted to hear about them from an outsider’s perspective, but Paul and Deanna both said that since they’d grown up with a lot of Molokans around, they hadn’t paid much attention. Molokans had been an accepted part of everyday life. There’d been problems in the past, though, Paul admitted. Like the Mormons before them, Molokans had been relegated to a certain section of town at the outset, and he led them through the narrow drive lined with abandoned shacks that had once been Russiantown, recounting stories of several anti-Molokan attacks and beatings.

“Do you remember this?” Julia asked Gregory.

He shook his head. “Before my time.”

Back in the Country Kitchen parking lot twenty minutes later, Gregory stopped in front of their van, taking out his keys.

“It’s been fun,” he said. “Thanks for the invite.”

Paul grinned, nodded toward Julia. “You got yourself a good one, bud.”

Gregory looked over at Deanna, then offered a half-hearted grin of his own. “I guess you did too.”

“Tough admission,” Deanna teased.

“Yeah,” he said. “It is.”

Julia hit him.

They all laughed.

4

He didn’t tell anyone about it at first. It was embarrassing, for one thing. And it was weird, for another.

His belly button was growing.

If he’d been married, he could’ve talked about it with his wife. If he’d been a kid, he could’ve talked about it with his mom. But he was a grown single man, living alone, and this wasn’t really something that he could bring up with his buddies down at the bar.

Chilton Bodean turned off the shower and rubbed his washcloth gingerly over the not-so-small nub protruding from the bulging mound that was his belly. He’d always had an “outie,” but in the past week it had seemed to become more prominent. At first he’d thought it was just his imagination, but overnight he’d had to throw that theory out the window.

It was now more than an inch long.

He got out of the shower, used a towel to rub the steam off the mirror, and looked at his body in the glass. The pinkish belly button was now hanging down, like a small second penis, and the thought occurred to him that maybe his umbilical cord was growing back.

That was what it looked like, and the thought scared him. Years ago, he’d taken a wart off his knee with Compound W, and the medicine had indeed worked, but years later the wart had returned in exactly the same spot.

Was something like that happening here?

The mirror was fogging up again, and once more he wiped it with the towel. He knew he didn’t eat right, drank too much, didn’t exercise, didn’t take care of himself, and he’d been worried for several years that he might get cancer or have a heart attack or something. Not worried enough to do anything about it, but worried enough that the thought concerned him. Skin cancer was the most likely, he figured, and for quite a while now, he’d kept a close watch on any moles or pimples or changes in skin tone on his body.

Which was how he’d noticed his belly button.

Which was why he’d thought at first that he might be overreacting.

He touched the protruding piece of flesh, squeezed it between two fingers. He felt nothing. He squeezed harder. No pain. No sensation at all.

He could go to the doctor—he should go to the doctor—but he was afraid of finding out that it was something serious. Or, as he really feared, something unknown. He had never heard of anything like this happening before, and it was possible that it was the first time it had occurred, that it had never happened to anyone else. Ever.

He might be the very first victim.

He combed his hair, shaved, brushed his teeth, and got dressed.

He went to work, tried not to think about it.

He kept hoping it would go away, but as the days passed, the umbilical cord grew. From one inch… to two… to three. He knew that it was an umbilical cord, and that was what frightened him. It was regenerating itself, but he was no longer inside his mama’s body and there was nothing for it to connect to. It hung down at first, but then it started to curve to one side, following the contours of his stomach. Would it just keep growing forever, trying to find his mama? He prayed that it wouldn’t.

The thought occurred to him that he could cut it off. After all, his first umbilical cord had been cut off after he was born and there hadn’t been any side effects. What if he just got himself some shears and lopped that sucker off?

But the truth was, he was afraid to do that. There was still no feeling in it, but it was a part of him nonetheless, and whacking it off would be like chopping off a finger.

It grew.

Six inches.

Seven.

And then it moved.

This was not just a shift in direction of growth, like before, an unobservable change that occurred over a long period of time or during his sleep. He felt it wiggle, and he practically screamed when it happened. Would have screamed had he not been in church at the time. He glanced quickly to his left and right, making sure that no one had seen any movement or noticed his reaction, and was gratified to see that everyone’s gaze was focused on the preacher up front.

The umbilical cord was cold, he noticed now, though that was not something that had registered before. It felt like a worm or a snake, and it slithered beneath his white church shirt, the slimy tip of it pressing against his right nipple.

