Jeff Gelb - Seeds of Fear

The old man held open the side door and walked with me as I carried the box out to the car and placed it in the backseat.

"Remember," he said. "I can get rid of it for you."

I shook my head. "No, thanks."

He held out his hand. "That'll be five dollars."

I blinked. "What?"

"Five dollars."

"For what?"

"That's half Marilyn's," he said.

I didn't want to argue, so I took out my wallet and gave him a five.

I got into the car, backed up and pulled onto the highway, heading toward Phoenix. I saw no other cars on the highway, no other lights, and I could hear the… thing on the seat behind me, making strange mewling noises, as well as sounds like crackling cellophane and breaking twigs issuing from some where within its still-growing body. The noises sent a chill through me, and I turned on the radio, cranking it up. The only station I could get out here was a gospel station, but I didn't care, and I tried to focus on the music, tried not to hear the noises on the seat behind me.

Ten minutes later, I heard it move out of the box.

I kept expecting at any minute to feel cold slimy hands touch the back of my neck, but I was afraid to look behind me, and I didn't want to pull off the side of the road because I knew I might never get back in the car, so I kept driving.

By the time we reached Phoenix, I could see the thing in the rearview mirror, sitting up on the seat. It was as tall as I was. It had Marilyn's face.

It smiled at me in the mirror, and against my will, I felt myself becoming aroused.

I pulled into the parking lot of a twenty-four-hour supermarket. I was no longer frightened of the creature, but reality had set in. How was I going to bring this thing into my brother's house? I wondered. What was I going to say? How was I going to explain it?

I parked the car beneath one of the lights in an empty section of the parking lot and turned around to look at the creature.

It was male.

The sight of the penis, long and gracefully slender, shocked me. The face was Marilyn's, as was the hair, and I had automatically assumed that the creature was a female. I had seen no breasts, but I had not been able to see that low in the mirror.

Now I saw everything.

And I felt attracted to it.

The creature smiled at me.

And its penis stiffened.

What the hell was happening? My own erection was growing, even though I didn't want it to, my body responding to this monster even as my brain was disgusted by it. It wasn't even human, I told myself. Three hours ago, it had been a puddle of my sperm that had landed on Marilyn Monroe's moldy panties.

The creature leaned forward, puckered its lips, and though there was no lipstick around its mouth, it looked exactly like one of Marilyn's classic poses.

My penis hurt, it was so hard. I didn't want to insert my penis in the creature, didn't want to stick it in its mouth or in its ass. I wanted to do what I'd done with the panties: spurt on it.

But what would happen to that sperm?

In my mind, I saw it blackening, moldering, combining with the flesh of this monster to create yet another monster.

The protective feelings I had originally felt for the creature were gone, replaced by this unnatural lust. The disgust was still there, though, augmented by an unfocused rage. I got out of the car, opened the back door, grabbed the creature's arm, and yanked it outside. Its skin was soft, erotically smooth to my touch, and I could not help looking down at the erect organ pointing outward from between its legs as I pulled it from the car.

I hit it over the head with the lug wrench I took from the Dart's trunk. It did not bleed, but it fell down in a crumpled heap on the parking lot. It had not even tried to avoid the blow, and though a brief flicker of that initial protectiveness returned as I hit it, the feeling was overpowered by my rage and fear, and I hit it again.

And again.

I glanced around the parking lot to see if anyone had witnessed this beating, but the lot was empty save for a few cars near the supermarket entrance, and there was no sign of any people.

I picked up the creature and put him in the back seat.

I drove at an even seventy miles an hour once I got past the outskirts of the city, but it was still close to dawn when I reached The Place. I skidded into the parking lot, braked to a halt. I opened up the back door and looked down at the form of my son. I didn't know if he was dead or merely unconscious, but I didn't really care.

I picked him up. He was warm, still alive. The sensuous smoothness of his skin aroused me again, and I glanced involuntarily at his slender penis and I felt myself becoming hard.

I kicked shut the door of the car and carried him into The Place.

The front door was open, the old man waiting for me. He looked at me and there was neither horror nor humor on his face, no look of I-told-you-so in his eyes. He merely looked at the form in my hands, nodded at me.

"Want me to take care of it?" he asked.

I nodded. I could not even bring myself to speak.

"Ten dollars," he said.

I took out my wallet, handed him two fives.

He accepted the money, pocketed it.

I glanced toward the museum entrance, thought of Marilyn's panties, then forced myself to turn and walked out of The Place. I pressed down on my erection. ' I did not look back.

You wan me suckee you good, GI?

Gil Thornton's elbow slammed into the side of the restaurant's neoclassic facade as his hand reached for the side arm that should have been caressing his hip like an enamored lover.

That should have been there.

But wasn't.

Hadn't been for twenty-plus years.

You wan me suckee you good, GI?

Gil pushed away from the thin sheet-marble column and ran a shaky hand through thinning hair. Tried to force an even shakier smile to his lips, but found that particular action as impossible as trying to draw a long-forgotten gun.

To shoot a long-dead whore.

watching him

He would have laughed out loud if he'd been able to stop panting. The reaction and the (fear) memories had undoubtedly been the direct result of the "182nd Point 5" reunion dinner he'd just suffered through.

And wondered, again — for the hundredth time that evening, actually — why the hell he'd suddenly felt obliged to sit through an overpriced meal and down watery scotch alongside men whom he shared nothing in common with except the number 182.5.

The exact middle of the summer of '69 draft choice.

If you didn't count leap year.

Which Uncle Sam didn't.

Why after all these years? was still playing like a broken record in his mind when the evening's "Reopening of Old Wounds" had drifted away from firefights and cheap pussy and focused on the current administration's brownnosing attempt to reestablish trade agreements with the Nam.

The boys of the "182nd Point 5 Club" thought that was a bad idea.

And Gil had kept quiet, sucking down three times his usual two-drink limit and making himself a promise he intended to keep this time: No more reunions with men incapable of putting the past behind them.

Like he'd done.

At least until tonight.

"So ya wanna suckee or not?"

Gil lowered his hand slowly, remembering the side arm at the last moment, and quickly grabbed the restaurant's brass handrail instead.

still watching him

"What?"

The vague female shape stepped away from the line of parked cars and started a slow, cautious advance — high heels clicking against the sidewalk like bamboo chimes, her body moving beneath the minidress like a snake trying to shed its skin.