Alan Baxter - The Gulp - Five Tales of Horror

Some sense of normalcy returned as the meal hit Troy’s stomach, but the itch in his hand didn’t ease, nor the drag at his chest that seemed to draw him back towards home. He imagined it felt like this when parents had a new baby and went out, leaving the child with a babysitter. An anxiety of abdicated responsibility.

“You know what, mate,” he said to Brendan. “I think that bug knocked me about more than I realised. I thought a good feed would fix me up, but I don’t think it did.”

“You do look a bit peaky.” Brendan’s eyes were narrow in concern.

“Sorry, man, I owe you a beer. But next time, yeah?”

“Sure. You gonna be okay?”

Troy smiled, but it felt fake even to him. “Yeah. I reckon I just need to sleep it off.”

He passed a couple of his Turner’s colleagues coming in as he went out.

“Thought you were off sick?” one said.

“I was. Thought I was better, but I’m not. Going home again.”

“See you Monday?”

“Hope so!”

He hurried away up Tanning Street. Besides the burning itch in his swollen hand, and the discomfort of the tightened skin, he did actually feel much better for the feed and the couple of beers. He just needed to get back to his egg.

As he reached the opposite corner of the block, where the Victorian pub stood, he saw Cindy Panko heading towards him. On her own. He wondered where Al Chang was. Maybe she was going to meet him. He felt a lurch of longing in his gut, remembered the many times they’d enjoyed each other’s bodies. But she was no good, certainly no good for him. She wasn’t made of family stuff. The egg at home exerted a greater pull on him than Cindy’s body now. Some distant part of his mind suggested maybe that wasn’t right. Maybe that was fucking weird. But he didn’t care.

“Hey, Troyyy,” she said, dragging out the sound of his name.

She had a great figure, long shiny brown hair and big eyes. Her skin was always creamy. “Hey,” he said cautiously, pausing. The urge to get back to his egg intensified.

“Where you going?” she asked.

“Heading home.”

“It’s not even 8 o’clock.”

He shrugged. He didn’t owe her an explanation.

“Wanna have a drink with me?” she asked. She pointed to the Vic. “We could go in there if you don’t want to be in Clooney’s tonight.”

“What about Al?”

Her face twisted into something nasty. “What about him?”

“Like that is it?”

“Al Chang can get fucked. But by someone else from now on.”

“So you come crawling back to me, that it?” The words were harsh and out before he realised he was going to say them.

Instead of being hurt, she grinned impishly. “I like it when you’re angry.”

“I’m going home.” He stepped around her and started to walk away, but she fell into step beside him.

“How about I come too?”

“What?”

“Let’s fuck, Troy. Come on. And you’ve got some grog at home, I’m sure. Let’s get pissed and fuck.”

He couldn’t ignore the stir in his groin at her words, but the drag in him intensified again. His egg needed him. Family first. “No. Fuck off, Cindy.”

She stopped, eyes wide. “Well fuck you too, shitcunt!” she spat.

He heard her Dunlop Volleys slapping the pavement as she marched away from him. He didn’t look back, kept walking.

When he got back to his flat, he went straight to the tank. The plants were all swollen with numerous blisters and darkening towards black. They looked oily. The fish were unrecognisable. Bloated and contorted, yet somehow alive, here a gasping mouth, there a gaping gill. Eyes bulged from strange positions on the crooked scales, fins were feathered or gathered into bizarre points, protruding at random from their confused bodies. They bobbed and rolled in the water, tumbled occasionally by the current from the filter pushing cleaned water back into the tank from the top. They no longer avoided the egg, either through disinclination or inability he wasn’t sure. They drifted and flexed feebly in the water, seemingly blind and lost to their fate. He didn’t mind.

But the egg, oh, that was magnificent. It had grown, now filling a little over half the length of the tank, about the size of a rectangular couch cushion. Its surface glowed, more than a reflection of the LED light bar, definitely some internal iridescence, rainbowing its surface. The myriad tendrils inside writhed lazily.

Troy’s sense of urgency, of longing, eased immediately. He was where he needed to be, caring for this. His hand itched and pulsed, but despite that warning, maybe even invited by it, he desperately wanted to touch the egg again. To hold it.

He suddenly felt encumbered by his clothes. Hurrying to the bedroom, he stripped off, left his clothes in a pile on the floor, and returned to his tank. Naked, he slid the glass covering aside and reached in. The warm water was a balm to his swollen, itching skin. He couldn’t lift the egg easily in one hand, but he got his puffy palm under it and hoisted it up out of the water, then pressed it against his chest, cradled in the crook of his elbow. He kept his left hand away from it, some part of him realising he might need better use of that hand, despite being right-handed.

The egg was warm, almost hot, and pulsed with life. It emanated a kind of peace and a kind of vibrancy simultaneously. It felt right, pressed against his flesh. He would protect this thing. Nothing else mattered.

He hugged the egg to him for a long time, unaware of exactly how long, but eventually the weight became too much, pulling at him. His breathing had turned to shallow gasps, his heart raced, and the egg itself yearned for water.

He quickly returned it to the tank. All inside his arm and across his chest was stippled with little bumps, already the skin stretching to a translucence that showed liquid inside. Troy felt as if he’d had the best sex of his life, spent and exhausted and exhilarated. All this time wanting a family and he had it all in this one beautiful thing. Paradoxically, both child and lover, something to care for and something to be with, a family in rainbow beauty. It transcended family, made a mockery of the concept of a couple producing offspring. It was all things combined into one and it wanted him.

He stumbled backwards to the couch and sat, staring at the thing he loved, unaware and unconcerned as hours drifted by.

At some later point, hunger roused him. He staggered into the kitchen and tried to find something to eat, but he hadn’t shopped in a while, and nothing was especially obvious. He found a pack of bacon in the fridge and tore it open, ate the fatty strips of meat raw and cold. Some potatoes sat in the vegetable crisper and he took one, crunched it like an apple. Taste, texture didn’t matter, he simply needed sustenance.

With his back to his beloved family in the tank he realised he was exhausted. He knew self-care was an important part of any relationship. He needed sleep. The egg was safe in the water, so he went through into the bedroom. He saw himself in the mirrored sliding door of his wardrobe. Naked and lean, a handsome enough man. But his arm and torso distracted him. Across the upper right side of his chest and shoulder, and all along his right arm, his skin was rippled like a burn scar. He moved closer. Not rippled but stippled. A mass of liquid-filled blisters, each about the size of half a grape, pushing up from this skin, blurring together in places. They itched, the skin over them both semi-translucent and darkening to an off brown colour against his usual pale pink. Not brown, he thought, something deeper. Maybe a shade towards purple, like a stormy sky. He pressed gingerly at one of the lumps with the index finger of his left hand. It felt hardened, but still flexible. A strange gift from the egg, but family changed a person, after all. Family meant becoming something bigger than oneself, greater than the sum of parts.