He was filled not only with horrified disgust but with a sudden sensation of panic. What could he do? It felt as though it was growing even now, beneath his shirt, and he half expected it to pop out from the top of his shirt, whipping out from underneath his collar like some overlong pecker.

The cord moved to his left nipple, started down the side of his stomach.

He’d had enough, he couldn’t take it anymore. He stood quickly and excused himself as he passed in front of Jed and Travis and Maybelle, trying not to step on their feet as he made his way out of the pew and into the center aisle. He didn’t know if they could see the outline of the umbilical cord beneath his shirt, and at this point he didn’t really care. It might even be a relief to have his secret discovered. But despite the overwhelming feelings of fear and panic within him, despite the sheen of sweat that draped his head and was soaking through his cotton whites, everyone apparently assumed that he’d had a sudden attack of the runs or something and let him pass without even looking at him.

He rushed out of the church, threw up in the bushes outside.

His truck was parked on the street, but he ran all the way home, the umbilical cord sliding slowly and methodically over his upper torso, exploring.

He ripped the shirt off the second he was inside his house and the door was closed safely behind him.

The umbilical cord whipped out straight, practically pulling him off balance, then, like a tape measure being called back and rewound, slipped faster than the eye could see down his pants. He felt it slide through his underwear and press against his leg before tapping his knee and coming to a stop.

Chilton fell into his recliner, crying, tears coursing down his cheeks and great hiccuping sobs of fear and frustration issuing involuntarily from his uncooperative mouth. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried—he must have been a baby then—and he didn’t want to be crying now, but he just couldn’t help himself. He didn’t know what the hell was going on, his own freakish body was attacking him, he was embarrassed and terrified and all alone, with no one to talk to. Everything was crashing down on him at once, and he knew that he was cracking under the pressure like some pathetic little pantywaist, but he just couldn’t help it.

He crossed his legs, trying to trap the umbilical cord in place, and sucked in his gut as he unbuckled his belt and then pulled it as tight as it would go, rebuckling. It was uncomfortable and chafing, but he figured it would keep the cord from moving around, and he slumped back, feeling drained. He was still crying, could not seem to stop, but he knew he had to do something about this and he tried to think of something, tried to come up with a plan. His brain seemed fuzzy, though, his thought processes muddled, and the only thing that made any sense to him was to stay here, in the recliner, and wait for it to go away. It wouldn’t go away, he knew that intellectually, but remaining here felt right, and he curled up and doubled over, and was grateful that he felt no movement in his pants.

He cried himself to sleep.

He awoke unable to breathe, his windpipe choked off by the umbilical cord that was now wrapped around his neck. The recliner was all the way back, and he was stretched out. His belt was still tight, his waist hurt from the leather digging into his skin, but the umbilical cord had escaped.

And it had grown.

He flailed around, attempting to suck in air but unable to draw breath any deeper than the back of his mouth. His whole head was hot and it felt as though the entire world was pressing in on his body. His feet kicked out at the elevated footrest, and his thrashing hands knocked over a lamp and an ashtray on the table next to him before his fingers curled around a pair of scissors.

He fumblingly tried to fit his fingers through the holes, but he couldn’t seem to work the scissors and was afraid he would drop them and his last and only chance would be gone. His vision was getting fuzzy, and he knew time was running out, so he held the scissors tightly and stabbed at his belly button, but he missed the umbilical cord and the pointed steel sank shallowly into his flesh.

His body jerked with the pain, and he screamed… only he couldn’t scream. The attempt seemed to deplete what little air remained in his lungs, and his vision darkened. He was dying, and he pulled out the scissors and stabbed at the cord wrapped around his throat and was gratified to feel movement. He still could not breathe, but the cord was sentient and it wanted to save itself, and it tried to move away from the knife without letting up on its grip.

He succeeded in stabbing the umbilical cord, but he also hit his own neck, and blood was streaming down his shoulder, down his back. He was growing weaker, his brain fogging, and he sensed that his last resort was to get at the source.

He gripped the scissors hard and plunged them into his stomach.

He’d been aiming for his belly button again, but again he’d missed, and the scissors sank blade-deep into his flesh. The pain was unbearable, unlike anything he’d ever experienced before, and he was glad to feel himself passing out from lack of oxygen so he wouldn’t have to experience the agony of the stab wound any longer.

He just hoped the umbilical cord died with him.